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Book Logging: Audiobooks
Eggers, Dave. The Lifters - Audiobook read by Dion Graham. The cadences of the reading felt a little odd. I'm not sure if it's a common accent that I haven't heard often or what, but I think I've run into other audiobooks read this way (and probably not by this person???). The plot of this is kind of peculiar. It's a kids' book with some paranormal elements. Places in the world where people are despairing are being undermined by whirlwinds to the point that buildings collapse into sinkholes. Secretly, certain people work to prevent the collapse. There's an excruciatingly long scene of mortifying embarrassment that I feel that potential readers should be warned about.
Hiaasen, Carl. Chomp - Audiobook read by James Van der Beek. This is one of Hiaasen's YA books, and I generally like those. This one was funny. The main character and his father work with animals in the Everglades and get hired to manage the animals for a 'reality' show with a big name star who is pretty horrible. The story includes a girl who is fleeing her father who is a violent drunk. There were a lot of coincidences that crashed together to combine humor and suspense. The protagonist is a boy who lost part of his hand when he made a mistake handling an animal. It comes up more than once, but it's not a thing he's upset about by the time the story starts, and it isn't a focus for the story.
Keller, Tae. When You Trap a Tiger - Audiobook read by Greta Jung. There's a thread of magic through this, but most of the story is about a girl dealing with family upheaval, loss of a parent, and impending loss of a grandparent. The dying grandmother is a Korean immigrant. The girl and her older sister are mixed race. The magic involves tigers and stories and family. There's a lot about things people choose to pass on and things they try not to but maybe should. I cried at the end.
LaValle, Victor. The Ballad of Black Tom - Audiobook read by Kevin R. Free. I felt like this novella was walking along the edges of a sinkhole. Except that it was pretty clear that the bottom of that pit was in no way worse than everything around the pit. I haven't read Lovecraft, and I think that left a gap for me that actually made the horror of the mundane world worse. That is, I didn't have his side of it in the back of my head, waiting to be altered. The racism and racial violence are pretty bad here and are clearly horrors that stalk normal people and might strike when least expected.
Markell, Denis. Click Here to Start - Audiobook read by Greg Watanabe. Middle grade mystery. The protagonist's great-uncle leaves him a series of puzzles to solve to find a treasure, but he and his friends aren't the only ones trying to pursue the answers.
Martinez, A. Lee. The Last Adventure of Constance Verity - Audiobook read by Cynthia Farrell. Constance has always been the Chosen One, and she's had enough of it. The book covers her quest to find a way to get rid of the title and what comes after. There are a lot of references to adventures past, and there's a fair amount of humor. None of it bears up under serious scrutiny, but it was a fun ride.
Moreno-Garcia, Silvia. Gods of Jade and Shadow - Audiobook read by Yetta Gottesman. I had to check this out (via Overdrive) twice in order to finish it. There was a gap of months between the two checkouts, so I lost some bits of the first half of the book. I liked the magical elements here and how the protagonist's journey wasn't entirely about those. I liked how the reader performed the book.
Polk, C.J. Witchmark - Audiobook read by Samuel Roukin. I also had to check this one out twice with a gap of months. This felt very much England immediately after WWI, except for the bits that didn't. The magic was rather interesting but also took some extra suspension of disbelief. I could buy that one form of magic would be valued over others, but I'm not convinced that healing would be discarded given that the people with other types of magic need healing, too. I wasn't survived by the lengths to which some of the characters would go to hold onto power, though, and I think I was supposed to be.
Reichl, Ruth. My Kitchen Year - Audiobook read by the author. There are recipes in this, but they're more cooking show narration than Joy of Cooking. The author surrounds the recipes with autobiographical narrative. I enjoyed listening, but cooking show narration also frustrates me because the recipes are all One True Way. The cooks don't talk about variations on the recipes based on food restrictions, flavor preferences, limited availability of the ingredients, etc. In my experience, that information is vastly more useful than strict recipes. I want to know what happens if I use white beans instead of kidney beans or if I use dill instead of basil or chicken rather than beef. Are the eggs necessary? (Most websites that talk about substitutions assume options not available to me and don't talk about why. They also don't address what to do if there are multiple ingredients that need to be changed. This is a major issue for our family.) Something like this feels more anthropological.
Roanhorse, Rebecca. Race to the Sun - Audiobook read by Kinsale Hueston. This is part of the Rick Riordan Presents series. I quite liked the book. Two siblings, with help from a friend, have to try to save their kidnapped father from monsters out of legends. Then they discover that the problem is bigger and might mean the end of the world. The world draws on Navajo traditions.
Standage, Tom. A History of the World in 6 Glasses - Audiobook read by Sean Runnette. I'll be honest, I failed to pay attention to most of this. I just couldn't focus on it. I remember beer and wine and coffee and tea and cola. I assume the other one was water, but I might be wrong. The book is nonfiction and not very long.
Valente, Catherynne M. Space Opera - Audiobook read by Heath Miller. I had a lot of trouble following this, and I never quite figured out why I was bothering to keep trying. I'm not even sure why I finished. I think that I never actually bought the premise, and I definitely didn't find it funny.
Weymouth, Laura E. A Treason of Thorns - Audiobook read by Fiona Hardingham. This is another one of those YA books that have incoherent worldbuilding due to the author wanting a particular character dynamic and emotional situation. The emotional through line works pretty well, but I kept stopping the book and trying to figure out how all of the supporting structure didn't just disintegrate. I believe I ranted to a couple of different people about it. This is set in a magical England that has major powers bound to particular houses and the adjoining lands. Each of those needs a person bound to it to command it and channel it. If that relationship goes wrong or if the spirit isn't properly kept, the power leaks out and destroys the surrounding land. The major problem in the book is that the King has a higher level of power over the Houses than the Caretakers do and uses it in destructive ways.
Yee, F.C. The Epic Crush of Genie Lo - Audiobook read by Nancy Wu. The title is kind of terrible, but the book is very good. Genie has to become a Slayer. It's more complicated than that in as much as she's working with Monkey and talking to deities. It's much the same in that she has problems with the ways that killing demons interferes with family, friendships, school, etc.
Started but not finished::
Barnhill, Kelly. Iron Hearted Violet - Audiobook read by Simon Vance. I didn't connect well with this, not with the setting or the plot or the characters. I listened to 2.5 hours and just found myself irritated. I think it was a mismatch in styles.
Brissett, Jennifer Marie. Elysium - Audiobook read by Claire Bloom. I didn't get very far before hitting explicit sex, a long scene of it. Cordelia was home, and it was mortifying for both of us. I really wish for warnings on audiobooks.
Bryson, Bill. The Life and Times of the Thunderbolt Kid - Audiobook read by the author. This is a memoir of the author's childhood in the 1950s. The humor didn't work for me.
Carter, M.J. The Strangler Vine - Audiobook read by Alex Wyndham. I listened to the first fifty minutes of this and didn't want to spend more time with the point of view character. The book is a mystery set in 19th century India; the POV character is young British soldier. There's a lot of period racism.
Coon, Kelly. Gravemaidens - Audiobook read by Bahni Turpin. I listened to about an hour and a half of this and kept wanting to shake the main character because the worldbuilding was inconsistent. I felt like she was a pod person who wasn't really from the culture in which she ostensibly lived. A lot of her motivations could have made sense with slightly different worldbuilding or slightly different circumstances in the same world. As it was, I just got angry at how little sense things made. Overdrive tags the book as fantasy, but as far as I could tell it was mostly historical. I didn't recognize the city name, but the setting was clearly Mesopotamian.
Ellis, Bella. The Vanished Bride - This is a mystery with the Bronte sisters as the detectives. I gave up after two hours because I didn't like any of the three of them as written. I didn't want to spend time with them.
Hendrix, Grady. My Best Friend's Exorcism - Audiobook read by Emily Woo Zeller. I think I'm too old for this book. I was irritated by the characters acting their ages. I only managed about 10% of the book.
Kabot-Zinn, Jon. Guided Mindfulness series 1 - Audiobook read by author. I listened to a couple of tracks of this and found myself very much on edge rather than meditative. There's a particular style of talking that's common to these things that pings me as over the top gaslighting. I get angry in response and start wanting to set things on fire with my mind.
Kadrey, Richard. The Everything Box - Audiobook read by Oliver Wyman. I couldn't focus on the narrative enough to track the details. There were too many parallel plotlines. I think this was an apocalyptic heist, but I only got two hours in, so I'm not sure if there would have been more plot after the heist part.
Lim, Roselle. Natalie Tan's Book of Luck and Fortune - Audiobook read by Catherine Ho. I ran out of time on this one, but I also was pretty sure that I knew some of the impending complications and just didn't want to try to cope with them.
McCall Smith, Alexander. The Department of Sensitive Crimes - Audiobook read by David Rintoul. I gave up after a few chapters because I wasn't tracking the sentences properly. That made tracking the characters and story a daunting prospect.
Turnage, Sheila. The Law of Finders Keepers - Audio book read by Lauren Fortgang. This mostly just didn't hold my attention. It's a middle grade mystery with a moderately large cast of characters.
Hiaasen, Carl. Chomp - Audiobook read by James Van der Beek. This is one of Hiaasen's YA books, and I generally like those. This one was funny. The main character and his father work with animals in the Everglades and get hired to manage the animals for a 'reality' show with a big name star who is pretty horrible. The story includes a girl who is fleeing her father who is a violent drunk. There were a lot of coincidences that crashed together to combine humor and suspense. The protagonist is a boy who lost part of his hand when he made a mistake handling an animal. It comes up more than once, but it's not a thing he's upset about by the time the story starts, and it isn't a focus for the story.
Keller, Tae. When You Trap a Tiger - Audiobook read by Greta Jung. There's a thread of magic through this, but most of the story is about a girl dealing with family upheaval, loss of a parent, and impending loss of a grandparent. The dying grandmother is a Korean immigrant. The girl and her older sister are mixed race. The magic involves tigers and stories and family. There's a lot about things people choose to pass on and things they try not to but maybe should. I cried at the end.
LaValle, Victor. The Ballad of Black Tom - Audiobook read by Kevin R. Free. I felt like this novella was walking along the edges of a sinkhole. Except that it was pretty clear that the bottom of that pit was in no way worse than everything around the pit. I haven't read Lovecraft, and I think that left a gap for me that actually made the horror of the mundane world worse. That is, I didn't have his side of it in the back of my head, waiting to be altered. The racism and racial violence are pretty bad here and are clearly horrors that stalk normal people and might strike when least expected.
Markell, Denis. Click Here to Start - Audiobook read by Greg Watanabe. Middle grade mystery. The protagonist's great-uncle leaves him a series of puzzles to solve to find a treasure, but he and his friends aren't the only ones trying to pursue the answers.
Martinez, A. Lee. The Last Adventure of Constance Verity - Audiobook read by Cynthia Farrell. Constance has always been the Chosen One, and she's had enough of it. The book covers her quest to find a way to get rid of the title and what comes after. There are a lot of references to adventures past, and there's a fair amount of humor. None of it bears up under serious scrutiny, but it was a fun ride.
Moreno-Garcia, Silvia. Gods of Jade and Shadow - Audiobook read by Yetta Gottesman. I had to check this out (via Overdrive) twice in order to finish it. There was a gap of months between the two checkouts, so I lost some bits of the first half of the book. I liked the magical elements here and how the protagonist's journey wasn't entirely about those. I liked how the reader performed the book.
Polk, C.J. Witchmark - Audiobook read by Samuel Roukin. I also had to check this one out twice with a gap of months. This felt very much England immediately after WWI, except for the bits that didn't. The magic was rather interesting but also took some extra suspension of disbelief. I could buy that one form of magic would be valued over others, but I'm not convinced that healing would be discarded given that the people with other types of magic need healing, too. I wasn't survived by the lengths to which some of the characters would go to hold onto power, though, and I think I was supposed to be.
Reichl, Ruth. My Kitchen Year - Audiobook read by the author. There are recipes in this, but they're more cooking show narration than Joy of Cooking. The author surrounds the recipes with autobiographical narrative. I enjoyed listening, but cooking show narration also frustrates me because the recipes are all One True Way. The cooks don't talk about variations on the recipes based on food restrictions, flavor preferences, limited availability of the ingredients, etc. In my experience, that information is vastly more useful than strict recipes. I want to know what happens if I use white beans instead of kidney beans or if I use dill instead of basil or chicken rather than beef. Are the eggs necessary? (Most websites that talk about substitutions assume options not available to me and don't talk about why. They also don't address what to do if there are multiple ingredients that need to be changed. This is a major issue for our family.) Something like this feels more anthropological.
Roanhorse, Rebecca. Race to the Sun - Audiobook read by Kinsale Hueston. This is part of the Rick Riordan Presents series. I quite liked the book. Two siblings, with help from a friend, have to try to save their kidnapped father from monsters out of legends. Then they discover that the problem is bigger and might mean the end of the world. The world draws on Navajo traditions.
Standage, Tom. A History of the World in 6 Glasses - Audiobook read by Sean Runnette. I'll be honest, I failed to pay attention to most of this. I just couldn't focus on it. I remember beer and wine and coffee and tea and cola. I assume the other one was water, but I might be wrong. The book is nonfiction and not very long.
Valente, Catherynne M. Space Opera - Audiobook read by Heath Miller. I had a lot of trouble following this, and I never quite figured out why I was bothering to keep trying. I'm not even sure why I finished. I think that I never actually bought the premise, and I definitely didn't find it funny.
Weymouth, Laura E. A Treason of Thorns - Audiobook read by Fiona Hardingham. This is another one of those YA books that have incoherent worldbuilding due to the author wanting a particular character dynamic and emotional situation. The emotional through line works pretty well, but I kept stopping the book and trying to figure out how all of the supporting structure didn't just disintegrate. I believe I ranted to a couple of different people about it. This is set in a magical England that has major powers bound to particular houses and the adjoining lands. Each of those needs a person bound to it to command it and channel it. If that relationship goes wrong or if the spirit isn't properly kept, the power leaks out and destroys the surrounding land. The major problem in the book is that the King has a higher level of power over the Houses than the Caretakers do and uses it in destructive ways.
Yee, F.C. The Epic Crush of Genie Lo - Audiobook read by Nancy Wu. The title is kind of terrible, but the book is very good. Genie has to become a Slayer. It's more complicated than that in as much as she's working with Monkey and talking to deities. It's much the same in that she has problems with the ways that killing demons interferes with family, friendships, school, etc.
Started but not finished::
Barnhill, Kelly. Iron Hearted Violet - Audiobook read by Simon Vance. I didn't connect well with this, not with the setting or the plot or the characters. I listened to 2.5 hours and just found myself irritated. I think it was a mismatch in styles.
Brissett, Jennifer Marie. Elysium - Audiobook read by Claire Bloom. I didn't get very far before hitting explicit sex, a long scene of it. Cordelia was home, and it was mortifying for both of us. I really wish for warnings on audiobooks.
Bryson, Bill. The Life and Times of the Thunderbolt Kid - Audiobook read by the author. This is a memoir of the author's childhood in the 1950s. The humor didn't work for me.
Carter, M.J. The Strangler Vine - Audiobook read by Alex Wyndham. I listened to the first fifty minutes of this and didn't want to spend more time with the point of view character. The book is a mystery set in 19th century India; the POV character is young British soldier. There's a lot of period racism.
Coon, Kelly. Gravemaidens - Audiobook read by Bahni Turpin. I listened to about an hour and a half of this and kept wanting to shake the main character because the worldbuilding was inconsistent. I felt like she was a pod person who wasn't really from the culture in which she ostensibly lived. A lot of her motivations could have made sense with slightly different worldbuilding or slightly different circumstances in the same world. As it was, I just got angry at how little sense things made. Overdrive tags the book as fantasy, but as far as I could tell it was mostly historical. I didn't recognize the city name, but the setting was clearly Mesopotamian.
Ellis, Bella. The Vanished Bride - This is a mystery with the Bronte sisters as the detectives. I gave up after two hours because I didn't like any of the three of them as written. I didn't want to spend time with them.
Hendrix, Grady. My Best Friend's Exorcism - Audiobook read by Emily Woo Zeller. I think I'm too old for this book. I was irritated by the characters acting their ages. I only managed about 10% of the book.
Kabot-Zinn, Jon. Guided Mindfulness series 1 - Audiobook read by author. I listened to a couple of tracks of this and found myself very much on edge rather than meditative. There's a particular style of talking that's common to these things that pings me as over the top gaslighting. I get angry in response and start wanting to set things on fire with my mind.
Kadrey, Richard. The Everything Box - Audiobook read by Oliver Wyman. I couldn't focus on the narrative enough to track the details. There were too many parallel plotlines. I think this was an apocalyptic heist, but I only got two hours in, so I'm not sure if there would have been more plot after the heist part.
Lim, Roselle. Natalie Tan's Book of Luck and Fortune - Audiobook read by Catherine Ho. I ran out of time on this one, but I also was pretty sure that I knew some of the impending complications and just didn't want to try to cope with them.
McCall Smith, Alexander. The Department of Sensitive Crimes - Audiobook read by David Rintoul. I gave up after a few chapters because I wasn't tracking the sentences properly. That made tracking the characters and story a daunting prospect.
Turnage, Sheila. The Law of Finders Keepers - Audio book read by Lauren Fortgang. This mostly just didn't hold my attention. It's a middle grade mystery with a moderately large cast of characters.
no subject
Have you read The Iron Will of Genie Lo?
Not yet, but I'm looking forward to it! (I actually hadn't realized it was out already.)
The people who loved it aren't actually wrong; I just don't understand. If that makes sense?
Makes a lot of sense! A lot of people seem to love Valente's prose, but it's WAY to overwrought for me. And I enjoy Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, which I think Space Opera was trying to be, but it just didn't hit that note for me at all. (I do know a lot of people who felt similarly, so I think it's just a polarizing book / she's a polarizing author.)
no subject
I was more able to believe it when I was under the impression that the weather magic required constant power and attention, but, at that point, I couldn't figure out why the culture was discarding non-aristocrats with power.
The ways in which the social order was broken were the point of the book, so it was harder to suspend disbelief about them. Aristocracies do really stupid things in order to keep power, so that wasn't a stretch.
I don't know. I think that the alterations that would have made the worldbuilding more effective were all things that would have taken away the feeling of post-WWI England that I found so prevalent. That would have complicated other things.
I really liked The Iron Will of Genie Lo.