Book Logging: Audiobooks
Sep. 12th, 2020 01:30 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
the_rckAs with the paper and ebook logging, I'm cranky and possibly picking at issues that wouldn't be deal breakers at a different time (or for not-me people). I liked most of these better than it sounds like I did.
Alexander, Zeno. The Library of Ever - Audiobook read by Emily Lawrence. Book 1 in the Library of Ever Series. This was a very short book and kind of lacking in depth. I suspect that it's the sort of story that a kid in the target audience will imbue with layers and layers in their imagination. It's about a child becoming an apprentice librarian in a vast, magical library. It's not just books in the library. The protagonist time travels and climbs all over a magical globe. There's a villainous group trying to restrict access to information. My main bone to pick with the library stuff in the book is that the protagonist thinks that her job as a library worker is to find answers for patrons rather than to help them find the answers themselves.
Andrews, Ilona. Diamond Fire - Audiobook read by Renee Raudman. Novella length. There are two books between this and Burn for Me, and I haven't read them yet, so I jumped over a lot of plot development. This is from the POV of the younger sister of the heroine of that book and is set during the run up to the wedding. I'm still kind of iffy on the wedding being a good idea, but I generally had fun with this novella (and maybe the intervening books will convince me). I missed some bits of plot because I was doing other things while listening, but nothing crucial was depending on those.
Barrett, Tracy. The Beast of Blackslope - Audiobook read by John Allen Nelson. Both the book and the performance were rather meh. I suppose I shouldn't be surprised because the story's pretty clearly aimed at 7 year olds. The protagonists are a brother and sister who are descendants of Sherlock Holmes. Their parents take them on vacation to a small town where they attempt to solve a mystery that Holmes never managed to solve.
Beagle, Peter S. In Calabria - Audiobook read by Bronson Pinchot. This is quite short for an audiobook, only three and a half hours. I think I still don't really get the appeal of Beagle's work. I spent a lot of this wondering why I was still listening.
Caletti, Deb. A Flicker of Courage - Audiobook read by Kristen Sieh. Book 1 of the Tales of Triumph and Disaster! Series. This is a middle grade book with fantasy elements. The protagonists live in a small land that's ruled by a single magic user. When one ruler dies, another discovers their power; some of them are good while others are evil. There are traditionally four other people with the power to break the ruler's spells and to overthrow evil rulers. Four kids join together to try to help a toddler whose been transformed into a small lizard. The story doesn't progress all that far and is clearly setting up for sequels. The evil ruler is pretty transparently based on Donald Trump. The book wasn't terrible, but it was... slight, kind of lacking in depth.
Chainani, Soman. The School for Good and Evil - Audiobook read by Polly Lee. This is the first book in a long series, and I think it would have read better as a standalone. It ran a bit too long, and I wanted the two protagonists to stop being quite so narrowly focused. I didn't think that their attitudes were out of keeping with their ages necessarily, but it frustrated me to cover the same ground over and over and over.
Cho, Zen. The Order of the Pure Moon Reflected in Water - Audiobook read by Nancy Wu. Listening to this felt like there was almost a story I could understand properly. I think I got the surface without any depths because I don't have the right cultural context. I was kind of bored, and my attention kept wandering. I'm not sure the book should be tagged as fantasy as those elements are almost imperceptible. Mostly, it's about people trying to survive having their culture crushed, dismembered, and stolen. There's no happy ending.
Chokshi, Roshani. Aru Shah and the Song of Death; Aru Shah and the Tree of Wishes - Audiobooks read by Soneela Nankani. Books 2 and 3 in the Pandava Quartet. I enjoyed these books as much as the first. Book 2 added two characters to the core group from the first book-- one more Pandava sister and a boy whose connection to the questing group is more complicated. There's once again a time limit to head off an apocalypse, and there's a good bit more exploration of the larger world of the gods, demons, and other non-human beings. Book 3 introduces ten year old twins to fill out the group of Pandavas.
Cuevas, Adrianna. The Total Eclipse of Nestor Lopez - Audiobook read by Anthony Rey Perez. Nestor and his mother keep moving as his father gets reassigned. This time, they've moved in with his father's mother. Nestor can understand animals when they talk, and animals understand him. They tell him that there's something deeply wrong in the woods near their house. I enjoyed this middle grade fantasy. Perez is a good narrator for this type of book.
Eason, K. How Rory Thorne Destroyed the Multiverse - Audiobook read by Nicole Poole. For some reason, I'd expected this book to be funny. It wasn't. It was still quite good. There was a lot more about growing up and about making political choices. There's a bit in the middle during which the passage of time is confusing-- Some developments imply a long time between point A and point B while others imply only days.
Foxlee, Karen. Ophelia and the Marvelous Boy - Audiobook read by Jayne Entwhistle. Middle grade fantasy. The worldbuilding here is very squishy. An ice witch has ruled the world for 300-ish years. Okay, I can go with that. I'm just not sure why I missed any discussion about it being constantly winter and how they got food and fuel and so on. I'm not sure why there don't seem to be legends about spring/summer. If it's not constantly winter, I'm not sure why Ophelia believed the Marvelous Boy about having to find the sword and kill the witch. I'm also wondering if the author researched asthma and asthma inhalers at all. The protagonist uses her 'puffer' several times an hour with no side effects; it seems to be more like a soothing sort of thing than anything else. But this was not a bad book. It was solidly decent just never quite edging into good.
Hearne, Kevin. Besieged - Audiobook read by Luke Daniel. This is an anthology of stories in the Iron Druid Chronicles. The reader is quite good. One of the stories was awkward as an audiobook in a house full of people due to NSFW content.
Hernandez, Carlos. Sal and Gabi Save the Universe - Audiobook read by Anthony Rey Perez. This is book 2 in the series. I'm not sure I entirely followed the cross universe shenanigans here which involved multiple copies of Gabi working at counter-purposes. There's a school play and festival, too, and a toilet with a high level AI.
Hiaasen, Carl. Hoot - Audiobook read by Chad Lowe. A construction site is plagued by delays which the police consider vandalism and the company considers sabotage. There's a general sense of the ridiculous in that and in the interpersonal interactions of the assorted kids who're involved. I enjoyed the book.
Holm, Jennifer L. The Fourteenth Goldfish - Audiobook read by Georgette Perna. This is a very short audiobook, almost exactly three hours long. The first person narrator is an eleven year old girl who is trying to deal with her de-aged grandfather living with them. She and her mother pretend that he's a cousin, and he goes to middle school with her. He has come up with some sort of mad science thing to de-age people, but he can't replicate the process or prove that he is who he says he is. He's very bad at being a middle school student.
Kress, Adrienne. The Door in the Alley - Audiobook read by Kristen Sieh. Book 1 in the Explorers Series. This is a short children's book. It ends with a cliffhanger, and the library doesn't have the sequel (I didn't check to see if it actually exists). There's a weird blend of the possible and impossible in this, and I was never quite certain which things were meant to be normal for the broader world of the book. The POV characters are both children who accept what they observe as self-evidently possible.
Lafferty, Mur. Six Wakes - Audiobook read by the author. I thought I had logged this book before, but looking back, I'm not seeing it, so either I didn't or I mistagged it. There were parts of this book that I enjoyed, but I felt that the characters were oddly trusting of their mission. Also, the entire set up was weirdly baroque and expensive for what it seems to have been intended to accomplish.
Nagoski, Emily and Amelia. Burnout - Audiobook read by the authors. I got confused in places here because I couldn't track who was speaking. I also got frustrated that one of the two authors was very adamant about exercise being the Best way to complete the stress cycle and that all physical ailments could be alleviated by completing the stress cycle. The other was so certain that exercise wasn't universally helpful, and that was one of the things that kept me from stopping the book. I'm intrigued by the idea of doing something to let my mind and body know that I'm safe, but I'm kind of at a loss as to what would work for me. None of their options felt right.
Rollins, Danielle. Stolen Time - Audiobook read by James Fouhey. The ending was telegraphed way, way in advance and wasn't, IMO, satisfying. It's the sort of ending that leaves every plot thread dangling, and all the characters shattered. I sort of expected that, given that there's a series name attached, but I was hoping for something better. As the time remaining in the book ticked down, I got more and more sure that I was going to be unhappy with the book as an independent thing.
Thomas, Sherry. The Hollow of Fear; The Art of Theft - Audiobooks read by Kate Reading. Third and fourth in the Lady Sherlock Series. In The Hollow of Fear, Charlotte needs to solve the murder of a friend's estranged wife. In The Art of Theft, she needs to retrieve documents that are being used to blackmail an old friend of Mrs Watson. In both books, I found the continuing stories more interesting than the episodic portion of the plot.
Watson, Jude. Loot: How to Steal a Fortune - Audiobook read by Michael Crouch. This is a caper/heist story starring a bunch of 12/13 year olds. It wasn't great but also wasn't terrible. There are a vast number of holes in the plot that I think I wasn't supposed to notice.
Wilson, C.L. King of Sword and Sky; Queen of Song and Souls - Audiobook read by Emily Durante. Books 3 and 4 in the Tairen Soul series. I want very much to know how this series comes out, but I'm also frustrated by how long it is (there are five books; they all run more than fifteen hours). This is a fantasy series with a strong thread of romance. I have issues with the fact that there are elves and 'Eld' (the former being allies and the latter being the villains); hearing the distinction is difficult. I'm not sure I understand the history of this setting because the villains are over-powered relative to 90% of the people in this other world.
Started but not finished:
Chainani, Soman. A World without Princes - Audiobook read by Polly Lee. Book 2 of the School for Good and Evil Series. I stopped halfway through this when I realized that I wanted a revolution that involved all of the characters giving the entire system the middle finger and then going off to found a commune. If I'm reading a dystopia, I don't consider reading about how the characters clawed their way to a better status inside the system to be anything like happy, and I didn't feel like the characters in this book were even aware of the underlying problems. I liked the writing and the characters, generally, but... Looking at the remaining books in the series, I don't see any real likelihood that they burn everything down and take up farming. They're not even acknowledging that they're in Omelas.
Chiang, Ted. Stories of Your Life and Others - Audiobook read by Todd McLaren and Abby Craden. I don't think that I like short story collections in audio. If I dislike a story, I have no way to page forward. I think I got halfway through this book. Then I stopped for 2-4 years. I've decided that I'm not going back to it.
Jackson, D.B. Time's Children - Audiobook read by Helen Keeley. I got about halfway through this, a little more than eight hours in. At that point, I was just frustrated. A lot of what had happened so far felt gratuitous and kind of dull. It had taken fully six hours to get to the beginning of the situation described in the blurb, and I kind of felt that just about any of the other characters would be more interesting protagonists than the one who got most of the focus.
Moriarty, Jaclyn. A Corner of White - Audiobook read by Fiona Hardingham. I listened to 3.5 hours of this out of 11.5 and still couldn't remember who the characters were. I'm not sure if I wasn't listening well enough or if this is simply a book badly suited to my tastes.
Peters, Elizabeth. The Curse of the Pharaohs - Audiobook read by Susan O'Malley. Right. Now I remember why I abandoned this series a few books further in. I hated feeling like the author was constantly mocking the narrator and making her be Wrong and not actually as competent as she thinks she is. This particularly contrasts with the books by Deanna Raybourn that I'm currently reading. The narrator in the Raybourn books has the same arrogance but is often right and actually has competence to back it up.
Ruby, Laura. The Shadow Cipher - Audiobook read by Adam Verner. Book 1 in the York series. I think I only made it ten minutes into this one.
Valdes, Valerie. Chilling Effect - Audiobook read by Almarie Guerra. This is an SF story of a ramshackle cargo ship and a found family crew. The captain is being blackmailed. I think this was just a mismatch for me. I got four hours in (out of fourteen-ish) and wasn't attached to any of the characters and therefore didn't care about the protagonist's issues in terms of interacting with everybody else or about the episodic missions she was being blackmailed into completing. There's probably a plot arc in there somewhere, but looking at another ten hours without any real sense that anything would happen put me off. This is the sort of book where I'd read the end early in order to judge what sort of story the author was telling and whether or not it was my sort of thing. I really don't like the barriers to do that with audiobooks and ebooks.
Alexander, Zeno. The Library of Ever - Audiobook read by Emily Lawrence. Book 1 in the Library of Ever Series. This was a very short book and kind of lacking in depth. I suspect that it's the sort of story that a kid in the target audience will imbue with layers and layers in their imagination. It's about a child becoming an apprentice librarian in a vast, magical library. It's not just books in the library. The protagonist time travels and climbs all over a magical globe. There's a villainous group trying to restrict access to information. My main bone to pick with the library stuff in the book is that the protagonist thinks that her job as a library worker is to find answers for patrons rather than to help them find the answers themselves.
Andrews, Ilona. Diamond Fire - Audiobook read by Renee Raudman. Novella length. There are two books between this and Burn for Me, and I haven't read them yet, so I jumped over a lot of plot development. This is from the POV of the younger sister of the heroine of that book and is set during the run up to the wedding. I'm still kind of iffy on the wedding being a good idea, but I generally had fun with this novella (and maybe the intervening books will convince me). I missed some bits of plot because I was doing other things while listening, but nothing crucial was depending on those.
Barrett, Tracy. The Beast of Blackslope - Audiobook read by John Allen Nelson. Both the book and the performance were rather meh. I suppose I shouldn't be surprised because the story's pretty clearly aimed at 7 year olds. The protagonists are a brother and sister who are descendants of Sherlock Holmes. Their parents take them on vacation to a small town where they attempt to solve a mystery that Holmes never managed to solve.
Beagle, Peter S. In Calabria - Audiobook read by Bronson Pinchot. This is quite short for an audiobook, only three and a half hours. I think I still don't really get the appeal of Beagle's work. I spent a lot of this wondering why I was still listening.
Caletti, Deb. A Flicker of Courage - Audiobook read by Kristen Sieh. Book 1 of the Tales of Triumph and Disaster! Series. This is a middle grade book with fantasy elements. The protagonists live in a small land that's ruled by a single magic user. When one ruler dies, another discovers their power; some of them are good while others are evil. There are traditionally four other people with the power to break the ruler's spells and to overthrow evil rulers. Four kids join together to try to help a toddler whose been transformed into a small lizard. The story doesn't progress all that far and is clearly setting up for sequels. The evil ruler is pretty transparently based on Donald Trump. The book wasn't terrible, but it was... slight, kind of lacking in depth.
Chainani, Soman. The School for Good and Evil - Audiobook read by Polly Lee. This is the first book in a long series, and I think it would have read better as a standalone. It ran a bit too long, and I wanted the two protagonists to stop being quite so narrowly focused. I didn't think that their attitudes were out of keeping with their ages necessarily, but it frustrated me to cover the same ground over and over and over.
Cho, Zen. The Order of the Pure Moon Reflected in Water - Audiobook read by Nancy Wu. Listening to this felt like there was almost a story I could understand properly. I think I got the surface without any depths because I don't have the right cultural context. I was kind of bored, and my attention kept wandering. I'm not sure the book should be tagged as fantasy as those elements are almost imperceptible. Mostly, it's about people trying to survive having their culture crushed, dismembered, and stolen. There's no happy ending.
Chokshi, Roshani. Aru Shah and the Song of Death; Aru Shah and the Tree of Wishes - Audiobooks read by Soneela Nankani. Books 2 and 3 in the Pandava Quartet. I enjoyed these books as much as the first. Book 2 added two characters to the core group from the first book-- one more Pandava sister and a boy whose connection to the questing group is more complicated. There's once again a time limit to head off an apocalypse, and there's a good bit more exploration of the larger world of the gods, demons, and other non-human beings. Book 3 introduces ten year old twins to fill out the group of Pandavas.
Cuevas, Adrianna. The Total Eclipse of Nestor Lopez - Audiobook read by Anthony Rey Perez. Nestor and his mother keep moving as his father gets reassigned. This time, they've moved in with his father's mother. Nestor can understand animals when they talk, and animals understand him. They tell him that there's something deeply wrong in the woods near their house. I enjoyed this middle grade fantasy. Perez is a good narrator for this type of book.
Eason, K. How Rory Thorne Destroyed the Multiverse - Audiobook read by Nicole Poole. For some reason, I'd expected this book to be funny. It wasn't. It was still quite good. There was a lot more about growing up and about making political choices. There's a bit in the middle during which the passage of time is confusing-- Some developments imply a long time between point A and point B while others imply only days.
Foxlee, Karen. Ophelia and the Marvelous Boy - Audiobook read by Jayne Entwhistle. Middle grade fantasy. The worldbuilding here is very squishy. An ice witch has ruled the world for 300-ish years. Okay, I can go with that. I'm just not sure why I missed any discussion about it being constantly winter and how they got food and fuel and so on. I'm not sure why there don't seem to be legends about spring/summer. If it's not constantly winter, I'm not sure why Ophelia believed the Marvelous Boy about having to find the sword and kill the witch. I'm also wondering if the author researched asthma and asthma inhalers at all. The protagonist uses her 'puffer' several times an hour with no side effects; it seems to be more like a soothing sort of thing than anything else. But this was not a bad book. It was solidly decent just never quite edging into good.
Hearne, Kevin. Besieged - Audiobook read by Luke Daniel. This is an anthology of stories in the Iron Druid Chronicles. The reader is quite good. One of the stories was awkward as an audiobook in a house full of people due to NSFW content.
Hernandez, Carlos. Sal and Gabi Save the Universe - Audiobook read by Anthony Rey Perez. This is book 2 in the series. I'm not sure I entirely followed the cross universe shenanigans here which involved multiple copies of Gabi working at counter-purposes. There's a school play and festival, too, and a toilet with a high level AI.
Hiaasen, Carl. Hoot - Audiobook read by Chad Lowe. A construction site is plagued by delays which the police consider vandalism and the company considers sabotage. There's a general sense of the ridiculous in that and in the interpersonal interactions of the assorted kids who're involved. I enjoyed the book.
Holm, Jennifer L. The Fourteenth Goldfish - Audiobook read by Georgette Perna. This is a very short audiobook, almost exactly three hours long. The first person narrator is an eleven year old girl who is trying to deal with her de-aged grandfather living with them. She and her mother pretend that he's a cousin, and he goes to middle school with her. He has come up with some sort of mad science thing to de-age people, but he can't replicate the process or prove that he is who he says he is. He's very bad at being a middle school student.
Kress, Adrienne. The Door in the Alley - Audiobook read by Kristen Sieh. Book 1 in the Explorers Series. This is a short children's book. It ends with a cliffhanger, and the library doesn't have the sequel (I didn't check to see if it actually exists). There's a weird blend of the possible and impossible in this, and I was never quite certain which things were meant to be normal for the broader world of the book. The POV characters are both children who accept what they observe as self-evidently possible.
Lafferty, Mur. Six Wakes - Audiobook read by the author. I thought I had logged this book before, but looking back, I'm not seeing it, so either I didn't or I mistagged it. There were parts of this book that I enjoyed, but I felt that the characters were oddly trusting of their mission. Also, the entire set up was weirdly baroque and expensive for what it seems to have been intended to accomplish.
Nagoski, Emily and Amelia. Burnout - Audiobook read by the authors. I got confused in places here because I couldn't track who was speaking. I also got frustrated that one of the two authors was very adamant about exercise being the Best way to complete the stress cycle and that all physical ailments could be alleviated by completing the stress cycle. The other was so certain that exercise wasn't universally helpful, and that was one of the things that kept me from stopping the book. I'm intrigued by the idea of doing something to let my mind and body know that I'm safe, but I'm kind of at a loss as to what would work for me. None of their options felt right.
Rollins, Danielle. Stolen Time - Audiobook read by James Fouhey. The ending was telegraphed way, way in advance and wasn't, IMO, satisfying. It's the sort of ending that leaves every plot thread dangling, and all the characters shattered. I sort of expected that, given that there's a series name attached, but I was hoping for something better. As the time remaining in the book ticked down, I got more and more sure that I was going to be unhappy with the book as an independent thing.
Thomas, Sherry. The Hollow of Fear; The Art of Theft - Audiobooks read by Kate Reading. Third and fourth in the Lady Sherlock Series. In The Hollow of Fear, Charlotte needs to solve the murder of a friend's estranged wife. In The Art of Theft, she needs to retrieve documents that are being used to blackmail an old friend of Mrs Watson. In both books, I found the continuing stories more interesting than the episodic portion of the plot.
Watson, Jude. Loot: How to Steal a Fortune - Audiobook read by Michael Crouch. This is a caper/heist story starring a bunch of 12/13 year olds. It wasn't great but also wasn't terrible. There are a vast number of holes in the plot that I think I wasn't supposed to notice.
Wilson, C.L. King of Sword and Sky; Queen of Song and Souls - Audiobook read by Emily Durante. Books 3 and 4 in the Tairen Soul series. I want very much to know how this series comes out, but I'm also frustrated by how long it is (there are five books; they all run more than fifteen hours). This is a fantasy series with a strong thread of romance. I have issues with the fact that there are elves and 'Eld' (the former being allies and the latter being the villains); hearing the distinction is difficult. I'm not sure I understand the history of this setting because the villains are over-powered relative to 90% of the people in this other world.
Started but not finished:
Chainani, Soman. A World without Princes - Audiobook read by Polly Lee. Book 2 of the School for Good and Evil Series. I stopped halfway through this when I realized that I wanted a revolution that involved all of the characters giving the entire system the middle finger and then going off to found a commune. If I'm reading a dystopia, I don't consider reading about how the characters clawed their way to a better status inside the system to be anything like happy, and I didn't feel like the characters in this book were even aware of the underlying problems. I liked the writing and the characters, generally, but... Looking at the remaining books in the series, I don't see any real likelihood that they burn everything down and take up farming. They're not even acknowledging that they're in Omelas.
Chiang, Ted. Stories of Your Life and Others - Audiobook read by Todd McLaren and Abby Craden. I don't think that I like short story collections in audio. If I dislike a story, I have no way to page forward. I think I got halfway through this book. Then I stopped for 2-4 years. I've decided that I'm not going back to it.
Jackson, D.B. Time's Children - Audiobook read by Helen Keeley. I got about halfway through this, a little more than eight hours in. At that point, I was just frustrated. A lot of what had happened so far felt gratuitous and kind of dull. It had taken fully six hours to get to the beginning of the situation described in the blurb, and I kind of felt that just about any of the other characters would be more interesting protagonists than the one who got most of the focus.
Moriarty, Jaclyn. A Corner of White - Audiobook read by Fiona Hardingham. I listened to 3.5 hours of this out of 11.5 and still couldn't remember who the characters were. I'm not sure if I wasn't listening well enough or if this is simply a book badly suited to my tastes.
Peters, Elizabeth. The Curse of the Pharaohs - Audiobook read by Susan O'Malley. Right. Now I remember why I abandoned this series a few books further in. I hated feeling like the author was constantly mocking the narrator and making her be Wrong and not actually as competent as she thinks she is. This particularly contrasts with the books by Deanna Raybourn that I'm currently reading. The narrator in the Raybourn books has the same arrogance but is often right and actually has competence to back it up.
Ruby, Laura. The Shadow Cipher - Audiobook read by Adam Verner. Book 1 in the York series. I think I only made it ten minutes into this one.
Valdes, Valerie. Chilling Effect - Audiobook read by Almarie Guerra. This is an SF story of a ramshackle cargo ship and a found family crew. The captain is being blackmailed. I think this was just a mismatch for me. I got four hours in (out of fourteen-ish) and wasn't attached to any of the characters and therefore didn't care about the protagonist's issues in terms of interacting with everybody else or about the episodic missions she was being blackmailed into completing. There's probably a plot arc in there somewhere, but looking at another ten hours without any real sense that anything would happen put me off. This is the sort of book where I'd read the end early in order to judge what sort of story the author was telling and whether or not it was my sort of thing. I really don't like the barriers to do that with audiobooks and ebooks.
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Date: 2020-09-12 04:39 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2020-09-15 12:10 pm (UTC)