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Microserfs
Microserfs by Douglas Coupland Published: 1995 Length: 371 pages This one took me ages and ages to get through. It’s a good example of the sort of book I need to learn to put down and come back to later – not a bad book, but one I just wasn’t feeling it at that moment. Instead I did my usual, suffered through, and essentially stopped reading. Maybe one of these days I’ll learn, but most likely not. This is the story of a group of Microsoft programmers in the early 90s who leave the company to form a start-up in Silicon Valley. It’s written as journal entries on the protagonist’s…
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The Dinner
The Dinner by Herman Koch Published: 2009 Narrated by: Clive Mantle Translated By: Sam Garrett (from Dutch in 2012) Length: 08:55 (292 pages) I’ve stated before that I enjoy unlikable curmudgeons for protagonists. Not in every book I read, but when I come across one I do consider it a treat. There’s something exciting about reading a character who completely personifies your worst Monday morning attitude, and this is one area where The Dinner succeeds. Two couples meet at an expensive restaurant. The husbands are brothers, one was a school teacher and the other is a politician months away from an inevitable win. Over the course of the dinner, a…
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Believe Me: A Memoir of Love, Death, and Jazz Chickens
Believe Me: A Memoir of Love, Death, and Jazz Chickens by Eddie Izzard Published: 2017 Narrated by: Eddie Izzard Length: 14:37 (368 pages) I’ve always been a fan of Eddie Izzard, so I was excited when I saw he had written a memoir and narrated it himself. I love self-narrated comedian memoirs. The book spends quite a bit of time on his young life, revolving around the early lose of his mother, and then continues on with his decade-long struggle to launch his comedy career – from street performing to live sketch comedy, and eventually to stand-up. During this period, he was also coming to terms with being transgender. Coming…
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Ninefox Gambit
Ninefox Gambit by Yoon Ha Lee Published: 2016 Narrated by: Emily Woo Zeller Series: The Machineries of Empire #1 Length: 10:52 (384 pages) Captain Kel Cheris is a brilliant captain in a very strictly run army and finds herself disgraced by running unapproved formations while trying to keep her soldiers alive, but she is given one chance to redeem herself. To do so, she must take back a lost fortress with the help of a master tactician from the past. He has never lost a battle, but he’s also a murderous traitor. The first chapter of this was so confusing, with so much unexplained terminology, that I nearly gave up.…
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Good Bones and Simple Murders
Good Bones and Simple Murders by Margaret Atwood Published: 1994 Length: 165 pages This is a collection of short stories and essays covering a wide variety of topics. I was never a huge fan of collections like this, and while I have warmed up to them over the last couple of years, I still had a hard time with this little book. A lot of these felt like writing exercises to me, the sort of thing that can be more fun to write than to read. I like the idea of short, experimental fiction, but a lot of the pieces here felt very by the number. The topics were varied…
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The Last Unicorn
The Last Unicorn by Peter S. Beagle Published: 1968 Series: The Last Unicorn, #1 Length: 294 pages I loved the animated version of The Last Unicorn when I was a kid. All of the films from that studio fascinated me. They also did The Flight of Dragons (my favourite) and the most frightening version of The Hobbit you’ll ever watch. They were all a bit eerie and off-putting, as the motion, the character designs, and the adult voices always felt a bit wrong to me as a kid. That was part of what made them different and interesting, though. I’m not sure how I didn’t know this, but it wasn’t…
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A Man Called Ove
A Man Called Ove by Fredrik Backman Published: 2012 Narrated by: George Newbern Translated By: Henning Koch (from Swedish in 2013) Length: 09:09 (368 pages) Ove is a fifty-nine-year-old grump. He’s stubborn, angry, rude, a stickler for the rules, and someone who can become infuriated by the simplest of things. In some ways, I can related to Ove a little too well, so I found his cynical inner dialogue to be hilarious right through the novel. Through flashbacks, we learn his life story and slowly start to understand why he is the way he is. It begins with him meeting his new neighbours and immediately hating them, but as the…
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Authority
Authority by Jeff VanderMeer Published: 2014 Series: Southern Reach #2 Length: 341 pages The events from the first book have finished, and now the team outside of Area X are struggling to understand what happened on this last expedition. Southern Reach has appointed a new head to the department, John Rodrigues, and we follow him as he takes the job, learns about the building, the staff, and the secretive history of the Area X research. In the first book, we get to see inside Area X and the regular world outside almost seems like a mystery. In this, we’re back on the outside looking in and we get to watch…
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The Prisoner of Zenda
The Prisoner of Zenda by Anthony Hope Published: 1894 Narrated by: James Wilby Series: The Ruritania Trilogy #2 Length: 05:31 (208 pages) Rudolph Rassendyll is a distant cousin of the royal family of Ruritania, a fictional German-speaking country in the centre of Europe. His sister-in-law, who considers him a complete waste of space, can’t stand his resemblance to those royals because it reminds her of a century-old scandal. An illegitimate child was born in England while a prince of Ruritania was visiting, and now every second generation or so a Rassendyll child is born with their trademark red hair and a long straight nose. This doesn’t bother Rudolph the way…
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The Haunting of Hill House
The Haunting of Hill House by Shirley Jackson Published: 1959 Narrated by: Bernadette Dunne Length: 07:31 (246 pages) I am physically unable to say the title of this novel without the words twisting themselves into House on Haunted Hill. It just won’t work. Dr. John Montague is a paranormal researcher, like a ghost hunter without his own scripted television show, and he has heard many tales of Hill House. In order to find and document the existence of supernatural phenomenon, Montague decides to invite a group of people to spend the summer in the house with him. He is joined by a relative of the owner and the only two…