Books Read
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Made In Scotland
Made In Scotland: My Grand Adventures in a Wee Country by Billy Connolly Published: 2018 Narrated by: Gordon Kennedy Length: 06:17 (288 pages) Growing up with two Scottish parents in Canada, I always remember Billy Connolly as the first Scottish accent I heard on television, excluding maybe Scotty from Star Trek and Sean Connery, neither of whom really count. Scotty always sounded like a drunk at a wedding trying to mimic my parents’ accents, and Sean Connery just sounds like Sean Connery. When I was young, I wasn’t allowed to see Connolly’s stand-up, since my parents were quite strict about swearing and rude humour, but that just made his comedy…
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Kidnapped
Kidnapped by Robert Louis Stevenson Published: 1886 Narrated by: Kieron Elliott Length: 09:07 (288 pages) Seventeen-year-old David Balfour finds himself whisked away far from home, against his will, and must attempt to make it back and clear his name. The novel begins just after his parents’ passing, and he learns that he may be the rightful heir to an estate his uncle currently holds. Soon after he visits the estate, his uncle – a somewhat pathetic man – arranges his kidnapping. David awakes a prisoner on a ship destined for America, where he will be sold into slavery. Soon his path crosses with Alan Stewart, a man with a cheerful…
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All Our Wrong Todays
All Our Wrong Todays by Elan Mastai Published: 2017 Narrated by: Elan Mastai Length: 10:02 (373 pages) This is the debut novel from Vancouver writer Elan Mastai, a science-fiction story about a man who lives in a different 2016, one with all of the technological advances we grew up dreaming about – flying cars, medical advancements, food replicators, and, my personal favourite, the ability to wake up refreshed with no grogginess. In this alternate 2016, they have also just discovered a way to solve the puzzle of time travel. This will contain some minor spoilers. While travelling back in time, a terrible mistake is made, and the traveller returns to…
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Educated
Educated by Tara Westover Published: 2018 Narrated by: Julia Whelan Length: 12:10 (334 pages) This is the harrowing true story of Tara Westover’s journey from a secluded, strictly religious, survivalist family to eventually earning her doctorate at Cambridge. Her parents didn’t believe in school and were very lax on the homeschooling, so this was quite an amazing feat. In fact, when she went to sit her entrance exam for college, she had to ask how the bubble sheets worked. She’d never before taken a school test. Tara grew up in Ohio under very peculiar circumstances, with a Survivalist Mormon family that was next-level strict, even when compared to the Mormon…
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The Sisters Brothers
The Sisters Brothers by Patrick deWitt Published: 2011 Length: 328 pages This caught my eye when it was first released. I picked it up a few years back, and I’ve only just gotten to it now. Better eight years late than never, I suppose. I was looking for Canadian books to read for the CanBook Challenge and Patrick deWitt was born about twenty-five minutes from where I currently live. It’s the height of the California gold rush, and two brothers are hired to kill a man. They travel to Sacramento from Oregon City, reflecting on the lives they’ve chosen on the way, only to realize on arrival that the job…
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The Seeds of Time
The Seeds of Time by John Wyndham Published: 1956 Length: 222 pages John Wyndham is one of my favourite writers, but before last year, I hadn’t read any of his short stories. He’s mostly known for his novels, but he was a prolific short story writer, publishing them throughout his entire writing career. Wikipedia has seventy stories listed. The first, Worlds to Barter, was published in 1931, a few years after his first novel under a pen name was published and twenty years before his first novel as John Wyndham. The last non-posthumously published story, A Life Postponed, came out in 1968, a year before his death. I really dislike…
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Hell House
Hell House by Richard Matheson Published: 1971 Narrated by: Ray Porter Length: 09:11 (301 pages) I loved I Am Legend (side note: it’s crazy that I can now link to books I read almost nine years ago). The direction it took surprised me, and it has one of my favourite endings of any novel. The way it wraps everything up and manages to completely flip the reader’s understanding of the plot on its head is really a thing of beauty. This novel didn’t live up to that. The setup for Hell House is quite good, I thought. A group of paranormal investigators have travelled to Hell House to try to…
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Recently Read – Normal, Saga #9, The Rise and Fall of the Dinosaurs, Paper Girls #3
Normal by Warren Ellis Published: 2016 Narrated by: John Hodgman Series: Normal #1-4 Length: 03:24 (148 pages) I love Warren Ellis as a comic writer, even though it’s been years since I read anything by him, but he’s been a little hit or miss as a novelist. I really disliked Crooked Little Vein but enjoyed Gun Machine. This one falls somewhere between the two. I listened to this as a single audiobook, but I see now that it was originally released serially in four installments. Maybe it read better in small chunks like that, where each stood as essentially a fictionalized essay around digital culture, but as a full work,…
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Misery
Misery by Stephen King Published: 1987 Narrated by: Lindsay Crouse Length: 12:21 (369 pages) A popular novelist has just finished his latest book, a gritty departure from the historical romance series he’s recently ended. He gets into an accident on his drive home and wakes up in the remote home of Annie Wilkes, his number one fan. She loves the historical romance and doesn’t want it to end. She also doesn’t want him to leave, and he’s too injured to escape. I really expected to love this. I thought the movie was great, and I know many readers look down on ‘self-important’ authors writing novels in which the protagonist is…
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Head On
Head On by John Scalzi Published: 2018 Narrated by: Wil Wheaton Series: Lock In #2 Length: 07:36 (335 pages) John Scalzi novels narrated by Wil Wheaton have become a sort of comfort food for me over the last few years, and that’s exactly the sort of thing I needed for the final months of this year. I enjoyed Lock In, the novel previous to this, but it wasn’t my favourite of his. It caused a small stir when, shortly after it was published, he revealed in a blog post that he purposely avoided using any gendered pronouns for the protagonist as a little experiment to see which gender the reader…
