Books Read
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32 Yolks
32 Yolks: From My Mother’s Table to Working the Line by Eric Ripert and Veronica Chambers Published: 2016 Narrated by: Peter Ganim Length: 07:26 (247 pages) I love a good food memoir, and this is probably the first one I’ve read coming from a Michelin star chef. I think I heard of Eric Ripert through Anthony Bourdain’s various television shows, and then I watched both On The Table and Avec Eric, which I enjoyed but wouldn’t necessarily rave about. Other chefs do seem to mention him with reverence, I’ve noticed, so he’s always seemed more like a legit chef than a media personality to me. This covers his childhood right…
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The Land of Mist
The Land of Mist by Arthur Conan Doyle Published: 1926 Narrated by: Barnaby Edwards Series: Professor Challenger #3 Length: 09:39 (248 pages) Arthur Conan Doyle was an interesting man. His Sherlock novels are the epitome of rational and logical thinking, yet he was deeply into spiritualism, attending seances and sittings with mediums. He was a member of multiple psychic research institutes, a founding member of one of them, and he wrote dozens of books and articles on the topic. He was famously duped by the Cottingley Fairies hoax and apparently drove his once-friend Harry Houdini to anger by insisting his illusions were real. Many of his Sherlock plots revolve around…
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Pirate Hunters: Treasure, Obsession, and the Search for a Legendary Pirate Ship
Pirate Hunters: Treasure, Obsession, and the Search for a Legendary Pirate Ship by Robert Kurson Published: 2015 Narrated by: Ray Porter Length: 08:24 (275 pages) I’ve always been obsessed with stories of treasure hunting. I used to dream of being Indiana Jones as a kid, searching the world for artifacts of historical significance (it’s not always about the money, as any self-respecting treasure hunter will tell you). I still remember my disappointment when it occurred to me that satellites had mapped out the world and the chance of coming across a disused temple somewhere was slim to none. Well, it turns out treasure hunting has been alive and well, it’s…
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Peter Pan
Peter Pan by J.M. Barrie Published: 1904 Narrated by: Jim Dale Length: 05:16 (207 pages) I don’t think I ever actually watched the Disney version of Peter Pan. I know the first bedroom scene, from it appearing in many other movies, but all my other knowledge is probably from the 1991 movie sequel Hook, which as a nine-year-old I loved. I actually didn’t even realize until recently that J.M. Barrie was Scottish. To die will be an awfully big adventure. So I went into this with little knowledge of the actual story but thinking I knew what to expect, and I was surprised at how dark this turned out to…
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Candide
Candide by Voltaire Published: 1759 Narrated by: Don Hagen Translated By: Unfortunately, no idea. Length: 03:45 (129 pages) A young man named Candide is living a simple and easy life in a Baron’s castle in Westphalia (born and raised, on the playground is where he spent most of his days). He’s caught kissing the Baron’s daughter and is thrown out of the castle (Jazzy Jeff style, I assume), and then spends the novel wandering from one adventure to the next. In his youth, he was tutored by the castle’s educator, a religious philosopher who taught him the ways of optimistic theodicy, which states that they live in the best of…
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American War
American War by Omar El Akkad Published: 2017 Narrated by: Dion Graham Length: 12:22 (352 pages) This is one of the books nominated in the Canada Reads 2018 competition. I’m not a huge fan of how the Canada Reads debates are structured, but it’s a good resource for finding some noteworthy Canadian novels, which I’ve been meaning to focus on a little more. This story takes place at the end of the 21st century in America. After climate change forces a ban on fossil fuel across the country, the southern states break away from the union and start the second civil war. The protagonist, Sarat Chestnut, is just a child…
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Acceptance
Acceptance by Jeff VanderMeer Published: 2014 Series: Southern Reach #3 Length: 341 pages This is the third novel in the Southern Reach trilogy and a fitting conclusion to the series. Conclusion may actually be too strong a word, as there’s a lot left open, but I was happy with how the story finished. The basic idea of this trilogy is that members of the Southern Reach agency are monitoring and examining a town and its surrounding area, Area X, where strange phenomena have occurred. The border to this area isn’t visible, but once you walk through everything changes – the inhabitants have been wiped out, decades of time seem to…
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Man’s Search for Meaning
Man’s Search for Meaning by Viktor E. Frankl Published: 1946 Narrated by: Simon Vance Translated By: Ilse Lasch (maybe?) (from German in 1959) Length: 04:47 (184 pages) The first half of this is Viktor Frankl’s memoir of the time he spent in various Nazi concentration camps, including Auschwitz. It’s a harrowing, yet in some ways inspiring, look at daily life in those camps. He was a taken from his job as a psychiatrist, brought to the camp, separated from his family, and stripped of everything, including his life’s work – a draft for his newly developed approach to Psychotherapy called Logotherapy, which would eventually go on to be practiced in…
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We Have Always Lived in the Castle
We Have Always Lived in the Castle by Shirley Jackson Published: 1962 Narrated by: Bernadette Dunne Length: 05:32 (246 pages) While not quite on the same level of The Haunting of Hill House, I still really enjoyed this. Shirley Jackson is a master of atmosphere and characterization, particularly at taking somewhat bizarre characters and writing them in a believable way. My name is Mary Katherine Blackwood. I am eighteen years old, and I live with my sister Constance. I have often thought that with any luck at all I could have been born a werewolf, because the two middle fingers on both my hands are the same length, but I…
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The Driver’s Seat
The Driver’s Seat by Muriel Spark Published: 1970 Length: 128 pages I really didn’t know what was going on in this book. I think I basically got what was happening by the end, and then I read a comment on Goodreads that made it click for me, but I think I may need to re-read this again soon just to see how the story unfolds when you know what’s to come. I mean, you know the ending when you start the novel. Spark tells you, but I guess I didn’t believe her. This is about a single woman who travels on holiday to a southern city in Europe to find…
