Books Read
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The White Tiger
The White Tiger by Aravind Adiga Published: 2008 Length: 276 pages I picked this up on a whim at the used book sale last month. I hadn’t really heard anything about it, but it did win the 2008 Man Booker Prize, so I thought I’d take a chance on it. I’m glad I did, because this was a great little book. Like eunuchs discussing the Kama Sutra, the voters discuss the elections in Laxmangarh. Adiga’s debut novel follows a young Indian boy named Balram Halwai, born the son of a rickshaw puller in Laxmangarh, as he sheds his caste and life of servitude to eventually become a Bangalore entrepreneur. He…
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The Three Musketeers
The Three Musketeers by Alexandre Dumas Published: 1844 Narrated by: Simon Vance Translated By: Pevear and Volokhonsky (from French in 2006) Series: D’Artagnan #1 Length: 22:45 (736 pages) Swordplay, bravado, romance, political intrigue, drunken brawls, mistaken identity – there is a lot happening in this well-known novel, which is actually the first of a trilogy of books following D’Artagnan and his three companions. I’ve seen a few film adaptations of this over the years, none of which I can really recall, but I do always remember loving the pure adventure of it all, and I’m happy to say that the same is true for the source material. This is high…
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Garlic and Sapphires
Garlic and Sapphires: The Secret Life of a Critic in Disguise by Ruth Reichl Published: 2005 Length: 334 pages This is Ruth Reichl’s memoir of the time she spent as the restaurant critic for The New York Times, from 1993 to 1999. It begins with her flying to the city after accepting the job and being recognized on the plane. These reviews could make or break a restaurant, and many chefs around the city made sure their staff knew who she was. If they could recognize her when she arrived at the restaurant, they could try to spoil her and help their review. Because of this, she began dressing in…
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The Human Factor
The Human Factor by Graham Greene Published: 1978 Length: 347 pages I’ve read two other Greene novels besides this one, The End of the Affair and The Captain and the Enemy, and I’m still not entirely sure what I’m going to get when I pick up one of his books, but I know I love his writing. This is one of his later novels in an incredible career that began in the 20s and lasted until the late 80s. I always think of him as a classic author, but it seems odd to include anything written in my lifetime, so I tend to fall back on the arbitrary ‘fifty year’…
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Waking Gods
Waking Gods by Sylvain Neuvel Published: 2017 Narrated by: Full Cast Series: Themis Files #2 Length: 09:02 (325 pages) This is the sequel to Sleeping Giants and the second novel in the Themis Files trilogy, a series about a team of scientists finding and testing a giant robot found buried on Earth. The first two novels in this trilogy probably should have just been one. The first ends in a very anti-climatic and dull way, particularly for a novel about a giant robot, and this one just continues the story. Waking Gods does jump ahead in time several years, but it really feels like the second half of that first…
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Shockaholic
Shockaholic by Carrie Fisher Published: 2011 Narrated by: Carrie Fisher Length: 04:25 (176 pages) I was very sad to hear of Carrie Fisher’s death last December. I read Wishful Drinking a year ago and really loved it. I’d forgotten at the time that she was a hilarious and talented writer, and I decided that I needed to eventually read everything she’s written. Her autobiographies, of which this is the second, are all on Audible, so I’m starting with those. She narrates them herself, which is always an added pleasure with the memoirs of performers. Her fictional novels are also on Audible, but they all seem to be abridged, so I’ll…
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Amsterdam
Amsterdam by Ian McEwan Published: 1999 Length: 192 pages Awards: 1998 Man Booker Prize Winner Amsterdam opens at Molly Lane’s memorial as two of her past boyfriends reminisce and pay their respects. One is the lead editor of a struggling newspaper and the other a revered composer. A third suitor, a right-wing politician, is also attending, and after the funeral the three become entangled in each other’s lives in very destructive ways. Middle-age angst is a central theme here, with the characters facing different stages of their careers. The editor is pushing for success and feels he can achieve it with a story that lies in very grey moral ground,…
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Company Town
Company Town by Madeline Ashby Published: 2016 Narrated by: Cecelia Kim Length: 08:58 (285 pages) This is a science fiction crime novel that takes place in a city built on a giant oil rig off the east coast of Canada. It’s the near future, and it’s incredible rare to find someone who hasn’t augmented their body in some way, by changing how they look or enhancing their physical strength or cognitive abilities. The protagonist, Go Jung-Hwa, is the only person on the rig that is unaltered. She works as a bodyguard for members of the sex trade, which is now legal and highly regulated but is still not without certain…
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Room
Room by Emma Donoghue Published: 2010 Length: 321 pages This story follows a young boy, Jack, and his mother as they live their lives trapped in a small room. Jack was born there, and in his five years of life he has never seen the world beyond the locked door. Emma Donoghue was inspired by the horrifying events in the 2008 Josef Fritzl abduction case, in which a man in Austria locked his daughter in his basement and abused her for twenty-four years. When I was a little kid I thought like a little kid, but now I’m five I know everything. I enjoyed this so much more than I…
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Alas, Babylon
Alas, Babylon by Pat Frank Published: 1959 Narrated by: Will Patton Length: 11:14 (323 pages) I keep hearing that dystopian and apocalyptic fiction has saturated the book market in the last few years, but I feel like these disaster scenarios have always been popular, really hitting their stride in the mid-twentieth century. A few of my favorites that come to mind (The Day of the Triffids, Earth Abides, and I Am Legend for example) all come from the 40s and 50s. What I love most about the apocalyptic stories from that era, at least from my limited sampling, is that the reader often gets to experience the disaster happen, and…