I am so addicted to audiobooks. You can listen while you sew or while you pull weeds or even when you pull hair and black slime out of the bath tub drains. What started as a 15 minute interlude while I relaxed and fell asleep has turned into an all day obsession. Here are the latest reviews:
Cold Sassy Tree by Olive Ann Burns - Just three weeks after his grandmother dies, Will Tweedy's grandfather marries a woman young enough to be his daughter. The story is told from fourteen-year-old Will's perspective. Like Margaret Mitchell and Harper Lee before her, Olive Ann Burns had one good novel in her - a really good novel.
As Chimney Sweeps Come to Dust by Alan Bradley - Alan Bradley writes a young adult book series about Flavia De Luce, an eleven year old sleuth, who loves chemistry. Chimney Sweeps is the most recent in the series. Flavia leaves England and goes to boarding school in Canada where she solves the mystery of a body hidden in her dorm room's chimney. She's a flippant little thing, so twelve year olds will like her more than parents will.
Go Set a Watchman by Harper Lee - To Kill a Mockingbird is a masterpiece. Go Set a Watchman is a pretty good first draft. Behind every successful novelist, there is a really good editor.
You Better Not Cry by Augusten Burroughs - This is Burrough's memoir about Christmases past, from the time he chewed the face off a life sized Santa doll when he was a child to adult Christmases both sad and joyous.
A Voyage Long and Strange: Rediscovering the New World by Tony Horwitz - Between Christopher Columbus in 1492 and the settlers at Jamestown and Plymouth Rock in the early 1600s, plenty of other people "discovered" America. Read all about them in Horwitz's book.
The Awakening by Kate Chopin - This book, first published in 1899, was titled A Solitary Soul. It is one of the earliest American feminist novels. It's good to be living now instead of then.
Let's Pretend This Never Happened by Jenny Lawson - Jenny Lawson had a hard time fitting in while growing up. A lot of her problems could be blamed on her taxidermist father who boiled big vats of animal skulls in the back yard and who threw a bobcat on her boyfriend when he came to visit. She concludes that all her childhood embarrassments helped her become the adult she is today, and she's pretty satisfied with how her life turned out.
The Queen of the Night by Alexander Chee - In 1882, the daughter of Swiss immigrants to the United States loses her family to disease, so she decides to return to relatives in Switzerland, except she never gets there. Instead, she goes to Paris, joins the circus, turns to prostitution, goes to jail and learns to be a seamstress, joins the palace staff at Versailles as a ladies' maid, and leaves that post to take singing lessons and eventually become an opera star. Then the book gets really unbelievable.
Songs of Willow Frost by Jamie Ford - A boy living in a Seattle orphanage during the Depression realizes that a Chinese singing sensation is the mother who gave him up years before. What I found most interesting was the information about the Chinese film industry in Seattle. White people had Hollywood; Asians had Seattle.
The Painted Girls by Cathy Marie Buchanan - Marie van Goethem was the child ballerina who posed for Edgar Degas' statue, "The Little Dancer, Aged 14." Buchanan takes what we know of Marie and her time to tell a story about the Paris ballet, the lower class families who pushed their girls into dance, and the upper class men who searched through the ranks of dancers for teenaged mistresses.
The Paris Architect by Charles Belfoure - During the Nazi occupation of France, an architect designs hiding places for Jews.
Gutenberg's Apprentice by Alix Christie - Before Amazon's Kindle, books came from printing presses. Gutenberg was not the only guy using movable type to put scribes out of work, and he didn't get rich off of it.
Amy and Isabelle by Elizabeth Strout - It's a mother/daughter story, and in the end we realize we would all be better off if we would be honest with each other and treat each other better.
The Lady of the Rivers by Phillipa Gregory - I watched the Starz television series "The White Queen" which was based on Phillipa Gregory's historical novel series, The Cousins' War (The White Queen, The Red Queen, and The Kingmaker's Daughter). The TV series was entertaining enough, but Mike and I spent a good portion of our viewing time searching for anachronisms - quilted vests that were obviously machine stitched, dresses with zippers, and acrylic finger nails. Did I just see gutters and down spouts on that building? There is nothing hokey about Gregory's The Lady of the Rivers, a prequel to The White Queen. Sure, there's some witchcraft and fantasy, but people believed in that stuff back then.
The Primates of Park Avenue by Wednesday Martin - Martin writes about her life living among the super rich of New York City's Upper East Side. I never knew what a Birkin handbag was until I read this book. I also need to sit Mike down to talk about a "wife bonus." It's an annual financial incentive paid to wives based on their domestic and social performance through out the year.
The Marriage of Opposites by Alice Hoffman - It's the story of Camille Pissarro's parents' romance and his struggle to pursue his art instead of going into the family business.
The Dress Lodger by Sheri Holmes - This is the story of the 1831 cholera epidemic in Sunderland, England and a fifteen year old prostitute named Gustine, who walks the streets of Sunderland wearing a rented blue dress. There's a body snatching doctor, a journalist with an overactive imagination, and a landlord/pimp who believes in conspiracy theories.
The Romanov Bride by Robert Alexander - Duchess Elisavyeta is a Romanov who survives the Bolshevik Revolution. After her husband's murder, she becomes the abbess of a convent. Though her life is dedicated to serving the less fortunate, the Bolsheviks eventually close her abbey and take her to Siberia where she is executed.
Marie Therese, Child of Terror by Susan Nagel - This is the story of Loius XVI and Marie Antoinette's only surviving child. Vive le roi!
The Innocents by Francesca Segal - A Jewish couple from North London have their lives mapped out until a wild American cousin gets in between them.
Lookaway, Lookaway by Wilton Barnhardt - Southern Culture on the Skids pretty much sums it up - my apologies to the band.
Someone by Alice McDermott - The "someone" is Marie. The book is about her life. The story is so ordinary and so profound. I loved this book.
Lady Maybe by Julie Klassen - It's a romance set in Regency England.
Year of Wonders: A Novel of the Plague by Geraldine Brooks - In 1666, the plague broke out in Eyam, England. This book has a weird feminist kind of ending.
Uprooted by Naomi Novik - The critics loved this fantasy novel. Beverly didn't. I'm sure someone will make it into a movie... which I won't watch.
That's twenty-five audiobooks, and they were free from the Burlington County Library.
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