Latest Listenings, Part 3

Here's the last batch of audio-books:

Fiction

The Twelve Tribes of Hattie by Ayana Mathis - In 1920, Hattie comes to Philadelphia with her mother and husband.  They are running from the lynching of Hattie's father in Georgia.  Hattie hopes Philadelphia will be the promised land, but it isn't.  The twelve tribes, besides being a biblical allusion, refer to Hattie's eleven children and one grandchild.

Lucky Us by Amy Bloom - These people just won't be held down, but can you really reinvent yourself so easily?  It works for the characters in the novel.  

The Muse by Jesse Burton - You don't need an external source of inspiration to achieve your artistic goals.  You just need confidence and maybe a little support from somebody who knows somebody.                 

Non-Fiction

The Hemingses of Monticello by Annette Gordon-Reed - The story of Sally Hemings and Thomas Jefferson is well know but not backed up with written records.  Jefferson clearly favored the Hemings family, but he was careful to refer to them only as slaves or employees in Monticello's business records.  Ms. Gordon-Reed's book is too long and she engages in too much speculation and drawing of conclusions based on what might have been going through someone's mind.

Enchantment: The Life of Audrey Hepburn by Donald Spoto - Ms. Hepburn had a sort of tough/charmed, wonderful/sad life.

The Road to Little Dribbling by Bill Bryson - In 1995, ex-pat Bryson wrote Notes from a Small Island, stories about a romp he took through England, before he moved back to the United States. Moving back didn't last, and he returned to England.  He decided to repeat some of the trips featured in "Small Island", and the resulting book is "Little Dribbling."

In a Sunburned Country by Bill Bryson - In this book, Bryson travels around Australia.

The Life and Times of the Thunderbolt Kid by Bill Bryson - I guess by now, you have figured out that I am quite taken with Bill Bryson.  He's really a funny guy.  "Thunderbolt Kid" is a memoir about growing up in Des Moines, Iowa.

The Glass Castle by Jeannette Walls - Jeannette Walls was raised by a bi-polar, drunken father and a self-centered, loony mother.  It's a wonder she turned out so well - and so forgiving.  Today, her crazy mother lives in her guest house.  The glass castle is the fantasy home Ms. Walls' father promised to build for the family, just as soon as he could work out a few of the engineering details and get some money together.

Food by Jim Gaffigan - Jim Gaffigan wants to be thought of as fat, and he would have you believe only junk food passes his lips.  The book is funny, but I'll bet Gaffigan is a closet vegetable eater.

An Education by Lynn Barber - My mother used to say, "You never know what someone is thinking."  Lynn Barber also makes that point in her memoir.  Ms. Barber's parents never stopped pressuring her to study hard so she could go to Oxford.  Then they told her college was a waste of money when it seemed they could marry her off to a successful, older businessman.  This businessman seemed devoted, but he really had a wife and a couple of children living a few blocks away.  These two incidents were Ms. Barber's real education, and the training she needed to become a journalist.