Best Audiobooks Read in 2024

I love listening to audiobooks and actually prefer doing so over reading the print versions usually. This year there were some real standout audiobooks and then a whole batch of very wonderful ones. I've ranked the standouts but the others I just listed as they came to mind, so the numbering system falls apart at that point.

Standout #1: James by Percival Everett; read by Dominic Hoffman

Random House Audio, 2024. 7 hours and 49 minutes.

James is the retelling of The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn story from the point of view of Twain's Jim, the enslaved man who escapes with Huck. In a lot of ways this is a perfect audiobook since so much of the book is about the language or dialect we use. "A white character notices James’s standard English cadence with shock and asks: “Why are you talking like that?” With impressive comedic timing and vocal agility, Hoffman skips nimbly between James’s natural eloquence and the “slave filter” he uses to hide it from white people, deepening a project that hinges on vernacular as both signifier and tool of liberation" (NYT). James is also my favorite book read in 2024.

Standout #2: Shakespeare: The Man Who Pays the Rent by Judi Dench with Brendan O'Hea; read by Barbara Flynn, Judi Dench and Brendan O'Hea

Penguin Audio, 2023. 12 hours and 5 minutes.

In her 60+ years of acting, Judi Dench has acted in 20 Shakespeare plays and in a variety of roles within those plays. This project, a series of conversations with Brendan O'Hea about the Bard and her career, was meant to for the Globe Theater Archives, but was reworked under the direction of O'Hea with the help of Barbara Flynn (who sounds an awful lot like Dench) into this fabulous audio experience.  "Sheer heaven for fans of Dench, Shakespeare, or the craft" (Cathy, Blue Willow Book Shop). 

Standout #3: The Covenant of Water by Abraham Verghese, read by the author

Recorded Books, 2024. 31 hours and 16 minutes.

I loved The Covenant of Water narrated by Verghese himself. This was a rare treat because I got to listen to his beautiful Indian accent but also learned how to pronounce previously unknown words and locations to me. The 30+ hours of listening made me feel like I had practically moved to India and more specifically to Parambil, the family estate, built as far away from the nearby river as it could be for fear of the water. The audiobook experience was so immersive it felt like I was living and breathing the same air as the characters.

4. Killer Angels by Michael Shaara, read by Stephen Hoye

Random House Audio, 1974, 2004. 13 hours and 44 minutes.

Killer Angels is a novel about the Battle of Gettysburg during the Civil War. My husband and I listened to the audiobook together. Stephen Hoye did an exceptional job reading the story, building up the tension preceding the battles to a perfect pitch. His accents for the both the Southern Generals and for the Maine men were spot-on and led to an even more personalized experience with the text. Even though I knew who won the battle historically, every time we stopped listening, I wanted to get back to it as soon as possible to find out how things worked out. As I listened I knew the book would end up on this list as best audiobooks of the year.

5. Brotherless Night by V.V. Ganeshananthan, read by Nirmala Rajasingam

Random House Audio, 2023. 13 hours and 28 minutes.

A Women's Prize judge said Brotherless Night is "a powerful book that has the intimacy of a memoir, the range and ambition of an epic, and tells a truly unforgettable story of the Sri Lankan civil war." The story was intense but I couldn't stop listening to the audiobook. To stop would mean I didn't care. And I did care, very much, because of this story. About the audiobook, the narrator Nirmala Rajasingam did a brilliant job. Audible says this book is meant to be heard. I agree.

6. North Woods by Daniel Mason, read by a cast of ten voice actors.

Random House Audio, 2023. 11 hours and 5 minutes.

In North Woods all the stories revolve around a small cabin in Western Massachusetts over several centuries. North Woods has a series of linked stories told chronologically centering the action on or near the cabin. Four centuries of stories, families, characters, and schemes. And all these stories are not told in the same formats -- some are told in prose, others in lyrics and poetry, newspaper articles, medical case file entries, real estate advertisements, a true-crime detective story, a page entry from an almanac, and even a historical society speech. The audiobook was excellent and used a variety of voice actors, ten in all. That seems about right considering the story took place over so many centuries.

7. Tiny Beautiful Things: Advice from Dear Sugar (10th anniversary edition) by Cheryl Strayed, read by the author.

Random House Audio, 2012, reissued 2022. 10 hours and 41 minutes.

For more than a decade, thousands of people have sought advice from Dear Sugar—the pseudonym of bestselling author Cheryl Strayed—first through her online column at The Rumpus, later through her hit podcast, Dear Sugars, and now through her popular Substack newsletter. Tiny Beautiful Things collects the best of Dear Sugar in one volume, bringing her wisdom to many more readers. I listened to the audiobook of Tiny Beautiful Things which was narrated by Cheryl Strayed. It was a perfect decision to have the author, Sugar herself, read out the advice she had given her readers. Everything about the experience was so authentic. I'm sorry I missed the book when it was first published in 2012, but I am so glad I found it after its 2022 reissue, which has a few updates and additions from the original.

8. The Song for Achilles by Madeline Miller, read by Frazer Douglas

HarperAudio, 2012. 11 hours and 15 minutes.

The Song of Achilles is the retelling of the Iliad story from Patroclus' point of view. The story was new and fresh to me. My husband and I listened to the audiobook, read by Frazer Douglas, and enjoyed it immensely. The pronunciation of names and places were all handled expertly. What we lacked was a complex list of the many characters, gods and heroes alike, to help us keep everyone straight in our heads. Not until I dug around the house and found the print copy loaned to me by my daughter, did I find what I needed to fill out the story: a character glossary and a gods and heroes illustrated closeup. I recommend listening to the audiobook but getting a copy of the print version to refer to as you listen.

9. The House of Broken Angels by Luis Alberto Urrea, read by the author

Hachette Audio, 2018. 9 hours and 46 minutes.

"This audiobook begins with a frantic revelation--"Big Angel was late to his own mother's funeral"--and the pace never slows down after that. The author narrates his novel with a verve and engagement that few performers could emulate, blending Spanish and English, dialogue and narrative with the balance of a dancer. Listeners get to know Big Angel and his family through an almost stream-of-consciousness rhythm that can seem frenetic at some times, poetic at others" (Audiofile). I found this book really enjoyable and helpful in my thinking about what it is like to be a member of a Mexican American family living in California but whose hearts are very much still across the border. This is a fantastic story and Urrea is a fantastic storyteller.

10. The Plague of Doves by Louise Erdrich, read by Peter Francis James and Kathleen McInerney

HarperAudio, 2008. 11 hours and 3 minutes.

The first book in Erdrich's Justice Trilogy, The Plague of Doves details the interconnected lives of several generations of whiles and Indigenous people living in a town in North Dakota where an unsolved murder in 1911 still haunts the community. "Erdrich is a master storyteller known for her compelling novels, and her lyrical, recursive narrative style is enriched by the narrators' ability to fully portray her characters. This ideal match of writer and readers creates a memorable and moving experience" (Audiofile).

-Anne

Audiobooks We Listened to On a Recent Trip

On our recent 16-day, 3000+ miles vacation, my husband and I listened to five+ audiobooks together. Last night we finally took the time to compare notes on our thoughts. Now you get the benefit of two opinions on each book.

The Fraud by Zadie Smith

This is Ms. Smith's first historical fiction book and the first either of us read by this famous author. The story is based on actual people and a famous court case in British history. Unfortunately, as Americans, we'd heard of neither the court case or any of the people, other than Charles Dickens.

My rating: 3 stars. I honestly think Zadie Smith tried to do too much with one novel and moved back and forth in time too many times. It was confusing. My review.

Don's rating: 3 stars. Zadie Smith read the audiobook, and though she did quite well with the Scottish accent, it didn't translate well to his ears above the car noise. He admits he gave up trying to keep all the details of the book straight after a while.

12 hours, 26 minutes. Read by the author.

Listen to a sample. 

Moonflower Murders by Anthony Horowitz

Moonflower Murders is the second book in the Susan Ryland series by Horowitz. Don and I listened to the first book, Magpie Murders, a few years ago and enjoyed it a lot. Moonflower Murders was very similar to the form used in the first which involved a book within the book.

My rating: 3 stars. I didn't connect with any of the characters and the plot just didn't add up for me.

Don's rating: 4 stars. Having met Susan Ryland in the past book, he was glad to "meet her again." The book within the book was better this time because he understood what was happening and it didn't jump from present to the book and back, which was confusing about the first part in the series.

18 hours, 29 minutes. Read by Lesley Manville and Allan Corduner.

Listen to a sample.

The Killer Angels by Michael Shaara

A novel of the American Civil War and the Battle of Gettysburg and the days leading up to it. The story is character-driven and told from the perspective of historical figures from both the Union and the Confederate side. It won the Pulitzer Prize in 1975 and a filmed titled "Gettysburg" was made from it. My review.

My rating: 5 stars. Even though I know how this battle works out I still was hanging on every word, eager to get back to the book each time after we had to take a break. I learned so much, too.

Don's rating: 5 stars. He's visited Gettysburg three times and has a military background. We had to stop the book often to allow him to expand on aspects of the battle or to describe the terrain. He was very moved.

13 hours, 45 minutes. Read by Stephen Hoye.

Listen to a sample.

Small Things Like These by Claire Keegan

In a small village in Ireland in 1985, Bill Furlong, a coal merchant, makes a discovery that causes him to confront is past and the complicit silences of town's people due to the church's influence. It is touching Christmas novella.

We both rated the story: 4 stars.

1 hour, 57 minutes. Read by Aidan Kelly.

Listen to a sample.

Sweet Thunder by Ivan Doig

Morrie Morgan returns to Butte, Montana in this third book in the series. This time Morrie is asked to serve the miner's union by writing editorials about their cause for a new newspaper, The Thunder.

My rating: 4 stars.  I absolutely LOVE Morrie Morgan as a character and Ivan Doig as a writer. I probably should rate this book with a 5, but I keep comparing it to the first book in the series, The Whistling Season, and I love that book more. Ha!

Don's rating: 5 stars. He's an even bigger Doig fan than I am. Don is a strong supporter of unions and of freedom of the press, so this book spoke to him on this level, too.

11 hours, 11 minutes. Read by Jonathan Hogan.

Listen to a sample.

-Anne

Review and discussion questions for: THE RABBIT HUTCH by Tess Gunty

This month's book club selection was Tess Gunty's National Book Award winning novel The Rabbit Hutch. It was a unanimous choice at first but then as women started reading the book a few balked, thinking the book was too difficult and contained too many trigger topics. We decided to go ahead with our choice and, boy, am I glad we did.

The Rabbit Hutch weaves together the daily dramas of tenants in a run-down apartment complex in a run-down fictitious town named Vacca Vale, Indiana. The builders, trying to give the apartment complex an air of sophistication named it 'La Lapinière', but the residents just called it the Rabbit Hutch. (Lapinière is the French word for rabbit hutch.) We all are familiar with rabbit hutches but it is odd to think of humans living in one where "walls are so thin, you can hear everyone's lives progress like a radio play." The tenants are all living down-and-out lives in their down-and-out apartments in the #1 Dying City in America. "Set over one sweltering week in July and culminating in a bizarre act of violence that finally changes everything, The Rabbit Hutch is a savagely beautiful and bitingly funny snapshot of contemporary America, a gorgeous and provocative tale of loneliness and longing, entrapment and, ultimately, freedom" (Publisher).

As I read and listened to The Rabbit Hutch I couldn't help but think of the book Lolita by Nabokov. I've always thought of that classic book as the most beautifully written book about a depraved topic. The Rabbit Hutch is stuffed full of trigger worthy topics and themes: child abandonment, the foster care system and shortcomings, sexual abuse of a minors and predator behavior, animal sacrifices, poverty and loneliness. Think of a depraved topic, it is probably addressed in this book. But the writing is brilliant. BRILLIANT! Like Nabokov, Gunty has a beautiful command of the English language and inserts phrases and quips throughout the story which would catch me up so I'd have to stop and think about what was said and the deeper meaning. One gal at book club said the book made her think about herself and her life choices in the face of encountering similar problems with students and neighbors. A book is a wonderful thing if it causes us to stop and change directions toward a more positive future. All this depravity is broken up by humorous situations, which I suppose what made the book bearable.

I am not getting anywhere near to a good summary of the book. I hope you take the chance to read its review in the New York Times. Also take a minute to read the interview Gunty did with the editorial staff at Waterstone, an online magazine. The Rabbit Hutch won the first Waterstone Debut Fiction Award. Both of these sources helped fill out my appreciation of the book.

Now to our book club discussion. The publisher provided no discussion questions and the ones we were able to find online were very basic. I wrote several questions to augment what others were able to find and we ended up having a very robust discussion. To be clear, two of us loved the book, two hated the book, and the rest fell somewhere in the middle. Afterwards all admitted that we had a fantastic discussion, even those who didn't like the book. So don't be afraid to pick this book for your future club meetings.

The Rabbit Hutch Discussion Questions 

(Spoiler alert: Some details of the book will be revealed in the questions.)

1. What did you think was revealed in the opening lines of the book  “On a hot night in Apartment C4, Blandine Watkins exits her body. She is only 18 years old, but she has spent most of her life wishing for this to happen.” And how did this affect your feelings about the book going forward?
2. Why do you think Blandine, the 18-year-old, former foster care 'graduate', is obsessed with Catholic mystics even though she was not religious?
3. Blandine never left Vacca Vale but her whole life she felt like an outsider. How does this happen? Have you ever known anyone in a similar situation? (Our group is made up of teachers, so we could reflect back on past students.)
4. Talk about the characters: Blandine, Moses, Elsie, Joan, Todd/Malik/Jack, James, others. 
5. The theme of "home" is a recurring one. Give some examples of how the characters felt about home.
6. What aspect of "dying cities" have you been aware of where you live? What signs of resurgence?
7. The book highlights how often there is a lack of societal responsibility by its members. Discuss examples of this from the book and in your own community/life.
8. What aspects of the book did you find funny/humorous? (You might need to prompt the group with some you've thought of before the meeting. We found so many funny aspects but of course they were hidden in some awful circumstances. It took us a while to come up with some and then the flood gate was open and we couldn't stop finding new humorous quotes/quips/situations.)
9. How did you react to the chapter of visual illustrations? Did it help you understand the unfolding scene better or not?
10. Todd, Jack, and Malik start sacrificing animals at some point. How does this come to pass and why did they continue it?
11. Late in the book Jack's chapters are written in 1st person. Why do you think the author switched that point-of-view and gave Jack a front row seat? Did you notice it? How did it impact the story?
12. What are your favorite quotes/quips? Here are a few of my favorites:
• "Her voice sounded like a communion wafer -- tasteless and light."
• "He wears his testosterone like a strong cologne."
• "You couldn't go anywhere in this town without bumping into God."
• "It takes Blandine a long time to respond, and when she does, the words seem laborius for her. She lugs them in to the room as though they're pieces of furniture."
13. On the last page of the book Joan wonders what comments people would make to fill the obituary guest book if Blandine died. What comments do you think people would make and who are these people? 
14. What is your reaction to the last few lines of the book summed up as, "I'm awake. Are you?"
15. What growth/positive movement did the characters make by the end of the book?

★Feel free to use these discussion questions for your book club discussion. If you publish the questions for your members or in any other publication, please give me credit. Thank you, Anne@HeadFullofBooks

-Anne

Review: THE COVENANT OF WATER

Title: The Covenant of Water by Abraham Verghese

Beginning quote:

1900, Travancore, South India

She is twelve years old, and she will be married in the morning. Mother and daughter lie on the mat, their wet cheeks glued together.

"The saddest day of a girl's life is the day of her wedding," her mother says. "After that, God willing, it gets better."

Friday56 quote (or from some page):

“Ammachi, when I come to the end of a book and I look up, just four days have passed. But in that time I’ve lived through three generations and learned more about the world and about myself than I do during a year in school. Ahab, Queequeg, Ophelia, and other characters die on the page so that we might live better lives.”

Summary: The Covenant of Water is an epic story following three generations (1900-1977) in Kerala on India's Malabar (Southern) Coast. The family has a secret, a peculiar affliction -- at least one person per generation has died by drowning. This is a problem not only because of untimely deaths but because water is everywhere in the region of India. The family is part of a community known as Thomas Christians, said to be founded by the Apostle Thomas back in the first century CE. The story begins when the woman who becomes Big Ammachi (Big Mother) moves to Kerala when she is but twelve-years-old to marry a widower trice her age. His first wife drowned. She is a witness to unthinkable changes in her family and her country over the span of her life. Many of those changes relate to medicine and patient care. Is there a cure for what ails this family?

Review: The headline in the Washington Post review for The Covenant of Water reads: "Oprah chose well. The Covenant of Water is a rich heartfelt novel." I agree. In fact, The Covenant of Water has everything I like in a book: a detailed plot -- in this case one which covers three generations of a family and many/many side characters; characters who are fully fleshed out, not one-dimensional beings; a theme which is very evident throughout the whole text; literary quotes and thoughts interspersed throughout; an author who treats his readers as intelligent and knowledgeable -- in this case about medical and genetic issues; AND, this may not surprise you, one which clearly has a very spiritual, often scriptural, message.

I listened to the audiobook narrated by Verghese himself. This was a rare treat because I got to listen to his beautiful India accent but also learned how to pronounce previously unknown words and locations to me. The 30+ hours of listening made me feel like I had practically moved to India and more specifically to Parambil, the family estate, built as far away from the nearby river as it could be for fear of the water.

Abraham Verghese is novelist (“Cutting for Stone”), doctor and professor of medicine — introduces his enormous new novel, “The Covenant of Water,” with a personal note to advance readers: His late mother, Mariam, “was an incredible storyteller” who “wrote a forty-page manuscript” in response to a grandchild’s query about her life. “In this novel,” Verghese declares, “I draw on some of those stories.” He dedicates the book — 10 years in the making — to his mother. (WaPo)

Verghese draws on his own life and his knowledge of medicine to enhance and enrich this book. It is masterfully written, a story in which one can get lost for days...and I did! At book club each member was asked if what she thought of the book. One member, Becky, told the group that she loved the book so much, she didn't want it to end. And that is saying a lot since the book is 724 pages long! 

-Anne

Review: THE LAND OF LOST THINGS

Title: The Land of Lost Things by John Connolly

Opening quote: 

Twice upon a time - for that is how some stories continue - there was a mother whose daughter was stolen from her.

Friday56 quote:

You can destroy a book. You can burn it, you can tear it to pieces and scatter them to the four winds, you can soak it until it reverts to pulp or the ink turns the water black, but you can’t destroy the contents of the book, or the idea of the book, not as long as there are those who care, who remember… Who read. Neither can you destroy stories, not unless you destroy people—and some have tried.

Summary:

Phoebe, an eight-year-old girl, lies comatose following a car accident. She is a body without a spirit, a stolen child. Ceres, her mother, can only sit by her bedside and read aloud to Phoebe the fairy stories she loves in the hope they might summon her back to this world.

Now an old house on the hospital grounds, a property connected to a book written by a vanished author, is calling to Ceres. Something wants her to enter, and to journey - to a land coloured by the memories of Ceres's childhood, and the folklore beloved of her father, to a land of witches and dryads, giants and mandrakes; to a land where old enemies are watching, and waiting. (Publisher)

Review: This book is the sequel to one of my most favorite books of a decade ago, The Book of Lost Things. I was so, so wrapped up in that story, clearly living inside the world where everything was different and warped.

I didn't even know that I needed a sequel. The Land of Lost Things is a darker version of the first story where some pretty horrifying things happen and yet, the same kernel is there...the importance of our STORY. The opening quote sets the stage nicely for a sequel, don't you think? And the Friday56 quote, which isn't actually from page 56, sets the stage for the importance of books and owning our own story. 

It is a clever but dark book, published over fifteen years after the first book in the series. I enjoyed it a lot but wished I had reviewed the original. Too much time had elapsed and I forgot many of the details. Here is my short review of The Book of Lost Things.

-Anne

Review and quotes: THE HEAVEN AND EARTH GROCERY STORE

Title: The Heaven and Earth Grocery Store by James McBride

Book Beginnings quote:

There was an old Jew who lived at the site of the old synagogue up on Chicken Hill in the town of Pottstown, Pa., and when Pennsylvania State Troopers found the skeleton at the bottom of an old well off Hayes Street, the old Jew's house was the first place they went to.

Friday56 quote: 

Moshe happily complied. He attributed her improvement to the arrival of Malachi, who insisted on dropping by the theater every day to deliver a loaf of his challah for Moshe to carry home to his wife. "This will be part of your wife's healing," he said proudly.

Summary:

In 1972, when workers in Pottstown, Pennsylvania, were digging the foundations for a new development, the last thing they expected to find was a skeleton at the bottom of a well. Who the skeleton was and how it got there were two of the long-held secrets kept by the residents of Chicken Hill, the dilapidated neighborhood where immigrant Jews and African Americans lived side by side and shared ambitions and sorrows.

As these characters' stories overlap and deepen, it becomes clear how much the people who live on the margins struggle and what they must do to survive at the margins of white Christian America and how damaging bigotry, hypocrisy, and deceit can be to a community. When the truth is finally revealed about what happened on Chicken Hill and the part the town's white establishment played in it, McBride shows us that even in dark times, it is love and community--heaven and earth--that sustain us. (Publisher)

Review:

Chicken Hill was where Moshe and Chona Ludlow lived and where Chona ran the Heaven and Earth Grocery Store. The year was 1925. The store served the neighborhood's quirky collection of Blacks and European immigrants. They were Jewish. Chona's husband, Moshe, a Romanian-born theater owner integrated the town's first dance hall. When the state came looking for a deaf Black child, claiming he needed to be institutionalized, the community sought the help of the Ludlows in keeping the child safe. Nate and Addie Timblin were the child's guardians and both worked for the Ludlows in some capacity. Could the Ludlows hide the child for a short time while the inspectors were snooping around? So begins the backstory that leads to the mystery presented at the beginning of the book. Who was the skeleton in the well? What did it have to do with the old Jew living nearby?

I bet Book Club will have a lively discussion with this book.

Book Beginnings on Friday is hosted by Rose City Reader. First Line Friday is hosted by Reading is My Super Power. Share the opening quote from current book.The Friday56 is hosted at Freda's Voice.  Find a quote from page 56 to share. Visit these two websites to participate. Click on links to read quotes from books other people are reading. It is a great way to make blog friends and to get suggestions for new reading material. 

-Anne

Review and quotes: THE LONELIEST POLAR BEAR

Title: The Loneliest Polar Bear: A True Story of Survival and Peril on the Edge of a Warming World by Kale Williams

Book Beginnings quote: 

Abandoned: She weighed scarcely more than a pound, roughly the size of a squirrel. Her eyes and ears are fused shut. Her only sense of the world around her came from smell, and her nose led her in one direction: toward the gravity and heat of her mother, a six-hundred-pound polar bear named Aurora.

Friday56 quote:

Until the winter of 1918, when death came to Wales on a dogsled.

Summary: 

The heartbreaking and ultimately hopeful story of an abandoned polar bear cub named Nora and the humans working tirelessly to save her and her species, whose uncertain future in the accelerating climate crisis is closely tied to our own.

Six days after giving birth, a polar bear named Aurora got up and left her den at the Columbus Zoo, leaving her tiny, squealing cub to fend for herself. Zookeepers entrusted with her care felt they had no choice: They would have to raise one of the most dangerous predators in the world themselves, by hand. Over the next few weeks, a group of veterinarians and zookeepers would work around the clock to save the cub, whom they called Nora.

Three decades before Nora's birth, her father, Nanuq, was orphaned when an Inupiat hunter killed his mother, leaving Nanuq to be sent to a zoo. That hunter, Gene Agnaboogok, now faces some of the same threats as the wild bears near his Alaskan village of Wales, on the westernmost tip of the North American continent. As sea ice diminishes and temperatures creep up year-after-year, Gene and the polar bears--and everyone and everything else living in the far north--are being forced to adapt. Not all of them will succeed.

The Loneliest Polar Bear explores the fraught relationship humans have with the natural world, the exploitative and sinister causes of the environmental mess we find ourselves in, and how the fate of polar bears is not theirs alone. (Publisher)

Review: I honestly only read this book because it was a book club selection but I found it to be a very compelling and alarming account of what is happening in our world due to our climate crisis. The story of Nora, the abandoned polar bear, and her survival is the hook to pull the other details along. Her story is interspersed with information of what is happening in the arctic area where polar bears live and the historic home of the Inupiat people whose traditional way of life is also in peril. Author Kale Williams, a Oregon journalist looks at the history of climate change, with an eye to what is happening in Alaska.

Initially I liked Nora's story but found the information about our climate crisis to be a bit heavy handed and I often felt scolded. But as I read on it became apparent to me that Kale Williams was actually doing a masterful job of consolidating a lot of points of information into a cohesive story of how we got to where we are today with our climate crisis. The book isn't very long, just a bit over 200 pages so it quite digestible. I know we will have a good discussion during book club, too. 

Polar bears make good ambassadors to make us care about what is happening to their territory and our world. I've fallen in love with Nora and want to go visit her in the Oregon Zoo in Portland! See her in action below.

Book Beginnings on Friday is hosted by Rose City Reader. First Line Friday is hosted by Reading is My Super Power. Share the opening quote from current book.The Friday56 is hosted at Freda's Voice.  Find a quote from page 56 to share. Visit these two websites to participate. Click on links to read quotes from books other people are reading. It is a great way to make blog friends and to get suggestions for new reading material.

A SOTH Book Club selection for September, 2023.

-Anne

Review and quotes: TOMORROW, AND TOMORROW, AND TOMORROW

Title: Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow by Gabrielle Zevin

Book Beginnings/First Line quote:

Friday56 quote:

Summary: Sam and Sadie meet in a hospital when they are both preteens. He is there for yet another surgery on his crushed foot after an accident, she because her sister is there getting treatment for leukemia. The first thing they do is play a video game together. This chance meeting leads to over 600 hours of time spent together playing and getting to know each other. After their friendship breaks apart, they don't see each other again for seven years until they bump into each other at a train station. He is now a student at Harvard, she a student at M.I.T, majoring in computer science. Their friendship is renewed and they decide to spend a summer creating a video game together. So begins a lifetime partnership built on the framework they started as kids, based on their love of gaming and a solid friendship. Though Sam wishes for romance, Sadie assures him that true collaborators are more rare and special.

Review: The book blogging world is of two minds about this book. There are those who say they couldn't get into it because they aren't gamers and those who could get into it even though they might not be into video games. I am in the second camp. Though I have rarely played any video games, other than the very first-- Pac Man and Space Invaders-- I enjoyed this story of friendship, competition, and gaming very much. Zevin, a life-time gamer herself seemed born to write this book. She brought her own love of the format to her story in such a way that people who didn't understand all the real-life gaming references didn't feel left out. She didn't burrow into the minutia and tedium of video game creation, but rather focused on the camaraderie and the art that goes into the successful creation of each new game. She also recognized how important good producers are to the success of the product and creates Marx, a lovable and loving friend to both Sam and Sadie, to fit that role. "Zevin’s delight in her characters, their qualities, and their projects sprinkles a layer of fairy dust over the whole enterprise" (Kirkus Reviews).

Marx and Sam are both mixed-Asian heritage and some of the most interesting psychological aspects of the novel involve both of their feelings of "unbelonging." Sadie was the creative genius in the partnership but wanted little to do with the games promotions leaving that job to Sam. When the gaming world thought that Sam was the creator of their first baby, Ichigo, Sadie started to pull away thinking he was trying to usurp her efforts. This movement away from Sam didn't happen all at once but at one point it led to a chasm so wide one couldn't imagine either finding their way back to other.

It was Marx who provided the book with its title. He loved theater and acting and wanted the company they formed together to be called "Tomorrow Games" as a reference to Shakespeare's Macbeth --  “What is a game?" Marx said. "It's tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow. It's the possibility of infinite rebirth, infinite redemption. The idea that if you keep playing, you could win. No loss is permanent, because nothing is permanent, ever.” This idea of beginning again, of starting over, of putting a new quarter into the Donkey Kong machine and getting high score, of playing a new game but loving it as much as the old game forms the theme of the book.

Now to be fair to my fellow bloggers who didn't love this book or didn't think they would so they didn't read it, I didn't rate Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow as high as you would think from this review. I gave it a 4.25 rating. The middle part just went on a bit too long for me. The miscommunication between Sadie and Sam irritated me, too. I listened to the 14 hours of recording on audiobook. It dragged for me in places and I felt compelled to bump up my listening speed (1.25.) But the ending was almost perfect and I think I cried for the last one hundred pages solid. I truly appreciated the world that Zevin created for us which allowed us to take a peek at the beauty and pain of friendships through a unique lens: video games..

Book Beginnings on Friday is hosted by Rose City Reader. First Line Friday is hosted by Reading is My Super Power. Share the opening quote from current book.The Friday56 is hosted at Freda's Voice.  Find a quote from page 56 to share. Visit these two websites to participate. Click on links to read quotes from books other people are reading. It is a great way to make blog friends and to get suggestions for new reading material. 

 

Weighing in at 416 pages, Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow qualifies for the Big Book Summer Challenge. Unbelievably, this is my third big book of the summer so far! This never happens.

-Anne

Review and quotes: HORSE

Title: Horse by Geraldine Brooks

Book Beginnings quote: 

[THEO. Georgetown, Washington, DC. 2019]

The deceptively reductive form of the artist's work belie the density of meaning...

No. Nup. That wouldn't do. It reeked of PhD. This was meant to be read by normal people.

Friday56 quote:

[WARFIELD'S JARRET. The Meadows, Lexington, Kentucky. 1850.] 

Jarret leaned against the new limestone wall.

Summary: This is the story of a horse. Not just any horse. The most famous horse in America for nearly half a century: Lexington, a racehorse and the sire of many, many other famous racehorses. It is also the story of race in America from the enslaved individuals who cared for and trained Lexington and the horse's white owners to present day racial tensions even in the world of academia.

Review: Boy, I made that summary sound boring, didn't I? My apologies. I wanted to narrow it down to it's bare bones and I may have gone a bit too spare. Let me try again.

In her afterward, author Geraldine Brooks writes,

This novel is a work of the imagination, but most of the details regarding Lexington's brilliant racing career and years as a stud sire are true...many of his foals [575 of them] went on to be outstanding champions, four of them winning the Belmont Stakes and three winning the Preakness --Preakness was a Lexington foal...It is also true that Lexington's skeleton, once a celebrated exhibit, languished for many years neglected in a Smithsonian attic before being loaned to the International Museum of the Horse in Kentucky in 2010... The thriving racing industry was built on the labor and skills of Black horsemen, many of whom were, or had been, enslaved. After Reconstruction, the racing industry became segregated and these Black horsemen were pushed aside...As I began to research Lexington's life, it became clear to me that this novel could not merely be about a racehorse, it would also need to be about race.

During her research she learned about an artist, Thomas J. Scott, and read a description of one of his missing paintings of Lexington being led by "black Jarret, his groom" (Harper's New Monthly Magazine, July 1870). So much is known about the horse and nothing is known about Jarret, his groom. From this point Brooks decided that she needed to tell his story, too.

As in many other novels by Geraldine Brooks, she goes back and forth in time to fill out the story. This novel begins in Washington, DC, when Theo, an African-American graduate student in Art History, takes time from his writing to walk across the street to explore a curbside pile of discarded items from his neighbor. In the pile he finds an old, dirty painting of a horse and his Black groomsman. He takes the painting thinking he might write an article about the process one would go through to have art evaluated. Little does he know that he is holding the lost painting of Lexington, the famous racehorse. As he works with experts from the Smithsonian, he meets Jess, an expert on bones, who has just discovered Lexington's bones moldering away in the Smithsonian's attic.

From 2019 to 1850 a time jump is made and here we meet Jarret who is running to get his father Harry Lewis, a horse trainer, who was able to buy his way out of slavery. A foal was preparing to be born. Harry and Jarret witness the birth of the foal, named him Darley but later renamed to Lexington. As a gift, the owner, Dr, Warfield, gave the foal to Harry, but later when it was discovered what a fine racer Lexington was, had to take him back because it was illegal for slaves to own racehorses. When Lexington was sold, Jarret was sold along with the horse. He was no longer Warfield's Jarret, but Ten Broeck's Jarret.

In short chapters we learn about Jarret's life, and honestly his chapters were the most brilliant in my opinion, and those of Theo and Jess in the 21st century, where they have to grapple with racism and living in a world of black and white rules.

Brooks skillfully paints the picture of an enslaved Black youth named Jarret in 1850s Kentucky ... Throughout the story, it is impossible to miss those parallels between the treatment of horses and enslaved people. ... The takeaway, teed up in discordant endings of triumph and heartbreak, seems to be while celebrating progress we must continue to rebuke racism. Our reckoning remains incomplete and unresolved. Horse is a poignant check-in, a lookout point, for how far we’ve come, and how far we still yet must ride. In 21st century America, privilege is still purchased by proximity to power, which is too often equivalent to whiteness. Horse stands as a convincing case that time alone does not heal all wounds (The Millions).

Horse was selected for an upcoming book club meeting and I know we will have a robust discussion on many and varied topics that the book addresses. I highly recommend the book, especially for those of you who enjoy reading historical fiction about actual people (horses) and events. I, for one, really enjoy learning about history when there is a compelling story to drive the narrative along.

Discussion questions. 

At 401 pages, Horse qualifies as my first big book of the summer for Sue's Big Book Summer Challenge over at Book by Book.

 

Book Beginnings on Friday is hosted by Rose City Reader. Share the opening quote from current book.The Friday56 is hosted at Freda's Voice.  Find a quote from page 56 to share. Visit these two websites to participate. Click on links to read quotes from books other people are reading. It is a great way to make blog friends and to get suggestions for new reading material. 

ANNE 

TTT: Favorite audiobook narrators

Top Ten Tuesday:  Favorite audiobook narrators. This is a reprise from 2019 when I selected this topic for a TTT Freebie week. (If you don't like listening to audiobooks, give these readers a try and see if they help change your mind.)

1. Tom Hanks. I've listened twice to The Dutch House by Ann Patchett, read by Hanks. His narration mades the listening experience wonderful. Here is a list of books and samples of his narration on audiobooks. 

2. Stephen Fry. A humorous reader. Fry is a perfect narrators for funny books.  One of my favorites is The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. Here is a list and samples of his books.

3. Bill Bryson. Bryson writes nonfiction. If he narrates his own audiobooks expect to be entertained. He has comedic timing which makes the experience quite humorous. Note the books on the list that are narrated by Bryson. My favorites: In a Sunburned Country; A Walk in the Woods; Shakespeare; A Short History of Nearly Everything.

4. Jayne Entwistle. Entwistle has a unique voice, though she is an adult her voice makes her sound younger so she is a perfect narrator for teen characters. I first heard her reading the Flavia Du Luce series by Alan Bradley. I also enjoyed her narration of The Lovely War. Here is a list of her body of work.

5. Tim Curry. I fell in love with Tim Curry when he acted in Rocky Horror Picture Show but that love was renewed when I heard him read the Abhorsen/Old Kingdom series by Garth Nix. He was too ill to read the last book in that series and I missed his narration a lot. Here is his a list of his body of work.

6. Jim Dale. The award-winning narrator of The Harry Potter series. Another favorite narrated by Dale is The Night Circus. His work is mesmerizing. Here is a list of his other works.

7. Bahni Turpin. Ms. Turpin has recently become one of my favorite narrators after I listened to The Underground Railroad by Whitehead; Children of the Blood and Bone by Adeyemi; and The Hate U Give by Thomas. Turpin is very versatile. Check out her list of narrations.

8. Will Patton. Will Patton is perhaps by favorite of all favorites. His voice is so deep and growl-y. He has a large catalog of works but my favorite of these is his narration on The Raven Cycle series by Maggie Stiefvater. Be sure to listen to a sample here. 

9. Julia Whelan. Whelan has recently come to my attention through her work on Educated; Far From the Tree; and The Great Alone.  She has a large body of work to choose from.

10. Adjoa Andoh. I first became aware of her through her narration of The Girl with the Louding Voice. Here is a sample.

11. Bill Homewood. Homewood narrated the 52+ hours of the audiobook of  The Count of Monte Cristo. His mastery of French made the experience so realistic. Here is a short sample.

12. Edward Herrman. He narrated two of my favorite nonfiction books: Unbroken and The Boys in the Boat. Sadly he is no longer with us so he will no longer be able to thrill us with hew material. (See more here.)

Bonus. Narrators who clearly have mastery of English and one or many world languages: Morven Christie (Burial Rites, Icelandic); Bahni Turpin (The Children of Blood and Bone, Nigerian accent); Zach Appelman (All the Light We Cannot See, German and French); and Ilyana Kadushin (Disappearing Earth, Russian).

Review: THE MARRIAGE PORTRAIT

The Marriage Portrait by Maggie O'Farrell is a novelized story of the the life of the actual 16th-century noblewoman, Lucrezia di Cosimo de'Medici. Little is known historically about Lucrezia but what is known is that she was forced to marry a much older man, Alfonso II d'Este, Duke of Ferrara, thus merging two dynasties, at age thirteen, though they did not live together until she was fifteen. By age sixteen the girl was dead. In order for Lucrezia to do her duty to her husband she had to produce an heir. No child came out of the couple's short union. From the time of her death there were whispers that the unfortunate bride was poisoned, though most experts believe she probably died of tuberculosis.

One painted portrait of the young girl exists and from that picture and the small amount of information left behind, Maggie O'Farrell has spun a story of the life of women in the 16th-century, especially those in the noble classes. Her idea for the novel came from Robert Browning's famous poem "My Last Duchess."

Browning’s dramatic monologue takes us inside the mind of the Duke of Ferrara, as he shows a painting of his former wife (Lucrezia) to a representative of the family of his next bride-to-be. An avaricious megalomaniac, the duke prefers her ever-smiling portrait to the original girl because the image is inert and easier to control. (The Guardian)

The first chapter starts at the ending, with Lucrezia at a hunting lodge with her husband, away from any plausible help, where she is sure she will be poisoned. Obviously, the author intends for her readers to be looking out for instances of high drama that would lead to such a claim and indeed there are many circumstances that lead the reader to believe the husband has little love for his bride and could indeed pull off such a deadly plan as to have her murdered. But many professional reviewers point out that this is melodrama reworked to appeal to a progressive 21st-century audience. We are led to believe that Lucrezia was raised by thoughtless and uncaring parents and that she had the possibility of escaping her circumstances. But the truth of the matter was that noble women growing up in that time period knew their place in life and knew they would likely end up in a loveless marriage, their main role would be to create heirs to carry on the family's line. There were not many other options for them.

But I confess I am a 21st-century woman so I was part of the prime audience for The Marriage Portrait. I cheered for Lucrezia as she found little ways to be remain independent and remained resolutely defiant in the the face of her bullying husband and his cronies. The ending, which is not in keeping with the historical records, was surprising and redemptive. 

I became an O'Farrell fan after reading Hamnet in 2021. That story, also set in the 16th-century was about Shakespeare's family, specifically his wife Anne. That story had an air of plausibility about it and O'Farrell's writing style and skills had me enraptured form page one. The Marriage Portrait seemed less plausible plot-wise, but it beautifully captured what daily life was like for women living in that time. I could picture it all from O'Farrell's detailed descriptions.

I listened to the audiobook version of The Marriage Portrait which is usually a good choice for me, but this time I wished I were reading the print version. I wanted to linger on the beautiful prose as well as ponder over the clues of the mystery and the full cast of characters, also plucked from history. It was a book club selection and we had a fairly good discussion over the book, though no one was wildly crazy about the book, no one hated it either.

Rating: 4 out of 5 stars.

-Anne