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Twists upon Twists

Revisado: 02-17-24

Great narration - the cadence, pitch, and style used for each character brought them to life. Waters has created memorable character, set them in a complex world she details richly. The plot twists and turns, leaving the reader surprised and delighted.

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Incredible details from an incredible woman

Revisado: 01-27-24

I grew up on Barbra and to hear the details of her art and her life leave me more convinced than ever that she is a singular talent. Her sense of story imbues not just her music and songs but the story she tells of her journey to make that art. What a joy to listen to her tell tales of the famous people she worked with in her own voice. I found myself pausing the book regularly to watch a film she talked about, or listen again to an album to catch those details of her search for perfection.

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Entertaining Adventure

Revisado: 04-09-16

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Gaiman is one of the most reliably entertaining writers out there. He creates a world where the weird and magical coexist with the familiar and mundane world around us.

Richard Mayhew is the hapless hero of this Gaiman tale. Richard, in an act of kindness to help a young, injured girl, unknowingly cuts himself off from London Above. Lovable, clueless, and yet somehow, strangely accepting of the world beneath the streets of London - London Below - where he finds himself confronting royal courts, floating markets, rat-speakers, angels, knights in armor and monsters, Richard is a wonderful protagonist.

The majority of the tale is told from Richard's POV in third person and it is here that Gaiman shines. We see a man struggle with not only who he is, but how this is all possible, while also succumbing to the world around him in a way that allows his full participation, despite the logical part of his brain telling him, none of this is possible. Richard is curious and fascinated by London Below, but finds himself helping in improbable situations in order to get back home to London Above.

Gaiman doesn't waste time explaining the mechanics of this world - we simply figure them out along with the protagonist - or not and, again, like Richard, simply suspend our disbelief and go along for the ride. He shows that world-building isn't about paragraphs and pages of backstory and info dumping so the reader 'gets it' but rather, he trusts his readers will accept and join his adventure. Gaiman brilliantly weaves myth and urban legend and humorous literalism into a magical world filled with bizarre and entertaining folk.

Richard saves Door, a girl with powerful magic to open locks and doors and even create doors. Her family of openers been killed and she wants revenge. Richard, for his act of kindness, finds that he no longer exists in London Above - people don't really see him, his landlord re-leases his flat, his colleagues don't know him.... See no alternative, he joins Door on her attempt to find out what happened to her family. They are joined by the Marquis de Carabas - a thief who has restyled himself a lord and Hunter - who has slain mythical beasts like the Albino Alligator of New York. Along the way the meet of host of other characters who try to help or hinder their success. There is the Earl's Court that travels the 'dark unopening' car of an British Underground train that passes through the Earl's Court station (leaving Richard wondering if there's an Raven's Court....) and the assassins Vandermar and Croop - a bit like Pinky and the Brain and a hilarious take on the 'intellectual criminal and dunderheaded thug' type.

Richard and Door's adventure is a traditional hero quest and the characters mythological in many senses. The book had me laughing aloud at the puns and the familiar yet wholly original takes on types. I'd love to see more of the world of Neverwhere.

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Literary post-apocalyptic novel

Revisado: 03-07-16

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4.5
Emily St. John Mandel has taken a more literary slant to her post-apocalyptic world than the bulk of them out there. You won't find many action filled scenes of crazed road-warriors or zombies or gun-toting survivalists chasing down the 'good-guys'. There are no long explanations of how society collapsed, instead the story focuses on a handful of characters, before and after the plague that wipes out most of the world's population.

The major players in the story are all connected, yet they connect through tenuous threads, and there is no big moment where their stories converge. Kirsten was a child actor when the end came, and now, travel with a symphony and acting troop that performs Shakespeare and Shakespeare and his world - another impacted by plague - serve as metaphors. Arthur is an actor and has a heart-attack on stage the night the plague strikes. His ex-wives and his son, are three more threads. There is Arthur's friend Clark, and the paramedic who was in the theater that night. There is a comic book that ties several characters together, that impacts how they understand this new world.

Mandel uses the plague to explore philosophy more than the how the world would fall apart and that is the power of her story. The rumination by characters on art and music, the value of items no longer of use, whether the past should be let go or taught, and so much more, all layered over the threads that connect the characters, seen and unseen. Mandel weaves back and forth between the past and the present, and moves from individual story to story, building the larger story.

The characters are fully realized and they are a cross-section of flawed humanity. Mandel's descriptions of both the world before and the world after are beautiful and frightening and vivid. There is hope in the new world, but their is an arbitrariness that undercuts that hope. There is a brutality to the new world but there is also a beauty to it as well. In the end, Station Eleven is a novel of the end of the world, but more importantly it is about how that end impacts a few individuals. The focus never wavers from the personal and it is the power of Mandel's narrative.

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Beautiful told story

Revisado: 03-06-16

Where does The Night Circus rank among all the audiobooks you’ve listened to so far?

as one of the best

What does Jim Dale bring to the story that you wouldn’t experience if you just read the book?

Dale's narration was perfection - his presentation of omniscience was never intruding but made it feel like the narrator was truly in love with the world these characters inhabit.

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My first comment about the novel is that everyone should ignore the cover text. That description fails to present what The Night Circus is about. Yes, there is a magic duel and yes, there is love but the book is so much more than plot points. Nothing about this book is flashy, action-oriented magic and the duel is a slow dance of beauty and subtlety.

The star of the novel is the Night Circus itself, the enchanting world that was the dream of a few, the work of art of two, and the intense experience of thousands. Morgenstern has written a novel that is true omniscient narration, and the narrator, beyond knowing each of the characters better than they know themselves, is in love with the world these characters inhabit. The style keeps a certain narrative distance rarely broken - we get the characters thoughts, but they are filtered through the narrators voice. Many of the negative reviews feel that the characters were flat - and I strongly disagree; we may not get their voice, but they are full, complex characters. The advantage of this narration style is that the brilliant description, the nuances of what can only be seen from the outside, takes the center stage.

This is a story to which one gives oneself over. It is a slow, meandering tale, with a large cast of unique individuals whom the narrator follows for a time, then as if wandering the crowd of circus goers, turns and follows another then another. Like a Seurat painting, the narrated minutiae of details blend to create a filled canvas, where the variety of life is on display, eyes drawn from the contortionist to the antithetical twins training acrobatic kittens, to those who follow the circus, dressed in the black and white of the circus with a splash of red, to the competing lovers, to the nefarious man in grey.

There is a plot and moments of tension, but there is no rush to denouement, no quick unfolding of secrets and mysteries. The world of The Night Circus is illusion and story doled out by a narrator who values esthetic over action. The magic is subtle, the competition more background than foreground. There are genuine moments of shock and surprise, of awe and wonder, and like a child being told a tale at the knees of a master-storyteller, I found myself lost in the telling, exclaiming oohs and ahhhh aloud.

Morgenstern's novel takes patience and a willing suspension of expectations to be deep in a character and see the world from their POV. This is not typical narration for today's novels. There is no racing down the superhighway, but rather, a wandering towards a remote destination where one stops to smell the roses of beautiful language, to lie on the grass and point out cloud shapes of the detailed descriptions, and to walk a twisted turning path until the destination is reached as all the while everything is slowly, lovingly revealed.

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New discoveries on each reading

Revisado: 03-06-16

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Each time I read this novel, I find different things to love. First, it was that Celie loved women, then it was how her conception of God changes through the novel, then how all the women grew, but only after eliminating the men in their lives (and how some of the men grew when the women stepped away.)

This reading however, I was more struck by Walker's prose. Some complain of the difficulty of the dialect, but I found the opposite — perhaps because I tend to 'hear' the language of books and am a slow reader because of it. Walker's use of the dialect makes the book sing with the rhythms and metaphors of a culture. The reader can 'hear' Celie's growth, and listen to the world Celie in habits through her language.

There is a brilliance to Walker for daring to write in the Black vernacular of the early 20th Century and daring the reader to read it. Had her story not been so powerful, so resonate, many would have dismissed the novel. But Walker proved that good story can overcome bias and cultural differences.

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Well done, story driven

Revisado: 02-06-16

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Legend is the first of a trilogy. Set in a future where parts of the US have become The Republic, and others 'The Colonies' (and they are at war, plus the Republic is also facing a rebellion in its own borders), weather is extreme and society has become more structured, the haves and the have-nots more obvious. June Iparis is a prodigy - the only individual in the Republic to score perfectly on their trial which is used to determine what level education you receive and what jobs you are suited for. She is also an orphan. Early-on, she narrates her rebellious streak, her relationship with her beloved brother, and how wonderful and powerful and good the Republic is.

Then, there is Day. He narrates his life as one of the society's less fortunate. He's from a poor slum where life is hard, resources scarce, and plague a constant threat. He's supposed to be dead, failed his trial, and now, he's wanted for criminal activity - he likes to disrupt the Republic by bombing things, steal supplies, etc although he's never killed anyone.

When Day risks everything to save a family member, June hunts him - for personal reasons. As is typical of dystopian novels, she comes to learn that not everything she was taught is the truth. But, her conflict with Day is personal.

Both narrators are well-drawn, voices distinct enough. The action is tight and the novel moves along quickly, without extraneous plots of giant chunks of exposition explaining the history of the world. In fact, few details are known on the how or why, or even a complete picture of the current state of the world of Day and June. The focus is on the characters and the action. The theme and the connection to issues of today are clear, but not overdone - no long speeches or chapters of rumination on the meaning of it all. No big surprises or twists, but it also didn't feel contrived or unoriginal. And while the changing relationship between the two narratives is expected, it isn't overly angst-filled or focused on more than the plot or theme.

Legend is one of the better YA fantasy novels.

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Another excellent Ishiguro

Revisado: 01-30-16

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Ishiguro, a master of subtle and understated prose, has another excellent novel in Never Let Me Go. The narrator, Kathy tells the story of her friendship with Ruth and Tommy, from their earliest days at their private boarding school, to adulthood, through its ups and downs, until only Kathy is left. While many know what makes these characters special when the novel begins, even those who don't have some prior knowledge should figure it out with little difficulty, early on. While never stating things explicitly, the clues are in plain sight.

What is the true focus and brilliance of Ishiguro's novel isn't the what, but rather, the how these three have been raised to this purpose, and what they eventually find out about what makes the special. That revelation has far more impact on the audience than it does the characters. That reveal takes what is disturbing and makes the alternative, or rather, the more common practice horrifying.

The characters are well drawn and Kathy's narrative draws us in, paints a detailed picture of their world, connecting to us, yet it is also an unfathomable existence. Strangely, I empathized with their experience, but at same was frustrated by their unquestioning acceptance, despite understanding their upbringing's goal was precisely that.

Ishiguro's work is always thought provoking, always based in the complex emotional inter-personal relationships and the individual's relationship to their status in the world. Never Let Me Go adds the layer of a possible ethic quandary that our innovations of science may present sooner than we'd like.

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Wonderful read, engaging setting

Revisado: 01-23-16

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4.5

Gruen's novel is a first person narrative that has a memorable narrator, particularly when it is the elderly version of Jacob speaking (he's "90. Or 93."). The elder Jacob's narrative is interwoven with Jacob when he's in his twenties. The elder's storyline is amusing and sad at the same time, but ends wonderfully.

The younger Jacob's story is about his summer working with a train circus. The book is filled with wonderful characters and a thoroughly engaging world of the circus. Jacob has to navigate the complex social milieu he finds himself in, with performers and workers in two different classes, and even those divided by a hierarchy. As the circus vet, he works with the animals and when the circus takes on a seemingly difficult to work with elephant, Rosie, he develops a special bond with her. Rosie is a great character and much of the plot revolves around her in many ways.

Jacob falls for Marlena, who works the equestrian acts, and happens to be the wife of the mercurial August, who handles the animal acts. Marlena ends up working with Rosie as well, helping develop an act which the circus knows will bring in the money. But through Jacob, we also learn the brutality of the circus as well - men no longer needed tossed from the moving train, the rush to buy out other circus acts when the collapse financially, and the reality that often-times when audiences don't fill up the show, workers go unpaid. Then the relationship with Jacob and Marlena builds, as does August's paranoia and anger, and the circus faces more hurdles and issues. The tension builds until the wonderful climax.

The novel is peopled with other great characters - Walter, the dwarf clown, Camel, the old drunk worker and Uncle Al, the wheeling and dealing owner of the circus. The one flaw of the novel was Marlena - she was not as well-drawn as some of the others and I wanted more of her. She and August should have been matches for Jacob, but she fell short.

The older Jacob narrative was well done, with Gruen capturing the angst and humor of growing old. The interaction between Jacob and his favorite nurse are touching and funny.

The narrative was tight and moved quickly, the action and tension of the main narrative played off against the slower narrative of the elder Jacob. Gruen's descriptions were detailed but never exhaustive or overdone.

Water For Elephants is a good read - entertaining story, emotional without being melodrama, with interesting characters and interesting setting.

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Creative idea, enjoyable

Revisado: 01-10-16

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Kagawa's YA novel, Talon - the first in a series, is a fast moving, enjoyable novel about Ember Hill, a teenager who happens to be a dragons who can take human form. She and her brother are being trained as possible sleepers to live among humans for the mysterious Talon - the dragon 'government' organization that determines what each dragon will do when they mature.

But dragons have been hunted by the mysterious Order of St. George for hundreds of years. Ember meets Garrett who has been raised by the order and is searching for sleepers. Of course, neither knows. Throw in the rogue dragon who helps other dragons who don't fit into Talon. He tries to convince Ember that Talon is a brutal, totalitarian government and she should come with him.

While there is the expected tension between the two male potentials, Ember find herself frustrated by her domineering trainer, the growing distance between her and her brother, and trying to find time to surf - the closest thing she can have since she isn't allowed to transform and fly.

The characters were well drawn, although I found Garrett and the rogue somewhat typed. The story it self was fast paced and moved along. The parable aspect of the novel wasn't overdone and the writing and dialog was entertaining.

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