and every award on earth goes too....

I was thinking tonight that there has been an abysmal lack of reading in my life lately.  Really, there has been a noticeable lack of anything besides school and work, but reading in particular has suffered. I haven't loved any of the library audiobooks I've downloaded recently (Another Timothy Hallinan book that so far I don't like as much as Crashed, the second Inkheart book, etc.) but I have listened, several times, to the BRILLIANT, MIND-BLOWING recordings of P.G. Wodehouse stories by Martin Jarvis.

I would give Martin Jarvis every award possible for these recordings.  The man is a genius.  He is - dare I say it? - just as good as Fry and Laurie.

If you can spare the cash for a Very Good Jeeves volume or two, I promise you won't regret it.


Dear Martin Jarvis,

Please read all the P.G. Wodehouse books.  We go around the house breathily chanting, "Darling!" in the manner of Mrs. Bingo Little. No other audiobooks have ever made me laugh aloud.

I love you.

Thanks a million times,

K

Crashed by Timothy Hallinan

I listened to this on tape, and about three days after I initially downloaded it from the library, I saw a positive review for the book on NPR and felt unreasonably proud of myself for downloading a decently reviewed book purely because the cover is well-designed.

The review said that it was the tone that makes this book - and I think that's very true.  When you tell someone what the story is about, it doesn't sound like anything spectacular. It's about the underworld of the Hollywood area, a drugged-out child star, a burglar, and a porn film.  How is that new or different, right?  And when you tell them that it's funny sometimes, it's even more misleading. Because it isn't a funny book overall; people die, and it's serious and scary. Yet the characters can find humor in life - they aren't perpetually serious - and that makes them seem like human beings.  Nothing is more boring to me than the stoic, inscrutable, Bond-style detective.

So, basically, it's a hard book to describe to people.

I can say that this is the only modern mystery story I've read that I really enjoyed.  Not only because the main character was fun and all that - but because it was at least a bit believable, and seemed to be about bigger things than just giving the reader a fun ride.  I was struck by the unmistakable social commentary.  And how the characters - all of them (with the possible exception of Junior's wife - she's believable and everything, but not meaty) - would be an actor's dream. And since Lionsgate has bought the rights to make a movie, there's a slim chance that it might pull through development purgatory and get made. Of course, the story and the characters and the social commentary could all get sapped out of them by dumb people, but with a smart screenwriter and a handful of great actors it could be something really, really special.  And I don't think that often.

Thistle Downing, in particular, would be a dream of an acting role. If somebody played the part well, I'd see them grabbing awards.  Thistle is drugged-out, obviously, but she's also so self-aware, and sees precisely what the media machine is after. She has a sense of humor.  She has weird ideas about what happened to her talent. She's not your normal messed up hollywood kid character - and I think that's cool because there is no such thing as a normal messed-up hollywood kid.

CONCLUSION:
People in real life are not just types - they're all different, no matter what group they fit into - and that, right there, is why this book is good: because Timothy Hallinan knows it, and writes his people like people.

Argo: How the CIA and Hollywood Pulled of the Most Audacious Rescue in History by Antonio Mendez and Matt Baglio

I listened to this on tape, actually.  Well, actually actually it was a library digital download.  So shoot me for using dated terms.

It was a fun-ish listen, I guess.  Honestly, I was more interested to see how the movie matched up. It was certainly the same story, though it was quite obviously jazzed up a bit.  One of the oddest things about the book is learning that Tony Mendez is apparently quite the painting devotee!  He got into the CIA as an artist - doing document forging and things like that.  But he said in the book that he has always considered himself an artist before a CIA agent.  Who'd have thought?

The reader stank. His pronunciation of the word "houseguests" was the most precise, laborious thing I have ever heard.

CONCLUSION:
Enjoyable if, like me, you wanted more details after watching the movie.

The Scorpio Races by Maggie Stif... Stivferr... ah, what the heck.

It's rare, these days, to read a book that really captures me.  You know what I mean?  A book where you become so involved and so worked into the story and the world of the book that - besides forcing you to stay up into the wee hours of the morning because you just CAN'T STOP READING - it consumes you for a couple of days. I kind of drift around in this weird, dazed way, where my head and imagination are most definitely in the book and characters, while my body, inconveniently, is not.

I can never predict when this is going to happen, or with which stories, but it did with this one.
I'd never encountered Maggie Stiefvater before, but I'm glad I did.  I actually listened to this as an audiobook - library download site, I worship and adore thee - and a cracking good one it was. I consider myself something of an, ahem, audiobook connoisseur, and this one was not extraordinarily great, but certainly, solidly good.  I'm always pleased when double narrator books are seamless, because they so often are not.  A truly good audiobook is a rare gem.

 The film rights have been bought, which doesn't mean it will absolutely be made for sure - more likely the opposite, judging from what I've read about the workings of the film world - but I'll be excited to see it if it does make it through the purgatory of development.  I hope they don't ruin it, because it's the kind of book would need restraint in every aspect, and I don't think that's hollywood's strong point at the moment.  Much as I'm glad it's been optioned at all, I wish somebody besides the people behind Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter had got hold of it.

CONCLUSION:
I'm still sort of stuck in that dreamy, dazed state, so I can't say much to the point.  I liked it, and I'm downloading another of her books as we speak.

Books on tape

I whined a lot this semester about how I didn't get to do any reading.  Well, I didn't really get to do much reading - but I recently realized that I sure listed to a heck of a lot of books on tape.

Bloodlist by P.N. Elrod
A sort of noir thing with the main character as a vampire.  His being a vampire seemed mostly like an convenient way to bring a character back from the dead to solve his own murder.
CONCLUSION:  Of the startling number of vampire books I have recently consumed, this was probably my favorite.

The Scorpio Races by Maggie Stiefvater 
Highly enjoyable, surprisingly.  Best book I've listened to in a good bit. I perversely didn't want to listen to it for a while because it won awards and I was afraid it would be dull, but I was happily wrong.
CONCLUSION: see full write-up.

My Week with Marylin
It's nothing surprising really - a behind the scenes with Marilyn Monroe.  It was interesting to me because I've seen The Prince and The Showgirl, in which Marilyn Monroe was quite good, I thought, and I knew a little of the backstory already.
CONCLUSION: Enjoyable in the way you know it will be - a slightly uncomfortable but fascinating peek into the life of an icon.

2 Nathaniel Cade books
Do I really like these? It's debatable.  I like conspiracy theory stuff.  I like thrills and action. Do I really love, like, paranormal stuff? No.  This seems to be about the closest thing to a paranormal Michael Crichton novel I'll ever encounter.
CONCLUSION: When it's this or Karen Kingsbury, I'll take vampires and frankensteins trying to kill the president any day.

The Lost Gate by Orson Scott Card
Weird magical all-mythological-gods-are-real story.    Didn't like it as much as Ender's Game, but how is that surprising? I adored Ender's Game.
CONCLUSION: Though this wasn't my favorite story ever, I do always go for the hermes/loki character. I wanted to hear more.

The Tales of Alvin Maker by Orson Scott Card
Weird alternate America where magic happens story.  Maybe it's because I listened to them instead of reading them, but these seemed... I don't know, fuzzier than Ender's Game.  This was also tainted by the readers (yes, plural) one or two of which were certainly not my favorite.
CONCLUSION: Didn't like it as much as The Lost Gate.

Confessions of a Jane Austen Addict
Read it before already.  Fine. I'm not a chick-lit person, so this is really as close as I'll ever get.
CONCLUSION: THANK GOD! FINALLY a book about a Jane Austen fan who doesn't make dumb mistakes when she's transported back to Jane Austen's day.

3 Anita Blake, Vampire Hunter books.
Do I like these books? Not really. Am I a paranormal-fiction fan? NO. But! The reader is good. The pace is quick.  There were lots of fights. I listened to them while doing school work, and they seemed to not take much focus to absorb, which was just what I needed.  I honestly didn't know they were, like, considered sexy books until after I was done with them.  Maybe I missed those parts, but it just seemed like a spunkier, much gorier Twilight to me.
CONCLUSION: Whatever.

True Strength by Kevin Sorbo
Hm. Didn't know he was, like, dying while making his TV show. Poor chap. I like that TV show. It's so marvelously campy.
CONCLUSION: But I didn't need to read that much disorganized whining.


ONES I DIDN'T QUITE GET THROUGH:

Beauty Queens by Libba Bray

Genuinely funny in many places, and excellent reading (by the author!) - but for some reason I just didn't finish it.  There's a good chance I will someday.

A Beautiful Blue Death by Charles Finch
I'm sorry to say it, but about a third of the way in I threw in the towel.  This was published in 2007, and felt so much like a lackluster knock-off of Dorothy Sayers, that I couldn't get through it.  The long descriptions of the food he was eating and him looking for his special pipe wore me down. EVERY scene was described in too much detail.  You have to restrain yourself sometimes, or it just gets dull.
I really don't care that "he preferred his eggs scrambled." That's just not an interesting fact.  Mainly because it says next to nothing about who he, or his companions are - and most of the detail is like that.  If we're talking about eggs and detectives, think of Hercule Poirot's lament that eggs are not round?  That says something about his character, thank you very much.
The reader was sprightly, and did a decent job with the material.

Lord of the Fading Lands by somebody or other
Honestly? I didn't even get through the prologue.  I'm adventuring further into the fantasy/sci-fi world these days - but some things I will just never like.