Esme
Moojie Littleman was abandoned on the church steps as a baby. He grew up with bad legs and a claw hand. His adoptive mother saw his inner beauty, but she died young. His adoptive father couldn't see past his inability to speak clearly and to do “guy” things. He abandoned Moojie to the cranky care of his grandfather, a hillbilly who ran a dairy farm. Moojie grew up angry and his longing for a real family became more crippling than his physical handicaps.
Pappy got Moojie exercising and then saddled him with chores and work around the farm to do. Slowly Moojie learned to speak, walk with braces, and use his hand for the chores. His chores gave him the opportunity to explore the hills around the farm, and there he met The Lighteaters. This clan of loveable misfits are the sworn enemies of his Pappy and the townfolk who call them The Hostiles.
Moojie longed to become part of the Lighteater clan, but they wouldn't accept him until he learned to live by The Code. Through his improbable adventures, Moojie learned the power of mercy, charity, forgiveness, and love.
This is a quirky, funny, and touching story that will surprise and delight you. I highly recommend it!
Anna's Book by Ruth Rendell writing as Barbara Vine is not your typical mystery. For the longest time, it seems to be the story of a family told through the eyes of a woman who has discovered her grandmother's diary.
Anna, the grandmother, is a Norwegian woman stranded in London in the early 1900s with a husband that is never around, even for the birth of his children. She writes her feelings in her journals, but to her children, she is strict and unfeeling.
When Anna dies, her favorite daughter, Swanny, finds and publishes one of the journals. It becomes popular, and Swanny is in demand as a speaker. There are secrets within the journals, however, but Swanny is only interested in one. Anna had intimated to Swanny that she was adopted, but no matter how she begged, Anna went to her grave with the secret intact. Swanny searches the journals to no avail. They seem to say that Anna is her birth mother, but then why would Anna have told her such a hurtful thing?
When Swanny dies, her niece Ann, picks up the journals and find yet another mystery. Was it murder? And what about the young girl that went missing – could it be Swanny? Ann won't stop researching until she has the answer.
This book jumps from Anna's point of view to Ann's and back again, which is challenging at the beginning, but becomes interesting as the book goes on. The story unfolds deliciously slowly, teasing and seducing the reader into reading more.
This is not a book that fans of faster paced mysteries will enjoy, but if you like British mysteries I suggest Anna's Book by Ruth Rendell writing as Barbara Vine.
Stopped reading this book because it seems like a second draft. There are punctuation errors throughout, words are misused, and the author has trouble with homonyms. Example, in describing a drunk, she mentions his “read nose.” This author needs an editor and proofreader in the worst way. It may or may not be a good story, but I couldn't keep reading past the errors.
Hungarian “Western”
This charmingly dark tale takes place in the Hungarian plains and involves a tragic love triangle between two cowboys - a cow herd and a horse wrangler. There is a lot to enjoy about this translated story. The setting is unique and nothing like what I expected Hungary to be like. I went to Wikipedia and learned a great deal about a part of the world I'll never visit. The love triangle is intriguing and mysterious. It portrays the Hungarian cowboy as intensely emotional yet restrained in verbal expression of those feelings. The ending of the story, although never in doubt, is still jarring.
The audiobook is narrated by BJ Harrison who has visited the Hungarian plain. He brings it alive as a character and its emotions overlie the entire narrative. His voicing of the cowboys and their songs is masterful. We understand the emotions of the cowboys through his narration rather than the actual words they speak.
I highly recommend this book.
This review is for the audiobook version.
Author Edward A. Joseph selected 50 articles out of a collection of his columns for newspapers and edited them into a touching and insightful book. These are short, positive slice-of-life essays that will make you smile and perhaps think about your life in a new way.
The audiobook is narrated by Robin McAlpine. Although she has a lovely, warm delivery that flows well, she would not have been my choice to read essays written by a man. To hear phrases such as “the other men” come out of her mouth was distracting to me. I believe, however, I would enjoy her narration on another book where the gender difference between author and narrator doesn't matter.
The pacing was a bit too fast for me. I normally listen at 1.2 speed without noticing a difference. For this audiobook, I had to turn it down to 1.0 in order to fully enjoy the book. These essays are meant to be savored, and I wanted more opportunity to do that. I also would have appreciated a longer break or some other distinction between essays. Even at 1.0, this was too quick and didn't give me as much time as I wanted to change gears going into the next essay.
Despite my quibbles about the narration, this audiobook is enjoyable, thought-provoking, informative, and inspiring. I especially enjoyed the essays that featured interactions between the author and his daughter or his wife. My favorite section was the travel section near the end. I am inspired to try the authors method of traveling. I highly recommend this book.
This is a review of the audiobook version.
As the survivor of marriage to a person with a diagnosed narcissistic personality disorder, I was interested in this book. It helped me understand the distinction between NPD and sociopathy as well as helping me understand more about what happened to me. I particularly enjoyed the 13 Red Flags to watch out for. I appreciated that the author is careful to emphasize that anyone can fall under the influence of a sociopath, even a trained clinician!
The narrator, Shelly Frasier is perfect for this kind of non-fiction. She comes across as knowledgeable without being clinical or cold. The stories are narrated in a way that entertain and educate. She has taken some difficult material and made it accessible and easy to listen to. I listen at 1.2 speed, and the pacing was perfect.
I am glad I got this in the audio format. I think I had an easier time listening to it than I would have had reading it. I do wish a PDF of the 13 Red Flags was included with the audiobook.
I am reviewing the audiobook version.
This 1-hour short listen is just mildly creepy
The narrator, Kimberly Wood, doesn't seem to try to overcome the weak writing of the two protagonists. The character voices are largely the same. Only at the end of the story, when the male protagonist starts talking a more stereotyped Black male lingo, can you tell the difference between the two characters.
The story itself is OK, but nothing special. The twist at the end is not a twist at all. You could see it coming a mile away. The book was just an hour long, but I would have rather listened to something else.
It's possible that I might have enjoyed the story more in a written format where I could have allowed my imagination to give the characters more depth.
Lisa Unger is a NYT best selling author, and indeed this is a well-written story. Unfortunately, the narration by Amy Landon is so bad that I nearly stopped listening just a few minutes into the story. I'm glad I didn't. The story carried the day. But I won't buy another book narrated by Landon. Her voice is robotic with no warmth.
So back to the story. A young woman, fleeing from an abusive boyfriend, pulls into an out-of-the way motel. The owner is very attentive to her needs, and she wants to like him. But she's got to get back on the road. Unfortunately, her car won't start and she is stuck. This is really where the story begins to unfold. To go any further would be to introduce spoilers. You'll have to read it for yourself. I do recommend reading it rather than listening to the audiobook. I think the experience will be much better.
Rick Wilson wrote this to help the country survive the 2020 election by knowing how to beat Trump. Wilson's book, Everything Trump Touches Dies, was prescient so I was anxious to listen to this. I started it in early 2020, but never finished it due to the pandemic. But now the orange guy is running in 2024, so I got a second chance.
The audiobook is narrated by Wilson himself, and no one else could do it justice. This needed to be done in his voice. I suspect if he was narrating it now, he'd be a bit gentler in tone, but not much.
There are some points in the book that I suspect Wilson has shifted on. For instance, his insistence that young people don't vote was not true in 2020 or 2022. He recently had a Gen X activist on his podcast, and it's clear he's seeing a change here.
But other than minor quibbles as these, this book holds up. It's worth listening to again if you want to be involved in activism around the 2024 election.
I have read The Woman in White once, listened to it read on the Phoebe Reads a Mystery podcast, and now I've listened to the audiobook version. I can say that this audiobook is my favorite experience of this book, largely due to the narrator, Ian Holm.
The story is set in 1850 in England. An heiress, who is orphaned and dependent on a self-absorbed uncle who just wants her to go away. Her half-sister is the other resident of the house, into which comes an art teacher. The art teacher and the heiress fall in love, and so of course he must leave because she is betrothed to a baronet. He seems quite attentive an kind at first. All is not what it seems, however. She receives a mysterious letter warning her about her fiancé, but she is too honorable to back out of the arrangement. What happens next is a suspenseful story of 2 women trying to save themselves in a time and place where they have no agency.
Ian Holm is a delightful narrator for this story. In particular, his portrayal of the awful uncle is genius. The book is long (670+ pages; audio 24+ hours), but worth the time if you enjoy period suspense.
I listened to the Audible version, which isn't listed here. Weird since Audible is owned by Amazon, just like GoodReads.
Details about Trump aren't current as it only covers through 2017. But the information about despots around the world is fascinating and makes this worth reading.
I wanted to like this, but honestly, I can't. The author didn't care enough to get professionals to help her. And she needed help. She needed a professional cover designer. She needed a professional editor. She needed a professional proofreader. And she needed a professional to layout the ebook. This is so unprofessionally packaged, and I will never respect a book that is so unprofessionally packaged. The author needs to care more about her book than I do.
Having said that, this is a good idea for a book and a not-too-bad first draft. I'd read it again and give it a different review if the author cares enough to do it right and reissue it.
The author called it a failed experiment. I agree. Beware of authors getting paid per word for serialization and pantsing it.
AudiobookThis is one of the most enjoyably creepy books I've listened to this year. I listened to the audiobook narrated by BJ Harrison. His narration enhances the fear factor that Sax Rohmer wrote into this book. It was the first Rohmer book I ever experienced, and I'm definitely looking forward to more!
If you've got a book hangover from reading something intense and you just need something light and fun to help you recover, this is your book. Bertie Wooster's silly notions are beautifully balanced by Jeeves' big brain and common sense. Bertie gets himself into trouble, and Jeeves gets him out. Along the way, you'll laugh and recover from your hangover. Give Jeeves and Wooster a chance. You can thank me later.
I enjoyed this much more than Rebecca. Rebecca's female protagonist is so weak, I just didn't enjoy the book that much. In Jamaica Inn, we have a much spunkier protagonist, which is good because this is a straight up thriller and she is in danger from the very beginning. Highly recommended.
Loved the stories, but hated the narrator. Eric Brooks seems like an old-fashioned stage actor who feels like the louder he declaims, the better he acts. Well, no. Not in audiobook format. I'm sad that they could not find a better narrator for this material, because there is nuance in this adventurous romance. But not in this audiobook.