More on Abandoning a Book

Last weekend, I published some thoughts about "The Borrower", an audio book I had abandoned.  That non-review generated quite a few very well-expressed comments from all of my friends in blog-land.  So rather than bury my reactions and additions in the comments section, I thought it appropriate to continue the discussion here.

Normally, I truly enjoy audio books but I recognize that the narrator can make or break the audio version.  I'm always careful in my reviews to note whether or not I 'read' the book in print or audio format.  Often I listen to a book AND read the book.  My right/left brain finds it easy to go back and forth, and I find I am able to continue reading when my eyes and hands are otherwise occupied.

In this particular case, I was sent this book IN AUDIO FORMAT by the publisher with the specific expectation I would review it AS AN AUDIO.  The Early Reviewer Program of LibraryThing is a wonderful program that puts books in various formats (print, ebook, and audio) into the hands of serious readers and asks only that a review be written in exchange.  In fact, they did not necessarily expect a blog post, but I always post my reviews on LibraryThing and on the blog.  Because I couldn't finish it, I felt obligated to write something saying that this was the case and to explain why I couldn't get through the book. I specifically said it wasn't a review. Even when I finish and review a book I don't care for, I try to say what it is that turned me off, because I recognize that each of us has different expectations, preferences, and values that will color our perception of anything we read.

That said, many of your comments have made me open to taking a look at the work in print format to see if I have a different take.  If the book is supposed to be the reminiscences of an older librarian looking back on a very inappropriate behavior, then those of you who noted that made a very valid case for the audio being a dud.  The narrator absolutely sounded like a 12 year old, and I think that's what gave me such a negative feeling.  I never would have gotten a mature look-back from that voice.

So I'm willing to give it another look, but I think I'm going to have to let some time elapse before I will want to try to re-evaluate given my negative feelings at present.  I did give the book to our children's librarian, who also likes audio books, and asked her to have a go.  I did not give her any indication of how I felt, nor has she read the blog.  It will be interesting to see if she has the same take. 

So thanks for a good discussion, and by the way...I do think in many instances that author does have some say about who will or will not narrate.  Even if they don't, shame on a publisher for not considering the appropriateness of a voice for a narration.  It's a shame to spoil a good book by having the wrong person reading it.  Emily Bauer's reading is clear and well inflected, but, if I hear those who read the print version correctly, her voice is the wrong voice for the story.  And that is a disservice to the author and the readers. 

Narration aside, I found the plot to be one that didn't draw me in either, and felt that by listening to at least 1/2 the book, the plot should have grabbed me by then.  I'll reserve judgement and let you know if that feeling changes on a later re-read.

Lastly, I will say that there are books that have taken me two or even three tries before they 'clicked' with me.  Three of my best all time life-time reads are in that category:  Olive Kitteridge, Cutting for Stone, and Cloud Atlas all took me three reads, and a group book discussion (either online or at the local library) before I fell in love with them.   I listened to and read each of them, and they remain among my favorites to this day.  So there's hope for Miss Makkai.  I'll let you know.  In the meantime, keep those comments coming in.  You make blogging fun.

Abandoned Book - The Borrower by Rebecca Makkai

Abandoned Book The Borrower by Rebecca Makkai

Normally, I'd never post a review for a book I haven't finished. However, this one is so far beyond belief that I cannot bring myself to listen any further. I received an audio copy of this from the Early Reviewers program, so I really tried and tried and tried to listen to the whole thing.  Normally I really enjoy audio books, and had been looking forward to this one.

Well...here's what the publisher wants us to get excited about:

Lucy Hull, a young children’s librarian in Hannibal, Missouri, is unsure where her life is headed. That becomes more than a figure of speech when her favorite patron, ten-year-old Ian Drake, runs away from home and Lucy finds herself in the surprise role of chauffeur.

The precocious Ian is addicted to reading, but needs Lucy’s help to smuggle books past his overbearing mother, who has enrolled Ian in weekly anti-gay classes with celebrity Pastor Bob. Lucy stumbles into a moral dilemma when she finds Ian camped out in the library after hours with a knapsack of provisions and an escape plan.

The odd pair embarks on a crazy road trip from Missouri to Vermont, with ferrets, an inconvenient boyfriend, and dubious family history thrown in their path. But who is actually running away? And from what?

I disliked both main characters--I found them cardboard, stereotypical, and just plain unbelievable. If I were the President of Holyoke College, I'd be disavowing any knowledge of Lucy the librarian as a graduate. A college graduate? Really? My 4th grade granddaughter has more common sense and brains than this one! This girl (and she's a girl -- a stunted, stilted non-adult) is vapid and locked in a dreamworld.

The child Ian is a manipulative brat,  and his mother is certainly an obnoxious, moronic religious fanatic, but.............that is no reason to glorify his running away and Lucy's kidnapping him and letting a 10 year old run her life. Can you say arrested development?   Trying to sugar coat this exercise in juvenile delinquency in a cocoon of children's stories that are more suitable to pre-schoolers than a 10 year old and a mid-20 year old, only adds insult to the reader's already bruised intelligence.  I simply could not continue with this one.  I finished 4 of 8 discs, but it was just too painful to read more.

I suppose if you're into fantasy you might like this one, and maybe someday I'll be able to bring myself to finish it, but for now, the pragmatic math major adult in me just couldn't finish this one.

Unfinished Friday: Half Moon

Half Moon

Henry Hudson and the Voyage that Redrew the Map of the New World

Author: Douglas Hunter
Format: 308 pg galley proof
Subject: Maritime exploration and navigation (non-fiction)
Setting: 1608, North Atlantic, North America
Genre: non-fiction, history
Source: ARC from publisher Bloomsbury Press

Well every once in awhile, you get a book that is interesting but unreadable. When I find I'm stopping every 2 or 3 minutes to look back or refer to something else, I can't get into a book, and that's not reading---it's schoolwork.  I'm done with that!

Don't get me wrong, if you have an extensive background in celestial navigation, and are familiar with ships (particularly 17th century ones) and navigational charts and soundings, this book is probably readable.  I'm just not qualified to say that.  In principle, I understand everything that Hunter is writing about.  I have a degree in math so I passed physics. I served in the Navy, I've passed basic sailing courses, and done some sailing, but this book is not written to be a sit down and enjoy it book for the non-professional.  There's a lot to love for the historian, and I tried skimming and skipping parts that did not readily register, but I found I was having to skip too much, make too many references to all the different names I had to jot down to keep the players straight, and was constantly referring to a map so I could see just where the line was for 45 degrees north etc., etc.

I asked my husband, a retired Navy surface ship sea captain and then retired high school history teacher, to read a few passages.  He read, looked up, turned the cover and said "Who wrote this?"  He was not impressed and suggested I would be better off letting it rest for awhile until I had NOTHING ELSE TO DO.

I read 95 pages. Here's just a sample of what I felt I couldn't deal with anymore.  After the latest series of  four or more pages of turnings, soundings, sightings, on pg. 90:

None of this cartographic confusion would have mattered, had the wind not then turned against Hudson, compelling him to retreat almost due East*

with the footnote then elucidating(?)thusly:

*Juet gave the course as "south-east and by east," which is a bearing of 123 degrees. With his corrections for magnetic variation applied of 17 degrees, we arrive at 106 degrees: 16 degrees southward of east, hence my description "almost due east."

At that point I gave up.  It's going onto the "give it another look someday" shelf, with my current notes tucked into it. I don't really care how he arrived at that description, although I can understand how Hunter wants to be sure his work and his premises are considered historically accurate.  He certainly has researched thoroughly and uses primary sources to the hilt.  It is an academic tour de force.  I'm just not ready to read at that level.  It's a shame it couldn't have been published in a plain English version for those who want the history without having to wrap their brains around all the science.

Unfinished Friday -Unfinished or Abandoned?

Marie, the Boston Bibliophile started this very useful meme so we can blog about books that for whatever reason just don't work.
 
Last week Caite of A Lovely Shore Breeze commented on my double discards:

" I love the idea of Unfinished Friday...but my problem is I hate to admit defeat. I put a book aside with the idea that someday I will finish it and am not sure I ever admit I absolutely will not finish it."

I totally agree with her.  For those of us who love books, and have any acquaintance with anyone who writes them, we know how much the author invests physically, emotionally, and often financially, into getting this book published and having people read it and comment on it.  I often put books aside to try later. I have an entire category in my LibraryThing personal library called "DNF- try later" as opposed to the "DNF- given away".

Perhaps it's my generation...I belong to that age group whose parents lived through the Great Depression and who would not let us leave the table without finishing every single brussel sprout, green bean, or beet on that plate.  After all "children were starving in (India, China, Korea, take your pick)".  So I'm socially conditioned to finishing anything I start.  I was so thrilled when my then 70+ year old father took up needlepoint when he needed something to do while recovering from knee surgery.  I unloaded a trunk full of half-finished projects that had been languishing for YYYYYYYYYYYYYYYEARS.....and he polished them off in four months!

Just for a diversion, here's the last piece Daddy did for me before he died, he was 82 at the time he completed it and said 1000's of swear words as he attached each of those 1000s of beads, and by the way, he did this one completely from scratch.  It wasn't one of my leftoevers. It hangs on the wall opposite my bed, and it's one of the last things I see at night when I turn out the light. But I keep thinking, if Daddy could finish those beads, I can finish a book!

So when I get a book I don't like, or keep falling asleep while reading (Ya think that's a clue????) I have a hard time getting over the feeling that it's my fault.  But FACE IT TINA....You aren't supposed to like everything in the world.  There are TV shows I turn off, clothes I look at in the store and put back on the rack, foods I don't order from a menu ( and a few I've even sent back!).  So why can't I abandon a book?

When I looked at the books I've abandoned so far this year, one was self-published and the promotional blurb did not match the subject matter as I expected.  The writing was bombastic, and I just wasn't interested.  It went into the LT Member Giveaway where, to date, 70+ people have indicated they would give it a home.  Another ARC from Hachette went into Member Giveaway - over 200 people wanted it, and many people gave it great reviews on LT, so I didn't feel so guilty abandoning that one...I figure the author is getting the publicity ARCs are designed to provide, and I didn't say it was awfully written, just that the subject matter was not to my liking.

My third and fourth abandoned beauties are still with me.  They are huge chunksters of non-fiction that I'm really interested in, and want to be able to pick up and read perhaps in pieces as time goes on.  I also know from experience, than sometimes it takes almost 200 pages to really get into a big guy.  So when my brain is ready to settle down and absorb some more, I intend to get to them again.

I actually have 7 more sitting on my TBR (Finish them shelf) and I'm hoping the "Finish them" challenge I set myself will help me get back to at least 3 of them this year. I found them all interesting to a point but as often happens with non-fiction, the authors just get into so much detail, I get lost in the trees and can't get out of the forest. With the fiction books, I keep seeing fabulous reviews, and several people have told me to stick with them, so I'm holding them, hoping that some morning my mind will say---AHA...let's finish that one this week.

By the way, these 7 that need finished are listed here.

I'm having a contest, and any book that gets 10 or more comments of encouragement, I will pledge to read it at least 1/2 way again this year.  Then if I still don't like it, I'll have a giveaway.  Get those comments in..

1. The History of God by Karen Armstrong
2. Women who Run with Wolves by Clarissa Pinkola Estes
3. Generations: The History of America's Future 1584-2069 by Neil Howe and William Strauss
4. East of the Mountains by David Guterson
5. Rabbi Jesus by Bruce Chilton
6. Shadow of the Wind by Carlos Ruiz Zafon
7. Cutting for Stone by Abraham Verghese

So let's all agree....it's Ok to leave a book unfinished.  And let's thank Marie for starting this meme and giving us permission to put these back on the shelf (with bookmarks intact) for later enjoyment if we don't want to abandon them completely.  YEA MARIE!!!

Unfinished Friday -a double header

Marie, the Boston Bibliophile started this very useful meme so we can blog about books that for whatever reason just don't work. This time I had two that hit the 'Let it Go" Pile. The first was  "The Hemingses of Monticello" by Annette Gordon Reed.

I've been working on this one for almost three weeks.  It is ponderous, tedious, learned, well-researched, and I've certainly learned a lot.  It really isn't for any specific challenge, although I thought it would be good background material for my participation in the US Presidents challenge.  It is not a bad book, it won the National Book Award.  It's just a really slow, and very detailed (probably way too detailed) read.

I'm putting it aside for now.  I've had it as an audio, and it's not working.  I think it might work better in print, and will look for it.  I'm just finding that I'm tiring of the author's constant speculation based on 'we really have no positive proof.'  I seem to be hearing the same theories over and over, and after 4 discs that's enough.  I realize that historians have to make assumptions.  For that reason, I try to read non-fiction written only by well-vetted authors.  I felt that winning a National Book Award was plenty of vetting, but  I also feel let down.

This book is 31 discs in audio and 816 pages in print, so the investment of time is substantial. Let's hope a different format will remedy my indifference toward this one, because my brain is not ready to soak up 800 pages of repetition right now.
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On the other hand, the second abandoned book The Broken Road To Disaster Recovery by Keifer Bonvillain is an ARC I got late last summer self-published by the author. It is poorly written, surreptiously researched, and not vetted by anyone except the author. Billed as the undercover whistle blowing story of corruption in Louisiana and FEMA, the author sets out to prove he has the scoop.I couldn't finish this one. I felt like I was in the supermarket line reading the National Enquirer.

It smacked of overblown self-importance--the author seemed to be the only person in the US who knew corruption and was qualified to report on it. If it hadn't been his 2nd such work (he is the author of Ruthless: A Tell-All Book about Oprah Winfrey), I'd have had more inclination to pay attention. The writing was bombastic, snarky, overblown, and in need of good editing. After 50+ pages, I decided life is too short. If there's truly a scandal to be reported, then I'll wait til it's reported by legitimate and vettable journalists.

Unfinished Friday --- Or is it?

The italics are the beginning of this post that I started earlier this week:
 
 For the past 9 months I've been picking this book up, trying to read it (or figure out what the premise is, or asking myself what it's all about, etc., etc.), and it's just not singing out "finish me, finish me." In fact, each time I've tried reading it, the other side of my brain is going "why are you wasting your time.?  I'm not liking this...."

I'm sure Shakespeare buffs are falling on their swords right now, but sorry, this one is going onto the abandoned pile--since it's a clearly marked NOT FOR SALE ARC, I can't even donate it to the library for its annual book sale. If you are interested in more objective assessments, BOOKLIST and Publisher's Weekly have blurbs you can read here.
Now...
At this point, I began paging through to see how far I really got, and my brain clicked on again.  "This book is downright funny" I thought. "Some of this is finally making sense.  I think I understand what the author is trying to do here"...So I planned to finish it over the weekend, and then give you the final review.  In the meantime, I thought it would be worthwhile to admit that sometimes it takes a time or two for something to 'click' and we ought not be too hasty to toss something aside. I was really settling back, and actually got about 95 of the 320 pages done, but realized that while there are sections of this book that are genuinely funny, and the premise is terribly clever, I just cannot take the abundance of sex, more sex, drugs, and more drugs needed to tell the story the way the author presents it.   It is hereby permanently consigned to the abandoned forever pile. Sorry Will, but this book is not for me.

I appreciate the opportunity offered to review the book, and will point out that no body can read every book and have a favorable opinion.  Others, including some very well known authors, have rated it highly. If you're a Shakespeare fan, a humor fan, and like satire, you might want to give it a try.

Wednesday Earplugs- the Weekly audios

It's been a few weeks since the last update,  but I haven't been listening as much as I used to.  During our recent road trip, I had over 20 books loaded up on my MP3, but found I was really having trouble finding any that appealed to me.  I had forgotten to transfer the one we really wanted to listen to in the car, and we ended up doing a lot of talking and/or sleeping when it wasn't our turn to drive, so the earphones are just getting resurrected.
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I did manage to finish

An Irish Country Christmas

by Patrick Taylor
narrated by Jack Keating

A thoroughly enjoyable cozy read about two doctors who love their patients, who live in a big rambling house with their surgery in the same building, who are lovingly cared for by one of the most delightful characters- Mrs, Kinky Kincaid- I've met in a long time. Both docs are suffering from unrequited love, which lends some depth to their characters and the story. Not great lit, but a fun read, and it certainly got me in the mood for thinking about the upcoming holidays.  It even gave me a boost to be able to contemplate the holidays without some of my children/grandchildren being able to be physically with us.
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Now here's what I had to abandon:

As I previously said, I put aside The Shadow of the Wind,, but based on a wonderful and lively book discussion with friends in Florida while we sat on the beach eating great seafood in St Augustine, I'm going to try to finish this one.  She said she had the same reaction in the center of the book, but indicated that it was definitely worth finishing.  So I'm going to move that one back to the front burner.

A Family Affair

by Rex Stout
narrated by Michael Prichard

Since we own almost everything Rex Stout ever wrote, I was determined to read at least one Nero Wolfe mystery this year.  Many of my LT friends think these are wonderful books.  So when I saw this on the rack at the local library, I grabbed it, thinking it would be something great to listen to on the trip.  I cannot for the life of me see why anyone wants to listen to, or read about, a pompous overbearing egotist who thinks he is so wonderful that there is a new solar system of which he is the center.  I stand ready to be proven wrong, but this one didn't work for me AT ALL.

Death In a Strange Country

by Donna Leon
narrated by Anna Fields

As most of you know, I really enjoy this series.  The problem with this audio was the narrator.  All the other books I've listened to have had marvelous narrators who read with a decent Italian accent when it was called for.  Ms. Fields slaughtered the perfectly beautiful Italian, and it was too painful to listen to.  This one is still on my list to be read, but my eyes will have to supply the words to my brain on this one.
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I'm currently listening to Malice Prepense, a Barbara Holloway courtroom drama, by Kate Wilhelm.  Like her others in the series, this one is terrific.

Before next week's post, I'll try to finish Shadow in the Wind, but I also have plans to listen toShepherds Abiding by Jan Karon (I know I'll like that one- I read it every year for Christmas), and one of many others that look appealing.  I'll suprise myself (and you my readers) by picking something different.

Muddled in the Middle

Last week when I posted David Carr's delightful piece Stuck in a Book, little did I know that I was about to fall victim of the same syndrome.  I'm currently STUCK in the middle of my audio book "Shadow of the Wind" by Carlos Luiz Zafon.  It's really a good book, but I suspect that my lack of a real chunk of time to listen and/or read it, is causing me to feel ambivalent.  The writing is so crisp and clear, since I was just in Barcelona 8 weeks ago strolling the very streets and venues featured in this story, I'm really enjoying the scene, and the characters.  It's just that the story does not seem to be going anyplace, and I'm literally falling asleep listening to it. I'm just waiting and waiting and waiting for something to HAPPEN. And it's not.

So, I am reluctantly putting it on hold and will try to finish it again later this winter.  It's due at the library (as in the dowload rights will expire) in two days, so I'll wait till I can get it again. 

Although I usually enjoy audio books, I'm really having a hard time on this trip...too many distractions and then I'm too tired. 

Stuck in a Book - Guest Post - David Carr

Yesterday I received my monthly newsletter from Novelist: RA News in which the editor David Carr eloquently mused about how we can sometimes find ourselves bogged down when reading an excellent book. I've often wondered why sometimes a book just doesn't "click" with me the first time, and yet I can return to it at another time and find it myself absolutely absorbed. This actually happened to me earlier this year. The first time I read Olive Kitteridge (long before it won the Pulitzer) I just could not like this book or this character. I forced myself to read it because it was set in Maine, and because I just kept feeling I should like it. Then about 5 months later, I read it again, this time with an online book group, and I saw it in a whole different light.

The book David refers to "Cutting with Stone" was highly recommended by a good friend, but I really struggled with it. I have resolved to give it another try though so I can see if it too is one of those that simply must be read at the "right time."

So I asked David, and he has graciously consented, for permission to reprint his opening article from the October issue of RA News: Stuck in a Book. If your library is lucky enough to have a subscription to the Novelist database, you too may be able to subscribe to this delightful newsletter and get the benefits of David's monthly musings.
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Stuck in a Book 

by David Carr, editor, RA News from Novelist

Earlier this year I reviewed a book I loved: Cutting for Stone by Abraham Verghese. In my review, I said that its excellence would make it difficult for me to find another book of similar magnitude. I wonder if that is one reason why I now find myself stuck in a fine police novel about postwar Britain, Flesh Wounds by John Lawton. I am enjoying it, and I'll read other books in this series; but I feel that it will never end. It seems to be adding new pages as I read. Meanwhile I am eyeing, almost apologetically, other books waiting for me: "Sorry, Philip Roth, Tana French, William Trevor, Joan Silber, this is just taking a little longer than I had expected." So my pleasure is diminished and I am not giving Mr. Lawton my best attention while it feels as if my other (better, smarter?) books wait patiently. It is their unrealized reader who is impatient.

So many conditions have to align properly when we read, I think. We need true reading time, not just a stolen few minutes before sleep. We need a book that moves us forward with complexity and engagement, not density and confusion. This means fictional lives with human characteristics and consequential presence in our imaginations. And we need to be able to finish the book in a reasonable span of time. The alignment of all these things -- and there are many more, I believe -- is often out of our hands. Ideal conditions are episodic and temporary, like a patch of great weather.

This has become more important to me as I begin to think seriously about setting some clear reading plans. I have classics, crime novels, westerns, Victorian fiction, novels of the First World War, countless essays, nonfiction works, all in my "to be read before death" lists. I don't want to cheat myself of Middlemarch or At Swim-Two-Birds or What is the What because I made an easy choice that I seem unable to finish up. (Listen to me: I'm complaining when I read, complaining when I don't read. Fickle, feckless.) In this case, what has happened to me is that I picked this book up instead of another, started reading and felt the casual commitment turn into a reluctant obligation, even as I read other nonfiction books and professional articles for my classes.

My feelings as a reader are mixed. I need to read something fresh, but -- you probably know the story -- I'm more than halfway done, it's really a pretty interesting narrative and the characters and their behaviors fit my tastes. I'm just not enchanted. I wish I were reading more happily, less perfunctorily, and faster. Those great books -- they make it harder for the "merely" good ones.

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So fellow readers what do you think?  Do find yourself reading a book to completion because you feel like you've invested time in it already?  Do you have criteria you use to decide when to abandon a book? When to put it aside to return to later? How often do you put a book down?

Again, many thanks to David Carr for permission to reprint his thoughts.

Wednesday Earplugs- the Weekly audios

 
Several people have asked how I manage to listen to so many audios...so here's the answer:   I listen constantly if I'm not sitting physically holding a book.  And ---here's my other confession:   Shhh,,,,I'm a video game addict and have a new game I've been trying to master, so I sit at the computer, play a game, and listen to a book.

It's also baseball playoff season, so I'm spending a lot of TV time these days with my eyes on the screen, and my ears on a book.  That hobby ended abruptly this past weekend as our Red Sox decided to take an early vacation.  So I've been substituting needlework for TV viewing.  My husband is a crime writer (no more on that for now as I don't want to jinx him) so he's constantly got the TV on some shoot-em-up or other, particularly in the evenings.  Since our TV is right next to the fireplace, if I want to stay warm, I should be in that room.  It's often hard for me to 'tune out' what's on the screen, and I do love him dearly and want to be with him, so we compromise, he works on his laptop and watches Sleuth TV, and I listen to a book with good sound deadening earphones, and play video games on my laptop, or do needlework.

Also, I do some kind of physical exercise every day....either I work out on an elliptical or walk for about 40 minutes, or I drive an hour R/T to the Y to work out in the pool.  So....lots of listening.

Finally, I save the big 'chunksters' for reading...they often require a level of concentration I don't give to audios.  I tend to reserve the 'ear-reading' for short, cozy mysteries or pop fiction--although this week's batch does contain the less than spectacular non-fiction by Gore Vidal.

Here's the latest batch:

Christmas Secret

Anne Perry
Narrated by:Terrence Hardiman

An endearing cozy set in Victorian England- Anne Perry's forte.  Unlike her William Monk or Charlotte and Thomas Pitt series, this stand alone features an amateur sleuth, a country vicar and his wife, who think they are simply spending Christmas at a rural parish while the current vicar goes on vacation.  Instead they find themselves solving a mystery.   A lovely little story, easy to read, and easy to listen to as an audio.  I've done both.  And I just found out these are an annual event, so I have four more to track down and read/listen to.
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Inventing a Nation

Gore Vidal
Narrated by: Paul Hecht & Gore Vidal
 
If you've read any biographies of the 1st three presidents, this book will actually be boring, unless you are a great fan of Gore Vidal's snarky 'insights.'  I didn't learn anything new, and found myself constantly asking "What's the point?"  It's a quick read for those who want only an overview of these three founders, and who don't mind editorial comments mixed in with their 'history.'  I'd almost say a waste of time unless the subject matter is completely unknown to you (and don't ask me the focus of the subject matter--I couldn't find the focus.)
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Death in a Strange Country

Donna Leon
Narrated by : Anna Fields
Abandoned Book

I'm a big fan of Donna Leon and of this Commissario Guido Brunetti series.  However, I could not listen to this because the narrator has such a poor command of Italian.  Leon often has her characters speaking in either Italian or Venetian dialects, and other narrators in this series bring that glorious language to life.  Anna Fields slaughters it, and it was too painful to listen to.  I'll have to track this one down in print.

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Devil's Claw

J.A.Jance
Narrated by: Stephanie Brush


Another episode in the continuing adventures of Joanna Brady, the first (and only) female sheriff in Arizona. Joanna is eagerly anticipating her wedding in a few weeks, although not eager about meeting her fiance's parents.  In the meantime, she's trying to solve a murder, locate a missing teenager who happens to be the daughter of the murder victim, deal with the unexpected death of her beloved next-door neighbor, keep her mother and future mom-in-law off her back, and keep her feet on the ground. In all of this she is supported by her future husband-Butch, her daughter, and her staff, who all become more like friends with each book in the series.

I was a bit confused about the ending at first, I really had to sit down and almost draw myself a diagram to see how the pieces fit so nicely together.  Jance's explanation may have wrapped it all up a bit too neatly, and left me saying 'Huh?'  When I finally understood what had happened and why, it made sense, but I think the resolution of the main crime (the murder) case could have been a bit more carefully explained as far as who all the players were and how they were involved.

Non-review and quickie giveaway: No Mad

Notnessie at Today's Adventure has come up with a terrific way to handle reporting on books that just didn't make it to the finish line, i.e., for whatever reason, we just didn't read the whole thing, but have read enough to get a flavor of the writing. She calls them "Non-Reviews". I've been calling them "Abandoned books" over on LT, but that sorta sounds like I've left them on the roadside for the crows. In some cases, I intend to come back and try later; in other cases, like Sam Moffie's No Mad, I realize that this is just not my cuppa tea. Sam asked if I would review this, and was gracious enough to send me a copy, so I feel an obligation to get it to someone who can appreciate the author's hard work. Sam has suggested that I find another home so someone else can enjoy it. So first my few comments, then the rules for the giveway.. I didn't finish this book; after 60+ pages, I felt it was going nowhere, and I got tired of the moanings, fantasies and self-centered musings of an adolescent masquerading as an adult male. The premise (if I read the back cover blurb) appears to be that said male finds his wife in bed with his brother, so he takes his belongings and his dog and sets off to find himself or abandon his previous life and see the world and/or d) wallow in sex whereever he finds it?? I got that far, but nothing seemed to indicate this journey would ever end... Moffie writes well, his sentences are often humorous, but I kept finding myself saying "and? and? get on with it." I couldn't find the point....but that may be just me---I'm not a middle aged male. I'd be happy to have someone else give it a look and enjoy it. So drop me a comment, and I'll pick from entries received by September 19th. Be sure to leave me an email so I can get in touch with you about mailing instructions.

Trash overboard!

Abandon ship! That's exactly what I did after the first disc of this horrible book. I enjoy satire, I really do. I get it. I don't mind some sex and violence in my books, (or my listens) but this "hero" (and I almost choke as I write that word) Serge A. Storms, is a vicious, stupid, anti-social excuse for a character. This book is nothing but some post-adolescent fantasy about being nasty to people in every way you can think of, and frankly, my real world is nasty enough without inviting Serge and his more than mildly demented friends in. Think of it as The Three Stooges meet Freddy Kroeger. I'm reasonable picky about what food I eat, so I shouldn't expect my mind to digest garbage either. By the way....this is actually the second time I've tried this book, the first was in print, and I didn't get very far, but I thought maybe I just wasn't in the mood. Often I like a book on audio that I haven't been able to like in print. (Great example is No. 1 Ladies Detective Agency.) I mercifully can't remember who receommended it, and if you were the one, please don't remind me. Then I won't have to think poorly of you. And yes, you're right.... I don't watch REALITY TV either. On to better things...