Listening List: The First and Second Quarters of 2012

[valyssia]

I’m going to confess something and you can judge me as you whim. I don’t read. Or I more accurately stated, I don’t read any more than I have to which is entirely too much considering what I do. The compromise that works well for me is audio books. I can busy my hands doing something quasi-useful while my mind gets largely roped in by the story.

 

Suzanne Collins

• The Hunger Games
• Catching Fire
• Mockingjay

I jumped on the bandwagon shortly after the movie came out and devoured this series. I still haven’t seen the film, but the books are very good. It struck me how tightly structured they were. Suzanne Collins must be a total terror. Not to anyone else except herself. I’m sure she’s a really sweet lady with a big ulcer.

What I mean is that each book is formatted at twenty-seven chapters. I’m sure that the word and page count is very similar too as the runtime for each of the audio books is between eleven and eleven and one-half hours. Having written a few short stories that have turned into novellas or even novels, I marvel at her discipline. (Yes, I’m laughing at myself.)  But honestly, that was one of the things I noticed in passing. It’s just not that often you see it. Suzanne Collins must’ve had a very strict outline for the series, a clear idea of what the scope of each point in the outline would to be, and she must’ve stuck to it religiously.

The Scholastic audio books are read by Carolyn McCormick who has a youthful enough voice to carry the character of Katniss Everdeen. As the stories are told from a first person point of view, this worked very well. There was no need for her to attempt to voice a man with an Eastern Slavic accent, or an elderly, Southern, African-American woman as with some of these other books here. The telling feels very much like Katniss is reading from her memoirs, which is a nice effect.

Having looked, I see that some people objected to how the series concluded. I didn’t. There’s symmetry in Katniss returning to her home. Now the long term psychological impact of that choice, which was made for her, isn’t pretty, but The Hunger Games isn’t a pretty trilogy. There’s no sunshine, no daffodils, no puppies. Or if there had been they would’ve burned your skin off, poisoned you by fragrance alone, and piddled on your remains, in that order. It’s a tragedy.

The authority in the series both old and new has a similar flavor. I actually liked that point. I’m enough of an anarchist at heart to appreciate the idea that seats of power corrupt. Doesn’t matter who’s arse you put in ’em. The fact that they would seek to punish Katniss didn’t come as a surprise to me. Though I’ll admit that I didn’t dig deeply enough to find what troubles the critics had, so I may just be talking out my navel.

 

Neil Gaiman

• Anansi Boys
• Coraline
• Fragile Things
• Smoke and Mirrors

I hate to admit how many times I’ve listened to the compilations of short stories in this list. They really are something that’s wonderful in small doses. I rarely listen to Smoke and Mirrors or Fragile Things all the way through, though I did this time. My favorite stories are: The Wedding Present from the introduction to Smoke and Mirrors, the Goldfish Pool and Other Stories, Murder Mysteries and Snow, Glass, Apples from Smoke and Mirrors as well. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve listened to The Goldfish Pool. It’s one of those slice of life stories that just works for me.

The nature of audio books has skewed Fragile Things in my mind. It’s narrated by Neil Gaiman who is a marvelous voice talent in his own right. The whole thing just kind of runs together for me into one lovely ‘tell me a story’ session. I looked at the titles and cannot manage to separate one piece for another to get a clear picture, though I was delighted to find the American Gods story The Monarch of the Glen at the end this time. I stayed up far too long one night listening to it with great relish.

This medium is flawed in that respect. Were it a book I would’ve read it cover to cover the first time through. Because it was audio, I popped the first disk in, I listened. I got distracted, time passed. I popped the first disk in, I listened, this time I made it to the last disk. Yay me!

Coraline is another audio book that is narrated by the author and it is just a delight. Funny, I haven’t watched the movie of that yet either.

Anansi Boys isn’t narrated by Neil Gaiman. I love it more than American Gods which is. I can’t tell you why. I know that my tastes are a bit off. You might’ve guessed that from my affection for The Goldfish Pool. I’d take odds that one isn’t a common favorite either. Perhaps it’s because it was the first Neil Gaiman audio book that was ever dropped in my lap. Whedonist presented me with a copy as a thoughtful gift. I had no idea what it was, save for what the box could tell me, so I didn’t go into it with the corruption of having read American Gods. Maybe it’s that I identified with Fat Charlie. I’ve led that sort of unremarkable, quasi-cursed existence myself. It could be that the voice actor, Lenny Henry is simply marvelous. Anyway, I liked it so much that I’m listening to it again.  And I’ll no doubt listen to it again somewhere down the road.

 

Robert Heinlein

• Citizen of the Galaxy
• Have Spacesuit Will Travel
• Starman Jones
• Stranger in a Strange Land
• The Moon is a Harsh Mistress

I’ve been on a Heinlein kick of late. It started with Have Spacesuit Will Travel, which I listened to on a whim. It’s one of the series of stories for young people that he wrote. It was charming so I fell in. I suppose I should be embarrassed that I’m into my forth decade and hadn’t read Stranger in a Strange Land. I still haven’t read it, but I’m totally in love with Jubal Harshaw. Some of the insights Heinlein shares through Harshaw are so sage that I was bowled over by simplicity and the truth in them.

The least memorable of these books is Starman Jones, which I just recently listened to and I’m sure I’ll listen to again because I won’t recall it. It’s a rags-to-riches story about a young farmer who is at the beginning of the tale supporting himself and his mother. By the end, he’s rescued an entire spacecraft full of colorful vacationers, spacemen and travelers using a natural gift: eidetic memory. It comes complete with a couple of moral lessons to land it firmly in the ‘for young people’ category. All-in-all it’s not bad, but rather unremarkable. 

Citizen of the Galaxy is a very similar story, but where Starman Jones felt overly optimistic, Citizen of the Galaxy packs a punch. The way Heinlein handles a long complex narrative with multiple truncations of time is just jaw-droppingly fluid. I may actually pick up a paper copy or ebook so that I can dissect those parts. That’s harder to do when you’re listening. I wasn’t necessarily thrilled with the ending. This is literally a rags-to-riches story as well. The main character begins the story as a slave at auction and ends a billionaire, or the equivalent in future terms. It is interesting hearing how he deals with sudden wealth. It’s not all champagne and roses, but the points between rags and riches are infinitely more interesting, or they were to me.

The Moon is a Harsh Mistress is—

I just finished it tonight and I plan to go through it again within the next six months. It is—

It might be one of the best, if not the best, sci-fi novels I’ve ever experienced. It is beautiful from the first word to the last. The thing that strikes me most is that I’m not one for political intrigue and that’s pretty much the sum of the story. I don’t know. It’s just so flawlessly crafted that I almost did one of my marathon listens where I start up Photoshop so I’m not totally idle and I fall into trance while I destroy an image or five and create nothing of value. But hey, no guilt.

Oh, and Lloyd James did a marvelous job of performing the story, which never hurts.

 

Ursula K. LeGuin

• Left Hand of Darkness

This is an old favorite that I had never listened to in audio book format. The performance I listened to was unremarkable, though that didn’t matter. I first read this book when I was in my teens. I think I’ve had the same crappy paperback copy this entire time and I’ve read it nearly to death. I went with it and enjoyed the refresher.

The story is themed around gender roles, our perceptions and reactions. It follows a man who is your standard ‘Earther’ or ‘Terran’ as he visits a planet where gender is globally ambiguous. The physical changes required for procreation only present themselves when the alien person is rutting. The result is that the Earthman is seen a sexual pervert throughout the entire tale. The alien race is a mutation of man, so they aren’t so alien that this doesn’t present problems. In fact, the entire plot is colored by them.

 

George R. R. Martin

• A Game of Thrones
• A Clash of Kings
• Storm of Swords
• A Feast for Crows
• A Dance with Dragons

I listened to this series on a road trip I took this spring and for part of the week following. Initially, it kept me out of the ditches. Then it kept me listening. As a result, all of the books blur together. Don’t ask me what’s where. I can say, “Ugh, good,” to most of it with fair sincerity. “I remember, but was poured into brain.”

Having exposure to the books makes the HBO series more interesting. I’m not sure how I feel about series two as yet. I’ve stated before that I had reservations. They didn’t lift, but they did evolve.

 

Terry Pratchett & Neil Gaiman

• Good Omens: The Nice and Accurate Prophecies of Agnes Nutter, Witch

This is another of those ‘let me count the ways’ sort of books. It makes me giggle, so it’s a staple. If you like the idea of a parody based on the Christian views of how the world will end and you haven’t read this, please do.

The idea that Famine would become a purveyor of designer non-food, nutritionally null, synthesized food stuffs to the rich and shameless, and the common man who enjoys a Big Mac is just beautiful. The book is chocked full of stuff like that. Turns of phrase are shamelessly led out and butchered with glee. Every trope becomes a pretzel whether it likes it or not. It’s just damned entertaining to listen to.

 

J. R. R. Tolkien

• The Hobbit
• The Fellowship of the Ring
• The Two Towers

The Tolkien books are something I’ve vowed to complete. It’s unforgivable that I haven’t read them. There have been two books in my lifetime that I’ve been completely turned off of. That is: I have memories so unpleasant associated with them that I simply can’t pick them back up. And of course, neither book took my mind off of my troubles.

The first one is Neuromancer by William Gibson. I was stranded in a featureless wasteland that had been a tiny, two-horse town near the Colorado/ New Mexico border. Looking at the map, perhaps it was Raton. I don’t remember. All I do remember is snow and cold and featureless, flat terrain broken up by a plank fence.

A friend of mine and I were headed back to the Midwest from Los Angeles. The interstate was closed by the storm. There was one motel that was full to capacity. As co-driver, it became my job to start the car’s engine every hour and allow it to run for ten to fifteen minutes while he slept. That kept the interior somewhere around freezing. Not so cold that we’d freeze. I watched the wind pile snow against the fence that night while I tried to read by the dim streetlight that reflected through the blizzard. Shivering and reading aren’t a good combination. It’s a shame, but I may’ve been put off William Gibson for life.

There’s a similar, less frigid, less interesting story to go with The Fellowship of the Ring. I’ve remedied that one without touching print. The audio books I picked up aren’t anything to write home about. Tolkien’s expertise as a storyteller has been helping to soothe that. So far I’ve been enjoying the story. I’ve found it interesting to compare the books with the Peter Jackson films which did them a remarkable amount of justice.