Agatha Christie The Hollow read by Hugh Fraser

§ March 1st, 2010 § Filed under Clever, Editor's pick, Good Mystery, Interesting, Listen up, Original narration § Tagged , , , , ,

Have a bit of Christie as social chronicler, as drawing room critic of a leisure class which presents itself as a platform of unemployment. It is 1946 and the Angkatells are gathered togethered, after the murder. Lucy, the mistress of cognitive deviations, Henrietta, clever, independent and detached, Midge, dark, square shaped, and poor, David, a spoiled, sour intellectual, and Edward, the reluctant, bony, undeserving heir.

It is quite obvious that the notion of work is odd, uncertain, and in the cooker. Midge “works” at a dress shop and Edward asks : “Is the woman sympathetic and pleasant to work for?... If you must have a job you must take one where the surroundings are harmonious and where you like the people you are working with.”

But how does one explain the notion of work to an heir?

How to explain to a person like Edward… What did Edward know of the labour market, of jobs, They were all divided from her by an impassible gulf: the gulf that separates the leisured from the working. They had no conception of the difficulties of getting a job. And once you had got it, of keeping it… She had found a job for herself at 4 pounds a week… Midge had no particular illusions about working. She disliked the shop. She disliked Madame Alfredge. She disliked the eternal subservience to ill tempered and impolite customers. She doubted very much whether she could obtain any other job….

The glowering and unresponsive David is visiting from Oxford with a purse full of contempt and theories, and is dispraised sweetly by Lucy:

“I must have a talk with you David and learn all about the new ideas. As far as I can see one must hate everybody but at the same time give free medical attention and a lot of extra education… Poor things all those helpless little children herded into schoolhouses everyday….

After The Funeral by Agatha Christie read by Hugh Fraser

§ February 28th, 2010 § Filed under Clever § Tagged , , , , ,

After the funeral, there is the family and the village. There is a batty aunt, a hysterical and heirless English lord, his ancient butler, and a smattering of inadequate and weak-willed in-laws, waiting for their share. These are the leftovers of the comfortable class, who married badly and relied on unreliable servants. Unlike Miss Gilchrist, who knew how to cook, and ran a pretty little teashop before the war.

Agatha Christie, differently

§ February 26th, 2010 § Filed under Clever, Good Mystery, Interesting, Original narration § Tagged , , ,

A wagonful of new Agatha Christie audiobooks (“lesser” works?) shows us an Agatha knee-deep in Freud, perhaps, indeed, an “English Freud”. Here she experiments with the entire merde ridden hagiography of psychoanalytic terms: pathologies, neuroses, perversions, deviances, persecutions. Sarah has just finished her M.B. and is interested in psychology. She looks on as an old obese mother, an ugly wheelchaired figure wields a regime of psychological oppression over her “nervy” “nervous” unnerved family. The ugly Mrs. Boynton continues to perform her chores as the warden of a women’s prison, although she no longer performs them inside a prison. Instead she institutes prohibitions against the emotions, liberties, impulses, movements, of her step sons and daughters.

Sarah complains of the rudeness of Raymond Boynton, who ignores her in the presence of his mother, despite their earlier conversation. The tradition of English manners comes to Jerusalem not in opposition to rudeness but rather as a prophylactic to madness; madness is the excess of civilization, the bad habit of civilization. As the narrator in An Appointment With Death tells us about the horrific Mrs. Boynton: “In a savage tribe they would have boiled and eaten her up her years ago”.

Dick Francis 1921-2010

§ February 14th, 2010 § Filed under Listen up

Dick Francis died in his home on the Cayman Islands. He was 89.

A successful steeplechase jockey, Francis turned to writing after he retired from racing in 1957. He penned 42 novels, many of which featured racing as a theme. His books were translated into more than 20 languages, and in 2000 the Queen – whose mother was among his many readers – honoured Francis by making him a Commander of the British Empire.

For more info: The Globe and Mail

The Scoop by Fern Michaels read by Natalie Ross

§ February 14th, 2010 § Filed under Drek

A mature, stubborn wealthy widow gathers up a group of brittle, neurotic or lonely girlfriends to help her daughter succeed as a journalist for one of the lesser entertainment magazines.  The helpful project helps the girls in turn. A Red Hat Club imitation, without the charm.

The Deal: A Novel of Hollywood by Peter Lefcourt read by William H. Macy

§ February 14th, 2010 § Filed under Clever, Editor's pick, Funny, Original narration § Tagged , , ,

L.A./Hollywood relived by a suicidal ex-husband ex-producer ex-Jew with a  screenplay.  The screenplay is  fresh off the bus from New Jersey, delivered to Charlie (post suicide) by his 21 year old nephew, Lionel. It is about Disraeli but that doesn’t matter.  The screenplay is his property, and all Charlie needs to make it (again)  in this town is one property.

The screenplay, nicknamed Ben and Bill, or Bob and Bill, somehow makes itself known to a studio,  an agent, a casting director,  who manage to get a black pro-Israel karate expert to play Disraeli, the Jew.

The characters are mimetic:

The  studio executive assistant has the unwieldy habit of walking to the nearest ladies room, locking the door, and screaming.   (It is always a mistake to actually read the screenplay.) We visit with her and her Beverly Hills therapist in intimate one hour sessions,  at which she arrives  hystericized with laughter. The therapist is straight out of DSM-V and full of noteworthy advice, relevant to any and all professional women over 35 who work among men. Cut out a small nook of rationality inside the chaos.

The director is paid in  dinar which have been blocked from leaving Yugoslavia, and doesn’t talk to the actors.  The actors are not worth characterizing.

Prepare to grow a dry grin and giggle while reading.

ORIGIN & CAUSE by Shelly Reuben

§ February 6th, 2010 § Filed under Audible, Brilliant, Editor's pick, Listen up, Unabridged § Tagged , , , , , , , ,

Let’s just say that murders happened in the middle of other things: a cop,  a lawyer, a fire investigator get up, they fight with their wives, they eat. Sometimes they think. The law is something they think about.  How it came to be what it is, where it came from, when it changed.  If you have a father who reads, who respects the history of things, who loves the Law, you think about what a lawyer should be, what the law should be, what an institution like the law allows human beings to be.

In Europe, rich people sometimes keep a modest apartment in a poor or marginal area of their city. They call it their “pied a terre”. Translated, this means “foot on the ground”. It is said that their purpose in maintaining these small apartments is to remind them of their roots and to keep them in touch with reality. And that’s exactly why I always keep my copy of Letters To A Young Lawyer in my briefcase. The words within, the philosophy, Harris’  love of simplicity and reverence for the law, this is my psychological pied a terre.

Capture by Robert Tanenbaum read by Charles Leggett

§ January 28th, 2010 § Filed under Listen up

Has anyone else noticed a spectacular and embarrassing  silliness among the old guard of East Coast scribblers? As though they were trying to write comic books, and couldn’t figure out how to convert text into images? Gone are the wry, dry, street talk, the inside cracks of persons, cities, institutions. Gone are the political or intellectual references and resonances. Gone are the  differences, the mannerisms, the languages that make themselves loved or remembered or both.

Advice? Use a pen not a keyboard, and write your age.

The Christmas Cookie Club by Ann Pearlman read by Gabra Zackman

§ December 19th, 2009 § Filed under Interesting § Tagged

There is a yummy baked goods kitchen feeling, because the woman baking the cookies has an organized sense of her world, she has friends, one dead and one living ex-husband, girl-children, and flour in her pantry. But—and there are 50 years worth of buts—she also has a daughter that miscarries, and friends with bad husbands and gruesome stories, and fears that don’t go away with the rules of the Cookie Club.

The Defector by Daniel Silva read by Phil Gigante

§ September 23rd, 2009 § Filed under Drek

Forget the tax on sugar. Tax bad dialogue, dreadful characterizations, idiotic psychological profiles. To wit:

When he was a child the twitch had made him the target of merciless teasing and bullying. It had made him burn with hatred. And that hatred had driven him to succeed. Victor Orlov wanted to beat everyone and it was all because of the twitch in his left eye.

Read it as farce.

The Girl Who Played With Fire by Steig Larson read by Simon Vance

§ September 14th, 2009 § Filed under Audible, Brilliant, Editor's pick, Enchanting, Funny, Original narration § Tagged , , , ,

Quiet, patient, relentless intelligence spills over the pages of this story about a girl geek, a journalist, a news magazine devoted to the critique of corrupt Swedish institutions, and an odd assemblage of  Stockholm’s thugs, bureaucrats, intellectuals, and cops.   None are verbose. Men and women think. Thinking happens without talk, without sounds, without annunciation. It is sometimes   signaled  by cigarettes. Sometimes by a  walk.   Much goes unsaid, and unshared.

All the good guys use Macs. Some of them smoke.  The geek uses a powerbook, the journalist a Mac ibook, the magazine editor  an Airbook. The geekgirl (Salander) is  skinny,  occasionally violent,  abnormally intelligent, obsessively private. She does not emote; she enjoys:  mathematics, sex, hacking.  She has  lesbian girlfriends, bank accounts in the Canary Islands, lawyers in Gibraltar, and a local accountant. She buys a 2.5 million kroner flat with a view and decorates it in one day of shopping in Ikea,   for a total of 97,000 kroner.

The Neighbor by Lisa Gardner

§ September 14th, 2009 § Filed under Listen up

Wonderful, well developed characters modeled on silly, overchewed, Oprah-certified victim-types. The victim of an alcoholic, depressive, schadenfreude-mother, the victim of a childhood kidnapping by a pedophile, the victim of an unforgiving corrections system, the victim of overwhelming emotions, overwhelming fears, overwhelming doubts, of poor parents, poor teachers, poor morals, poor taste. But magnetic and memorable, nonetheless. The woman who for no apparent reason leaves a pleasant husband and a pleasant child is a curiosity: for the police, for us. The mild mannered husband with quiet habits and no past is, likewise, unusual, and leaves us wondering.

Summer on Blossom Street by Debbie Macomber read by Miss Delilah

§ August 17th, 2009 § Filed under Listen up

Lots of interesting characters on Blossom Street: a widow with an adopted daughter, a tough ex-punk happily married and unhappily smoking,  a good son and chocolate factory owner with a growing heart problem,   a charmed and charming owner of a knitting store,  a gorgeous single girl getting over an ex-fiancee who fancied prostitutes. Too bad all the characters sound like a relentlessly perky meet-and-greet girl selling God on morning talk radio.

Maeve Binchy Whitethorn Woods read by Jenny Sterlin

§ June 20th, 2009 § Filed under Editor's pick § Tagged

Sit down at the kitchen table, have a cup of tea, and listen to the gossip, the rumours, the superstitions, the confabulations and conjurations of the people living in the village near Saint Anne’s well, in the magic woods of Whitethorn, where everybody tells stories. For example, the story of Neddy who was not the sharpest knife in the drawer.

But you see I never wanted to be the sharpest knife in the drawer. Years ago we had one sharp knife in the kitchen and everyone was always talking about in with fear. ‘Will you put the sharp knife up in a shelf before one of the children cuts the hands off themselves?’ my mom would say. ‘‘Make sure the sharp knife has the blade towards the wall and the handle out. We don’t want someone ripping themselves apart’. They lived in fear of some terrible accident and the kitchen running red with blood… I was sorry for the sharp knife, to tell you the truth….

And so we step into the minds and hearts of these irish folks who live very populated lives, crowded with family obligations, loyalties, suspicions, immoralities and miracles….And everyone with an opinion of everyone else. And always the age old heaviness of poverty and the imperative to hide half of everything true.

Saint Maybe by Anne Tyler read by George Guidall

§ May 26th, 2009 § Filed under Listen up § Tagged , ,

Only Anne Tyler can make an off-license church appear as American as apple pie, and it’s off-beat flock, a fumbling but cuddlesome assemblage. The Church of the Second Chance is both a hovel and haven of forgiveness, a familial supplement to a family no longer familiar, a family askew.
In 1965 Mrs Bedloe was one of those mothers who believed that life, her life, was perfect, and that everything that happened in life, her life, was perfect. “Her marriage was a great joy to her, her house made her happy every time she walked into it, and her children were attractive and kind and universally liked.” Indeed, in 1965 the Bedloe family had been perfect, or close to it as you got on Waverly Street, in Baltimore. Mr Bedloe was a high school math teacher and the coach of the baseball team, Danni worked in the post office, Ian dated the prettiest girl in his junior class and dressed in high top sneakers held together with electrical tape.
Afterwords, after the Bedloe family had lost Danny and Lucy, whom he had met in the post office, and married, and who had worn red lipstick and stockings with too straight seams, what remains are Lucy’s three children—Agatha, Thomas, and Daphne, and Ian, and his parents, and the house, with its attic converted into bedrooms for the extra children.

The Cruelest Month by Louise Penny read by Ralph Cosham

§ May 20th, 2009 § Filed under Enchanting, Listen up

Gamash celebrates his marriage at a bed and breakfast with beds so high you need a little step stool to climb into them, and a family so bellicose that you need a detective inspector to stop their effronteries.

Compulsion by Jonathan Kellerman read by Rubenstein

§ May 20th, 2009 § Filed under Listen up

The first murder victim is a horror list of character flaws with L.A. citizenship:

1. She could not be bothered to make the car payments on the first of each month, even though her parents took care of the down payment.
2. She lives in a dump in Sherman Oaks but she tells everyone she lives in Van Nuys.
3. She teeters out of a bar at 3 in the morning and can’t find her car in the parking lot— but it is not her fault—why don’t they put lights in the parking lot?
4. She runs out of gas on a freeway because she can’t be bothered to check the gas, or plan anything in advance.

Fractured by Karen Slaughter read by Phil Gigante

§ May 20th, 2009 § Filed under Listen up

A  collection of lost boys with dyslexia, poor little rich girls, orphans with personality disorders, meet in Atlanta, on different sides of the law.

Trick of the Eye by Jane Stanton Hitchcock read by Anna Fields

§ May 20th, 2009 § Filed under Listen up § Tagged , , ,

The open-faced innocence of Anna Field’s voice offers up a ripe acoustical image of a woman artist in New York: Faith Crowl. Faith is commissioned by an old and wealthy New York City socialite to paint the ballroom of her storied mansion in trompe l’oeil. Faith accepts, reluctantly, after a heavy dose of gossip by her gay friend, Harry. As Faith paints the ballroom, the old woman becomes curiouser and curiouser. Her personality is  baroque, gargoyle-like, impenetrable, suspect. Faith suspects. She looks for the truth behind the old woman’s past and finds that the woman is herself a work of art, an illusion.

The Girl With No Shadow by Joanne Harris

§ May 20th, 2009 § Filed under Interesting, Listen up

Two women, one  girl. One steals identities, one leaves identities behind her, one looks for an identity of her own. Zosie de l’Alba is a bad witch with  lollipop shoes, who befriends the good witch, draws the entire neighborhood into the chocolate shop, and bewitches the girl.

Market Forces by Richard K. Morgan read by Simon Vance

§ May 20th, 2009 § Filed under Audible, Interesting, Listen up, Original narration

Chris Faulkener has a new job and a new friend, and comes home to a beautiful mechanic named Carla, who is his wife. He doesn’t believe in violence, but he works for a conflict investment firm, which studies, tracks and finances the small wars of the world.

Bruno, Chief of Police by Martin Walker read by Robert Ian MacKenzie

§ May 20th, 2009 § Filed under Audible, Enchanting, Listen up

An intimate look at the arrangements, organization and order of small town French village life, through the eyes of the jovial, wise and well fed chief of police, for “...not  a single pig made it to market without some part of it being offered as part tribute part toll to Bruno…”.

He put the grill close to the coals, arranged the steaks, and then under his breath sang the Marsellaise, which he knew from long practice took him exactly 45 seconds. He turned the steaks, dribbled some of the marinade on top of the charred side, and sang it again. Then he turned the steaks for 10 seconds, pouring on more of the marinade, and then another ten seconds. Now he took them off the coals and put them on the plates he’d left to warm on the bricks he’d left to warm on the side of the grill.

The reader sometimes sounds as if he’s sucking on bubbles, a kind of terrible English mumbling, if you will.

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