American Grown is a coffee table book written by Michelle Obama. It describes her personal history with gardening, the gardening efforts she’s made on the White House lawn, and provides discussion and information about personal gardening, community gardening, and preparing fresh fruits and vegetables. I found this book more interesting that I had expected, but I did skip the preachy sections on childhood obesity. Michelle Obama’s narration was not awful, but she at times sounded much like I would expect myself to sound as an audiobook narrator – stiff. The narrator who read much of Ms. Obama’s text had a similar sounding voice that matched well. Of the other cast members, many of whom were people quoted in the book, had varying degrees of ease reading out loud. The audiobook had a similar feel as a local cable channel show. I don’t mean that in a bad way necessarily. These were people who enjoy gardening and are passionate about the topic. They’re just not natural audiobook narrators. Although I’ve listened to worse audiobooks, were I to have read this book in any other circumstance, I would choose the print version without hesitation.

Killing Kennedy is narrative non-fiction about the years leading up to the assassination of President John F. Kennedy. Following both Kennedy and Lee Harvey Oswald in chronological order, the book was quite interesting. I didn’t have much knowledge of the Bay of Pigs, the Cuban Missile Crisis, or Lee Harvey Oswald’s personal history going into the book. It reminded me of how much I enjoy American history. Bill O’Reilly is a public figure who is well known for his news program on Fox News. He approached the audiobook in much the same way. News reporting does not equate to good audiobook narrating. I found it distracting. I could also tell when he’d been reading for a while because he’d speed through and words became a little slurred. He also had this habit of accentuating or emphasizing words that did not make any sense within the context of the sentence. The most memorable example was when he discussed Kennedy’s hypothyroidism. He said that word in the exact same manner as the principal in “Say Anything” when he talks about Diane Court and her study of Bi-O-Chemistry. Again, if I were to have picked this book up to read under any other circumstance, I would have chosen the print version.

I will be posting my complete review of Beautiful Ruins and my Audiobook of the Year wrap up post next week.

Published by: St. Martin’s Press

Published on: May 7, 2013

Page Count: 368

Genre: Historical Fiction

My Reading Format: ARC sent to me by BookTrib in order to participate in this book tour

Available Formats: Hardcover and eBook

Summary from the Publisher:

A vivid novel of Charles Baudelaire and his lover Jeanne Duval, the Haitian cabaret singer who inspired his most famous and controversial poems, set in nineteenth-century Paris.

For readers who have been drawn to The Paris Wife, Black Venus captures the artistic scene in the great French city decades earlier, when the likes of Dumas and Balzac argued literature in the cafes of the Left Bank. Among the bohemians, the young Charles Baudelaire stood out—dressed impeccably thanks to an inheritance that was quickly vanishing. Still at work on the poems that he hoped would make his name, he spent his nights enjoying the alcohol, opium, and women who filled the seedy streets of the city.

One woman would catch his eye—a beautiful Haitian cabaret singer named Jeanne Duval. Their lives would remain forever intertwined thereafter, and their romance would inspire his most infamous poems—leading to the banning of his masterwork, Les Fleurs du Mal, and a scandalous public trial for obscenity.

James MacManus’s Black Venus re-creates the classic Parisian literary world in vivid detail, complete with not just an affecting portrait of the famous poet but also his often misunderstood, much-maligned muse.

My Review

A bohemian poet finds his muse in a streetwise mulatto cabaret dancer in Paris while the city is on the brink of a second violent revolution. For more there couldn’t be anything much more tempting than that. I did not hesitate when I was asked if I wanted to participate in James MacManus’ book tour. I went into Black Venus knowing virtually nothing about Baudelaire. I could have identified him as a Parisian poet, but that was the extent of what I knew. Like Baudelaire’s mother, his lack of personal responsibility with his finances irritated me, but I was drawn to his story and his life skirting the fringes of polite society. Jeanne Duval is an interesting character as well. The bastard daughter of a French plantation owner in Haiti and his favorite slave, she was forced to learn how to turn any circumstance to her advantage quickly. The undeniable attraction of these two self-serving people was as volatile as the streets of Paris during the Revolution of 1848. It is no wonder that the passion between the two lovers inspired poetry so sensual that they were banned, bankrupting the ambitious publisher who believed in him.

There is something intoxicating about Paris and the best novels taking place in that city make one want to be there in the thick of things, even when it is on the brink of revolution and is without a sufficient sanitation system. James MacManus did just that with Black Venus. From the moment I picked up Black Venus I was absorbed by the story. Charles Baudelaire and Jeanne Duval both individually and separately are endlessly fascinating. Their contemporaries, such as Gustave Courbet, Theophile Gautier, and Edouard Manet add that much more flavor. This was especially true of Baudelaire’s ill-fated publisher, Auguste Poulet-Malassis. He staked his career and his livelihood on an artist under the spell and influence of Jeanne Duval and narcotics. More so than anyone else, I left Black Venus hoping that he ultimately found peace with the success that came as a result of his dedication after his death.

It may be considered a curse to live during interesting times, but reading about them is delicious and addictive. If you don’t have any exciting travel plans for this summer, I recommend picking up this novel. You will feel as though you’ve seen and experienced so much without ever having left your home. In fact, given the complementary time period and the connection to laudanum, Black Venus works very well when read along with Murder As A Fine Art. A summer spent in the Gothic fogginess of London and the bohemian bars of Paris is a summer well spent.

Author James MacManus discusses his novel Black Venus.

Published by: Bloomsbury

Published on: May 7, 2013

Page Count: 288

Genre: Fiction

My Reading Format: eGalley provided by the publisher for consideration

Available Formats: Hardcover and eBook

Summary from the Publisher:

Ten-year-old Helen and her summer guardian, Flora, are isolated together in Helen’s decaying family house while her father is doing secret war work in Oak Ridge during the final months of the Second World War. At three Helen lost her mother and the beloved grandmother who raised her has just died. A fiercely imaginative child, Helen is desperate to keep her house intact with all its ghosts and stories. Flora, her late mother’s twenty-two-year old first cousin, who cries at the drop of a hat, is ardently determined to do her best for Helen. Their relationship and its fallout, played against a backdrop of a lost America will haunt Helen for the rest of her life.

This darkly beautiful novel about a child and a caretaker in isolation evokes shades of The Turn of the Screw and also harks back to Godwin’s memorable novel of growing up, The Finishing School. With its house on top of a mountain and a child who may be a bomb that will one day go off, Flora tells a story of love, regret, and the things we can’t undo. It will stay with readers long after the last page is turned.

My Review

The novel, which takes place during World War II while it continues in the Pacific after V-E Day, begins with 10 year old Helen, a girl who was mainly raised by her paternal grandmother after her own mother’s untimely death. When her grandmother dies suddenly, she is left to be raised by her father. He is a high school principal who takes a summer job to escape the drudgery of his career or the burden of single parenthood or both. He calls upon his deceased wife’s much younger cousin Flora to come and stay with his daughter while he is out of town. Having been stricken by polio as a child, he is concerned when he hears that two local children have been diagnosed with it, he demands that they quarantine themselves to their large if rundown home. The only people they see are the local minister and the young gentleman who delivers their supplies from town. Helen is a precocious child and at the beginning of the summer feels that she is more suited to babysitting Flora than the other way around. That she has no other company but this distant cousin she’s only met at funerals does not make the summer any easier.

Well written and haunting, the story of Helen’s summer with her deceased mother’s cousin kept me reading well past my bed time. Gail Godwin’s writing exudes the desperate heat of summer. As Helen recalls the events of the summer and the impact she and Flora had on each other, the truth about Helen’s mother, grandmother, and herself are revealed. Without intending to, Helen proves that no matter how smart and self-sufficient 10 year olds are, they are not ready to fully grab hold of their own destinies, let alone anyone else’s.

I just love books that take unexpected turns, which is typically why I glance over a book’s summary to allow the story to play out without many preconceived notions. Flora was just such a novel for me. While Gail Godwin’s characters did not leave the family’s property, her storytelling was not at all confined within the tight quarters of the setting. This is one author whose backlog I need to investigate, especially The Finishing School.

Published by: Mulholland Books

Published on: May 7, 2013

Page Count: 368

Genre: Fiction

My Reading Format: eGalley provided by the publisher for consideration

Available Formats: Hardcover and eBook

Bloggers Recommendation: I recommended this title in the May edition of the Bloggers Recommend newsletter.

Summary from the Publisher:

Thomas De Quincey, infamous for his memoir Confessions of an English Opium-Eater, is the major suspect in a series of ferocious mass murders identical to ones that terrorized London forty-three years earlier.

The blueprint for the killings seems to be De Quincey’s essay “On Murder Considered as One of the Fine Arts.” Desperate to clear his name but crippled by opium addiction, De Quincey is aided by his devoted daughter Emily and a pair of determined Scotland Yard detectives.

In Murder as a Fine Art, David Morrell plucks De Quincey, Victorian London, and the Ratcliffe Highway murders from history. Fogbound streets become a battleground between a literary star and a brilliant murderer, whose lives are linked by secrets long buried but never forgotten.

My Review

A murder mystery set in Victorian England is like catnip to me. Frequently the foggy, Gothic London setting is the playground of Jack the Ripper, but in David Morrell’s engrossing tale, Thomas De Quincey and his writings about his opium addiction and about the artistic qualities of an historical murder take center stage. He is back in London with his daughter Emily because he came into contact with someone who could reunite him with a long lost love. When a shockingly violent murder takes place while he is in town that mirrors the minute descriptions in his essay on murder, he comes under the scrutiny of Detective Ryan who, working with Constable Becker, a man who wants nothing more than to emulate Ryan, is trying to solve this new murder before the killer strikes again.

While including the historical figure of De Quincey made this novel very interesting as it is shaped around his life and writings, Detective Ryan and his relationship with Becker stole the show for me. Ryan employs new scientific techniques within his detective work and has to work around his very Irish appearance to solve crimes and keep the peace. Becker very much looks up to Ryan. Not only does the position of Detective pay more, he finds the work Ryan does interesting and useful to the city. There is a scene following the first murders where Becker demonstrates his devotion to Ryan and his techniques that I will never forget. When the pair meet up with the De Quinceys and work with Emily, everything fit into place. I wanted nothing more than to spend time with them, even in Coldbath Fields prison.

Simon Vance’s narration was playing in my head while I read this book. I hoped to discover that he was on tap to narrate the audiobook, but currently there isn’t one available. I hope that there will be one eventually because I would love to reread Murder As A Fine Art in audio. Audiobook gods, if you are listening, please cast Simon Vance. Combining his work with this novel would be like audiobook heaven.

Murder As a Fine Art is a smart mystery that makes the landscape of Victorian era London seem as vivid to me as crisp color picture. I could sense the damp fog against my skin as I followed Ryan, Becker, and the De Quincey’s through the city as they tracked down this murderer who approached his craft like an apprentice soaking up as much knowledge and technique as he can from a master artisan. Everything about this novel and the way in which David Morrell wove this tale of determination, loyalty, and the cost of following one’s baser desires captured my imagination. I highly recommend this novel and am holding out hope that David Morrell will bring Ryan, Becker, and Emily De Quincey back to me in a sequel.

Published by: Gotham

Published on: May 2, 2013

Page Count: 288

Genre: Memoir

My Reading Format: eGalley provided to me by the publisher for considertion

Available Formats: Hardcover, eBook, and Audiobook

Note: This book will prompt you to pay your library fines.

Summary from the Publisher

Josh Hanagarne couldn’t be invisible if he tried. Although he wouldn’t officially be diagnosed with Tourette Syndrome until his freshman year of high school, Josh was six years old and onstage in a school Thanksgiving play when he first began exhibiting symptoms. By the time he was twenty, the young Mormon had reached his towering adult height of 6’7” when—while serving on a mission for the Church of Latter Day Saints—his Tourette’s tics escalated to nightmarish levels.

Determined to conquer his affliction, Josh underwent everything from quack remedies to lethargy-inducing drug regimes to Botox injections that paralyzed his vocal cords and left him voiceless for three years. Undeterred, Josh persevered to marry and earn a degree in Library Science. At last, an eccentric, autistic strongman—and former Air Force Tech Sergeant and guard at an Iraqi prison—taught Josh how to “throttle” his tics into submission through strength-training.

My Review

Josh Hanagarne is a man who has been dealing with Tourette’s Syndrome since he was a young Mormon boy who loved more than anything to read. While his path to the library was a long road full of pot holes, it seemed only natural that he would one day find himself working at a library. While he may suffer from tics and other symptoms of Tourette’s Syndrome that make his life difficult, he was raised by loving parents who instilled in him a healthy self worth and a wonderful sense of humor. From the first pages of this book I was drawn to the way literature and books tied back to his life. I enjoyed the way he expressed his love for his work at the library by way of highlighting some of the odder or less appetizing aspects of library work. That he could put up with graffiti, misuse of public restrooms, and people continuously hiding books about the occult and hold dear to himself the ultimate goal and meaning of libraries warmed my heart. Coupled with the way in which he opens up about some of his own personal failings and I could not put this book down. I wanted to spend time with him, tics and all, as he explored how Tourette’s impacted his socially, spiritually, and physically. I wanted to be with him when he drove to the middle of nowhere and cried out to God and when he was in the gym using strength training to bring his demons under control. All along I very much appreciated his willingness to share his life with me.

Josh Hanagarne is the kind of librarian I want to have in my own neighborhood. He is smart, he is community minded, and he is deliciously irreverent about even the most reverent things. When he wrote of his impulse to walk out on his first day as a Morman missionary in Washington, D. C. and say, “This shit’s about to get real,” I laughed so hard I had to put my eReader down for a minute. If he walked up to me and said that, my intrinsic dread of those conversations would vanish quickly. He would have my attention. If the missionary were anything like Josh Hanagarne, he would hold it, too, especially if we just ended up talking about books and libraries.

While the strength mentioned in the title deals with the weight training Hanagarne uses to help keep his Tourette’s Syndrome under control, what made a lasting impression on me is the author’s strength of family, character, and sense of self. Stories like these make sharing in the human experience fulfilling. There is no one I wouldn’t recommend this memoir to, but this story of living up to one’s potential despite seemingly overwhelming odds makes it a perfect gift for graduates, loving parents, and lovers of libraries.

Memorial Day, 1938: New York socialite Lily Dane has just returned with her family to the idyllic oceanfront community of Seaview, Rhode Island, expecting another placid summer season among the familiar traditions and friendships that sustained her after heartbreak. That is, until Greenwalds decide to take up residence in Seaview.

Nick and Budgie Greenwald are an unwelcome specter from Lily’s past: her former best friend and her former fiancé, now recently married—an event that set off a wildfire of gossip among the elite of Seaview, who have summered together for generations. Budgie’s arrival to restore her family’s old house puts her once more in the center of the community’s social scene, and she insinuates herself back into Lily’s friendship with an overpowering talent for seduction…and an alluring acquaintance from their college days, Yankees pitcher Graham Pendleton. But the ties that bind Lily to Nick are too strong and intricate to ignore, and the two are drawn back into long-buried dreams, despite their uneasy secrets and many emotional obligations.

Under the scorching summer sun, the unexpected truth of Budgie and Nick’s marriage bubbles to the surface, and as a cataclysmic hurricane barrels unseen up the Atlantic and into New England, Lily and Nick must confront an emotional cyclone of their own, which will change their worlds forever.

“Scorching summer sun.” Doesn’t that sound lovely? If you think it does, then you’ll love this giveaway. I have one Advanced Readers Copy to give away along with a beach themed bookmark I made several years ago. I must have made one extra and it seems like the perfect compliment to reading this book.

If you’d like to read this book along with me this month, just leave a comment here letting me know what your favorite beach is (mine is Grand Haven beach on Lake Michigan). I will choose the winner on Tuesday, May 7 so you will have time revel in A Hundred Summers before the book hits the stores. If you have a Twitter account, let me know what you thought of the book using the #ahundredsummers hashtag. Boy am I ready for the sun!

Published by: William Morrow

Published on: April 30, 2013

Page Count: 704

Genre: Fiction

My Reading Format: ARC sent to me by the publisher for consideration

Available Formats: Hardcover, eBook, and Audiobook

Related Review: Horns

Summary from the Publisher

Don’t slow down

Victoria McQueen has an uncanny knack for finding things: a misplaced bracelet, a missing photograph, answers to unanswerable questions. When she rides her bicycle over the rickety old covered bridge in the woods near her house, she always emerges in the places she needs to be. Vic doesn’t tell anyone about her unusual ability, because she knows no one will believe her. She has trouble understanding it herself.

Charles Talent Manx has a gift of his own. He likes to take children for rides in his 1938 Rolls-Royce Wraith with the vanity plate NOS4A2. In the Wraith, he and his innocent guests can slip out of the everyday world and onto hidden roads that lead to an astonishing playground of amusements he calls Christmasland. Mile by mile, the journey across the highway of Charlie’s twisted imagination transforms his precious passengers, leaving them as terrifying and unstoppable as their benefactor.

And then comes the day when Vic goes looking for trouble . . . and finds her way, inevitably, to Charlie.

That was a lifetime ago. Now, the only kid ever to escape Charlie’s unmitigated evil is all grown up and desperate to forget.

But Charlie Manx hasn’t stopped thinking about the exceptional Victoria McQueen. On the road again, he won’t slow down until he’s taken his revenge. He’s after something very special—something Vic can never replace.

As a life-and-death battle of wills builds—her magic pitted against his—Vic McQueen prepares to destroy Charlie once and for all . . . or die trying. . . .

My Review

Followers of my blog know that I read very few horror novels. Over the 6+ years I’ve been posting reviews, I am pretty sure you can count on one hand the number of horror novels I’ve covered. I went through a horror – or more precisely a Stephen King – phase back in middle school/high school. After 6 or 7 of his novels, I thought I pretty much hit my lifetime quota. My tolerance for horror films is nearly non-existent. There is something about social media, though. I have been so glad to find and follow Joe Hill on Twitter and it is probably only natural that I have become interested in his books. I absolutely loved Horns last year. When I had the opportunity to read an advanced copy of his latest, NOS4A2, I didn’t think twice. I got a delicious chill when I opened up the package and the accompanying Christmas card from Charlie Manx. I couldn’t dive in right away, though. I had to circle the book for a while to prepare my wimpy little chicken heart before I settled in to read NOS4A2.

I had so much fun reading NOS4A2. The 700 pages may seem intimidating when you first pick it up, but the pages flew by like the expanse of Vic’s Shorter Way bridge. Vic had her fair share of problems, but she was spunky and unafraid to face the barricades that life placed in front of her. When her life absolutely depended on it, she managed to find the rock she needed. It is true that I would not want her as a lover or a mother, but I’d feel safe knowing that she had my back. Charlie Manx is not someone to be messed around with and his seemingly even temperament made his appetites that much more creepy. It was his side kick the Gasman, though, who scared the bejesus out of me. There were several sections in which he was prominently featured where I had to put the book down and walk away for a little while. By little while I mean the for the few seconds it took my absolute need to know what happened next to overpower my timid heart.

Along with the book and the lovely Christmas card from Manx, William Morrow included a gingerbread air freshener. I forgot about it until the significance of gingerbread reminded me to pick it up and hang it on my rear view mirror. I cannot tell you how perfectly the combination of my car, the gingerbread smell, and my children were while reading this book. Each time I opened the door I was reminded of the Gasman. If that weren’t enough, for a solid week my oldest daughter kept saying things like, “I love the smell of gingerbread!” or “I hope your car smells like this forever, Mommy!” Bringing all of your senses and the unwitting participation of your own children into the experience of a good horror novel is amazing. I just wish there was a way to make this blog post a scratch and sniff.

NOS4A2 would make an excellent gift for anyone who enjoys a horrifically good adventure. There are other perhaps less obvious types of people who could benefit from reading this book:

• Boyfriends/husbands/fathers who spend too much time in the garage restoring beat up antique cars
• Parents who do not supervise their children well or are happy to allow others to raise them
• The helpless people in your life who keep losing things
• Anyone who needs to broaden their definition of the word hero or brave
• Friends and family members who do never take down their Christmas lights
• Fanatical bike riders
• People who start listening to Christmas songs before the damn turkey gets cold

Now go and find yourself a copy of NOS4A2 and a can of gingerbread air freshener (No, you can’t have my gingerbread man!). You can have Christmas in May. If you’re lucky, there will be enough time between now and Thanksgiving weekend so that the sound of Christmas carols won’t make you break out in a cold sweat or spontaneously pee yourself. Let’s face it. The holidays will still probably come too soon, but you can carry a handkerchief to wipe the sweat from your neck and leave a dry change of clothes in your trunk just in case. Joe Hill’s delightfully evil book is worth the risk.

Published by: Little, Brown & Company

Published on: April 30, 2013

Page Count: 368

Genre: Memoir

My Reading Format: ARC sent by the publisher for consideration

Available Formats: Hardcover and eBook

My Review

As a junior in college I took an Irish literature class that introduced me to Edna O’Brien. She was the only female Irish author featured. I don’t remember that much about the plot to Night, but I remembered being impressed by her moxie and writing style. It’s been a few more years than I care to mention between then and the day that a copy of Country Girl showed up on my doorstep, but I couldn’t have been more excited last month than I would have been back then. My excitement simply at seeing the cover was fully rewarded. From the very last paragraph in the Prologue which closes with “…and so on that day in August, in my seventy-eighth year, I sat down to begin the memoir which I swore I would never write,” I was hooked into the story of her life.

Country Girl had my complete focus throughout. The lyrical way she returned to the significant places, events, and themes in her life made me long for the Irish literature I devoured so hungrily in my 20s. I very much appreciated that she didn’t approach this book like someone following a timeline. Reading this memoir felt very much like taking a walk with O’Brien, allowing her memories to flow as they came to mind. I kept asking myself why I don’t choose to pick up literary memoirs more often, especially when the author in question faced a great deal of criticism. O’Brien’s own book was burned in her home town. They were scandalized that one of their daughters would write something so unladylike. When that was less upsetting than her life at home with her husband, it takes a strong woman to continue to forge her career. It was not without cost, but O’Brien has proved herself to be a worthy daughter of Ireland.

People interested in literary memoirs, feminism, and Irish literature really must pick up a copy of Country Girl. This year I have focused on the fiction of Edith Wharton. While reading this memoir I knew that 2014 would be the year of Edna O’Brien. Read Country Girl and you’ll see why.

Despite all of the the things that made this week and, if I’m being honest, last week long, I’ve read several great books. In print I’ve read three books that will be published in May. I’ll review them all next month and blurbed one for Bloggers Recommend, but know that they were each wonderful reads. Pick them up if you see them at the bookstore or library. You won’t regret it:

Flora by Gail Godwin

Published by Bloomsbury on May 7, 2013

288 pages

Summary from the Publisher:

Ten-year-old Helen and her summer guardian, Flora, are isolated together in Helen’s decaying family house while her father is doing secret war work in Oak Ridge during the final months of World War II.At three Helen lost her mother and the beloved grandmother who raised her has just died.A fiercely imaginative child, Helen is desperate to keep her house intact with all its ghosts and stories.Flora, her late mother’s twenty-two-year old first cousin, who cries at the drop of a hat, is ardently determined to do her best for Helen.Their relationship and its fallout, played against a backdrop of a lost America will haunt Helen for the rest of her life.

This darkly beautiful novel about a child and a caretaker in isolation evokes shades of The Turn of the Screw and also harks back to Godwin’s memorable novel of growing up,The Finishing School. With its house on top of a mountain and a child who may be a bomb that will one day go off, Flora tells a story of love, regret, and the things we can’t undo.It will stay with readers long after the last page is turned.

Murder As A Fine Art by David Morrell

Published by Mulholland Books on May 7, 2013

358 pages

Summary from the Publisher:

Thomas De Quincey, best known for his sensational memoirConfessions of an Opium Eater, is the prime suspect in a series of horrific murders that paralyze London.

The killer seems to be imitating De Quincey’s true-crime essay ”On Murder Considered as One of the Fine Arts.” Desperate to prevent more atrocities but crippled by opium addiction, De Quincey is aided by his brilliant daughter, Emily, as well as two determined Scotland Yard detectives.

MURDER AS A FINE ART recreates gaslit London as a battleground between a literary luminary and a master killer whose secrets are deeply entwined with De Quincey’s own, in a riveting thriller along the lines of Dan Simmons’ Drood, Matthew Pearl’s The Dante Club, and Caleb Carr’s The Alienist.

The First Rule of Swimming by Courtney Angela Brkic

Published by Little, Brown & Company on May 28, 2013

336 page

Summary from the Publisher:

When Magdalena learns that her younger sister has disappeared, she does not immediately panic. A free-spirit, Jadranka has always been prone to mysterious absences and she has never seen a future on Rosmarina, the isolated Croatian island where their family has lived for generations. But when weeks pass with no word, Magdalena leaves behind her Adriatic home and sets off to New York to find her sister.

Magdalena’s search begins to unspool the dark history of their family: from the brother and sister who fought as partisans during WWII, at a terrible price; to their children, forced to make devastating choices under the pall of the Soviet era; to theirchildren, the sisters at the center of the novel, who carry the family’s secrets in their blood.

A haunting and sure-footed debut, THE FIRST RULE OF SWIMMING explores the legacy of betrayal and persecution in a place where beauty is fused inextricably with hardship, where nonconformity – especially by women – is stifled by cultural taboo, and where the lure of leaving is countered by the summons of family and home.

I have also listened to one of the best audiobooks I’ve listened to this year, Beautiful Ruins. I ask myself why, why haven’t I listened to that audiobook earlier? I had tentatively planned on listening to it after I finished the Audie nominees for Literary Fiction, but when Michele from A Reader’s Respite said she was interested in listening along with me, it became a done deal. Listening along with someone else is that much better than listening alone. It took me about a week and a half to finish it because I wasn’t able to squeeze in much audiobook time over the weekend. I am going to write a full review soon, but it was a treat to say the least. Edoardo Ballerini is a phenomenal audiobook narrator (his Richard Burton is sweet perfection) and Jess Walter is a new favorite (I also should have read The Financial Lives of the Poets a million moons ago!). I love authors who love and appreciate audiobooks the way that he does. Beautiful Ruins is a great package all around. Now I need to find a copy of Cleopatra to watch this weekend.

One unexpected result of listening to Beautiful Ruins was the realization that I had listened to half of the Audiobook of the Year nominees. In case you missed it, I was less than pleased by the audiobooks presented as Audiobook of the Year material. Beautiful Ruins was the one bright spot in the category before I read it. Now I’m even more certain that if Michelle Obama, Colin Firth, or Bill O’Reilly walk home on Audie night with the Audiobook of the Year award that they have stolen it from Eduardo Ballerini and deserved to be incarcerated. As much as I believe this in my gut, I don’t want to continue casting aspersions without fully experiencing each of the nominees. So, instead of easing my considerable Simon Vance withdrawal symptoms and picking up The Good Thief’s Guide to Venice as I wanted, I used my two shiny new Audible credits on American Grown and Killing Kennedy. I’m not sure I’ll survive the Killing Kennedy experience, but anything for the Armchair Audies and earning the right to protest the meaninglessness of the Audiobook of the Year Audie Award category.

Finally, I have been doing a lot of thinking about my life, my free time, and book reviewing. I hope to finalize my thoughts and maybe even write another post for Sunday. *gasp* No worries, though. I’m not going anywhere, but what I do and how I do it is going to change in a way that I hope will free me up in multiple ways to be more present here.

Have a wonderful weekend!

Audiobook Published by: Audible

Narrator: Colin Firth

Audiobook Length: 6 hours 28 minutes

Armchair Audies Review: I purchased this audiobook using an Audible credit as this title has been nominated for an 2013 Audie Award in the Literary Fiction category. I am judging the Literary Fiction category as part of Armchair Auides.

Note: I have previously reviewed The End of the Affair after listening to the audiobook version narrated by Michael Kitchen. Therefore, my review here will pertain only to the production and narration of this version.

Armchair Audies Ranking: 4th out of the 5 titles in the Literary Fiction category

My Review

The following are my observations:

• The Basics: Colin Firth has a pleasant reading voice and clearly is comfortable with the book. The production was crisp. While at times I was quite bored (see Talk About the Passion), listening to him read the book was not unpleasant. There are several significant characters in the book, Bendrix, Sarah, Henry, and the detective, Parkis. There is no real change of voice for Bendrix, Sarah, or Henry. I did enjoy the way he read Parkis, but it highlighted that Firth changed accents based on socio-economic status rather than character. That Bendrix, Sarah, and Henry were all narrated with roughly the same voice was rather disappointing.
• Talk About the Passion: There is so much emotion to The End of the Affair. From the very beginning Bendrix talks about hate as if it is his mother’s milk. Of course there is more than more behind his hate. There is love and envy and regret and a fight against a faith in God he doesn’t want but can’t shake. The buzz and hum of pure passion is in the air throughout. With this audiobook version of the classic, I just didn’t feel it there. The performance had no life until Sarah’s diary, which can’t help but engage with a moderately competent narrator. Firth delivers his narration from an emotional distance and that is frustrating because I know he has a good range from his performance in The King’s Speech.
• The End of the Review: I absolutely love The End of the Affair. While having the opportunity to reread it for the Armchair Audies was nice, I was underwhelmed by this audiobook version. I would only recommend it to die hard Colin Firth fans for whom the novelty of having him read a book out loud would be reason enough to listen. I would not be interested in another Colin Firth narration. He is much more delightful to the eye than to the ear.