The drive from Jackson to “home” in southeast Florida is arduous, taking a whopping 15 hours from stem to stern.  I usually fly, but the times I’ve driven have been rescued from monotony by audiobooks.

I love listening to a good audiobook.  This is not always the same as a good book, however, as most of you who listen as well as read can attest.  Just because a book is wonderful doesn’t mean its audio counterpart will provide equal enjoyment.  It all depends on the reader.  The words “read by the author,” for example, always give me pause.  Some authors, despite their love affair with words, were never meant to be readers.  Other authors, though, are great readers of their own work; they know their work intimately and are best able to grasp its mood.  Neil Gaiman’s reading of his book Stardust is very good.  I had already read the book when I listened to it during my move from Florida to Jackson, yet hearing his rendition of the fairy tale was wonderful.  I bet Barbara Kingsolver’s The Lacuna is amazing read by her, though I’ve been unable to find anything on the web about how it is.  Let me know if you’ve listened to it.

It seems like more and more audiobooks are being performed by an ensemble cast.  The Help, Kathryn Stockett’s gem of a debut, is read by her actress friend Octavia Spencer along with three other women, who take turns voicing for Kathryn’s unforgettable characters.

Libraryjournal.com voted The Help audiobook one of the best of 2009, saying,

Actresses Octavia Spencer, Bahni Turpin, Jenna Lamia, and Cassandra Campbell “immediately pull listeners in, breathing life into this touching [debut] novel” set in early 1960s Jackson, MS. [read the entire article here].

The new book by Elizabeth Kostova, who will be autographing and reading at Lemuria on February 17th, The Swan Thieves, is also read by a full cast, including Treat Williams and Anne Heche.

My favorite audiobooks, though, are those that are a little easier to listen to during short drives.  To and from work today I listened to David Sedaris’s new cd, Live For Your Listening Pleasure.  This is a collection of live readings he made in Denver, NYC, Durham, LA, and Atlanta.  On a short drive you can usually finish one of his stories, which you know is nice if you’ve ever tried to listen to a novel audiobook and sat in a parking lot for thirty minutes trying to get to a good place to stop.  Also, the live audience laughter factor makes you feel like you’re right there listening with ’em.

If you don’t want funny, but still want something you can take small bites of, poetry is a good option.  Mary Oliver has a new poetry collection on cd coming out in April, Many Miles, and I got a preview copy!  In the liner notes she writes about the virtues of listening to someone read,

For there is something heard in the actual voice that cannot be accrued from the printed page, though we read with care and excitement, even with a real falling-into-it passion.  There is simply no “connect” as there is between listener and speaker.  That, at its best, is almost touch.  Nuances unfelt on the page hang in the air.

Her first collection of poems, At Blackwater Pond, is still available!

“Read” an audiobook!  You’ll be taking part in the great oral tradition, keeping alive the days when troubadours and bards recited epics to the townspeople! Well, I might be getting overexcited, but I can’t deny, as Mary Oliver says, “my joy and appreciation at the salvation of voices otherwise vanished into the unknowable darkness.”

The Book world will miss Robert B. Parker – the celebrated writer of more than 50 books, the best known of which were his Spenser novels about a wisecracking ex-boxer turned Boston private eye – he died yesterday morning in Cambridge, Mass. He was 77.

It’s taken me too long to get around to reading Denis Johnson, but here I am.  I just read Jesus’ Son and I want to recommend it to everyone because it was that good, but I’m having trouble thinking about what to say about it?  Let’s see.

I think my first reaction to these stories was confusion, sort of at how anything in them could be happening in the first place because they’re dreamy and fuzzy and vague.  They’re also pretty brutal – they are the stories of, as a blurb on the back puts it, “dreamers, addicts, and lost souls”, and to do any of Johnson’s fantastic characters justice I’ll just have to quote him:

“That night I sat in a booth across from Kid Williams, a former boxer.  His black hands were lumpy and mutilated.  I always had the feeling he might suddenly reach out his hands and strangle me to death.  He spoke in two voices.  He was in his fifties.  He’d wasted his entire life.  Such people were very dear to those of us who’d wasted only a few years.  With Kid Williams sitting across from you it was nothing to contemplate going on like this for another month or two.”

And so maybe you can understand that my second reaction was to lap this up.  The stories in Jesus’ Son ARE brutal and violent, but they’re also witty and sad and tough and sweet, and with characters like Kid Williams and Jack Hotel – won’t tell you about him – they’re hard to forget.  Johnson is a great writer, and a short story master, and I’m a convert now.  Better late than never!  Right!

Susie

If you don’t live in Jackson then maybe you don’t realize that we’ve had no water for the last couple of days. We had a big freeze and a whole bunch of water pipes are broken – here is an article in our paper. Anyway, a lot of businesses are closed (after all, the bathroom doesn’t work) but we don’t stop – we are OPEN – so come on down if you are off of work – or order online if you’re out there somewhere and would like to say hello.

When I was looking through my stack of advanced readers’ copies shortly before Christmas madness happened, I picked up my copy of Tracy Chevalier’s Remarkable Creatures and read a few chapters. Not until January rest occurred did I pick it back up again and become pleasantly surprised at Chevalier’s treatment of the early 1800s in London and south of there in the small seaside village of Lyme Regis.

Based on the life of Mary Anning, a “before-her-time” fossil explorer and rare prehistoric sea creature discoverer, this little novel offers an unusual and provocative read. Insights into the male dominated academic geological community and exploration into the church’s role of rare acknowledgment of extinct fish or animals created by God propel the book’s premise. Add to that an often close, but tumultuous friendship between Mary Anning and Elizabeth Philpot, a middle age spinster newly arrived from London, who is also captivated with fish fossils,and the plot thickens. A shared interest in a complicated man adds jealousy and envy to the emotional mix between the socially diverse  women. Comments on English society of the times, social class differences, as well as educational differences, provide abundant details and additional interest in this time period.

Although I did not read Chevalier’s popular The Girl with the Pearl Earring, which was published in 2005, I saw the beautiful movie. True to this previous read, Chevalier dapples in historic fiction, and does quite a good job. I had never heard of Mary Anning and remembered few details of this period of time in English history, so reading this book was an eye opening experience for me. Conversational in tone and method, the writing flows easily; chapters are told alternately between Mary and Elizabeth. Flowery descriptions of the English seaside village add to the enjoyment. Even the  book’s cover pulls the reader in!  Remarkable Creatures provides a nice little read for a cold January’s weekend.

-Nan