Impartial Witness by Charles Todd

An Impartial Witness
Charles Todd
Narrated by Rosalyn Landor
Audiobooks America 2010

As a librarian, my list of "must reads" is always longer than Crystal Gale's hair, so it's rare for me to just grab a book at the library.  However, two weeks ago I had to make an emergency trip to Denver, and none of my requested audio books were in yet, so I decided to pick one off the shelf.  Two things happened: one, I perused books on the shelf and chose a book based on cover art and the short summaries you find either on the back or on the inside of the dust jacket.  I'll explore this topic in more depth later.  Two, I found a great book by an author I'd never heard of that I really enjoyed.
The book I chose was An Impartial Witness by Charles Todd.  It's a Bess Crawford mystery, and now that I've finished it, I know that there are actually multiple books in the series, and An Impartial Witness is the second of the series, and the newest of the series will be out next week.  The Bess Crawford mysteries are historical mysteries, set in England during World War I. Bess is a very strong female - she's a field nurse for the military and she was an "army brat" of sorts, growing up in India where her father was a high-ranking officer (I can't ever keep military ranks straight, and since I listened to the audio book, there's no way I'm going to figure out his rank, sorry) in the British military. In all of the mysteries, Bess doesn't go looking for trouble, but she definitely doesn't know how to leave trouble alone once it finds her - a fact that is eluded to often in An Impartial Witness.
The book starts out with Bess treating a severely burned pilot who keeps a picture of his wife near him at all times.  After transporting the man to a hospital in England, Bess takes a train to London for a few days leave before she must return to the front.  As she's walking through the train station, she sees the woman from the photograph - the pilot's wife - but this woman is utterly despondent as she bids farewell to a different soldier.  A few weeks later, Bess finds out that the woman was brutally murdered later on that same day.  When Bess volunteers to help Scotland Yard with the investigation, she's caught up in the mystery and nearly gets herself killed a few times.
I loved that the book had a historical element to it that added to the "intrigue", however on the same note, I'm not too sure of the historical accuracy of the book.  For example, the book takes place in 1917, and Bess has her own motorcar that she drives around like it's no big deal.  That seems odd to me - but I wasn't alive in 1917, so maybe women were driving quite a bit back then.  Also, I love that Todd has created a very strong female character who doesn't back down just because she's a female, but I was surprised at the fact that no one objected to her nosing around all the time.  In the end, the flaws didn't outweigh the enjoyment I had listening to the book - Rosalyn Landor did a great job with voices and keeping the pace quick enough so that it wasn't boring.
I'd recommend this book to anyone who enjoys historical fiction, mysteries and strong female characters, but I wouldn't recommend it to readers who are particular about details.  There's nothing terribly risque in the novel, so it could be HS appropriate, but the historical references and vocabulary would make it difficult for a reluctant reader or MS reader to follow.

Cryer's Cross by Lisa McMann

Cryer's Cross
Lisa McMann
narrated by Julia Wehlan

Truthfully, I'm on the fence about this book, and I'm not sure if it's because I listened to the audiobook or because the book is a bit weird.  I'm starting to wonder how my opinion of books is shaped by the audiobook.  I wonder if the audio version doesn't absolutely thrill me from the get-go then I don't like the book in the end as much, or if I think it's boring or moves slowly because the narrator speaks slowly.  But that's another debate.
Cryer's Cross is a remote town in Montana where students are starting to mysteriously disappear.  The book begins with the main character, Kendall, recalling how she felt being a part of the search party for the first missing teen, Tiffany.  Then a few months later when Kendall's boyfriend starts acting weird and disappears as well, her life is thrown into turmoil.  To make matters worse, Kendall is extremely obsessive compulsive, so her brain races all the time - except when she's playing soccer or dancing.
When Nico (Kendall's boyfriend) disappears, the obsessive compulsive in Kendal notices that Nico and Tiffany sat at the same desk, and that the desk had been brought up earlier in the spring when the class got too big.  She convinces herself that it has to be a coincidence and works very hard to distract herself with soccer and dancing so that her constantly racing OCD brain doesn't take over.  But the oddities that keep cropping up make it impossible for Kendall to let go of the possibility that Nico is alive and needs her help, and she must constantly decide whether what's happening is real or whether she's going crazy.
What made this book difficult to finish is that the jacket cover promised a sci-fi thriller type of book (which it is) but the first half of the book is more realistic fiction with really odd teasers at the beginning of each chapter which are, at first confusing and a little intriguing, but then become annoying and confusing until about the last chapter of the book.  The book's saving grace is the ending - very thrilling (read: it scared the pee out of me*).
I don't know who I would recommend this book to, but I have a feeling that it would be pretty popular with teenagers for two reasons.  First, Lisa McMann is a pretty popular YA author (she wrote the crazy popular Wake series).  And second, the plot is sooooo out there - I think kids will like it because they really think if they spend too much time at school they'll go crazy and disappear.

*Author's Note:  I am an absolute wuss.  If something "scares the pee out of me" it could be anything from creepy music in a commercial to someone walking into my office without me seeing them coming. So really...probably not that scary.

Incarceron by Catherine Fisher

Incarceron
Catherine Fisher
Narrated by Kim Mai Guest

Holy weird book Batman.  I’ve tried writing an intro paragraph to review this book four times and I’ve chucked them all.  There is no way to describe this book other than different, weird, and “how in the H did Catherine Fisher come up with the ideas in this book?”

Incarceron is a prison.  A prison world that does not have guards or walls.  It’s a living prison.  Sometime in the future, there’s a huge war and the government decides to create a prison where people can live, move around, marry, have children and even die eventually, and supposedly putting them in their own world – a world that thinks and guards them with some electronic super-intelligence – will create a perfect society both in and outside the prison.  Of course, things don’t work out the way we want them to do they?  Outside the prison, life has gone back to the Middle Ages.  Technology is technically banned, and protocol dictates that everyone life as if it were the 1800’s.  All electronics are banned, but it seems that everyone uses them anyway.  There is surveillance everywhere, and just about everyone knows how to dodge it.
Claudia is the daughter of the warden of Incarceron and she is engaged to the prince.  She and her best friend and tutor, Jared, are convinced that there is more to Incarceron than her father claims and they find a key to Incarceron and try to break in.  Through the key they manage to make contact with people inside Incarceron – a man named Finn who they believe is actually Prince Giles, the true heir to the throne thought to have died many years before.  The more Claudia tries to locate Incarceron and the more Finn tries to find a way out, the more confusing the story gets.  Intrigue and mystery abound in this one, let me tell you.  There is nothing I hate more than a mystery that is too easy to solve – the suspense actually has to be suspenseful for me.  However, this book had so much suspense and intrigue, I actually got kind of lost in it, though I'm not sure it was because of the book itself or because of the narration*.  The ending is not what I would expect and lends itself to a sequel, but to be honest, I’m not sure I'll read it.

*This post is connected to my post about audiobooks.  Feel free to read it!

Audiobooks - what makes them good?

Audio Books – what makes them good?


For those of you who don’t partake in audio books, you really don’t know what you’re missing.  Long road trips are made shorter and much more bearable by audio books, and instead of watching mindless TV while I knit (yep, I knit.  Add it to my list of grandma skillz), I love to listen to audio books.  As a librarian, I understand that it is physically impossible for me to read all the best-sellers and great books that are published each year, not to mention reading all the great books I missed in my past (please don’t ask me which of the classics I’ve read.  The number is really small).  So I use audio books.  The public library has them not only to check out on CD, but also to download to almost any MP3 player.

However over the last year or two, I’ve realized that not all audio books are created equal.  There are some audio books that are abridged versions, which, in some cases I can see as being a positive thing.  But audio books, just like regular books, can be, well, crappy.  And I’m at the point in my career where I’m starting to figure out which books I personally will listen to in audio form, and which I won’t.  For example – I’m not terribly fond of books written in verse, so I don’t think that audio forms of such books would be the best choice for me.  Also, I usually listen to audio books on long drives, so really descriptive books don’t keep my interest as audio books.  I’ve found that I need the plot to keep moving for me to stay interested when a book is in audio form.

But there’s more to it than that.  I’ve found that som

But should I let the audio version change how I feel about the print version?  In the spring I was listening to a different audio book and told my good friend Sarah about it, and she suggested that I quit listening to the audio book and pick up the real deal because she knew I’d love the book if I did.  Sure enough, reading the last 100 or so pages on my own redeemed the entire story, and not because all the action was in the end of the book, but because my reading wasn’t hindered by dramatic pauses and slow reading.
Unfortunately I have no solutions as to how to decide what makes an audio book great or not.  I will say that it is my firm belief that an audio book should enhance the print version – not take away from it.  So my one suggestion is that if you find an audio book that you don’t like because of the way it is read, turn it off and check out the print book.  Never let a crappy rendition ruin your experience of a great book.e audio books are really crappily produced, and if you’re not careful, you’ll get a really great book that is a terrible audio book and it’ll ruin the book for you.  Sometimes the narrator reads entirely too slowly or too dramatically for the book – as in the case of Incarceron, narrated by Kim Mai Guest.  The book itself is about 442 pages, but the audio book is eleven hours 32 minutes, which averages out to approximately 38 pages per hour.  If I Stay is about 200 pages and the audio book is four hours, so about 50 pages per hour.  But regardless of pages read per hour, there were parts of Incarceron where the action should have been way more intense than it was.  I think the narrator thought she was making the reading more intense by READING LOUDER and making DRAMATIC…..PAUSES, but the effect was lost.  I caught myself thinking “Get on with it already!” And don’t get me started on fake horrid accents…ugh.  So not the case with If I Stay, which is narrated by Kirsten Potter.  When the action got going, she read faster.  Her emotions absolutely matched the story, and there were no silly accents.

If I Stay by Gayle Forman

If I Stay
Gayle Foreman
Narrated by Kirsten Potter

I’ve only read a few of Nicholas Sparks books, and to be honest, I didn’t really like the ones I read.  But I feel like if he wrote books that I actually enjoyed, he would write something like If I Stay.  Imagine that you wake up one morning to a snow day (waHOO) and your family – that you love dearly – decides to go for a drive.  However, tragedy strikes and by the end of the day, you’re the only one left alive.  Mia is a senior in high school who finds herself in this exact situation.  After a horrible car accident, she lies in a coma and her spectral self has the ability to see and hear everyone around her, she can even follow them into other rooms, but she can’t seem to find a way to either re-inhabit her body, or let go and go to Heaven.   And more importantly, she’s not sure she wants to stay behind without her family.  The entire story is her remembering her life before the accident and trying to imagine her life without her family and her struggle to decide whether or not to stay and possibly go to Julliard, or go and abandon her grandparents, her boyfriend and her extended family.

I have been blessed in this life to have a kick ass family.  They are not perfect, but they are mine and I love them all fiercely.  This past winter when my dad had heart surgery my entire family was suddenly and brutally faced with our own mortality - our individual mortality and the mortality of our family, and it scared the pee out of all of us.  Lucky for us, my dad is fine and now has a whole new set of valves to clog with cholesterol.  The way that Foreman wrote this book, the reader is forced to consider tragedy like Mia’s.  What would I do if both my parents and my siblings were killed in a horrible accident?  Would I be able to go on?  Now that I have a special someone in my life (it’s about flippin time!!!) does that change my reaction to the situation?  I don’t know and I hope I never have to find out.  In any case, Foreman has created a beautiful book that is emotional, real and an absolute page turner.  Or in my case, a CD switcher*.  I highly highly recommend it!

*This post is connected to my post about audiobooks.  Feel free to read it!

Dairy Queen

Dairy Queen
Catherine Gilbert Murdock

I'm never sure if I read more than the average person, or less than a normal bibliophile, but I feel like I read a lot.  And even though I feel like I read all the time, there are still tons of books I'd like to read and just can't seem to find the time to read them.  So I do what any literature lover would do - I get audiobooks.  I would not recommend audiobooks most of the time - part of my love of reading is the act of getting comfortable and shutting out the world - an act I would not advise while driving.  But in this case, I would highly recommend at least listening to the first disc, or chapter of the audio book (read by Natalie Moore) if only to hear the awesome Wisconsin accent - an accent that I miss terribly since I've moved away from the Midwest.  It is one of the most friendly, unassuming accents in the United States (in my opinion).  Southern accents are all too common, and - to be perfectly honest - I'm always a little afraid that a compliment from someone with a southern accent is actually meant to be criticism.  New York accents make me think of the mafia, and california/surfer accents make me want to sunbathe.  But the Wisconsin/Michigan/Minnesota accents are my favorites.  Might have something to do with  my love of the movies New in Town and Fargo, but it also has to do with my wonderful memories of the amazing people I know from those regions.

Ok, enough about the accent on the audiobook.  The book itself is fantastic - with or without the accent.  It's the story of DJ, a girl whose life has always revolved around two things:  dairy cows and football.  Her older brothers are legendary football players, and she's always loved the game.  Her father runs - or used to run - a dairy farm, but was injured and now DJ and her younger brother do most of (all) the work around the farm.  An old family friend - and the coach of the rival high school Holly - asks DJ to help out his 'star' quarterback, Brian Nelson.  In return for the training help, Brian will help out around the farm doing odd jobs.  DJ reluctantly agrees and not only is a friendship born, but DJ realizes that she has a deep abiding love of football, and just to prove that she can, she decides to go out for the football team.  Dairy Queen is the first in the series of adventures DJ has learning how to actually talk to people, how to deal with life's stress and curveballs, and how to be a female football player.

What caught me about the book is how Murdock used DJ's train of thought and internal monologue to make the reader not only understand her naiveté, but empathize with her.  Thoughts like "You're probably laughing now too.  So what.  I know where your milk comes from, and your hamburgers." DJ is the perfect embodiment of a strong teenage girl - she doesn't care what people think, except when she does.  And in doing something no one else has ever done, DJ does some soul searching to figure out what matters and what doesn't.  She never claims to figure anything out, she just honestly reports what she experiences and how she feels about events and people and people's reactions to events.  She learns not to make assumptions, and learns how hard it is to break free of the assumptions you've made and the assumptions people have made about you.

The rest of the series - Off Season and Front and Center - are definitely on my reading list.  This time, I'll probably sit down with the actual book - now that I have DJ Schwenk's voice in my head to guide me.