Cozy Mysteriousness with Lizzy and Darcy

As soon as I turned on the audiobook Death Comes to Pemberley by P. D. James, narrated by Rosalyn Landor, I realized I'd hit a trifecta. Great writing (my first James novel - I'll be checking out all those Adam Dalgliesh  mysteries soon!), narrated by Landor (I just sink into her narration - one sentence and I'm transported to Regency England.), and set in the world of Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice (I'm one of those Jane fans, prone to rereading everything she wrote, but especially P&P. Plus, obviously, constantly rewatching the BBC movie with Colin Firth.)

So it all began very well. Delightful visitations with beloved characters, a nice imagining of life a few years after Elizabeth and Darcy's marriage, and tensions when Lydia and Wickham show up uninvited, leaving a body in the Pemberley woods in their wake. Wickham is quickly arrested for the murder, and poor Darcy must face heaps of unresolved feelings about the man while maintaining his distance - and his respectable position as magistrate and local VIP. I'm thoroughly impressed with James's structure and her obvious love of Austen, which allows her to create this story while keeping purist snobs like me from throwing up our arms in outrage.

Really, there's only one place right at the end when I felt James had mis-stepped with the whole "Pemberley, six years later" thing. (She had Lizzy and Darcy discuss something that I felt should surely have come up at some point in the previous years.) Otherwise - as a murder mystery, as a detective story, as a chance to see Mr. Bennet's life after his beloved second daughter moves away - this was a completely successful book for me.

And of course, Landor's narration was the icing on the cake. She gave great life to the narrative voice, and positively relished Lydia's hysterics, in particular. Her Jane was sweet and calm, her Elizabeth was patient and wry, and her local magistrate is no one I'd like to have to deal with on a regular basis.

All in all, yum, yum, and triple-yum. My favorite book of the year so far.

(I know it's only January. I've read / listened to thirty books. I'm allowed to declare a definitive favorite.)

June is Audiobook Month!

So as we know, I love audiobooks. Love 'em. Listen while I commute, listen while I do the dishes, listen on the rare occasions that I exercise, and listen while I work. (Well, as long as I'm not on the phone or writing more than a line or two of email. I mostly work with numbers, leaving the other half of my brain free to deal with words.)

June is, for whatever reason these things are decreed, audiobook month. Of course I had to celebrate, by... pretty much doing what I was doing anyway. But since it's now the end of June, and I'm a woman with a spreadsheet, I figured I'd go on a bit about the audiobooks I read this month. 15 of my 27 books this month were audio, which is a typical ratio. Here they are:



Bossypants by Tina Fey - narrated by the author. Hilarious, and probably the more fun for hearing Fey's narration than just reading it. A+ audiobook.
To Seduce a Sinner by Elizabeth Hoyt - Anne Flosnik is one of those narrators I follow around from author to author.
Already Home by Susan Mallery
Saturday Big Tent Wedding Party by Alexander McCall Smith - Lisette Lecat narrates all of the No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency novels, and is incomparable. She's another one of the narrators I stalk. With my ears. 
Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov - as I mentioned earlier, narrated by Jeremy Irons. Goosebumps.
Bury Your Dead by Louise Penny - is this first time I've heard Ralph Cosham's calm, mellifluous yet somehow gruff voice? I'm looking for more.
Quicksilver by Amanda Quick - Anne Flosnik again. 
The Lady Most Likely by Julia Quinn - Rosalyn Landor has brought me to so many different worlds and introduced me to several worthy authors - I always enjoy her narration.
Clouds of Witness by Dorothy Sayers
Unnatural Death by Dorothy Sayers
The Unpleasantness at the Bellona Club by Dorothy Sayers
Strong Poison by Dorothy Sayers - all of the Sayers are narrated by Ian Carmichael, who has such a charming voice that I very much welcomed its infection of the Lord Peter stories I read on paper. 
Double Fault by Lionel Shriver
The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot - This is the book I'll be finishing today, to round out #JIAM. I'm captivated by Cassandra Campbell's narration, and need to remember to follow her more consistently. I've actually listened to her for dozens of hours already, but I have failed to notice how much I like her. 'Twill be corrected!
The Goodbye Quilt by Susan Wiggs

So there you have it, complete with the ravest of my rave reviews. If you aren't convinced that audiobooks are superb, well, I just don't know what to say to you anymore.
(Kidding. I love you all. Thanks for reading!)