The Signature of All Things

The Signature of All Things by Elizabeth Gilbert
(Viking / Blackstone Audio, 2013)
Format: audio CDs via library (narrated by Juliet Stevenson)

From Goodreads: "Spanning the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, this enthralling story follows the fortunes of the Whittaker family as led by the enterprising Henry Whittaker, a poor-born Englishman who makes a fortune in the South American quinine trade. Henry's brilliant daughter, Alma, becomes a botanist of considerable gifts. As her research takes her deeper into the mysteries of evolution, she falls in love with Ambrose Pike, who draws her into the realm of the spiritual, the divine, and the magical. Alma is a clear-minded scientist, Ambrose a utopian artist, but they are united by a need to understand the workings of the world and the mechanisms behind all life." 

So I went into this with not the highest expectations, and without knowing much about it other than some positive comments from people I trusted who (like me) didn't particularly like Eat, Pray, Love. 

Henry Whittaker’s adventures quickly captivated me; he’s a brash and shameless egoist whose ambition is more than enough to drive him to all the fame and fortune he craves. I wish the force of his personality had been used to greater effect after his daughter Alma grew up; suddenly he becomes someone who needs managing and coddling, a transition that doesn’t really honor the Henry we watched grow from a thieving London gardener to the richest man in Philadelphia.

It does, however, work as far as turning Henry and his vast empire into an albatross around Alma’s neck. One of her several albatrosses, as it turns out, since she is also burdened, she feels, by her size and appearance, her unusually inquisitive brain, and the Dutch reserve instilled by her austere mother. Alma is a very hungry caterpillar of a child, absorbing everything around her, but she spends the majority of her narrative in her cocoon, struggling to burst forth. It makes for some really intense drama, as Alma’s longings, large and small, fail to be realized.

And then the intense, talented, odd Ambrose Pike shows up, and Alma emerges from her cocoon, but not as the magnificent butterfly she’d imagined. At least she can fly, though, and this third part of Alma’s life is less intense but ultimately more satisfying to her as a person.

(I do realize that since Alma and her father are botanists, I should have framed this whole thing in terms of a plant growing then flowering, but then I’d have to get into a whole plot-spoilery thing about pollination, and no one wants that.)

Here’s the very weird thing about this novel. I definitely enjoyed it; I wanted to be right there as Henry grew his empire and as Alma bloomed (there, I did it), and I had physical reactions to the emotions happening (achy heart, gasps, etc.) It was intense, and took place in a great world – all the plants, all the parts of the world, all the science and brainy people. But once it was over, I was gone. It didn’t stick; it didn’t plant a seed in my soul. (I will stop with that now. Probably.)

Juliet Stevenson’s reading is impressive. She conveyed Alma’s joys and shames and obtuseness and sharpness with pitch-perfect tones. It’s a long, long narration (18 CDs) and I know from other lengthy audiobooks that there’s a tendency to lag or lose the flavor of the text with long projects, but Stevenson was present for the whole thing. (This isn’t a surprise, given some of the hefty classics she’s narrated so beautifully, but it’s still a delight.) I’m cautious about listening to more literary works (instead of reading them) because I don’t want to risk losing touch with the text, but Stevenson is so reliably accessible and emotive that I blindly trust her to interpret whatever she’s reading. That trust was rewarded again here.

The Dinner: Pull Up a Chair

The Dinner by Herman Koch (translated by Sam Garrett)
(Hogarth / AudioGo, 2013)
Format: audio CD via library (read by Clive Mantel)

From Goodreads: "It's a summer's evening in Amsterdam, and two couples meet at a fashionable restaurant for dinner. Between mouthfuls of food and over the polite scrapings of cutlery, the conversation remains a gentle hum of polite discourse—the banality of work, the triviality of the holidays. But behind the empty words, terrible things need to be said, and with every forced smile and every new course, the knives are being sharpened. Each couple has a fifteen-year-old son. The two boys are united by their accountability for a single horrific act; an act that has triggered a police investigation and shattered the comfortable, insulated worlds of their families. As the dinner reaches its culinary climax, the conversation finally touches on their children. As civility and friendship disintegrate, each couple shows just how far they are prepared to go to protect those they love. Tautly written, incredibly gripping, and told by an unforgettable narrator, The Dinner promises to be the topic of countless dinner party debates."

I'm all: woah. Then I'm all: yikes. Then I'm all: NO WAY. What a horrifying delightful spectacle of a novel. Paul deftly drew me right into the midst of his disdain for his brother, the very up-and-coming politician Serge. I'm right there with him as he disparages the fancy restaurant, the pretensions of the headwaiter, the tiny portions. He speaks with love and tenderness and respect for his wife and son, even while alluding to the very hot water his son and Serge's son are in. 

But the anecdotes pile up, inexorably, each one a little signpost. And suddenly I'm on a path, being guided by a trickster demon, and there's no way to go back. By the time Paul orders a grappa, I'm peering at this book through my fingers (I can do that when it's an audiobook.) 

Clive Mantel ate up The Dinner with a spoon. (Sorry. Couldn't resist.) The way he spits out the name "Serge" every time; his fond tone whenever he mentions Paul's wife; how calmly he relates Paul's increasingly eye-popping stories as if he, like Paul, considers them just everyday moments.  

I've seen a lot of reviews saying that The Dinner is an exploration of how far we will go for those we love, and that sort of thing. To me, that's not the theme. Instead, it's about facades, why we construct them, and how those we love do and don't see through them. Paul repeatedly quotes the opening of Tolstoy's Anna Karenina ("Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.") What Koch examines in The Dinner is the unique versions of unhappiness that make up one of those unhappy families; a funny and compelling and dire warning to all.

The Son, Reviewed by a Texan Daughter

The Son by Philipp Meyer
(Ecco & HarperAudio, 2013)
Format: audiobook via library (read by Will Patton, Kate Mulgrew, Scott Shepherd, and Clifton Collins Jr.)

From Goodreads: "Spring, 1849. The first male child born in the newly established Republic of Texas, Eli McCullough is thirteen years old when a marauding band of Comanche storm his homestead and brutally murder his mother and sister, taking him captive. Brave and clever, Eli quickly adapts to Comanche life, learning their ways and language, answering to a new name, carving a place as the chief's adopted son, and waging war against their enemies, including white men-complicating his sense of loyalty and understanding of who he is. But when disease, starvation, and overwhelming numbers of armed Americans decimate the tribe, Eli finds himself alone. Neither white nor Indian, civilized or fully wild, he must carve a place for himself in a world in which he does not fully belong-a journey of adventure, tragedy, hardship, grit, and luck that reverberates in the lives of his progeny. 

Intertwined with Eli's story are those of his son, Peter, a man who bears the emotional cost of his father's drive for power, and JA, Eli's great-granddaughter, a woman who must fight hardened rivals to succeed in a man's world."

So. My husband's from Ireland. I explained to him why this book rubbed me wrong this way: your hero is the son of mythic Celtic queens and kings. He fought off the Normans and the Vikings and the  British, too, for good measure. Helped St. Patrick with the whole snake issue. Meets the locals down the pub of an evening for a reflective pint. Has a son he lost to the IRA, a daughter who married a Protestant land owner, an aunt or three who perished in the potato famine. Let's see, what else? Oh, yes, he's best friends with a Druid and learned to write Ogham symbols before being shown the mysteries of beehive burial chambers. When the Troubles began, he watched the younger generation struggle to choose sides, all the while holding true to his abiding principals and playing the tin whistle and attending church every Sunday. His favorite child was in the GPO that day; his least favorite was the only one to survive. One granddaughter becomes a famous Irish dancer, another is part of the diaspora, and his descendants are uncannily good at surviving when the Celtic Tiger roars off into the sunset. They all invest properly in technology and also know how to farm their long-held land for bricks of peat to burn of an evening. 

Do any of their characters need to be more deeply developed than that? Is having a tangential role in every Child's History of Ireland significant moment enough to make their dynasty worth reading about for hundreds and hundreds of pages? If so, great. The Son is just right, then. 

And I don't dispute that it's well-written. I mean, I could have done without the detailed descriptions of how to use every bone of the buffalo, or how to cap an oil well, or how wild mustangs are different from domesticated horses. But then again, I'm a 7th generation Texan. I not only had all those lessons from my own schooling, but I've reviewed them all when my sons took the same year-long Texas history classes in 4th and 7th grades. So Meyer is telling a very (very) romanticized version of Texas lore here, and that's delightful and romantic and fascinating if you've never heard it, but once you have, or if you take that away from this tome, is what's left worth the hype?

For me, it wasn't. I felt beat over the head by his themes (you should probably respect who came before you, while keeping in mind that whoever that was that you're displacing stole the land from someone else to start with). I liked Eli okay,  and his progeny to some extent, but he never hit me as one of those vital characters you just can't escape once you close the book.

I do have tolerance for the sensationalizing of a dramatic history. I've enjoyed plenty of epic sagas full of sweeping adventures ripped from the headlines of whatever era they visit. In this case, though, I didn't feel like the underpinnings were enough to support the hype.

And then there's JA, who is worthy, I grant, of lots of pages because she encompasses so much that her great-grandfather would admire. And yet, she can only do so by eschewing everything 'girly' about herself, including her non-initialed name and the pearls from her grandmother. She works damn hard to fit into a man's world, and that was interesting and engaging, but also sad. I'd not have minded another female character who was interesting and engaging, even though she was 'only' raising her children on the frontier or surviving years as kidnapped Comanche chattel, or subverting societal expectations of her role as a member of the non-white underclass. (These women existed in the book, they just... didn't do much, except act as foils to the men and sometimes deliver succinct speeches about their lives before being shunted off to the sidelines for the rest of the book.)

The narration of this audiobook was great. The various narrators were quite in tune with their characters' cadences, especially in the case of Eli, whose patterns of thought were so well-suited to Comanche life even before he was kidnapped. I wish I hadn't had so very long to get acquainted with everyone, but as I did, I'm glad I enjoyed that aspect of this novel.

There, I'm done being surly now.

The Good Lord Bird

The Good Lord Bird by James McBride
(Penguin Audio, 2013)
Format: audio download via library (narrated by Michael Boatman)

From Goodreads: "Henry Shackleford is a young slave living in the Kansas Territory in 1857; the region is a battleground between anti- and pro-slavery forces. When John Brown, the legendary abolitionist, arrives in the area, an argument between Brown and Henry's master quickly turns violent. Henry is forced to leave town with Brown, who believes he is a girl. 

Over the ensuing months, Henry, whom Brown nicknames Little Onion, conceals his true identity as he struggles to stay alive. Eventually Little Onion finds himself with Brown at the historic raid on Harpers Ferry in 1859, which was one of the major catalysts for the Civil War."

The Good Lord Bird won the 2013 National Book Award and is on the current Rooster Tournament of Books shortlist. It was practically the rule that I was going to like it. But I'm such a rebel; I don't abide by rules. I forge my own path! I strike out in my own direction! No one can make my decisions for me!

So here's my own, personal, not ordained take on McBride's novel: super. I so dug the narrative voice, the main character, the thematic elements, the humor. Surely this was in part due to Michael Boatman's narration, which was all about Onion's voice. He was very much on this crazy journey with Onion, from Kansas to West Virginia, through battles and life in campgrounds and reconnaissance at Harpers Ferry, to the eve of the raid and beyond. Boatman is so good at translating McBride's tone and dialect that I wonder if I'd have enjoyed the book so much in print. (I did look at the sample online, and can see why it would be hard to jump into cold, but as an oral experience, the whole thing just runs along like a clear fast stream.)

John Brown comes across as crazy (like a fox) and super charismatic; no matter how often Onion talks about striking out on his own, he's as caught up in Brown's plans as the rest of them. Part of this is the combination of youth and the inclination to stick with the devil you know, but part is that Onion is proud to be John Brown's good luck charm. And I love the way McBride handles Brown's vast store of superstition and omens: they very much inform the text, but they don't dominate it. It's easy to just ascribe it all to Brown's craziness, but all along, and without Onion particularly noting it, those beliefs prove important.

Rooster Ten! The Tournament of Books is Back!

It's time! It's time! The Morning News's Tournament of Books Shortlist has been released!

Here it is:

A Tale for the Time Being by Ruth Ozeki

At Night We Walk in Circles by Daniel Alarcón

Eleanor & Park by Rainbow Rowell

Hill William by Scott McClanahan

How to Get Filthy Rich in Rising Asia by Mohsin Hamid

Long Division by Kiese Laymon

The Dinner by Herman Koch

The Goldfinch by Donna Tartt

The Good Lord Bird by James McBride

The Lowland by Jhumpa Lahiri

The Luminaries by Eleanor Catton

The People in the Trees by Hanya Yanagihara

The Signature of All Things by Elizabeth Gilbert

The Son by Philipp Meyer

The Tuner of Silences by Mia Couto

Play-In Round:

Life After Life by Kate Atkinson

Woke Up Lonely by Fiona Maazel

As all my loyal readers know, I've read six of these. (My non-loyal readers can figure it out by seeing that six of these have links to my reviews on this site.) (I don't have disloyal readers.) Of the six I've read, I'm delighted that each of them is in the tournament, as I very much liked them all, and found a lot 'discussable' about each. Hopefully the trend will continue as I delve into the other titles.

The first thing I did? Lots of chatter back and forth with my Goodreads group "The Rooster!", because oh, have we ever been awaiting this list. (The internet really does have every kind of community you could wish for, eh?) (Interested? - I will totally approve your request to join us.)

Second, I of course hit the search boxes on my library websites. Luckily, I was able to find most of the ones I hadn't read, so I will be powering through them in anticipation of the brackets coming out for this March-madness-style book tournament.

And third would be the reading. All the lovely, lovely reading. I'm so looking forward to it. Next up is Meyer's novel, which I've heard a million great things about. Could I possibly love it more than the Rowell or the Lahiri? Stay tuned, my friends. I'm sure to let you know.

The Lowland

The Lowland by Jhumpa Lahiri
(Knopf / Books on Tape, 2013)
Format: audio via library (but I have a hardback, Mom, so I'll leave it on your desk for you) (narrated by Sunil Malhotra) 

From Goodreads: "Two brothers bound by tragedy; a fiercely brilliant woman haunted by her past; a country torn by revolution. A powerful new novel--set in both India and America--that explores the price of idealism and a love that can last long past death.

Growing up in Calcutta, born just fifteen months apart, Subhash and Udayan Mitra are inseparable brothers, one often mistaken for the other. But they are also opposites, with gravely different futures ahead of them. It is the 1960s, and Udayan--charismatic and impulsive--finds himself drawn to the Naxalite movement, a rebellion waged to eradicate inequity and poverty: he will give everything, risk all, for what he believes. Subhash, the dutiful son, does not share his brother's political passion; he leaves home to pursue a life of scientific research in a quiet, coastal corner of America.

But when Subhash learns what happened to his brother in the lowland outside their family's home, he comes back to India, hoping to pick up the pieces of a shattered family, and to heal the wounds Udayan left behind--including those seared in the heart of his brother's wife."

I first read Lahiri only recently, which is incredibly lax of me given how much I've heard about her over the years. Oh, good gracious is she an amazing crafter of words! Her characters! I want them all in my life; I want to console them and counsel them and make their lives stronger, sooner, so they don't have to endure all the lovely-to-read-about struggles that keep me in thrall as I encounter them. 

This touched me for so many reasons - the evocative picture of Subhash's life in Maine, Udayan's passion and youth and the irrevocable paths it sets him upon, Subhash's definition of himself in both conjunction and opposition to his brother (my sister is 14 months younger than me; I know all about how true a portrait of that sibling relationship was, especially as they were growing up.) Lahiri has a knack for going in unexpected directions with her narrative, but for those paths to feel absolutely integral to the characters and their situations. As much as I loved Subhash (I mean, seriously loved - what a deeply drawn guy), my moment of devastation came at the end, a flashback when Udayan is separated from his brother, and the lowland of the title is witness to some moments that define, well, everything else that happens in the book. It's just stunning.

Sunil Malhotra is perfect for this audio. I enjoyed him as Park in Eleanor & Park, but the adult voices suit his narrative style better. He has a steady, clear, almost wistful tone that really brought Subhash's point of view to life. It was a great listen, for a great book.

My Secret Feelings about The Goldfinch

You guys! I'm struggling. Struggling to explain away my niggling negativity towards Donna Tartt's The Goldfinch. Should I have read it instead of listening? But David Pittu's narration was quite good, his voices interesting and consistent and his Theo, in particular, accessible and familiar. Is it because I'm working so much on my own writing at the moment? But I've noticed writerly tricks in other authors' works and not felt irritated by them. Is it the high expectations stemming from my love of The Secret History? But I've already been vaguely disappointed by The Little Friend, so I ought to be inured to Tartt's follow-ups not delighting me in that same way.

One thing is, I didn't like Theo very much. He was a little bit of a punk before his mother died and he took The Goldfinch (though I will say I was delighted by Tartt's creation of his 13-year-old boy voice. I spend a lot of time with smart 13-year-old boys, and she did beautiful things with the tension between child and young man, a boy who has an active - if not admirable - secret life but who still holds his mom's hand and worries about her opinion of him.) The pinball trajectory of his teen years and the overwhelming influence of Boris on his life works well and makes sense. But I am rarely interested in pages and pages of a drug-fueled life, no matter how artful or how consistent for the character. So that's part of it.

The other thing is, the visibility of the construction. Tartt puts guns on the mantle piece and says, "Look, a gun. On the mantle piece." Then she references the gun, or the mantle piece. And then the gun goes off. I found the transparency too blunt, too often. Kid is left holding a priceless painting. How about if he befriends an antiques restorer who teaches him something about preservation techniques? Hey, Boris is chewing on a thumbnail - watch out, it means something. Not that Theo will trouble to find out. It happens repeatedly, big and small things. Andy's deep dislike of sailing. Theo's engaged lover. Every mention of Tom.

I love Tartt's writing on the sentence level, the paragraph level. Her scene-setting is evocative, often gorgeous. I love Xandra and Mrs. Barbour and Pippa and especially I love Boris and Hobie. But Theo had so little agency, other than his idée fixe about the fate of the painting, always running from instead of towards, always upset but not seeking solutions.

And here's where I'm going to complain about the ending, so stop reading unless you want big spoilers.

Amsterdam.


The set-up, fine. I'm okay with his ruined suit and missing passport he doesn't try to do anything about until Christmas Eve. I guess. Not crazy as always about the drug-and/or-fever-induced dreams. But especially feel cheated by Tartt using 'dead cell phone, can't possibly find a charger or get a new damn phone or call voice mail service or log in online to see your texts or any other way for anyone to get in touch with him' as a device. He never checks email? Boris never phones the hotel? Coupled with 'oh these Dutch papers I can't read are the only ones I could possibly get my news from so don't even bother delivering the International Herald Tribune to me, thanks,' I was about ready to throw the book across the room, except it was an audiobook I was listening to on my phone, since THAT'S HOW TECHNOLOGY WORKS NOW, Tartt, and you can be as elaborate as you want in explaining why he's not accessing it, but it's going to read like you're trying too hard and you're not then justifying that effort with a payoff. If somehow Theo had woken up and managed to direct his own destiny, I might have been able to ignore those factors, but he didn't, so it's a constant thorn.

A Tale for the Time Being

A Tale for the Time Being by Ruth Ozeki
(Viking, 2013)
Format: paper via library

From Goodreads: " 'A time being is someone who lives in time, and that means you, and me, and every one of us who is, or was, or ever will be.'

In Tokyo, sixteen-year-old Nao has decided there’s only one escape from her aching loneliness and her classmates’ bullying. But before she ends it all, Nao first plans to document the life of her great grandmother, a Buddhist nun who’s lived more than a century. A diary is Nao’s only solace—and will touch lives in ways she can scarcely imagine.

Across the Pacific, we meet Ruth, a novelist living on a remote island who discovers a collection of artifacts washed ashore in a Hello Kitty lunchbox—possibly debris from the devastating 2011 tsunami. As the mystery of its contents unfolds, Ruth is pulled into the past, into Nao’s drama and her unknown fate, and forward into her own future.

Full of Ozeki’s signature humor and deeply engaged with the relationship between writer and reader, past and present, fact and fiction, quantum physics, history, and myth, A Tale for the Time Being is a brilliantly inventive, beguiling story of our shared humanity and the search for home."

Nao! Wonderful, complicated, smart, bullied, depressed, buoyant, philosophical, super Nao. She's a treasure of a character, and her tale is the definition of engrossing. I wanted to devour it in one setting, but Ruth wouldn't let me. (Ruth the character, not Ruth the novelist.) Ruth makes it all about her, possessive of Nao even with her husband. And possession gradually gives way to obsession, which is a whole delightful journey of its own, no matter how often I wanted to shake Ruth (the character) and force her to let me get back to the next installment of Nao's journal. (Okay, maybe in those cases it was Ruth the author I wanted to shake. But then she would grant me some wonderful moment with Ruth the character, and I had to restrain myself.)

This is the first of the 2013 Booker Shortlist books I've read, and based on this, I'm excited to get to the rest of the list. 

Life After Life: Love!

Life After Life by Kate Atkinson
(Random House Audio, 2013)
Format: Audio CDs via library (narrated by Fenella Woolgar)

From Goodreads: "During a snowstorm in England in 1910, a baby is born and dies before she can take her first breath. During a snowstorm in England in 1910, the same baby is born and lives to tell the tale.

What if there were second chances? And third chances? In fact an infinite number of chances to live your life? Would you eventually be able to save the world from its own inevitable destiny? And would you even want to?

Life After Life follows Ursula Todd as she lives through the turbulent events of the last century again and again. With wit and compassion, she finds warmth even in life's bleakest moments, and shows an extraordinary ability to evoke the past. Here is Kate Atkinson at her most profound and inventive, in a novel that celebrates the best and worst of ourselves."

Oh, you've heard the buzz. And you've looked at the kinda weird roses on the cover and thought, 'eh, is this for me?' Well, you can trust me - the answer is YES. It's for you, it's for me, it's for humanity (not to get too OTT this early on in my review, but honestly? I'm not wrong.) I'm an avowed fan of Atkinson's, but it's not that I'm predisposed to adulation - she's always doing something a little, or a lot, different from before, so I take her on a case by case basis. Much like Ursala begins to do, at the point in her life when she realizes that her choices have some very clear consequences. Ursula is a compelling, emotion-driven scientist, and her area of study is her life. As she relives and relives crucial moments in her childhood, first unknowingly then deliberately altering events to avert tragedies for the people in her world, Ursula makes us all think about the lengths we would go to to prevent harm to our loved ones. And when our loved ones start being endangered by world events, it stretches Ursula - and us. How far will we go, how much will we put up with, how much should we personally suffer to bring about change, and will our sacrifices even work? 

It's not just big concepts, though. Life After Life is also a story about family, about the beloved little brother and the difficult big brother, about the black sheep aunt and how she fits in, about chance meetings that mean the world. All that gorgeous detailed stuff that Atkinson does so well, as well.

This was the first narration of Woolgar's I've heard, and there is something deceptively placid about her tone that still had the power to stop me in my tracks. I wanted to flip back and forth a lot more than usual with this book so it may have been a better choice for me in paper, but Woolgar drove the pace admirably and I'm glad to find another narrator I enjoy.

How To Charm Mel

How to Get Filthy Rich in Rising Asia by Mohsin Hamid
(Riverhead, 2013 - also Penguin Audio, 2013)
Format: audio CDs via library (narrated by the author)

From Goodreads: "The astonishing and riveting tale of a man’s journey from impoverished rural boy to corporate tycoon, it steals its shape from the business self-help books devoured by ambitious youths all over “rising Asia.” It follows its nameless hero to the sprawling metropolis where he begins to amass an empire built on that most fluid, and increasingly scarce, of goods: water. Yet his heart remains set on something else, on the pretty girl whose star rises along with his, their paths crossing and recrossing, a lifelong affair sparked and snuffed and sparked again by the forces that careen their fates along.

How to Get Filthy Rich in Rising Asia is a striking slice of contemporary life at a time of crushing upheaval. Romantic without being sentimental, political without being didactic, and spiritual without being religious, it brings an unflinching gaze to the violence and hope it depicts. And it creates two unforgettable characters who find moments of transcendent intimacy in the midst of shattering change."


I've seen Hamid's name bantered about, but this is my first time reading him. Oh, he's a charmer of a writer. This short but expansive novel parodies self-help books with each new chapter, trying to keep the "you" of the supposed audience on track to filthy richness, despite obstacles such as a poor rural childhood, power and gas outages in the burgeoning business, mafia-friendly competitors, corrupt government officials, etc. And most importantly, by keeping "you" away from the alluring "pretty girl" (another very real but nameless character) who keeps popping up and stealing your thoughts from the path to success. It's all fun, and a fantastic depiction of modern life in parts of Asia. 

Hamid narrated the audiobook with great flair and with his tongue firmly in his cheek (as it should be) with the self-help portion of each chapter. His energy didn't flag even when the story did a couple of times (the "pretty girl" was so much more interesting in her teens and middle age than she was in her early adulthood), which kept me engaged. It's only 5 CDs long, so if you're interested in audios but don't want to commit to something that'll take over a month of your commute, this is a good one to check out.

Bibliophilia, or, The Book So Nice I Paid for It Thrice

Eleanor & Park by Rainbow Rowell
(St. Martin's Press, 2013)
Format: so many formats. I used an Audible credit (narrated by Rebecca Lowman & Sunil Malhotra), then I bought it in paper. That's right: paid for it twice. (Three times if you include the one I bought as a gift.) Cause why? Cause I love it, that's why. Also because she signed this awesome book plate for me, and I had to have something to put it in, right? 

From Goodreads: "Bono met his wife in high school," Park says.
"So did Jerry Lee Lewis," Eleanor answers.
"I’m not kidding," he says.
"You should be," she says, "we’re sixteen."
"What about Romeo and Juliet?"
"Shallow, confused, then dead."
''I love you," Park says.
"Wherefore art thou," Eleanor answers.
"I’m not kidding," he says.
"You should be."

Set over the course of one school year in 1986, ELEANOR AND PARK is the story of two star-crossed misfits – smart enough to know that first love almost never lasts, but brave and desperate enough to try. When Eleanor meets Park, you’ll remember your own first love – and just how hard it pulled you under.

So, look. I told you last year to read Rowell's first novel, Attachments. Remember? When I said it was super funny and right and that she knew people inside out? Well, turns out that wasn't a fluke. Because now we have Eleanor, who is permanently lodged in my heart, and Park, who, dude. Just send me back to 1986; I was a sophomore in high school then, too. I'd totally have fought Eleanor for him.(Well, I wouldn't have. I was too introverted. Unlike now, clearly. Hello, all you dear friends who I talk at but not face-to-face, thanks for stopping by.) I'd have watched them and been jealous, though. Because Eleanor & Park together - oh, so right. Even when they're breaking my heart because the world is a sucky place sometimes, they're oh, so right. Heartbreakingly right. 

(I'm a little broken by this book.)

Also in this book: music, comic books, too many kids sharing one measly room, the politics of who sits where on the school bus, excruciating gym clothes, more music, the difficulty in affording batteries for your soul-saving walkman when you're very poor, veterans as parents, an Impala, and Shakespeare. Every bit of it as glorious as the last bit.

My oldest kid & I listened to the audio while we did our spring break college visit road trip. Here's me: let's hit the road! Time to put on E&P! Here's him: wait, where's the pause button? I just have to find this song they're talking about. Cue me, pretending to care about whatever, lyrics, rhythm, yeah sure, but not-so-secretly impatient to get back to the text. (I'm not nearly as musical a person as - well, anyone else in my family.) (Did you know some people use their time in the car to listen to music instead of audiobooks? Weird, right?) Lowman was the bomb - she could make me tear up with, like, half a syllable (hello, strange hilly dark Virginian roads! You don't need me to see as I navigate you, do you?) - I'm thinking she was absorbed in the story as I was, and she very beautifully accessed Eleanor's agonies and ecstacies. I also enjoyed the other character voices she used. Malhotra was a lovely Park, wry and shy and able to make me cry. My son in particular was put off by his voice for Park's mom, which was pretty extremely accented for a woman who'd been in the U.S. for twenty or so years. Other than that, I'm all about this audio - the pacing and production were great. Oh, wait, one more thing - I do agree with my son that it would've been great if they'd been able to include some of the music E&P shared during the audiobook. But Rowell made a playlist page on her site, so you can listen along, too, even if you go for the print version of this super A+ I'll be raving about it for years book. (Mom, I'll loan you one of my copies.)