BOOK CLUB – The Reservoir by John Milliken Thompson

Jul 262011
 

5256159881 7ba9c432e6 m pictureWelcome to BOOK CLUB, which I run with co-conspirator Nicole from Linus’s Blanket. Today we will be chatting about The Reservoir by John Milliken Thompson, which was released at the end of June from Other Press (website | twitter | facebook). For those of you reading this post, please remember that this discussion is likely to contain spoilers.

Here is the synopsis of the book I wrote for my review:

When a young, pregnant woman, Lillie, is found floating dead in Richmond’s reservoir, the cause of death is originally thought to be suicide, but soon the evidence piles up so that murder is suspected. Before too long, the police pick up Lillie’s cousin Tommie, with whom she had been having a fling. As it becomes more and more obvious that Tommie was with Lillie the night she died, he is put on trial for her murder, his own life hanging in the balance.

theresevoir pictureBefore we get started, here are some of the reviews of readers who will be participating today:

Caribou’s Mom
Devourer of Books
House of the Seven Tails
Indie Reader Houston
Linus’s Blanket
That’s What She Read

If you plan on participating in today’s BOOK CLUB, please consider subscribing to comments at the bottom of the page (please use the TOP subscription option, the second option will subscribe you only to replies of your own comments).  I will be updating this post with new questions and ideas over the course of the day.

Here we go…

  • First off, what were your general impressions of the book?
  • Is this a book you would have read had you not been reading it for a book club?
  • I suspect some people will be put off by the distant language. Did you find yourself able to engage with the story and characters?
  • Fictionalizing true crime can be difficult. Do you think that Thompson struck a good balance between the different genre elements of his story?
  • Richmond reacted quite strongly to Lillie’s death and Tommie’s accusation. What does their reaction tell us about the mood of the town post-Civil War? Was the level of engagement a believable part of the story for you?
  • Thompson tells Tommie’s story by alternating between the storyline of the trial and his earlier life and interactions with Lillie. Was this method effective?
  • Do you believe Tommie’s final story of what happened to Lillie? If not, what do you think really happened?

12 review copies of The Reservoir were provided by Other Press in order to facilitate this discussion.  Thank you!

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Audiobook Resources – Audiobook Week Discussion

Jun 102011
 

If you wrote a post on this or any of my other discussion topics today, Friday, June 10th, please leave your link in the Mr. Linky before midnight Central time (US) and you will be eligible to win a prize.

Today we’re talking about audiobook resources. There are a lot of great ones out there, but I’m welcoming Susan from Audiobook DJ to share a little about one of my favorite resources: Audiobook Jukebox. Make sure to read all the way to the end for a special mini-challenge.

AudiobookWeek picture

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I want to thank Jen for inviting me to tell you about Audiobook Jukebox, a project that’s become one of the most exciting things I’ve worked with in a long time. Originally founded by BethFishReads and myself, Audiobook Jukebox grew from the desire to have a place where bloggers could share links to their audiobook reviews and find audiobook reviews contributed by others.

We liked the imagery of a jukebox because, just as a jukebox provides a link between listeners and its collection of songs, we wanted our jukebox to be a link between listeners and all of the great audiobooks waiting to be heard. We quickly learned we weren’t the only ones who loved listening to and reviewing audiobooks – the response from bloggers has been tremendous!

When you submit a link, we add/verify bibliographic information and the correct cover shot for the title. We include this information, along with your link, in a post which alerts readers to the availability of your review. Once posted, all of the bibliographic information is available for searching on our site’s search engine and when readers find interesting titles, they can use the links to go directly to your reviews. Started in August of 2010, we’ve already posted over 3,000 review links. My husband, Jeff, and I now operate the site and we hope you’ll drop by www.audiobookjukebox.com to add a link and search for that next great listen.

Susan Dunman
Twitter – @audiobookdj
http://www.audiobookjukebox.com

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For an extra chance to win some of our Audiobook Week prizes, link up the audiobook reviews you wrote this week – or any that you have not already linked up – to Audiobook Jukebox. I will choose at least one winner from among the people who post reviews today, Friday, June 10th.

What are your best audiobook resources?

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Audiobooks for the Uninitiated – Audiobook Week Discussion

Jun 092011
 

If you wrote a post on this or any of my other discussion topics today, Thursday June 9th, please leave your link in the Mr. Linky before midnight Central time (US) and you will be eligible to win a prize.

AudiobookWeek pictureOkay, so here’s my thing with transitioning to audiobooks. Just because you are an awesome reader does not automatically mean you are going to be an awesome listener, at least not immediately. But this is actually good news. It means if you try an audiobook once and aren’t really into it, you aren’t somehow a person who is just incapable of audiobooks.

Audiobook literacy is a skill, just as printed word literacy is a skill and, while they are complementary, they do not overlap completely. If you are already a good reader, you have a huge leg up on developing your audiobook literacy, but you won’t just be magically there. It does take a little time to train your brain to process the spoken word in the same way it processes the written word; most of us haven’t sat and listened to someone read aloud to us for decades before starting to listen to audiobooks. I jumped right into audiobooks, but I found I would often have little to no idea what happened at the beginning of the book for my first 5-10 audios, because it wasn’t until the story sucked me in that my brain would realize it should be paying attention. Now, if you are trying to listen to a complicated audiobook, this can be an incredibly frustrating problem, because some books cannot be caught back up with easily. Obviously everyone will progress at different rates, but here are some things you can do to help acclimate your brain to audiobooks without frustration:

  • Listen to books you have already read – Listening to old favorites is a great way to break into audiobooks. For one thing, if you lose concentration on the audio, it doesn’t particularly matter, because you already have a good idea as to the plot. It is a great way to let your brain work on the process of paying attention to the spoken word.
  • Listen to audiobooks with less complex storylines – I still regret the fact that I attempted Cutting for Stone by Abraham Verghese on audio relatively early in my listening career. The narrator, Sunhil Malhotra, was fabulous, but the frequent jumps in the timeline of the story just lost and frustrated me. Straightforward plotlines are easier to follow along with, which is a huge help when your brain is still figuring this whole audiobook thing out.
  • Listen to engaging narrators – If your first audiobook experience is with a mediocre narrator, you’re going to have a tough time paying attention, even to a really interesting book. Ask your listening friends who their favorite narrators are, and pick something up by them.
  • Listen to an audiobook with quick pacing – Quick pacing catches your attention right away, and helps keep your interest for longer periods of time, without getting any listening fatigue. Mysteries tend to be particularly good for this, as long as they aren’t overly convoluted.

Do you have any tips to add? What are your top recommended titles or narrators for new listeners?

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Sound Effects in Audiobooks – Audiobook Week Discussion

Jun 072011
 

If you wrote a post on this or any of my other discussion topics today, Tuesday June 7st, please leave your link in the Mr. Linky before midnight Central time (US) and you will be eligible to win a prize.

AudiobookWeek pictureSound effects in audiobooks are a divisive topic.

There are audiobooks I have really adored that good friends have nearly dropped audiobooks, had them almost ruined by the addition of sound effects. Where do you come down on this issue?

Personally, I find that some, but not all, titles are enhanced by judicious use of sound effects. For example, in the above mentioned title, there were only three sound effects, although they were used multiple times :a train whistle, a violin song, and the wind. All three were major plot elements with thematic basis, and for me they enhanced the story. Similarly, the audiobook of Matched by Ally Condie occasionally used sound effects. In Matched the effects were used in a way that made me feel the other-future-ness of the storyline, which enhanced the book in a way the narrator – although talented – would not have been able to do.

I very much do not want sound effects in every audiobook I listen to, but for some titles, they work for me.

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2010-2011 My Audiobook Year – Audiobook Week Discussion

Jun 062011
 

If you wrote a post on this or any of my other discussion topics today, Monday June 6th, please leave your link in the Mr. Linky before midnight Central time (US) and you will be eligible to win a prize.

AudiobookWeek pictureMy year in audiobooks has been an amazing one. Since the end of Audiobook Week last year, I have listened to 51 audiobooks, which is slightly more than one per week on average, since Audiobook Week was later in the month last year.

I’ve also started reviewing for Audiofile Magazine, which has exposed me to a ton of great audiobooks that might not have ever been on my radar otherwise.

Here are some of my favorite titles from the past 12 months (not including the reviews I have on tap for this week):

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A Rose by Any Other Name…

May 112011
 
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From Marlis1 on flickr

(Hmm, maybe I shouldn’t have been so hard on How Shakespeare Changed Everything given today’s title.)

One of the interesting things about book blogging is discovering all the idiosyncratic things I do in my reading that I had never noticed before. Almost exactly a year ago, I had a discussion here about how much attention I and other readers pay to physical descriptions of characters. That discussion was based on another review I saw of a book I really enjoyed, Between Friends by Kristy Kiernan and how physical description – or lack thereof – influenced our feelings about the book as readers. Kristy also responded with an author’s perspective.

Lately I’ve been thinking about another of my odd reading habits, which relates to the names of characters. It seems that I primarily have two settings when it comes to names: I ignore them, or they bother me. Honestly, most of the time I have no idea what the names of any given character are when I finish the book, often this is even the case when I am in the middle of the book. Realizing that I tend not to pay attention to the name OR physical characteristics makes me wonder exactly how I do identify characters, but I suppose this explain why I have trouble with books that have a large number of generally indistinct minor characters, if I don’t understand their actions and motivations, I just can’t keep them straight.

For me the name is not a word with meaning in and of itself, but it acts as short hand for everything that makes the character who they are. Which I assume is the case for many people, except maybe most of you actually pay attention to the name itself as well?

Which brings me to my second weirdness with names. Generally, the only times that I do pay attention to the name as a word is when it seems to me to jar with my experience of the character. There was one case in which a character with a name I didn’t think fit nearly ruined the book for me, because every single time she showed up I was drawn so far out of the story. More recently, I was occasionally distracted by two out of three women in Mothers & Daughters by Rae Meadows having flower names, although that book I still very much enjoyed. And, in fact, in that case the name issue caused me to continue to think about the book long after I had finished it, and I have now concocted a reason for the way the names flowed from one generation to the next which I think is consistent with the motivations of the characters. So, I suppose in that case the names eventually actually added to the story for me.

I’m putting all of this out there hoping that I’m not completely alone. Do you pay attention to the names of characters? Do character names ever change how you feel about a book? Am I insane?

I’d also love to hear from some authors how they name their characters. Just names you like? Names that mean something specific to the character? Another way?

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BOOK CLUB – The Last Brother

Feb 222011
 

5256159881 7ba9c432e6 m pictureWelcome to BOOK CLUB, which I run with co-conspirator Nicole from Linus’s Blanket. Today we will be chatting about The Last Brother by Nathacha Appanah, which was released at the beginning of February from Graywolf Press (website | twitter | facebook). For those of you reading this post, please remember that this discussion is likely to contain spoilers.

Here is the synopsis of the book I wrote for my review:

In 1944, the island of Mauritius in the Indian Ocean is somewhat removed from the rest of the world, enough that a nine year-old boy would not know that the rest of the world had been embroiled in a bitter war. Of course, even without knowledge of the war, Raj has a very painful life of his own, growing up in a small, poor village with a violently alcoholic father, and losing his two brothers to a storm. His life is difficult enough that things actually seem to be looking up with Raj is hospitalized at the prison his father works for – the only hospital facility around – and meets David. Raj doesn’t understand why David and so many other light skinned men and women are imprisoned, on Mauritius the white men are the ones who are in charge, not the ones found in prison. Regardless, though, he and David are immediate friends, more like brothers, really. The Last Brother is framed from the modern-day adult perspective of Raj, and we know almost immediately that something tragic happened during his time with David, although it is only through his recollection of the past that we discover exactly what it was.

5379298489 226befed41 m pictureBefore we get started, here are some of the reviews of readers who will be participating today:

Caribousmom
Devourer of Books
Diary of an Eccentric
Indie Reader Houston
It Was Uphill Both Ways
Must Read Faster
That’s What She Read

If you plan on participating in today’s BOOK CLUB, please consider subscribing to comments at the bottom of the page (please use the TOP subscription option, the second option will subscribe you only to replies of your own comments).  I will be updating this post with new questions and ideas over the course of the day.

Here we go…

  • First off, what were your general impressions of the book?
  • Is this a book you would have read had you not been reading it for a book club?
  • What were your impressions about the way Nathacha Appanah framed this book, opening it with Raj as an older man remembering his childhood and time with David?
  • Cassandra from Indie Reader Houston commented that Raj seemed to relive his past so completely that he even regains his youthful innocence. Do you agree? How does this influence Raj’s reliability as a narrator?
  • Whose story do you think Appanah was primarily telling? Raj’s? David’s? Why?
  • Did the fact that the book is translated change the way you read it or felt about it?
  • What questions did you have for the group?
    Two more questions inspired by TopherGL
  • Does hearing a similar story multiple times, even about a truly horrific event desensitize us to it?
  • How does Raj and David’s story touch upon World War II and the Holocaust in a unique way, even with barely mentioning it overtly?

12 review copies of The Last Brother were provided by Graywolf Press in order to facilitate this discussion.  Thank you!

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Fairy Tales – What’s Old is New

Feb 012011
 

tumblr leo3ye1P0T1qeozlzo1 250 pictureWell, our show on Jane Eyre is officially live, and we’re ready for the hate mail to come rolling in (please leave it at oldisnewpodcast(at)gmail.com or attached to the show notes for the podcast, not here).

Now that that is taken care of, Nicole and I are turning our attention to fairy tales!

We’ve been gathering literary criticism, original fairy tales, and retellings. I have a whole shelf full already, including these:

5408633448 a103e3eb69 m picture5408633524 d4083d56d7 m picture5408633464 3a60beb3dc m picture5408023723 b2bcaa2170 m picture

I would love to know more about some of your favorite fairy tales, your favorite retellings, or your favorite fairy tale analysis.

Oh, and if you would like to read fairy tales along with us, feel free to grab our button:

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Sunday Spotlight on: Some Sing, Some Cry by Ntozake Shange and Ifa Bayeza

Oct 102010
 

5060639214 141edd3ab0 m pictureToday I want to talk about a book I am dying to read, but which I was not able to fit in in time to review it for my Chicago Author Month.

At 560 pages, “Some Sing, Some Cry” is a sweeping epic of the African American experience from emancipation through Vietnam, told through the lives of one family. Interestingly enough, “Some Sing, Some Cry” is actually the result of a collaborative effort between sisters. Ntozake Shange and Ifa Bayeza are both successful playwrights, with Shange also having published fiction and poetry. Although Shange lives in New York, Bayeza makes her home in Chicago, which is why I chose to spotlight this during my Chicago Author’s Month.

I am typically not a huge fan of historical fiction set in the United States, but this is exactly the sort of thing that sways me. I love epics like “Some Sing, Some Cry” that showcase a nation and a people’s history while at the same time personalizing events through a focused group, such as a single family.

From the few pages I read, “Some Sing, Some Cry” seems to be well-written and moving, just the sort of book I’d like to settle in with over a long weekend.

4866515992 41b02a5de1 m pictureHave read “Some Sing, Some Cry?” If so, what did you think of it? Is this the type of book that appeals to you?

I received no compensation for this post, including a copy of the book for review.

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Recommended Audiobooks – Audiobook Week Discussion

Jun 252010
 

If you wrote a post on this or any of my other discussion topics today, Friday June 25th, please leave your link in the Mr. Linky before midnight Central time (US) and you will be eligible to win a prize.

4629932963 f158331a61 m pictureI know that I’m the one who picked this question, but I still think it is a very difficult one!

For people who were new to audiobooks, I would probably recommend “The Help,” because I think that is a fantastic introduction to audiobooks. The multi-voiced cast is fabulous, and I think their narration really adds to the story. I’d also definitely recommend the “Harry Potter” audios as a good way to ease into audiobooks. I listened to and loved the Jim Dale versions, but I know people are crazy about the Stephen Fry versions as well.

For those already acquainted with audiobooks, I would recommend the following audios that I have loved:

  • “America, America” by Ethan Canin, narrated by Robertson Dean
  • “The Thirteenth Tale” by Diane Setterfeld, narrated by Ruthie Henshall and Lynn Redgrave
  • “So Cold the River” by Michael Kortya, narrated by Robert Petkoff
  • “Paper Towns” by John Green, narrated by Dan John Miller
  • “Major Pettigrew’s Last Stand” by Helen Simonson, narrated by Peter Altschuler
  • “The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks” by Rebecca Skloot, narrated by Cassandra Campbell and Bahni Turpin
  • “Bad Things Happen” by Harry Dolan, narrated by Erik Davies
  • “When You Are Engulfed in Flames” by David Sedaris, narrated by David Sedaris

Added:

  • “The Little Stranger” by Sarah Waters, narrated by Simon Vance

I’m also loving “Feed” by Mira Grant right now, which is narrated by Paula Christensen and Jesse Bernstein, but I guess I can’t recommend it for sure until I finish.

What audiobooks do you recommend? I’m always happy to add to my wishlist!

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