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I listened to the Audible Modern Classics edition, well narrated by Victor Levine. I especially liked his characterization of the Blue Fairy Godmother. This book is set in WWII Germany, post-war New York City, and a prison cell in Israel. It has no science fiction tropes. I did not find any of the characters particularly likeable (but that's true of most Vonnegut for me). A line from this book is one of the favorites in my quote file, and it sums up one of the themes of the book: We are what we pretend to be, so we must be careful what we pretend to be. This book is evidence that Vonnegut is one of the great American writers. He has the gift of making hope out of emptiness and simplicity, something that many people assume only Zen Buddhist masters can do. View all my goodreads.com reviews.
Goodreads.com posted to my Facebook status line when I added this book, and my friend ![[info] - personal](http://s.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png) supergee commented that he didn't like the book. I asked why and he wrote "Not sf, crappy characters, dumb moral." I agree with point 1. I also somewhat agree with point 2 (see above) and it puzzles me why Vonnegut's "crappy characters" don't bother me the way some writers' crappy characters do. I think it has something to do with how Vonnegut's protagonists mostly aren't emo, and/or how Vonnegut's writing style is definitely not emo. (I'm contrasting it to my reaction to Dan Simmons's Hyperion, which has some tremendously emo characters which are punched up because the writing style can be pretty emo.) I don't know what supergee thinks the moral of the book is; the closest I can come to a moral in it is what I quoted above. I don't think that's a dumb moral, although I'm not sure I agree with it. (For me, it might be a prescription that I tend to over-follow. I have a hard time pretending, and it limits me in some ways.) Tags: audiobooks, booklog, books, ethics, reviews
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 Our Inner Ape: A Leading Primatologist Explains Why We Are Who We Are by Frans de Waal rating: 2 of 5 starsNarrated by Alan Sklar. I didn't care for the narration; he added a sly nudge-nudge tone of voice to any discussion of sex (and in a book about chimpanzees and bonobos there is plenty of discussion about sex) and a scoffing or superior tone to any discussion of morality/ethics. I enjoyed the descriptions of animal behavior and of interactions between the apes and their human observers. I was less impressed with de Waal's attempts to draw conclusions about human behavior from these observations. He swung between generalizing wildly about how all humans (or all men or all women) were this or that, and admitting that human behavior is so influenced by culture and learning that we are capable of pretty much anything. View all my (goodreads.com) reviews.
Other books I've read or listened to recently: Musicophilia, Oliver Sacks. I have liked every Sacks book I've read. This one is a little more scattered than some, but I found it fascinating and inspiring. Spin, Robert Charles Wilson. Overall I liked this quite a bit - there was some believable science and also some believable character interaction and development. I was annoyed that only one of the female characters had meaningful work, and there was a plot point very close to the end that I had major suspension of disbelief problems with, but that didn't really spoil the overall story. A Passage to India, E.M. Forster. This is the first Forster I've read, and I was really impressed by his ability to get inside the heads of so many different people, who were at odds with each other in various ways, and describe them all with sympathy and compassion. He did a lot more than that, but that's what I especially noticed. Tags: booklog, reviews
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(Links are to the Goodreads site.)
 Stay by Nicola Griffith
Third in a series of books featuring Aud Torvingen, who started out seeming like a sort of lesbian James Bond, but is evolving more complexity by this book. This is a well-crafted novel with two intertwined plots -- a "stay up too late to finish it" sort of novel.
 The Shadow of the Wind Bestseller's Choice Audio by Carlos Ruiz Zafón
The story was engaging -- several stories within a story, in a sort of historical Gothic romance genre. Several of the male characters are well drawn.
I was disappointed by the treatment of female characters. The women in the novel are, with one partial exception, mythical beings rather than real people, who exist solely to elicit strong emotions in the male characters.
The narrator did a good job, although he fell into certain modern American speech patterns more often than I would have preferred, given that it is a historical novel set in Barcelona.
Piano music appears behind key scenes. The music itself is lovely (and apparently composed by the author). But I find it unpleasant to try to listen to music and words at the same time, so I really didn't like the musical additions and wished they'd been left out of the audiobook. Tags: booklog, feminism, reviews
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Here's what I just posted to audible.com about Aegypt (Unabridged) by John Crowley, narrated by the author 5 stars out of 5 slow, meandering, and beautifulCrowley develops his stories slowly with lots of detail and writes beautifully. His writing and ideas are meant to be savored and pondered. If you like the idea of listening to a 15 hour and 29 minute poem, with another poem inside it, then you might well like this book.
Crowley narrates the book himself, in a flat middle-American voice, with a quirky, slightly self-conscious manner. The narration worked for me. I found his voice easy to listen to, and his reading gave me more insight into what his artistic intentions are. But the narration isn't going to please everybody. I wrote it this way because the current top review of the book is extremely negative. Some folks on audible.com really don't like slow-to-develop stories, and some folks are fussy about narrators. (Me included, on that last one.) I wanted to describe the experience of listening to the book in a way that would appeal to someone who might enjoy it, and deter someone who might dislike this kind of book. Tags: audiobooks, reviews
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Albert Kuvezin and Yat-Kha, Re-CoversThey are from Tuva, and I found out about them via ![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif) the_ogre via the movie Genghis Blues about the American blues musician/throat singer Paul Pena, and ultimately via Richard Feynman (one of the first Westerners to popularize Tuva). On this album they are covering a wide variety of mostly Western rock music, from Led Zeppelin to Joy Division. My favorites are the Zeppelin song (see the "listening to" field), "In A Gadda Da Vida," just because—who does "In A Gadda Da Vida" these days? and "Black Magic Woman," which I like a lot more than Santana's version. I can't remember where I found out about Tuvan throat-singing originally. I have had a CD of Tuvan throat-singing, Deep in the Heart of Tuva, for a long time. It has a Yat-Kha song on it. It also has a couple of Paul Pena songs on it. I have other overtone-and throat-singing music—from David Hykes' Harmonic Choir and from the Gyuto Monks Tibetan Tantric Choir (a great CD, but not the best choice to take with you to the oral surgeon when having your wisdom teeth out). Tags: cool, music, reviews
listening to: "When The Levee Breaks" - Albert Kuvezin and Yat-Kha - Re-Covers
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Via marykaykare via peake: A list of all the major sf and fantasy award winners - Hugo, Nebula, Clarke, World Fantasy, Tiptree, Philip K. Dick, Stoker. A few years ago I embarked on a Project to read all the Hugo and Nebula winners (which is proceeding in fits and starts), so I've read a bunch of these recently. The ones I've read are in bold; comments in italics. I've given ** to the ones I liked a lot (only the first time each is listed). Feel free to recommend others - my reading list can never be too long. :-P 1953 HUGO: ** Alfred Bester, The Demolished Man** ( Read more... )Tags: books, reviews, sff, surveys
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