Cloud AtlasI highly recommend Dreamhost.
by Daniel Pearl; narrated by Stephen Hoye Set just after the civil war in Boston, Daniel Pearl’s The Technologists follows the adventures of several students at the recently-founded Massachusetts Institute of Technology as they grapple with a madman attacking with plagues of science. Pearl does a great job building a convincing environment for his story, [… Read More]
by J. S. Fletcher; narrated by various Librivox readers When Spargo, the reporter for the Watchman, happens upon a man who has just found a dead body, he stumbles into a shocking story of murder and intrigue in the heart of the wealthy (and presumed safe) Middle Temple neighborhood. A few thoughts: Unlike a lot [… Read More]
The Big Burn: Teddy Roosevelt and the Fire that Saved America By Timothy Egan; narrated by Robertson Dean Egan’s new exhaustive history tells two stories. It opens and closes with an enormous forest fire that swept big portions of Washington, Idaho, and Montana, using the tale of that fire as a framing device through which [… Read More]
By John Mortimer; narrated by Leo McKern Rumpole is a grumpy but quick-witted old barrister who defends clients mostly accused of petty crime, though sometimes accused of much worse. He does so with a wry grin and a glass of port to follow. A few thoughts: It’s weird to learn that John Mortimer’s Rumpole books [… Read More]
The Intrusion of Jimmy by P.G. Wodehouse; narrated by Mark Nelson for Librivox It’s a good year when you read at least one Wodehouse book, and it’s even better when the book is narrated by Mark Nelson, perhaps my favorite narrator after Scott Brick (and perhaps Neil Gaiman). In the usual Wodehouse mode, The [… Read More]
Vanished Smile: The Mysterious Theft of Mona Lisa by R.A. Scotti, read by Kathe Mazun In 1911, Scotti tells us, Harland and Wolff was building the biggest ship known to man, Scott was on his way to the South Pole, and the most audacious heist in art history was in the works. By 1913, only [… Read More]
by Grieg Beck; narrated by Sean Mangan When superhuman special forces soldier Captain Alex Hunter leads the second recovery team to investigate a new cave found under the Antarctic ice, he has no idea what he’s getting himself into. The elite military squad he commands, along with several scientists and other civilians, thinks they’re [… Read More]
An update of the audio book narrators I’ve read since the last On Voices post. Scott Brick – Foundation; In Cold Blood; The Book of Fate; The Great Influenza; Mystic River; Sea of Glory; Isolation Ward; A Stir of Echoes; The Crime Writer; Game of Shadows; Moneyball; *Bill Bryson – Life and Times of the [… Read More]
Each month, I build a playlist of songs downloaded from emusic, newly purchased from other places, or drawn from my current music collection. At the end of the month, I review that playlist. Emusic: Mike Doughty, Yes and Also Yes – More quality songs from Mike Doughty. We don’t see a lot of differentiating in [… Read More]
By Robert Harris, narrated by Christian Rodska One of the most successful hedge funds in the world has run into some trouble. Its owner, the reclusive computer programming genius Alex Hoffmann, woke to find an intruder in his home, and seems to be at the center of a vast conspiracy designed for some unknown purpose [… Read More]
Packing for Mars: The Curious Science of Life in the Void by Mary Roach, narrated by Sandra Burr In Packing for Mars, you will learn how much volume of flatus a burrito causes the average human to expel, you will learn that Russian scientists regularly smuggle alcohol aboard to bribe cosmonauts to conduct their experiments [… Read More]
by Christian Moerk, narrated by Stephen Hoye and Justine Eyre Moerk’s captivating gothic novel, Darling Jim, slowly reveals its story through a series of storytellers, each within a tale being told by someone else. The core tale involves three sisters and the eponymous wandering cad, a man of entrancing beauty and style who lures women [… Read More]
Superman on Trial is a BBC Radio dramatic presentation created in honor of the Man of Steel’s 50th Anniversary. Here’s the plot synopsis from Wikipedia (which I expanded from a one sentence to a five sentence summary): Poisoned with Kryptonite and put on trial for causing as many disasters as he prevents, Superman must relive [… Read More]
Series 1, 2, 3, and 4. Fry’s English Delight is a radio show produced and broadcast by BBC4 about the nature of the English language. It’s fun and educational, perfect for word nerds like you and me. I might be cheating to put it in my “Books I Read” category, but I think of it [… Read More]
Chocolate, Please: My adventures in food, fat, and freaks written and narrated by Lisa Lampanelli Lisa Lampanelli, “Comedy’s Lovable Queen of Mean,” spouts epithets and slurs with mind-numbing rapidity. Her comedy, standing squarely in the middle of the “insult comic” genre, could be easily offensive if one took things personally (or took things personally on [… Read More]