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Showing posts with the label audio books

Non-fiction Audiobook: Cathedral of the Wild, by Boyd Varty

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Another in my long list of books about being in or traveling in the wilderness, Boyd Varty's memoir is a little different.   Title: Cathedral of the Wild: An African Journey Home Author: Boyd Varty. Audiobook narrated by the author. Publication info: Random House Audio, 2014. 9 hours. Hardback Random House 2014, 304 pages. Source: Library Publisher's Blurb: When Nelson Mandela was released after twenty-seven years of imprisonment, he needed a place to recover and adjust to his new life. He went to Londolozi Game Reserve. Founded over eighty years ago by Boyd Varty's great-grandfather, Londolozi started as a hunting safari. But in 1973, Boyd's visionary father, Dave, transformed it into a nature reserve, creating a blueprint for modern-day conservation. This transformation is the backdrop of Boyd's family history and his own personal odyssey. Alongside his feisty, daring sister, Bronwyn, Boyd grows up learning to track lions, raise leopard cubs, and pilot L

Audiobook Review: The Argonauts, by Maggie Nelson

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Reading this book was part of my on-going quest to educate myself about all things trans, and was recommended by a reader of this blog, I believe. Title: The Argonauts Author: Maggie Nelson. Read by the author. Publication info: Blackstone Audio, 2015, length 4:40. Original Greywolf Publishing, 2015, 160 pages. Source: Library Publisher's Blurb: An intrepid voyage out to the frontiers of the latest thinking about love, language, and family. Maggie Nelson's The Argonauts is a genre-bending memoir, a work of "autotheory" offering fresh, fierce, and timely thinking about desire, identity, and the limitations and possibilities of love and language. At its center is a romance: the story of the author's relationship with the artist Harry Dodge. This story, which includes Nelson's account of falling in love with Dodge, who is fluidly gendered, as well as her journey to and through a pregnancy, is an intimate portrayal of the complexities and joys of (queer

Audiobook Review: Marmee & Louisa

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I hope you all enjoyed your Memorial Day holiday. I skipped posting because hey, a holiday (okay, and it was my birthday). I'm back now, though, with a review of Marmee & Louisa, a biography of Louisa May Alcott and her mother, Abigail May Alcott. Title: Marmee & Louisa Author: Eve LaPlante. Narrated by Karen White Publication Info: Tantor Media, 2012. 14.5 hours. Hardback, Free Press, 2012, 384 pages Source: Library Publisher's Blurb: Since its release nearly one hundred and fifty years ago, Louisa May Alcott's classic Little Women has been a mainstay in American literature, while passionate Jo March and her calm, beloved "Marmee" have shaped generations of young women. Biographers have consistently credited her father, Bronson Alcott, for Louisa's professional success, assuming that this outspoken idealist was the source of her progressive thinking and remarkable independence. But in this riveting dual biography, Eve LaPlante explodes those

Non-fiction review: Nature Beyond Solitude

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A few weeks ago I reviewed a book in the spirit of Thoreau, which ended up irritating me a great deal. This book felt like the antidote.   Title: Nature Beyond Solitude: Notes from the Field Author: John Seibert Farnsworth Publication Info: Blackstone Audio, 2020. 8hrs 50 min. Original hardback Comstock Publishing, 2020. 216 pages. Source: library Publisher's Blurb: John Seibert Farnsworth's delightful notes are not only about nature, but from nature as well. In Nature Beyond Solitude, he lets us peer over his shoulder as he takes his notes. We follow him to a series of field stations where he teams up with scientists, citizen scientists, rangers, stewards, and grad students engaged in long-term ecological study, all the while scribbling down what he sees, hears, and feels in the moment. With humor and insight, Farnsworth explores how communal experiences of nature might ultimately provide greater depths of appreciation for the natural world. In the course of his travel

Non-fiction audio book: The Way Home

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Another of my semi-random picks from the library's digital audio books.    Title: The Way Home: Tales from a life without technology Author: Mark Boyle Publication Info: Blackstone Audio, 2019. 8hrs 40 min. Original hardcover, Oneworld, 2019, 288 pages Source: Library Publisher's Blurb: "It was 11:00 pm when I checked my email for the last time and turned off my phone for what I hoped would be forever. No running water, no car, no electricity or any of the things it powers: the internet, phone, washing machine, radio, or light bulb. Just a wooden cabin, on a smallholding, by the edge of a stand of spruce." The Way Home is a modern-day Walden―an honest and lyrical account of a remarkable life lived in nature without modern technology. Mark Boyle, author of The Moneyless Man, explores the hard-won joys of building a home with his bare hands, learning to make fire, collecting water from the stream, foraging, and fishing. What he finds is an elemental life, one

Audiobook Review: Surfacing, by Kathleen Jamie

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I tend to wander through the non-fiction audio section of my library's Overdrive and tag books that I might enjoy listening to while I do my daily walks. This was one of those selections, an excellent choice for walking.   Title: Surfacing Author: Kathleen Jamie. Read by Cathleen McCarron Publication Info: Books on Tape, 2019, 6h 45 min. Original hardback, 2019, Sort of Books, 240 pages. Source: Library Publisher's Blurb: An immersive exploration of time and place in a shrinking world, from the award-winning author of Sightlines. In this remarkable blend of memoir, cultural history, and travelogue, poet and author Kathleen Jamie touches points on a timeline spanning millennia, and considers what surfaces and what reconnects us to our past. From the thawing tundra linking a Yup'ik village in Alaska to its hunter-gatherer past to the shifting sand dunes revealing the impressively preserved homes of neolithic farmers in Scotland, Jamie explores how the changing natural

Audiobook Review: Nation, by Terry Pratchett

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I guess this is classified as Young Adult? Who cares--anything Pratchett wrote is worth reading. And more YA lit should be like this: long on thought, short on romance.     Title: Nation Author: Terry Pratchett. Read by Stephen Briggs Publication Info: Harper Collins, 2008, 9.5 hours. (367 pages in hardback). Source: Library Publisher's Blurb: Alone on a desert island — everything and everyone he knows and loves has been washed away in a storm — Mau is the last surviving member of his nation. He’s completely alone — or so he thinks until he finds the ghost girl. She has no toes, wears strange lacy trousers like the grandfather bird, and gives him a stick that can make fire. Daphne, sole survivor of the wreck of the Sweet Judy, almost immediately regrets trying to shoot the native boy. Thank goodness the powder was wet and the gun only produced a spark. She’s certain her father, distant cousin of the Royal family, will come and rescue her but it seems, for now, that all she

Non-fiction review: The War Below (audiobook)

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My sifting through the history audio books at the library (Overdrive) brought me this at times painful read about US submarines in WWII.   Title: The War Below: The Story of Three Submarines that Battled Japan Author: James Scott. Read by Donald Corren Publication Info: Simon & Schuster/Blackstone Audio, 2013. 448 p. hardback, 14 hrs 20 min. Source: Library Publisher's Blurb: The riveting story of the submarine force that helped win World War II by ravaging Japan's merchant fleet and destroying its economy The War Below is a dramatic account of extraordinary heroism, ingenuity, and perseverance—and the vital role American submarines played in winning the Pacific War. Focusing on the unique stories of the submarines Silversides, Drum, and Tang—and the men who skippered and crewed them—James Scott takes readers beneath the waves to experience the thrill of a direct hit on a merchant ship and the terror of depth charge attacks. It's a story filled with incredible

AudioBook Review: Into the Silence, by Wade Davis

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  Title: Into the Silence: The Great War, Mallory, and the Conquest of Everest Author:  Wade Davis, read by Enn Reitel Publication Info: Random House Audio, 2011, 29 hours. Original hardback, Knopf Canada, 2011, 672 pages. Source: Library (Overdrive) Publisher's Blurb: If the quest for Mount Everest began as a grand imperial gesture, as redemption for an empire of explorers that had lost the race to the Poles, it ended as a mission of regeneration for a country and a people bled white by war. Of the twenty-six British climbers who, on three expeditions (1921-24), walked 400 miles off the map to find and assault the highest mountain on Earth, twenty had seen the worst of the fighting. Six had been severely wounded, two others nearly died of disease at the Front, one was hospitalized twice with shell shock. Three as army surgeons dealt for the duration with the agonies of the dying. Two lost brothers, killed in action. All had endured the slaughter, the coughing of the gun

Non-fiction audiobook review: N-4 Down, by Mark Piesing

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Title: N-4 Down: The Hunt for the Arctic Airship Italia Author: Mark Piesing. Read by Matt Jamie Publication Info: Harper Audio, 2021. 11 hours 17 min. Source: Library digital resources Publisher's Blurb: The riveting true story of the largest polar rescue mission in history: the desperate race to find the survivors of the glamorous Arctic airship Italia, which crashed near the North Pole in 1928. Triumphantly returning from the North Pole on May 24, 1928, the world-famous exploring airship Italia—code-named N-4—was struck by a terrible storm and crashed somewhere over the Arctic ice, triggering the largest polar rescue mission in history. Helping lead the search was Roald Amundsen, the poles' greatest explorer, who himself soon went missing in the frozen wastes. Amundsen's body has never been found, the last victim of one of the Arctic's most enduring mysteries . . . During the Roaring Twenties, zeppe

Middle Grade Monday: A Place to Hang the Moon

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Title: A Place to Hang the Moon Author: Kate Albus. Read by Polly Lee Publication Info: Tantor Media, 2021. Original Margaret Ferguson, 2021, 309 pages Source: Library Publisher’s Blurb: It is 1940 and Anna, 9, Edmund, 11, and William, 12, have just lost their grandmother. Unfortunately, she left no provision for their guardianship in her will. Her solicitor comes up with a preposterous plan: he will arrange for the children to join a group of schoolchildren who are being evacuated to a village in the country, where they will live with families for the duration of the war. He also hopes that whoever takes the children on might end up willing to adopt them and become their new family--providing, of course, that the children can agree on the choice. Moving from one family to another, the children suffer the cruel trickery of foster brothers, the cold realities of outdoor toilets, and the hollowness of empty tummies. They seek comfort in the village lending library, whose kind

Audiobook Review: Beyond the Call, by Lee Trimble and Jeremy Dronfield

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  Title: Beyond the Call: The True Story of One World War II Pilot's Covert Mission to Rescue POWs on the Eastern Front Author: Lee Trimble with Jeremy Dronfield. Read by Donald Corren Publication Info: Audible Audio, 2015. 11 hours. Hardcover 2015 by Berkley, 352 pages. Source: Library digital resources   Publisher’s Blurb: Near the end of World War II, thousands of Allied ex-POWs were abandoned to wander the war-torn Eastern Front, modern day Ukraine. With no food, shelter, or supplies, they were an army of dying men. The Red Army had pushed the Nazis out of Russia. As they advanced across Poland, the prison camps of the Third Reich were discovered and liberated. In defiance of humanity, the freed Allied prisoners were discarded without aid. The Soviets viewed POWs as cowards, and regarded all refugees as potential spies or partisans. The United States repeatedly offered to help recover their POWs, but were refused. With relations between the allies strained, a plan wa

Audiobook review: All the Single Ladies by Rebecca Traister

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Title: All the Single Ladies: Unmarried Women and the Rise of an Independent Nation Author: Rebecca Traister Publication Info: 2016, Simon and Schuster Audio. 11.5 hours. Hardcover, 2016, Simon and Schuster, 339 pages. Source: Library digital services   Publisher’s Blurb: In 2009, award-winning journalist Rebecca Traister started All the Single Ladies about the twenty-first century phenomenon of the American single woman. It was the year the proportion of American women who were married dropped below fifty percent; and the median age of first marriages, which had remained between twenty and twenty-two years old for nearly a century (1890–1980), had risen dramatically to twenty-seven. But over the course of her vast research and more than a hundred interviews with academics and social scientists and prominent single women, Traister discovered a startling truth: The phenomenon of the single woman in America is not a new one. And historically, when women were given options beyon