How To Find Good Books On Librivox

A lot of people ask me how I find time to read so many old books (I would call them classics but most of them are just old). Honestly, 80% of the classics I "read," I actually listen to on audiobook, and the vast majority of those audiobooks I download from Librivox.

If you're not familiar, Librivox publishes audiobooks of works in the public domain you can download for free. I've written about why I find Librivox more browser-friendly than Project Gutenberg before, but I also use Librivox a lot because I find it really convenient to listen to snippets of books while I'm doing routine tasks around the house or driving on errands. Since I only read one or two books at a time, audiobooks are a great way for me to balance two novels at once.

The problem with Librivox is that the quality of the audiobooks can be hit-or-miss. It's 100% volunteer, so some readers are professional and others could use some practice. This can make people shy away from trying their audiobooks; but I stumble across awesome audiobooks on Librivox all the time, and if you follow some basic guidelines (developed by myself through experience) you can make better choices in downloading books.

1. Start with short stories. Librivox has tons of short story collections, and they're a great place to start out. After you listen to some short stories, you'll probably come across a narrator or two that you really like. When that happens...

2. Look up the narrator you like and download all their stuff. Most narrators stick to particular subjects or genres, so this is a great way to discover books you might not have heard of before.

3. Books with multiple narrators are generally to be avoided. I've done the multiple narrator thing, and it's tough, even when you're enjoying the book. Right now I'm at the point where I simply won't download a novel with more than one narrator. It's better to have an okay narrator reading an entire book than a mix of excellent, okay, and not-that-great narrators together for one book. The latter makes it really difficult to follow the thread of the story.

4. Always download the latest version of a book. Sometimes you'll search for a book and come up with multiple recordings for it. ALWAYS download the latest. Chances are someone decided to create a new version because they thought the previous one was an insult to their literary sensibilities.

5. To find new books: Browse the list of recently cataloged books or just randomly search for keywords. Librivox used to have a list of the most popular downloads, but I can't find that link now. You can also try to find recs online. I like to check out GoodReads groups dedicated to audiobooks.

6. To make your life easier: In iTunes, highlight all the tracks in your audiobook, right click, go to Get Info>Options, and select Equalizer Preset>Spoken Word, Media Kind>Audiobook, Remember position>Yes, and Skip when shuffling>yes.

Questions? Comments? Have you listened to any audiobooks from Librivox you really liked?



ETA: Here is thread to a GoodReads discussion group about books people have enjoyed from Librivox. Sorry I'm posting it so late, but it took me forever to find it: Audiobooks>Good Librivox books discussion.



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Audiobook Review: O JERUSALEM by Laurie R. King

Dang, this book is long.

Mary Russell is the young partner-in-detection to the officially retired Sherlock Holmes. In the first Mary Russell "memoir," The Beekeeper's Apprentice, there is a small side note that she and Sherlock Holmes went to Palestine on a secret mission for the British government (and also to get out of the country) that's treated basically like this: "We went to Palestine for a year and it was kinda awesome and also the longest trip evar. Then we got back, yay!" O Jerusalem, the fourth book in the series, jumps back to that time period to tell us everything that went on during Russell's and Holmes' briefly-mentioned trip, to wit: they wander around Palestine for what isn't forty years but definitely feels like it; there are a lot of sheep; Sherlock Holmes gets almost-killed a bunch of times; and then they finally get to Jerusalem, where Russell starts geeking out and they stop a terrorist plot.

I can understand why Laurie R. King gave Russell's trip to Palestine its own book, because there was not way to do justice to it otherwise. As I mentioned before, this book is long. And meandery. It isn't quite that it doesn't have a plot, because it does; the reader just doesn't know what the plot is until maybe the final quarter of the book. They wander around and around with what appears to be no direction, and at some point it's like, "Just get to Jerusalem already!" Even worse, I listened to this on audio, which I really only do while cleaning or folding laundry, and thus it took me two months to finish.

I'm not going to say this book should have been shorter--mainly because I can't remember everything that went on at this point--but it does require a considerable amount of patience. It's well-researched and -written, as are all of King's novels; but I'm not a huge fan of "journey" books to begin with, and mystery books where the mystery is incidental outright annoy me most of the time, so I can't say I'm a huge fan right now.

What I did find really interesting, though, were the dynamics of Russell's and Holmes' relationship. Chronologically this is several years before they get married, before we even get a hint that their relationship is anything other than platonic. But in O Jerusalem, you definitely get the sense that the foundation of their marriage is being formed here, especially on the part of Holmes. It was more sentimental and sexual than I was expecting (not that, I'm sure, I would have interpreted it that way had I read the books in chronological rather than release order), and I think it's an awesome way to tell the story--to play with what we already know about the characters and add more layers to them that what would otherwise be there.

This probably won't be listed among my favorite Russell and Holmes books, but if you're already reading the series, naturally you want to read this one. If you're not reading the series, you're missing out on some great writing!

THE MAGICIAN KING by Lev Grossman: Drinking Game!!

   

Take a drink:

• Whenever the characters drink (natch)
• Every time Quentin says or thinks, "I'm a king in Fillory!" (Is that like being big in Europe?)
• ...of butterbeer for every Harry Potter reference
• ...of G&T for every Narnia reference
• ...of grog for every Lord of the Rings reference
• ...of a Red Bull Jaegerbomb for every gamer/computer geek reference
• Whenever it's mentioned Julia is wearing black.
• It seems like these characters have a lot of 'issues.'
• Every time Quentin goes through a door, metaphysical or otherwise.
• Whenever you fantasize about re-naming your cat Pouncy Silverkitten.

Start chugging:

• When the book focuses on Julia's past (you'll need it).
• When Quentin starts talking about being a hero (ditto).
• If you sense an extended metaphor coming on.
• Whenever your realize the words on the page are actually an anagram of YOU'RE GOING TO DIE AND LIFE HAS NO MEANING, repeated over and over. (Retroactively drink when you realize that really the entire book has been like that.)

Take a shot for:

• Every key Quentin loses.
• Every talking animal who serves as a convenient plot device.
• Every obscure secondary character that reappears out of nowhere.
• When you come across a line you want to turn into a t-shirt.

I read this book as part of RIP Challenge VI, hosted by Stainless Steel Droppings. Click on the link to learn mores.

Audiobooks are the Nom

Photo by PlayfulLibrarian

Blogging has definitely influenced my reading, but the biggest change that comes directly from blogging is my new obsession: audiobooks.

I've never had much to do with audiobooks. Colorado doesn't have an audiobook culture like, say, Utah (I'd never seen more audiobooks in my life than when I was in Utah) and my parents never listen to them. But at the same time, when I read, I "hear" the words in my head. Also, odd confession: I've always wished there was a button on the remote that worked like the mute button, but took away the picture instead of the sound so that I could just listen to the TV instead of watching it. So in way listening to audiobooks should be second-nature to me.

Nevertheless, I resisted audiobooks because I thought it would be too hard to concentrate on them. I did listen to Harry Potter on audio, but only after I'd already read them--that way if I got distracted, I wouldn't be lost. But then I finished Harry Potter and I really wanted to listen to another audiobook on a car trip, which was when I tried out Wicked Lovely by Melissa Marr. Amazing audiobook! It was so good I kept listening even after the trip was finished.

Because of that experience, I've listened to several more audiobooks (most by Melissa Marr), and they've definitely grown on me. I find myself to be more interactive with audiobooks--laughing or reacting more emotionally than I would if I was just reading. In a way, the performance aspect of audiobooks make them more fun for me, too.

Plus, you can listen to audiobooks while doing other things! I can't listen to them while I'm writing, because I can only concentrate on one set of words at a time, but definitely while cleaning or tweeting or doing something pointless like editing a video on the computer. I still sometimes get a bit lost, but it doesn't bother me that much. I think audiobooks are easier to pick up and require a bit less concentration, perhaps because the narrator does some of the work for you by filling in the tone of the writing and the emotions of the characters. Even if you don't know exactly what's going on, you can pick up on the context fairly easily.

Not to mention the fact that I really think books are supposed to be read aloud. Writing, at its essence, is just a recording of what was or should or will be said aloud, kind of like musical notes.

Anyway, that's my new thing. Do you have any audiobooks you'd recommend?

Looking for the Hero in Melissa Marr's FRAGILE ETERNITY

In Fragile Eternity, Aislinn continues to be torn between Seth, her human boyfriend, and Keenan, the fairy king of the Summer Court. Who owns her heart was definitively laid to rest in Wicked Lovely, so what machinations are at work to tear her and Seth apart in this book?

Although this series is pretty clearly marketed to girls and the synopsis centers around Aislinn, I don't think she's the protagonist of the novel--in fact, I'm beginning to have my doubts she was ever the protagonist. Wicked Lovely was a fight between Keenan and Seth over masculinity; Ink Exchange was a battle between Niall (the sassy gay friend) and Irial (the king of the Dark Court) for Niall's soul; and now there's Fragile Eternity, in which Seth and Keenan continue to struggle for possession of Aislinn and power in faerie.

Despite the fact that Keenan is the one with the super fairy powers, Seth is obviously the more masculine of the two. Instead of manning up and following Seth's example, Keenan has responded to his emasculation--exacerbated by Aislinn refusing his sexual advances and the lack power he has within his own court--by being a conniving little bitch. Instead of Fragile Eternity, this could just as easily be titled Everybody Hates Keenan:

• Donia (another fae and Keenan's long-time girlfriend) is snarly because he wants to have his cake and eat it, too--in other words, he wants to bang both her and Aislinn and have them be okay with that. YEAH RIGHT.
• Seth's annoyed because Keenan's trying to keep Aislinn all to himself. Not cool.
• Niall's still enraged over the whole Leslie thing and keeps threatening to kill Keenan if he gets the chance.

The only main character who doesn't hate Keenan is Aislinn--but she should hate him, because he's totally manipulating her for his own ends.

It's not that there aren't strong female characters in this novel, but the main action is driven by the activities of the two male characters, Keenan and Seth. While Keenan's playing mind games, Seth goes on a quest to prove his intentions to Aislinn and join faerie so they can be together as equals. Unlike Keenan, who responds to his stronger queen by guilting her into yielding to him, Seth works to make himself her equal. The women in the book--Donia, Aislinn, and Sorcha--are powerful, but their actions are a response to what the male characters do. The only exception to this is Bananach, who is one crazy bird lady.

In addition, Seth's quest leads him to make a deal that is very Persephone-esque. His story is framed in terms of myth and adventure, and this leads me to believe Seth is the true protagonist of these books, not Aislinn. Even Bananach recognizes that it's upon him the coming action will hinge; and he's the common denominator between all the fae courts and their leaders. In the first book he proved his masculinity, and in this book he demonstrates his mettle by going on an odyssey.

Like all heroes, though, Seth has a weakness: when he is in Faerie, his will is subverted to that of a woman's, which creeps everyone out. Will this prove important in the coming books? I'll have to read them to find out!


Musical notes: "Waiting for the End," by Linkin Park

Review: INK EXCHANGE by Melissa Marr

Leslie appeared briefly as one of Aislinn's friends in Wicked Lovely; unbeknownst to Aislinn or any of her other friends at the time, Les' life is nightmare. Basically abandoned by her father and working to keep a roof over her head, her addict brother occasionally drugs her and then pimps her out to his friends. To gain some control over life, Les decides to get a tattoo. Unfortunately, said tattoo is actually a magic spell that ties her to Irial, the king of the faeries' Dark Court.

As with Wicked Lovely, in Ink Exchange, Melissa Marr takes familiar tropes of teen paranormal romance and switches them up. Irial is the handsome and dangerous Dark King who isn't all bad; he cares for Leslie as he wouldn't for any other mortal, feels her emotions, and wants her to be happy. He promises to give Les everything she ever wanted: love, a place to belong, protection, revenge against the men who raped her, and above all mind bleach to take away the fear that's defined her life for months. "Only Irial makes it all better," Les says at one point. Yet Irial is not in any way the romantic hero of the story the way, say, Edward Cullen would be. For one thing, from the beginning of the novel a correspondence is drawn between Irial and Les' brother, Ren--they both use her for their own ends and take away her choices. For another, the narrator of the book (I listened to this on audiobook) makes Irial sound ridiculously sleazy. It's hard to imagine Les actually being attracted to this creepzoid if it wasn't for her tattoo.

Then there's Niall, another fae who is the Summer King's advisor and was also in Wicked Lovely (he was the funny one). Despite the fact that Niall is now part of the Summer Court, he was once a member of the Dark Court and v e r y close to Irial. Their relationship definitely contains homoerotic overtones ("He saw the dark passion in Irial's eyes," they kiss, Irial spends centuries waiting for him, I could go on). Despite the fact that Niall talks like an escapee from a Renaissance fair ("Come! Let us go to the club."), Leslie thinks he's a normal human and is deeply attracted to him. But then of course she is--Niall is addictive to humans, which is why he generally stays away from them. But he can't stay away from Leslie! Is it true love?

It's impossible not to root for Niall, who is totally likeable and has been ever since Wicked Lovely; but even though he seems like better hero material than Irial times a thousand, there really is no difference between him and the Dark King other than the fact that Niall resists the dark side of himself. At least, he does until he can't. Although he knows it's wrong and Leslie's response to him is dependent on his fae nature, her own attraction to the dark court and connection to Irial are too irresistible for him.

With two guys after her, both of whom are essentially bad news, it seems like Leslie is screwed no matter what happens. Yet somehow the tables get turned on our two would-be heroes. Les frees herself and escapes, apparently unscathed, into a normal human life, while Niall and Irial's lives are upended even as they continue to revolve around Les. Niall especially gets the short end of the stick at the ending, and one has to wonder why. Like Les, Niall was used and victimized by those he trusted, and like her, he left the Dark Court because of it. But if Niall can't deny his "true nature," the part of himself that was attracted to the dark to begin with, can Les? She was the one who initially demanded Irial's tattoo, after all. Will she eventually be unable to deny the attraction of the Dark Court like Niall? Or is the very fact that she's able to make choices for herself in a way Niall and Irial can't the element that attracts them to her?

I wouldn't call Ink Exchange a romance at all, really, but it does tell a great story and takes a deeper look at these sorts of relationships than your average YA novel. I definitely recommend this series!

Musical Notes: "Your Love Is My Drug," by Ke$ha

THE LIGHTNING THIEF by Rick Riordan

Percy Jackson is a teenager with a lot of problems--he has ADHD, dyslexia, and keeps getting thrown out of schools for bad behavior. His troubles only get worse when he's kicked out of Yancy Academy and goes home for the summer, which is when he finds out he's a demigod who is only safe at Camp Half-Blood, a summer camp built for children of the Greek gods. If all that isn't enough, now Percy has to go on a quest to stop the Olympian deities from destroying the world by fighting amongst themselves.

I listened to this on audio with Jesse Bernstein as the narrator and ZOMFG HE WAS AWFUL. He read at the pace of a snail and was really cheesy about it, as if he was reading to five-year-olds. Maybe if I was five years old this wouldn't be a huge annoyance, but I'm not, so it was. In addition, he had this habit of reading the end of sentences as if they didn't end with periods, but commas. IT DROVE ME FREAKING CRAZY!!!! For example, Bernstein would sound like he was reading,

All the way into the city, I put up with Nancy Bobofit, the freckly redheaded kleptomaniac girl, hitting my best friend Grover in the back of the head with chunks of peanut butter-and-ketchup sandwich...,

and then a new paragraph would start! I can't count the number of times I felt like I was left hanging off the end of a sentence. He also had problems with making exclamations in the dialog sound really flat, and sentences that were supposed to be flat sounded, paradoxically, like exclamations. Oh, and he can't do a Southern accent for shit. I can feel my blood pressure rise just thinking of the way Bernstein read this book, it was soooooo annoying.

Ergo it's a serious credit to Riordan's storytelling skills that I didn't just rip the CD out of my car stereo and start on another audiobook. I wanted to, believe me; but every time I felt like my sanity needed to be saved, some interesting twist in the story would convince me to keep listening to find out what happened next. There's a lot of action in the novel and Percy is always facing some new type of challenge.

Aside from the maddening narrator, this book is pretty good, although not without problems. Percy's not the sharpest knife in the drawer, and all the things he discovers during the course of the novel--from the identity of his father, to who the baddy bad guy is--are insanely obvious from the get-go. Hint: Hermes is the god of thieves, hellooooooo. Also, the environmental stuff was not well-done. It wasn't integrated into the plot and came off as preachy and kind of random. New Jersey is a forested paradise and the Pacific Ocean has so much litter in it you can't swim? I'M SURE.

Despite alllllll these problems, though, I still did enjoy the book. Like I said, Riordan can keep you engaged in the story even when you know what's going to happen. Percy is a totally likable character, and I loved how the book played with Greek myths and gave them modern-day twists. I also liked that Percy traveled West on his adventure--I guess you could sort of call this book a Western! I'm not sure I can handle another audiobook with Bernstein, but I am intrigued enough to check out the rest of the series and see what happens next.

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Harry Potter and the Book of Double Entendres

In this installment of Harry Potter, Harry becomes deeply aware of his "wand"--which, we're informed repeatedly, is an impressive eleven inches long.  Aunt Petunia refers to it as "his thing", and Cousin Dudley is intimidated whenever Harry whips it out.  When Harry proves his manly prowess by chasing away Dementor kisses, the Ministry of Magic tries to emasculate him by threatening to take away his "wand."  The fact that Dementor kisses have a vaguely homosexual overtone only reinforces Harry's masculinity--and further undermines Dudley's, seeing as how he couldn't resist the Dementor's kiss.

Harry is understandably upset about the threat to take away his wand.  Not only does he instinctively know losing it would mean not returning to Hogwarts; unconsciously, he senses that to lose one's wand equates to being emasculated.  He has prima facie evidence of this in the form of Sirius Black, someone who has been un-manned by the shenanigans of the Ministry and his inability to use magic.  Sirius rattles about his miserable house, completely impotent.  This is represented not only by his failure to control Creature, but also the fact that he is the last in his family line, symbolically at least unable to produce children.

When Harry heads to Hogwarts, he faces more challenges and threats to "wand"--namely in the person of Dolores Umbridge, the current Defense Against the Dark Arts teacher.  Umbridge is possibly the most loathsome character in the entire series, but why?  Obviously she represents the evils of bureaucracy, but then so does Prime Minister Fudge.  Umbridge's repulsive personality is antithetical to everything magical or feminine, even though she is a hyper-feminized character.  We're even told her wand is "an unusually short one."

This setting up of Umbridge as the antithesis of everything Harry Potter and Hogwarts stands for creates for the reader a witch in the worst, most frightening sense of the word--a woman who has gone wrong, who does everything a woman shouldn't do.  Instead of eating babies as medieval witches were said to do, however, Umbridge continually attempts to force Harry to deny his manhood and emasculate himself.  She calls Harry a liar and demands that he continues to lie.  From this we learn that the words that issue from a man's mouth (or at the very least a wizard's mouth, which can speak things into existence and thus create) is a metaphor for potency and ejaculation.  As Harry fails to stop himself from speaking the truth and doesn't lessen the power of his words by telling lies, he proves he has the honor and stamina to move on to the next challenge in the story.

Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix is the book where Harry comes into adulthood and decides for himself what will separate him from Voldemort and make him his own man.  Therefore it's no surprise the book is filled with so many metaphors for physical and sexual power.  This power will not be actualized, however, until book seven.  For now Harry is merely establishing the parameters and basis for his life as an adult.

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