Carry On, Jeeves by P. G. Wodehouse, narrated by Martin Jarvis

Rating:

* * *

The book's description from the website dedicated to P. G. Wodehouse:

A Jeeves and Wooster collection These marvellous stories introduce us to Jeeves, whose first ever duty is to cure Bertie's raging hangover ('If you would drink this, sir... it is a little preparation of my own invention. It is the Worcester Sauce that gives it its colour. The raw egg makes it nutritious. The red pepper gives it its bite. Gentlemen have told me they have found it extremely invigorating after a late evening.')


And from that moment, one of the funniest, sharpest and most touching partnerships in English literature never looks back...

The key word here is 'stories'. How on earth did I not see that when I purchased the book?! I don't like short stories, I don't get most of them and generally short stories and I don't get along very well. Inevitably, this selection didn't fare all that much better in my view. I can see that there is much writing talent that Mr. Wodehouse possessed and if it were one, full-length novel, I believe I could appreciate it a lot more than I did.

I did like Jeeves. I suspect, you simply cannot not like him. He says precious few words throughout each story, and yet these few words always present such comical contrast between Jeeves and Wooster, Without uttering a single insult, Jeeves manages to clearly show who the slightly idiotic character is. Again, I wish at least one of these stories could have been longer. I have no doubt I would have laughed my a** off.

The stories did, however, elicit a few smiles from me Bertie Wooster is definitely a very funny, if a little simple-minded, man. If you like short stories and comedy of manners, I'd say you should give it a go. Carry On, Jeeves will make for a summer afternoon or two of easy, pleasurable read.

Narration

The version of Carry On Jeeves I listened to is narrated by Martin Jarvis, and this guy just stole my heart. He's splendid. He switches between the voices without a flaw, not a line seems monotonous, and I believe he gives Jeeves and Wooster an extra special something. It is Jarvis's narration that I give credit for keeping my resolve to finish the stories going. Jim Dale is no longer the sole holder of my very 'bestest' narrator, that honor now will have to be shared with Martin Jarvis.

Soulless by Gail Carriger, narrated by Emily Gray

Rating

* * *

The book's description from the publisher's website:

Alexia Tarabotti is laboring under a great many social tribulations. First, she has no soul. Second, she's a spinster whose father is both Italian and dead. Third, she was rudely attacked by a vampire, breaking all standards of social etiquette.

Where to go from there? From bad to worse apparently, for Alexia accidentally kills the vampire -- and then the appalling Lord Maccon (loud, messy, gorgeous, and werewolf) is sent by Queen Victoria to investigate.

With unexpected vampires appearing and expected vampires disappearing, everyone seems to believe Alexia responsible. Can she figure out what is actually happening to London's high society? Will her soulless ability to negate supernatural powers prove useful or just plain embarrassing? Finally, who is the real enemy, and do they have treacle tart?

SOULLESS is a comedy of manners set in Victorian London: full of werewolves, vampires, dirigibles, and tea-drinking.

This book was fun. Pure entertainment to while away boring and/or dull hours we all have here and there.

I'll admit I have some mixed reactions to it and I was having a hard time deciding how to rate this novel. Some things just don't make sense. For example, Alexia's soullessness. It does give her that one supernatural (or rather, preternatural) power of taking away other supernaturals' powers by a single touch (sadly, no shape shifting or immortality involved) which is an interesting introduction to the paranormal genre. However, character-wise, Alexia couldn't be farther away from my idea of a soulless person (a psychopath comes to mind). I understand that to match the light and amusing tone of Soulless, Ms. Carriger couldn't make Alexia a completely evil woman, with no moral compass. But not a single, teeny tiny sinister trait? That's a little bit of a letdown. Sure, Ms. Tarabotti is stubborn, with an independent and untamed spirit, and with an alpha (of course, duh!!!) personality, but it is kind of mundane, if you ask me. For that alone, I wanted to give Soulless two stars.

On the other hand, I truly enjoyed the light tone of the whole story. I liked the humor, I liked Alexia's and Lord Maccon's 'dance' around admitting their feelings and desire for each other (don't worry, I'm not really spoiling anything, as it's obvious from the beginning where their relationship is going). I also had fun with other characters, especially with Ms. Tarabotti's mother and half-sisters. You put them all in one room and you truly have a comedy of manners. Consequently, I did chuckle a few times and smiled almost all the time, while listening to Soulless. And the writing itself wasn't half bad either. It had a kind of a spring-in-its-step quality. For these reasons, I was ready to bump the rating up to four.

In the end, after hoping that Alexia would suddenly do something deliciously evil and not getting it, I got stuck in the middle. I did like it enough to not consider it a waste of time but not enough, I'm afraid, to read the rest of Parasol Protectorate books (well, maybe if I find them during one of my frequent library sales excursions).

P.S.

The label attached to this book the most is 'steampunk'. Personally, I didn't notice many steampunk elements in Soulless. There was maybe one appearance of a dirigible delivering the queen of vampires' drone to Alexia. Not much that I can think of besides. Maybe because it's set in an alternate Victorian England? Definitely more fantasy than science-fiction, with werewolves and vampires taking the center stage.

Narration

I chose the audible version of Soulless and I'm glad of it. The narrator, Emily Gray, does a fantastic job conveying the sarcastic spark in Alexia and an overall humor of the story. She switches between characters and accents seamlessly. I never was confused as to which character was talking. Above all, Ms. Gray has a pleasant voice, breathes life into the novel and makes the listening experience worthwhile.

~~~~~~~~

FTC: I bought a copy of Soulless by Gail Carriger.

Across the Nightingale Floor by Lian Hearn

 The book's description from Audible:

A tour-de-force novel set in ancient Japan filled with passion, fantasy, and feuding warlords. The first volume in the highly anticipated Tales of the Otori trilogy.
Sixteen-year-old Takeo's village has been massacred by an evil warlord, and he is about to be slain by the men who murdered his parents and neighbors. At the last moment, his life is saved by a nobleman, who claims the boy as his kin and begins his education.
But nothing is as it seems. Takeo discovers that he has rare powers that are useful to those around him. As he grows into manhood, he must decide where his loyalties lie: with his noble master and adoptive father; with the Hidden, a secret, spiritual sect whose beliefs are forbidden; or with the Tribe, the assassins and spies who consider him one of their own.

 ********

 I couldn't, I just couldn't stand this book. I have no idea what the people who gave this book five or four stars were thinking. I just have to wonder what kinds of books they read in general if they praise this dreadful story to high heavens. Across the Nightingale Floor is one of the most boring books I've read in a long, long time. The story was going absolutely nowhere, the plot was mundane and I felt as if my brain cells were slowly disappearing. And categorizing it as a fantasy is misleading. Placing a story in a made up country (uncannily resembling feudal Japan that really had nothing to do with an alternate world) does not a fantasy novel make. I've been reading fantasy books all my life, so I would know.

I realize I'm being harsh but I am very upset and mislead by all the praise and high ratings I fell for. This book deserves three stars at best. Check that, it really only deserves two stars. I was feeling generous suggesting three.

I haven't finished this book and it's not in my nature to review books that I don't finish. However, with five hours of listening time wasted and only two and a half of this torture to go, I knew the 'Aha!' moment wasn't coming and my opinion wouldn't have changed.

2-in-1: Nefertiti & Dark Desire

Both books today are audio books. Both narrators are ones that I will listen to with enjoyment any day. However, the books differ on every other level, the genre, plot, character development and writing quality.

1. Nefertiti by Michelle Moran

Nefertiti is my first Moran’s book and also one of the very few books about ancient Egypt I have read so far. It tells the story of fifteen-year-old Nefertiti and her younger sister, Mutnodjmet as they are entering the scene of the court of Egypt. Nefertiti is married off to Amunhotep, the next pharaoh who is thought unstable and a danger to Egypt’s future. The sisters’ lives will be forever changed as they both have to find their ways amidst the treachery, the lies and the danger of Egypt’s court. Nefertiti is becoming loved by the people but also seems to share her husband’s mad vision to get rid of Amun, Egypt worshipped god and to instead worship Aten, until now a minor deity that Amunhotep wants to elevate to the position of the one and only god of Egypt. As Nefertiti’s life changes seemingly for the better, her sister’s life brings her unhappiness and misery because Mutnodjmet does not yearn for the power and wants to spend her days away from court and its machinations.

As I said, despite loving historical fiction, I don’t actually know a lot about that period in history of Egypt. For that reason, I cannot speak on Ms Moran’s historical accuracy or lack thereof. However, I did enjoy the novel for its plot which was very captivating from the very beginning. As with many HF books, there are a lot of characters present. While the main ones, Nefertiti, her husband, Mutnodjmet, Vezir Ay (Nefertiti’s father) and couple of others, do develop pretty nicely and we get insight into their personalities, there is also a score of people (such as Mutnodjmet’s body servant or her mother) that I would have liked to see have more depth. I chose to read this book in an audio format and this is one thing I am glad about. Cassandra Campbell, the narrator, does a great job performing. As a matter of fact, her voice had captured my attention even before the story did. All and all, it was a very entertaining read and I will definitely be reading the other two books by Michelle Moran, The Heretic’s Queen and Cleopatra’s Daughter.

2. Dark Desire by Christine "White Hot Heat" Feehan

There isn’t a lot in a way of plot in this book. It is part two in the Carpathians’ series. This time it’s about Jacques, the brother of the prince of Carpathians Mikhail. Jacques is captured, tortured and buried alive in a wall by cruel vampire hunters who seem more bloodthirsty than a vampire would. Jacques refuses to die and his will to live is fueled by the need of revenge and a psychic contact he accidentally establishes with Shea, a miracle-performing young doctor. Shea has been living with a strange blood disease her whole life and her decision to become a doctor came from her desire to find a cure before it’s too late for her and people like her. Until one day she has to give up her career and run from the same vampire hunters that tortured Jacques. For some strange reason (really not that strange because Jacques is calling her to him), she ends up in the Carpathian Mountains and rescues Jacques from certain death. Now they have a lot to learn and overcome together as it turns out they are life mates (meaning one cannot live without the other) as mortal danger is lurking in the woods.

Okay, if you read my review of part one to this series, you know I didn’t like it one bit. However, I was willing to give it another chance because I liked the whole premise about those powerful Carpathians who are vampires but claim to be just a completely separate species. Anyway, Dark Desire does get a little bit better, not so many over-the-top sex scenes and even the female character, Shea is a lot more likeable and believable than Raven from Dark Prince. However, as you maybe noticed from the alias I gave Ms Feehan, the language still remains pretty horrendous, with tons of repetitions and the ever present absurd phrases in the nature of ‘white hot heat’. I was entertained by the book but not for the reasons that were intended by the author. I simply had to laugh at the bad use of language and a very one-dimensional story. It was either that or cry because Ms. Feehan is a bestselling writer with millions of fans all over the world and still don’t see why. It was again an audio version and once again I did enjoy the narrator, Juanita Parker who did breathe a lot of life into this story and made it interesting enough for me to listen to the end.

The Forest of Hands and Teeth by Carrie Ryan

Okay, I'll just come right out and say that this book was a big disappointment to me. I know that it puts me in the minority, probably somewhere right at the bottom of the list but I just could not make myself care for the story and the characters at all.

Let me first go over the plot, which is probably not necessary as most of the readers out there already have heard about it. But the plot summary is always in order. As the story begins, we meet Mary who lives in a tiny village surrounded by the Unconsecrated (another word for zombies) and the only thing that separates the world of zombies from the world of the living is chain link fence (ahem, how tall is that fence or how strong that it kept the zombies at bay for generations?). Mary is a teenager ready to be married and start her own family when her mother goes out too far into the Forest of Hands and Teeth (where zombies reign supreme) and gets bitten by one of the Unconsecrated. At this moment Mary's world as she knew it ceases to exist. Her brother Jeb, who can't forgive Mary for letting their mother live and become one of the zombies, gives her away to the Sisterhood, who have more secrets that the author bothers to share with the readers. Mary is miserable, she loves a person who cannot be with her and his brother is the one who finally speaks for her (proposes to her), but she doesn't love him and she wants to get away from the village and find the ocean her mother had talked about. Mary finally gets her chance when the village is breached, the Unconsecrated turn or kill all the inhabitants, apart from, of course the most important characters: Mary, Harry, Mary's brother Jeb, Mary's love Travis and her former best friend, Cas, plus a little boy Jacob (why he's thrown in there I have no idea, maybe to help preserve the human species in the future). Okay my head hurts already. The rest is history...or future.

To be fair to the author, I think that the story is interesting and her portrayal of Mary's despair and unhappiness engaging. To a point. But when I realized that Mary was going to be the only character described in depth and all others might as well have been zombies for all the insight given the reader, I lost interest completely. I am not sure whether Mary was supposed to come off as a self-absorbed, egocentric young woman or not. If it was intentional, then it has definitely been achieved. Then again, if I have to wonder about it then one way or another something just isn't right.

Another thing going against this book was that I listened to it on audio and the narrator killed the story. The whole book was read in a monotonous tone of reading the telephone book. I actually think that the person reading the introduction about who recorded the book, the title, the author and the narrator put more intonation and emotion into her voice than the narrator. I simply could not tell when Mary was happy, sad or horrified. All and all, the narration was very robotic and the only reason I kept listening to it was because I hoped that it would get better. It didn't.

Lastly, I am not a die-hard fan of Young Adult fiction. I do enjoy some books (The Book Thief, Hunger Games, Inkheart, to name a few) but because I do not love it, it's probably difficult to fully satisfy me and what faults I can justify in genres I love, I cannot overlook in this one. As far as the dystopian theme that is resurfacing in contemporary fiction goes, if it's done well I love it. But, yet again, I am more of a King's The Stand girl than The Forest of Hands and Teeth one.

Book Info:

Author: Carrie Ryan

Title: The Forest of Hands and Teeth

Published By: Random House

In: 2009

Recorded by: Listening Library

Narrator: Vane Millon

Twenty Seven Bones by Jonathan Nasaw

I usually don’t review audio books. I like listening to them as a preferable form of entertainment while I’m driving or working out (however rarely this happens :O) but I find it quite difficult to write about character and places especially if I am not sure what the correct spellings might be, if the names I would want to talk about are not mentioned at the back cover of an audio book. This was one of the issues I had with reviewing Twenty Seven Bones by Jonathan Nasaw, albeit not the reason why I didn’t like the book.

Twenty Seven Bones is supposed to be a bone-chilling thriller (note the ‘is supposed to be’) taking place on St. Luke island. This small, quiet place is being shaken by the discovery of two mutilated bodies with their hands chopped off. A retired special agent Pendergast is asked to come to the island to help the local police solve the murders before the news of a serial killer gets out into the open and potentially ruins the tourist commerce. Soon however, the rumors spread as there are more victims popping out and the serial killer gets nicknamed “The Machete Man”. As it turns out, it’s not one but two serial killers working together. The murderers are a married couple, obsessed with the mythical power of the last breath. Soon, Phil and Emily are joined with a sneaky well known and rich inhabitant of the island, Lois (at least I think it’s Lois, might be Luis, for all I know). From that moment the events seem to spin out of control and Pendergast saves the day!


I really did not like this book. It was boring and there was nothing shocking or chilling about it. Let me just start with saying that I dislike thrillers in which the murderer is revealed at the very beginning and there is no suspense whatsoever from that point on. This was such a book. I kept waiting for the shocking ending, and kept waiting, and waiting…and it didn’t come. Let’s face it, unless a book is a grand literary achievement, with captivating writing, you need a good plot and a healthy dose of mystery for a thriller to work. Twenty Seven Bones was not a literary piece of art and it had neither a good plot or any mystery. The only good thing about it was the narrator, Dion Graham, who did a splendid job with the Creole (I think)accent. I thoroughly enjoyed listening to him, impersonating all characters and it was the only thing that kept me going to the end. At one point I stopped caring about the plot and just listened to the narrators voice. All and all, if you are in for the chills and thrills while listening to thrillers on audio, skip this one or you’re in danger of falling asleep at the wheel.

'High Profile' by Robert B. Parker on audio

I am one of those true geeks who prefer listening to books instead of music. When a few years back I discovered that there actually were books on audio, it was a magical moment for me. I have enjoyed audiobooks ever since. Until I listened to High Profile. I seriously had my 'doubting Thomas' moments then.

The book is a thriller. The premise is interesting enough. I did pick this one out of many after all. A high profile TV personality is murdered together with his lover, who was pregnant with the guy's child. Jesse, a chief of police in Paradise, MA is investigating the murder while dealing with his personal problems. He drinks too much, cannot let go of his promiscuous ex-wife and is involved with another woman, who in turn still loves her ex. Considering that Mr. Parker is among the bestselling authors on the market, one would think the book would be a quick, easy and interesting read (or listen?). The problem is, Parker apparently had some serious issues with how to write a good dialogue. And a bad dialogue turns into a nightmarish one when you actually have to listen to it. To give you an example of how it went throughout the whole book I will try to imitate a little of it:

'I checked on that guy you asked me about.' - Molly said

'What did you find?' - Jesse said

''Quite a few interesting facts.' - Molly said

'Like what?' - Jesse said

' Like he used to be married to our suspect.' - Molly said

'Really?' - Jesse said

...

Notice the 'said' word and you'll know what I mean. And it went on and on and on...and I thought it would never end. I was ready to drill screws into my brain if I heard another 'said'. For the first time in a very long time I was looking forward to descriptive passages because the dialogue was pure torture.

I know that listening to an audiobook is a very different experience from reading one and 'High Profile' is just one of the books that should never have been recorded. Unfortunately, I don't think I'll even pick any of Parker's books to read.