What I'm Listening To Now

Larry McMurtry, Lonesome Dove

This is better to listen to than to read. (I read it when it was first published, back in the 1990s.) A really slow start which is easier to put up with when you're listening while cooking or driving or waiting to fall asleep, which is when I listen to audiobooks. There are some great scenes, but honestly this doesn't really have a plot. Instead of "the queen died and then the king died of grief," it's "the queen died and then the king died and then the prince fought a bear and then..." 

The overall spine of the book is Call and Gus drive a cattle herd from Texas to Montana in about 1870, I'd say. Maybe a little earlier. The Civil War has been over for some time and the railroads aren't around yet.  Since we had railroads in the West at around 1869, this doesn't really add up. I guess it's once-upon-a-time time? Anyway.

There's also a scene with a woman giving birth that gets some details wrong. I know McMurtry had at least one kid, since James McMurtry is his son. Maybe he just wasn't paying attention?

I don't really like the ending, but overall I did enjoy listening to this one.

I tried to listen to the sequel -- Streets of Laredo -- and do not recommend.

Connie Willis, Bellwether

This is light science fiction with a romance subplot. This research institute employs researchers, while behaving more like a corporation than a research institute. The young researcher is researching fads. Another young researcher is researching chaos theory. An annoying 20 year old office assistant annoys them both. It's good to listen to while falling asleep if you know the entire plot (as I do) and so it doesn't matter if you sleep through bits of it.

Natasha Pulley,  The Salt King

I loved Pulley, and this was as much fun to listen to as it was to read. (I read it for a review in Asimov's.)

A young Jesuit-in-training is sent to investigate a possible miracle in a strange land that is in England but its own sovereign nation. Demons, angels, miracles and wonders, along with some great characters. Listening to it, you get the different dialects, which I love a lot. There's a m/m romance at the center, and a f/m one at the edges. Very much G-rated romances, as is usual with Pulley.

Also, lots of snow. I love books with snow in them.

What I'm Listening to Now

The Small Change Trilogy, Jo Walton, read by John Keating and Heather O'Neil

These are three books -- Farthing, Ha'penny, and Half a Crown -- set in an AU where Britain made peace with Hitler in 1941. FDR was assassinated in his second term, so that Lindberg becomes president just before WWII kicks off. I guess it isn't a WW, since no one except Britain is fighting Hitler; and then they make peace.

In any case, these books are about fascism increasing world-wide, and especially in Britain, so they're apropos for today's events. There's a great and awful bit in the second book, from the POV of an actress, saying all politicians are alike, Churchill and Atlee wouldn't have done anything different from the Farthing group (the fascists that take over Parliament), and the death camps in Germany are just work camps, and anyway none of Britain's business. In the third book, there's some harrowing scenes of fascists marching in London and Jews being stoned.

These are mystery books, in that each book turns around a mystery; but they aren't traditional mysteries. Mysteries are generally conservative works, in that they start with a Utopian space, which is disrupted by crime; and then the space becomes disordered and terrible; and then the police or a private detective or Miss Marple solve the crime, right the wrong, and the world returns to its former Utopian space. However, here, the space being disrupted is far from Utopian, and while the crimes get solved, nothing is made better by the solving of the crime. Indeed, everything gets worse, until the last book, which has, frankly, an unbelievable ending.

These are excellent books, wonderfully narrated. Well worth listening to. Available via Audiobooks.

The Keeper, Tana French, read by Roger Clark

This is the third in the Cal Hooper trilogy, about a Chicago homicide detective who retires to sheep country in Ireland and accidentally adopts/mentors a 13 year old (Trey is 15 in this novel). The setting, a small rural town, is as much a character as anyone else. The cast of characters includes sheep farmers, shopkeepers, ne'er-do-wells, high school students, and Cal himself. Also some great dogs.

Each of the novels contains a mystery, including this one, but honestly I don't read French so much for the mystery as her ability to create characters and place. When you listen to them, also, there are wonderful Irish accents. 

Available via Audiobooks.

The Haunting of Hill House, Shirley Jackson, read by Tony Walker

I may not make it all the way through this one. Jackson writes creepy better than anyone. It's strange, because she also wrote these charming, slightly funny stories about her children (in Life Among the Savages and Raising Demons) which are just orthogonal to the horror fiction. Those are also worth listening to, by the way.

Anyway, I'm enjoying this one so far, but man is it creepy. The set up is a professor of haunted houses (or something like that) rents Hill House for a couple of months and goes to live there with these people he hired because they (the people) all of some sort of paranormal events in their background. Like one was living in a house where stones rained down for three days, and another is apparently telepathic, or at least can identify cards without looking at their faces.

There's also a very New England peasant couple. And, of course, Jackson's wonderful voice. I like what I've listened to so far (the first half hour or so) but it's starting to get creepy. This one is available for free on YouTube.