Lately my travels took me to Colorado, Maryland, and Florida so loaded up on the old MP3 player were some interesting audiobooks.
I like to listen to audiobooks which have a connection with my hometown and Douglas Perry presents an interesting true tale of the two 1924 murderesses (Belva Gaertner, a swanky divorcée, and Beulah Annan, a beautiful married woman) who served as the inspiration for the play – and subsequent musical and film – Chicago. Perry not only tackles the story behind the murders but also the Windy City culture which seemed to idolize the killers; rarely was a white woman accused of murder convicted. Also introduced into the mix is crime reporter Maurine Watkins, who covered both trials, and wrote the hit Broadway production two years later.
The story telling is fast paced and provides an interesting look into the world of Chicago crime reporting before gangsters took over the front pages. Berkot provides solid narration although sometimes his presentation of female voices is a touch too high pitched in my opinion. Still, regardless of not digging some of Berkot’s voicework, a good audiobook which keeps things moving along at a steady pace.
I’m sure many of us think we know the story behind the Cuban Missile Crisis (Ok, at least I thought I knew a lot about it…) but Michael Dobbs painstakingly details the events day by day, hour by hour, and sometimes minute by minute as they unfolded to bring those thirteen days in October 1962 to vivid life. Everything is told “in the moment” as we go behind the scenes in Washington, Moscow, Havana, and many other locales to get a real feel for what was happening not only in America but in Cuba and Russia as well. This is fascinating stuff – much of which I had no inkling of – and it’s incredible to know the proverbial Doomsday Clock was at one minute to midnight and any number of factors could have loosed nuclear Armageddon. As the book details, in many ways blind luck rather than cool leadership saved our butts.
This is another winner worthy of a listen! At first I thought Bob Walter’s delivery was a wee bit too dry but after an hour or so I got into the swing of his narration. Granted the key players in the crisis don’t receive a ton of background info devoted to them but I think by this time listeners don’t need an extra hundred pages covering Kennedy, Castro, or Khrushchev. All in all I was pleasantly surprised by just how suspenseful One Minute to Midnight turned out to be!
So I decided to give The Companions a go as my first exposure to the Forgotten Realms series of books and R.A. Salvatore in particular. While The Companions is billed as something anyone can just jump into and start reading – without tackling any of the previous Drizzt titles – I found it a pretty hard slog. Alright, I’m not here to knock Mr. Salvatore since I haven’t read (or listened) to any of his previous work but if The Companions is an example of his writing at its best I’m going to have to take a pass on checking anything else out. Granted, it isn’t as if I’d pick up a D&D novel expecting Hemingway or Dostoyevsky but Salvotore’s writing here is so weak he makes Dan Brown read like Hemingway or Dostoyevsky…
If I hear halfling characters’ faces described as “cherubic” one more time I swear I’m going to shove sharpened pencils into my eardrums… Not to spoil anything but if readers are expecting more thrilling tales of the drow hero Drizzt, they are going to be sorely disappointed. On the plus side, if folks are fans of the Forgotten Realms – and know the ins and outs – I’m pretty certain they’ll be entertained. Also Victor Bevine does a nice job with the narration.
I’ll bet R.A. Salvatore has plenty of novels I’d enjoy, since it’s rather tough to be a New York Times best selling author if everything you do is crap (Dan Brown aside), but sorry to say The Companions isn’t one of them.
