Considering that I‘m a full-blown atheist, I‘m surprised at how much I‘m enjoying this book! It‘s a translated record (from Norwich English to Chaucerian English) of an Anchoress‘ visions in the 14th c. and, her interpretations worked out over a 20-year period afterwards.

It‘s all pretty much, “God is Love” but there‘s something about the way she has developed her ideas from her visions that‘s fascinating.

🎧 Next up: An audiobook that‘s been in my queue for several years— ever since @BethFishReads cited it as one of her personal all-time favorite audiobooks!

#AudiobookPantheon

🎧 Started the last book of the trilogy…
Even though I gave no idea what the twinkle fairies (?) are saying, I‘m thoroughly enjoying this comic adventure wherein the Prince(s) Charming(s) find their names on wanted posters across the thirteen kingdoms!

I think I‘ll also want to get print copies for the illustrations and to figure out what those fairies are saying!

I‘m not a big fan of ‘Kindred‘ but my workplace book club chose this other Butler title in a nod to climate change. I‘m a third of the way in and finding it utterly compelling!

In the now-near future, Lauren lives in a poorly fortified enclave of 11 neighborhood houses 20 miles away from L.A. Climate change, social inequity, deteriorating infrastructure & civil services and, polemical politicians have lead to people living in survival mode…

Four guys from the Blackfoot Nation slaughter a herd of elk 10 years ago on restricted hunting grounds— and now they are haunted by their consciences and an elk spirit…

Engrossing, graphic and tense…

The audiobook narrator, himself a Blackfoot, narrates— sometimes a bit fast but nicely done overall 🎧

It hit 112 degrees Fahrenheit today and the power grid blinked for a bit so, staying in a cool, dark room with an audiobook was the way to go! This is a cozy mystery set in Brighton (UK) in 1957 — full of cleverness and plenty of twists & turns to keep you guessing!

Matt Green is the audiobook narrator who delivers the snark perfectly. 🎧

I read this one two years ago in print; but decided I needed a refresher before I head into, ‘The Secret Pilgrim‘.

Ned, who is the desk guy handling the inquiry as to the credibility of information received from the USSR, is really a background or secondary character in this story. But his is the voice of the *next* book— so I‘m paying more attention to him this time around!

Henry IV is one of the least documented monarchs in English history since William the Conqueror, so the author had to make a meal from thin gruel. But if your only understanding of H4 is from Shakespeare, this is an excellent way to get a fuller, truer picture.

The audiobook narrator sounded stilted and uninterested— which made for a grueling listen some days— so I would definitely recommend the print version!

Don‘t let the 400+ page count scare you away! This is an easy, fast and very straightforward story about a crew who heads out on a lucrative contract to tunnel through a bit of space in a volatile area.

The author spends a lot of time creating characters of different species, genders, sexualities & loves— often at the expense of a more developed action line; but fun if you‘re looking for something light!

‘Good to Great‘ is, by the author‘s admission, actually the *prequel* to ‘Built to Last‘ though the latter was researched, written and, published first! The reasons are outlined in the final chapter and tempts me to go ahead and order BTL; but I think I‘ll hold off until the next management class to see if other book recs come up!

#ReadyToManageTheWorld 😂

The third key concept from this book is the Flywheel— a metaphor for the building momentum of a good-to-great business. There‘s another diagram, the Doom Loop which is the antithesis of the Flywheel. Interestingly, I‘ve been a part of large organizations that have been exemplars of each!

The Hedgehog Concept is ostensibly presented as a key item in successful corporate missions, but I think there‘s something to be said for it being a *personal* driver as well!

Starting this in audio— Sadly, James Cameron Stewart lacks the enthusiasm of Alex Wyndham; but he nonetheless has one of those nice old-fashioned British voices.

Henry IV is the English King who basically proves, “Might equals Right” in usurping the God-ordained Richard II. Now to hear what unconventional thing the author has to say about all this!

In chapter 2, the author discusses leadership levels. I pretty much instantly recognized myself as a “Level 1”. I have always adhered that you lead by example; but now I see that if you want to manage people, you have to be a bit more outward facing and not an aggressive introvert!

#LevelUp

Not quite as clever as the first-in-series; but still enormously fun! The League of Princes Charming and their Princess counterparts head out to steal back a sword from the Robber King. Lot‘s of humor and adventure as things don‘t quite turn out the way you expect!

Bronson Pinchot may have had a little too much fun this time around as there were a couple character voices that were fairly unintelligible; but his range of voices still remarkable.

Whenever a business title crosses my desk, I think, “Ugh”; but then after I finish, I‘m all, “I‘m going to take over the world!”

Starting this one today. It‘s highly recommended at the management seminar I‘m taking.

I had to read the synopsis of this play a couple times *before* starting! It involves three suitors for the fair Anne and 1 rogue knight scheming to get at the wealth of two wealthy households via seducing the wives… A comedy featuring Falstaff and a very “suburban” cast of characters!

I always struggle a bit w/Shakespeare‘s Comedies (Decoding Early Modern English humor is hard!) so I‘m only 3 acts in; but hoping to wrap it up before the weekend.

“A Dark Historical Tale of Witchcraft” set in 1380 Lincoln, England (reign of Richard II) — Just started so not much to say yet other than I‘m looking forward to digging into it!

And now for some plain old *fun*!

A year after their first adventure, we find two of the Princes Charming (or is it Prince Charmings?!) & Cinderella at a castle trying to sort themselves out… and then Sleeping Beauty‘s PC gets kidnapped! Time to gather the Heroes together again!

Bronson Pinchot is brilliant in this series as the audiobook narrator 🎧

I *almost* bailed on this as the first half was so incredibly slow— But the second half has all the action 🙂While it‘s not as sexy as a Magic Treehouse or a Tardis, the “CVD” feels real as do the characters and the moments of their lives that we witness.

It throws in some time travel & physics theory (TBH, I‘m not sold on the “version control” concept) but the heart of the story will get you more than anything else.

📷: Double slit experiment

I love the story but the audio is dragging me down: dirty noise floor, booth noise, someone coughing in the background in chapter 17; not crazy about the episodic delivery, male character voices or, even of Claire herself.

I‘m bailing on the audio and, when I next have the urge to visit Jamie & Claire, it will back to my print copy.

All this time and I just now realized the cover is a woman‘s face! 🤦🏻‍♀️

This is a time travel novel featuring a married couple in the future, the wife having been hollowed out by a tragedy in her life. The husband is a physicist working on what is essentially a time machine.

Slow start so far (80 pages in) but eager to see where this is going!

I first read this when it came out 30 (!) yrs ago & revisit it every 5 or 6 yrs. This yr will be my first re-read in audio though! Davina Porter narrates this time-traveling historical romance set in 1740s Scotland.

But DP sounds a bit brittle to me & I‘m not liking Claire as much this time ‘round; but I‘m sticking w/this to the end! Either the recording will have grown on me or I might honestly have to ask myself if I‘ve outgrown Outlander!

Oh, FFS, in my post COVID vax state of mind, I ordered another copy of ‘Fugitive Telemetry‘!

No matter, I have plans to turn my niece onto Murderbot. I‘m sending her the first-in-series and, if she gets hooked, I‘ll send her the rest! (LOL, That takes care of the “Something to Read” portion for the next 5 birthdays and Christmases!)

Anyway, guess who‘s going to stay up late? I‘ll be exhausted for work tomorrow, but totally worth it! 😍

Action-packed and filled with Murderbot humor...
It takes be quite a bit of concentration to track through all the choreography but it‘s definitely worth the effort!

Martha Wells is turning out consistently great adventures of a rogue SecUnit and I am here for it!

Impatiently waiting for ‘Fugitive Telemetry‘ (#6) to arrive in the mail from Powell‘s!

A M/F romance between 2 journalists working the same beat, it may have you thinking of the movie, “How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days”; but sadly, it is not that. This is a very low energy, non-steamy romance with a word of warning about the dangers of dating interwoven into the plot.
Definitely not for me, but maybe for someone who wants something light and tame?

Time for a mini-Murderbot binge! I‘ve had ‘Network Effect‘ in the stacks for over a year; the short, “Home” dropped today and; ‘Fugitive Telemetry‘ is on pre-order— due to arrive at the end of the month!

I love the Histories! I‘ve finished reading the Folger edition of H4I, so tonight I will watch the Hollow Crown episode: Our king of the moment is Jeremy Irons 🤴

This is the play in which Falstaff is introduced, a prince redeems himself and, we see how Hotspur earned his sobriquet!

There was a pandemic and a nuclear war, and now there is religion and a post-apocalyptic landscape. A small commune is surviving on the Oregon shore...

I tried. I really tried, but this isn‘t paced fast enough for me and I‘m not sure when, if ever I‘ll be in the mood for PA stories again. This was my second attempt at it— so I think it‘s time to say, “Not for me” and DNF it.

FWIW, Gabra Zackman seems to be a perfect match for this POV1 story 🎧

I loved absolutely everything about this fractured fairy tale!
The Princes Charming from four different fairy tales band together to take on giants, a witch, trolls, a dragon... as well as princesses, each other and, themselves!
Bronson Pinchot clearly had a great time performing the story and even though it‘s targeted to 9-12 year-olds, I can‘t wait to get to the next two books in the series!

This is a charming, quirky novella about a 36-yo woman who has spent half of her life working for a convenience store. She doesn‘t fit the norms of Japanese society and though it‘s not spelled out, the implication is that she falls somewhere on the Autism spectrum. There are a couple of moments of dark humor which I loved, but it‘s not a dark book! Nancy Wu is the audiobook narrator and did a great, pitch-perfect job! 🎧

I love and collect old print dictionaries, so I knew I was going to really get into the tagged book; but I think in the future, I‘ll stick w/print editions over audio. There‘s something a bit condescending & off-putting about the author‘s voice, though I know others love it. 🎧

📖📖Anyway, came away with a newfound appreciation for the OED. I have a 2-volume compact edition (pictured) but admittedly mostly use the online version these days!

This book has been in and off my stacks for years but I‘m finally got around to it— this time in audio, narrated by the author.
The story is a double biography of the two men who were the most instrumental in creating the Oxford English Dictionary.
I always love the material the author chooses for his books, but I also always wonder why my enthusiasm gets tempered once I‘m “in it” 🤷🏻‍♀️

The audiobook is only 5+ hours long and, halfway through the story is over— So what is taking up the other half?
It turns out it‘s a reading of the poem in the original Early Middle English (“Chaucer‘s English”)! Even though I couldn‘t understand most of it (a handful of words here and there), knowing the story helped a lot. The original has a cadence of its own and is performed lyrically and beautifully by the narrator, Bill Wallis. #AllTheStars

Also translated from Early Middle English (“Chaucer‘s English”) is this anonymous story about chivalry and honor: Sir Gawain steps up and accepts a challenge thrown down by the Green Knight and, well it doesn‘t turn out like anything you would expect! I‘m really enjoying the translator‘s preserving the alliterative nature of the work as well as the lyrical quality. Beautifully done and the narrator serves it all equally well. 🎧

It was all rather interesting and entertaining: some tales are bawdy while others chivalric, fable-like, inspiring... But then we get to the “The Parson‘s Tale” which is an extremely long lecture/sermon/treatise on Penance, Contrition, the Venial Sins and, the Seven Deadly Sins. All detailed and with examples. The last tale in the collection, it absolutely killed any good will I had for this Classic. In the future, I‘ll probably just read selects.

I've started my "Henry IV Trilogy" by listening to a BBC: In Our Time podcast about Owain Glyndŵr-- a rebel who posed a serious threat to H4 in the early day of the king's reign and who still holds a place in many Welsh nationalist hearts (or so I am told). I‘m also interested in reading some of the women mystics of the time, i.e Julian of Norwich and Margery Kempe (grateful to have a Norton Anthology around!)

So, my brain is too busy decoding the Early Modern English of Shakespeare to *also* try and work out the Early Middle English of Chaucer— so I got the modern translation by the late Burton Raffels— and in audio.

I‘ve been surprised at the cynicism, relative morality/amorality and, sexually crude uh, “events” and mostly entertained.

Will probably go back to my old trusty Norton Anthology next time I decide to tackle this one!

So yes, I‘ve been treating the first couple of days of April more like “March+” and wrapping up my *Richard II* reading! But this weekend, I‘ll start the *Henry IV , Part I* leg of my journey through Shakespeare‘s History with a little warmup: The chapter about the play in ‘The Shakespeare Book‘. I originally bought this for my daughter when she was in middle school, but now it lives on my bedside table 📚

Oddly, for not being my favorite of Shakespeare‘s plays ('Hamlet') or one of the #Bard5 ('Hamlet' · 'Romeo and Juliet' · 'Macbeth' · 'Julius Caesar' · 'Much Ado About Nothing'), this History play has gotten quite the workout in the past few years!

I‘ve actually just re-read the play for the third or fourth time now and am wrapping the month up with some literary criticism, podcasts and stuff ?

This is a collation of four short stories that, at first seem separate from each other and oddly without that elegiac note that seems to be Ryan‘s signature. Then that last story wraps it all up and delivers the shiv to you where you stand!

There is a slight connection to “A Slanting of the Sun” (short in the collection of the same name) but you don‘t need to read either to enjoy the other.

At first, I thought this was interconnected or related to ‘The Spinning Heart‘ and ‘The Thing About December‘ which confused me until I double-checked: This is a standalone collection of shorts set (mostly) in Tipperary, Ireland. Each story holds a tragic note paradoxically couched in beautiful almost lyrical prose. Two stories had me gasp, but all are memorable. Wayne Farrell did an admirable job of narrating all POVs regardless of age or gender

This was on a list of SFF titles of Action & Adventure; but it seems to be more of a police procedural set in a rather dismal future city/state in the Balkans— def not the “Indiana Jones in Space or Fairyland” vibe I was hoping for! Unfortunately, I‘m just not in the right mindset for it right now. The fact that I lost it for five days and I wasn‘t terribly bothered tells me that it‘s time to re-stack it for another time.

‘Beau Geste‘ is the ultimate boy‘s adventure story— if you were a boy in 1924. The story itself opens with a double mystery: What happened at this fort in the middle of the desert? And who stole the Blue Water? As intriguing & action-packed as it is, it is also a dated tale where honor & chivalry look like snobbishness, racism and misogyny now.

IMHO, ‘The Four Feathers‘ (by A.E.W. Mason; 1902) is better in all ways

Sadly, I only dimly recall a parody version of this movie from the 1970s, ‘The Last Remake of Beau Geste‘ but I‘ve always wanted to read this Classic tale of the French Foreign Legion. This edition is narrated by the late Geoffrey Howard and opens with a rather macabre scene at the outpost.

Sams was the WWII cryptographer who analyzed the text and made the still-disputed claim that this is a work from Shakespeare‘s “Lost Decade” (1580s). It‘s has more historical inaccuracies than the other Shakespeare Histories but nonetheless plays like a highlight reel from Edward III‘s life. The “exegesis” at the end of the book was too much for me but I will probably dig into more the next time I tackle this play!

Ian Mortimer makes his case that Edward II was alive when Edward III was crowned King! It‘s just one of the things that makes this biography of Edward III engaging and thought-provoking. It‘s NF, but feels like an adventure tale told enthusiastically by the audiobook narrator, Alex Wyndham.
Maybe Mortimer is a crackpot, or maybe he‘s onto something; but regardless, can‘t wait to dig into his bios of Henry IV & V!

🎧 I have the ebook edition, but with a rapidly closing reading window to get this in for February and, it being 500+ pages long, I wasn‘t sure I was going to be able to tackle it this month. But I saw the audio was only half price of what I was expecting *and* it‘s narrated by Alex Wyndham (same British narrator who read, ‘The Strangler Vine‘). So glad I dnloaded this! The pathos, melodrama, and rich excesses! *Better than fiction!!!* Loving it!

So I scrolled all the way back to the beginning of my TBR list here on Litsy! In honor of my 5th anniversary here, I decided to move the 5 oldest titles up into my 2021 stacks. 📚

First up will be a book that enjoyed something of a resurgence in interest last year during the pandemic. Many years ago, I read an earlier effort of the author‘s and was underwhelmed; but I‘ve heard great things about this one so I‘m willing to try again 🙂

I‘ve been on Litsy for 5 years!

My first post (above) was for an audiobook that had been nominated for the Audies (the audiobook industry‘s equivalent of the Oscars (r)). The Armchair Audies was a panel of volunteers who each selected a category and listened to each of the nominees and, then came up with their own pick! It was fun while it lasted! 🎧