2013 Book a week - week two

[Robin]

Since we are starting out the new year with traveling through Canada, I thought we'd take along an audiobook or two or three. Before you turn up your nose at audiobooks, you have to know that I haven't always liked them either. Up until last year, I had great difficulties even listening to one. My problem is voices. If I find a voice annoying, then forget it. So I have to listen to all the samples, make sure I like the narrator. Then I discovered I have a preference for female narrators versus male. The ladies just seem to do a better job of male voices. The males end up sound like those performers in those off broadway female impersonator shows and throw me completely out of the story. Just think Patrick Swayze and Wesley Snipes in To Wong Foo Thanks for Everything Julie Newmar and you'll understand.

I started listening to audiobooks in the car which had the interesting side effect of not worrying about all the idiot drivers on the road and enjoying the ride. After a period of time found myself listening while gardening or drawing - relatively mindless, put your mind on auto pilot tasks, otherwise I'd tune them out. Now I love audiobooks and have been working my way through J.D. Robb's entire series of In Death. I've already read the series twice but listening to it is an experience in itself.


Alright, have I talked you into trying an audio book yet? Which brings us to our tour through Canada with Canadian authors. Who better to start with than Margaret Atwood. She is most well known for the dystopian story, The Handmaid's Tale, which I read eons and eons ago. I'm trying to decide which one of her other stories I should try now.

And if you enjoy dystopian, then you would probably enjoy the world of werewolves and demons with Kelley Armstrong or William Gibson's world of cyberpunk.

I just started reading Neuromancer which is supposedly the book that captured the imagination of lots of writers and inspired the film, The Matrix. Looks like I'll be doing a book to movie comparison at some point.

[Aubrey]

I'm not a fan of audio books at all. I think my biggest problem is that I read way faster than I can listen so I can spend 10 hours listening to a book on tape or I can read it myself in 3.

I'm using the tour through Canada as an excuse to read Oryx and Crake, a Margaret Atwood book I've been meaning to read for a while. I also have to read Dragon House for my book club next week.

[Cleo]

I'm not a fan of audiobooks either but I think the problem is mine. Listening is a skill and, I admit it, it's not a skill that I've been developing in recent years. One of my 2013 goals is to listen to 3 audiobooks for the year (this is stretching it for me).

As for Canadian books, the few modern ones I've read I have not enjoyed so I tend to avoid modern Canadian authors (I feel I can say this, being a Canadian myself ;-) ). So ....... if anyone has any recommendations, I'd love to hear them!

[Cleo]

This week I've started reading:

Martin Chuzzlewit

Is anyone else planning to read any Dickens this year?