Books and Sensibility

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Audiobook Review: Station Eleven by Emily St. John Mandel

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  • Release Date: September 9th 2014
  • Audiobook Hours: 10 hours and 41 minutes
  • Genre: Literary….Science Fiction ?
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  • Publisher: Random House Audio

I feel like three years ago you couldn’t trip anywhere in the book-sphere without falling into this book. Station Eleven is the fascinating and deeply haunting story of what happens after a flu epidemic kills 99% of the Earth’s population and infrastructure collapses.

Everything I knew about this book happens in the first 20 pages; An actor in a production of King Lear dies on stage in front of child actor Kirsten Raymonde. Jump cut to 20 years later where Kirsten is part of a traveling symphony, a theater troupe that performs Shakespeare in the small towns dotting the the desolate and often dangerous North American landscape.

I am seriously in awe of the narrative structure of this book. The novel moves back and forth through time, telling stories of people who were in the theater that night with Kirsten. Mandel effortlessly weaves her characters fates through and around each other. There is also kind of a twist, I’m not sure how soon you’re supposed to see it, but it took me by surprise.

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Book Review/ Audiobook Review : A Psalm For Lost Girls by Kate Bayerl

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Book Review

If someone were to ask me what it means to have a book with
a strong sense of setting I would 100% point to A Psalm For Lost Girls.  New Haven, MA is a small
immigrant city where everyone knows everyone and some secrets just can’t be
kept.Callie da Costa wants to believe her sister Tessa, whose
untimely death she is still grieving , wasn’t the miracle making saint the
town and church think she might have been. That maybe the fortuitous voices her
sister heard where.  . . just in her head?

But when a missing girl miraculously appears on a shrine to Tessa, Callie has to rethink what she truly believes. This is a great read for those who, like me, don’t think
contemporary is for them. While the story has hints of magical realism the
events in the novel are grounded in grief and loss.

 

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The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood

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  • Release Date: February 1986
  • Pages: 309 
  • Genre: Dystopian 
  • Publisher: Anchor Books

Back in 2014 I read Margaret Atwood’s Oryx and Crake and it ruined my vacation because nothing is better
on the lido deck then reading about child sex trafficking and chicken noobies ! I just figured I didn’t get Atwood. I left that book feeling bleh.

But I’ve had a copy of The Handmaid’s Tale for years and since it’s one in a list of zeitgeist-y books  getting the TV/movie treatment (I’m looking at you The Dark Tower and American
Gods)  I decided to give it a try, Also this is the only one that isn’t like . . .a thousand pages.

While I didn’t care for Oryxand Crake I could immediately see why  The Handmaid’s Tale resonates with so many
people, especially now. There is a lot to unpack about feminism, women’s rightsand sexuality in the Dystopian (Utopian ?) Republic of Gilead where fertile womenare trained to become vessels of birth or, Handmaidens to wealthy older couples.

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A Silent Voice by Yoshitoki Oima

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Audiobook Review: #famous by Jilly Gagnon

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  • Release Date: February 14th 2017
  • Audiobook Hours: 7 hrs 53 minutes
  • Genre: Contemporary Romance
  • Publisher: Katherine Tegen Books (HarperCollins)

Did I pick up this book because the cover reminded me of Fangirl ? Maybe. Yes, yes I did.

When high school junior Rachel Ettinger secretly snaps a photo of  Kyle Bonham and tweets, ahem, I mean flits it it to her best friend she thinks nothing of it.

Until the pic goes viral.

While Kyle becomes an overnight internet sensation  Rachel becomes a target for harassment and cyberbullying.

So, in case you aren’t familiar,  this book was inspired by the phenomenon that is Alex from Target.

#famous had a strong start, we see a lot of the rampant sexism online and I really thought Gagnon was going to flesh out Rachel’s story through this lens, but the online abuse gets dropped pretty early to focus on a tedious plot where Kyle recruits Rachel to repeatedly appear with him on an Ellen type talk show.

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Audiobook Review: The Rest of Us Just Live Here by Patrick Ness

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  • Release Date: October 6th 2015
  • Length: 6 hours and 23 minutes
  • Genre: Contemporary / Paranormal YA
  • Publisher: HarperTeen

17-year-old Mikey Mitchell just wants to enjoy his last few months of high school with his best friends and hopefully getting his OCD under control.  But he’s also kind of stuck in the middle of your favorite paranormal YA novel, except you know. . . he’s a background character.  Strange blue lights and mysterious deaths  means the indie kids–those high school kids with the capital D destinies and weird names–are up to something. Mikey just hopes the indie kids don’t  blown up up the high school….again.

Patrick Ness is a mix bag of an author, you just never know what you’re going to get. The concept of having a Mikey’s contemporary narrative  adjacent to the indie kid’s paranormal adventure made for an entertaining listen.  The indie kid’s plot is a parody of e those paranormal YA books of the early 2010’s and Ness creates a loving satire of the genre.

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