Tag: audiobook

We Are Legion (We Are Bob)

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Book cover with a blue outer space background, asteroids, and two spaceships. The text reads We Are Legion (We Are Bob) by Dennis E. Taylor

We Are Legion (We Are Bob) by Dennis E. Taylor

Genre: sci-fi

I read it as a(n): audiobook

Narrator: Ray Porter

Length: 07:57:00

Her Grace’s rating: 2 out of 5 stars

Bob Johansson signs papers that ensure he will be cryogenically frozen and then brought back to life after his death, once the technology allows such things. The day after he signs the papers, he gets creamed by a bus. When he wakes up about 150 years in the future, he is his old self only his mind has been incorporated into a ship. His mission is to go into space and look for habitable planets for humans to colonize, making copies of himself along the way for various projects. Along the way, Bob and his various copies (all with different names chosen because otherwise that would be madness) find planets, discover sentient life, entire new ecospheres, and generally try to recreate the United Federation of Planets. 

I thought this was an ok story. It was fun and in parts funny (though maybe that was more due to Porter’s narration than anything else), but overall I didn’t really see what all the hype was about. Sentient ships are nothing new, nor is colonizing planets, first contact, or just about anything else in this. Don’t get me wrong, I liked it and it was fun overall. Just not anything really to write home about. 

By far the best part about it, for me, was the continuance of Star Trek into the future. Bob, as a 21st century nerd, was reared on Star Trek, Star Wars, BSG, SG1, and a million other sci-fi shows and books. I loved the multitude of homages to all the sci-fi nerddom culture. 

Porter’s performance was, as always, superb. He has excellent comic timing and tone. 

I don’t know if it was a function of listening to this rather than eyeball reading it, but I had a really hard time keeping the Bobs separate. I know they’re all copies of the original Bob but they weren’t sufficiently different for me to tell them apart. I couldn’t keep track of who was at Delta Eridani with the Deltans or who was headed back to Sol to see what shape the Earth and humans were in – was it Riker!Bob or Bob!Bob or Milo!Bob or a different Bob? They were supposed to have different missions and thoughts but I felt that they were not actually different enough to tell them apart. Maybe it would have been easier if I had eyeball read it. 

Also, there were, like, two women in the entire book for just a couple pages each, and zero diversity. Apparently everyone in the future is white? It’s just a white gut cloning himself over and over, which I’m sure is a fantasy of many of them, especially boring rich dudes *coughelonmuskcough* but for the rest of us, it’s not something we really want to read about. Honestly, authors. At this point, you should know better. That changed my rating from a 3-star ehhh to a 2-star cringe.

As it is, while I liked this story all right, I didn’t like it enough to get the next two installations in the trilogy. I felt this one had sufficient closure at the end to forego the rest of them. If my public library had them, I would consider reading them and finishing out the series, but they don’t have ANY of Taylor’s books, so I’ll just consider this a one and done series.

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Simon vs. the Homo Sapiens Agenda

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23866536Simon vs. the Homo Sapiens Agenda by Becky Albertalli (Website, Twitter, Insta)

Genre: contemporary/YA

Setting: Atlanta, GA

I read it as a(n): audiobook

Narrator: Michael Crouch

Source: my own Audible collection

Length: 6:45:00

Published by: Harper Audio (7 April 2015)

Her Grace’s rating: 5 out of 5 stars

Simon Spier is a gay high school junior who isn’t out yet. He has been having an online flirtation for the past several months with another boy he knows only as Blue. Simon is usually really careful with when and where he emails Blue, but one day he got careless, accessed his email from a school computer, and before he knows it, Martin, one of his classmates, has screenshots of his emails. Martin says he won’t share the emails with the whole school IF Simon helps him get a date with Simon’s friend, Abby. Blackmailing – what can go wrong?

This was an absolutely delightful novel. I admit I don’t read a lot of LGBTQ+ literature – not because I have a problem with it at all. I don’t. It just isn’t on my radar as much, which I think is ok since I’m not really its intended audience. That said, I am actively trying to add more LGBTQ+ books into my literary diet. I also very rarely read anything remotely resembling romance, and when I do, it’s either an accident that I somehow missed in the summary that a book is a romance, or it’s for a reading challenge. But this book got so much hype that when it was the Audible daily deal, I decided to get it. It only took me like 2 years to actually get around to listening to it.

Simon reminded me of a couple guys I went to high school with. He’s friendly and witty and in the theatre club. He’s not the most popular guy in school but is far from the least popular. His best friend Nick is on the soccer team. His other best friend Leah is a kick-ass drummer. They’re the typical teenagers – generally excitable, think their parents are lame, and hyperbolic about the events of their lives. Except for Simon, he has reason to be hyperbolic. Not only does he have to worry about getting outed by Martin, but Blue’s identity is also on the line. 

When I really look at this plot, not a whole lot happens. It’s a bunch of teenagers doing teenagery things and having all the feels about it. But it is really so much more than that. The underlying theme is to challenge the status quo, to undermine the assumption that straight is the default. Simon wonders why everyone doesn’t have to come out, whether they come out as straight or gay or bi or anything else. And he’s right. Straight shouldn’t have to be the default. Cisgender shouldn’t have to be the default. We badly need a shift in the way we think of sexuality and gender identity because being so narrow in our mindset and definitions is causing real harm to real people, not just characters in a fictional book. 

If I have any gripes about this book, it’s that everything all turned out very neatly. It seemed kind of unrealistic. Simon is a good kid. Leah, Nick, and Abby are all good kids. Blue turns out to be a good kid. Even asshole Martin turns out to be a good kid in the end. Basically everyone gets the HEA ending. So it was a little too cute for me in that regard. I like dark and twisty stories, which seem more real than the perfect ending. Don’t get me wrong, I am glad things turned out well for all the kids. It just seems like it was too easy. But it didn’t stop me from giving this a 5 star rating or it being among my favorite book I read in 2020! Even with all the cuteness and teenagers.

Big Sky

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Big Sky by Kate Atkinson (Website)

Genre: mystery

Setting: mostly a seaside town in the north of England

I read it as a(n): audiobook

Narrator: Jason Isaacs

Source: My own Audible collection

Length: 11:22:00

Published by: Hachette Audio (25 June 2019)

Her Grace’s rating: 3 out of 5 stars

I’m giving this 3 out of 5 stars only because Jason Isaacs’s narration was superb. The story itself was kind of boring. As with the rest of the books in Atkinson’s Jackson Brodie series, Big Sky starts with Jackson working on a case, this time staking out a couple to provide proof of their infidelity to his client. Then, showing the kind of weird luck only Jackson seems capable of, he encounters a man on a crumbling cliff and gets sucked into a ring of sex trafficking and kidnapping. Of course, the only person who can solve things and fix it is Jackson.

If he weren’t so sexy, Jackson Brodie would be really fucking annoying. The whole trope of “only I can solve this” was old to begin with, and now it has been pretty much ruined by the Lobotomized Hitler currently squatting in the White House, and it’s a pretty arrogant thing to think regardless of who is saying it. 

It was nice to see Reggie come back in this story. Last we saw of her, she was a lost and scared young lady trying to get by mostly on her own. It was fun to see her in this story and see what she’s made of herself. Other than Reggie and Jackson, sometimes, I really found not one likeable character in this story. The traffickers of course were revolting, but Julia is a shallow twit, Nathan is a typical teen and no one really likes those, and most of the others were pretty one-dimensional. The plot itself wasn’t terribly compelling to me, and Atkinson’s style of writing is so nonlinear that listening to this as opposed to eyeball reading it was a chore. I found myself not listening to it as often as not, and only kept going by pure virtue of Jason Isaacs’s sexy voice and skill in narrating. I really wish he would narrate more audiobooks. He’s one of my very favorite narrators, and it isn’t just because he’s my mega celebrity crush. He is a genuinely excellent narrator, able to do a variety of accents well, and even reading women’s voices nicely. I hate it when male narrators do a falsetto for women, or make them sound like brainless morons. Like, what women do you know who really sounds like that? Isaacs does nothing of the sort and all his voices are authentic and believable. I just really wish Audible could/would make more use of his voice talent.

The North Water

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The North Water coverThe North Water by Ian McGuire

Her Grace’s rating:  out of 5 stars

Genre: historical fiction

I read it as an: audiobook

Narrator: John Keating

Source: library

Length: 09:40:00

Published by: Macmillan Audio (9 May 2016)

In the 19th century, whaling ships often set out to the Arctic to bring back whale blubber and the furs of polar bears and seals. Henry Drax is a harpooner aboard the Volunteer, and Patrick Sumner is shipping out as the ship’s medic. Drax is a sick twist and Sumner is a disgraced army surgeon. When Sumner discovers that a cabin boy is being violently raped, and then later discovers the child murdered in the hold, it sets the two men on a collision course during this cursed voyage.

OK, so I know this was longlisted for the Booker in 2016. Neat. And yes, it absolutely had some beautiful writing, particularly when describing the scenery. But holy shit, y’all. This novel was chock full of unrelenting, vicious, gory violence. I am not a squeamish reader by any means, but the abuse and murder of children and cavalier slaughtering of animals, complete with many fully descriptive scenes, is more than I could handle this time. 

I KNOW the depictions of violence and casual disregard for animal life was historically accurate, but Jesus fucking Christ. I think the author was getting off on it or something. For example, the scene where the whalers killed a mother polar bear and captured her cub was horrific. Or this gem: 

Jones nods, takes a fresh blubber spade from the malemauk boat, waits for one of the sharks to come close enough, and then stabs at it, opening up a foot-long gash in its side. A loose-knit garland of entrails, pink, red, and purple, slurps immediately from the wound. The injured shark thrashes for a moment, then bends backwards and starts urgently gobbling its own insides.

And the joyful clubbing of baby seals. Or the near-orgasmic descriptions of whales blowing gobs of blood out their blowholes before they die, to the thrill of the men watching. And the multitude of excrement, both human and animal, or the vulgarity of the language (and believe me, I love a good fucking swear word). Is this really necessary? Again, I know this is the way it was back then, but there are ways to write that and still not be so enthralled with the violence. The gore and violence literally detracted and distracted from the plot. 

I read this as an audiobook and found myself gradually increasing the reading speed just to get it over with. The narrator did a fabulous job of it, though. Five stars to his performance. 

I once read the term ‘dicklit,’ and if ever there was a book to describe that, it is this one. Waiting to see how many men gather to explain why I’m wrong.

 

Forward: Stories of Tomorrow

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Forward: Stories of TomorrowForward: Stories of Tomorrow Edited by Blake Crouch (website, Twitter), written by Veronica Roth, Blake Crouch, NK Jemisin (Twitter), Amor Towles (Twitter), Paul Tremblay (Twitter), and Andy Weir (Twitter)

Her Grace’s rating:  4 out of 5 stars

Genre: sci-fi

I read it as an: audiobook

Narrators: Evan Rachel Wood, Rosa Salazar, Jason Isaacs, David Harbour, Steven Strait, and Janina Gavankar

Source: my own collection

Length: 08:24:00

Published by: Brilliance Audio (8 Oct 2019)

This short story collection features six stories on the future state of society. Most are dystopian or post-apocalyptic settings, and others are scary in how recognizable they are. 

I like short story collections written by a variety of authors. There is something for everyone in those kinds of anthologies and, though it’s not typical to like every story included, generally there are a couple gems that make the entire collection worthwhile. I found that to be true for Forward as well. There was really only one story I truly didn’t care for, but the rest, even the ones I didn’t love, all put in a solid showing.

“Ark” by Veronica Roth was maybe my favorite story in the collection. It is a surprising look at a handful of people and their lives in the last days before a world-destroying asteroid is due to hit Earth. I enjoyed the exploration of what makes a place “home” as well as the remarkably hopeful ending.

“Summer Frost” by Blake Crouch was one of my least favorite in the collection, mostly because I don’t care much about AI or gaming. Even so, it was an interesting topic and very well written, which made up almost entirely for any lack on my part. It dealt with themes of identity and awareness as well as what makes us human.

“Emergency Skin” by NK Jemisin was also maybe my favorite story in the collection. It is told from the point of view of an AI embedded in the brain of a man who is sent to Earth to collect vital samples. Earth isn’t what the man was led to believe, and it raises excellent questions about what makes an advanced civilization advanced. 

“You Have Arrived at Your Destination” by Amor Towles is a really intriguing think-piece about what ramifications there might be when we choose the kinds of children we have. It also makes the main character, as well as me, think about his own choices in the past. 

“The Last Conversation” by Paul Tremblay. This was easily my least favorite of the lot. I thought it dragged on and on. It was a story about consciousness and ethics. 

“Randomize” by Andy Weir was a look at the function of the future of computers and they ways in which they can be misused. Set in a relatively benign setting – Las Vegas – it took apart ways people can use technology to do criminal things. It was interesting, but I wasn’t sure it really felt very “future” to me. Other than the quantum computers, there wasn’t much that struck me as being sci-fi or dystopian or post-apocalyptic at all, but it was a recognizable setting that brought an immediacy to the story. 

Favorite stories (in this order):

  • Ark by Veronica Roth. Who knew the apocalypse could be so hopeful? (Tied with Emergency Skin)
  • Emergency Skin by NK Jemisin. What a cool twist! (Tied with Ark)
  • You Have Arrived at Your Destination by Amor Towles. Who hasn’t thought about designing one’s own children?

Favorite narrators (in this order):

  • Jason Isaacs (Emergency Skin). Though I expect nothing less from him, Jason Isaacs delivered a thoroughly riveting performance. He does tons of accents flawlessly and made the point of view character who narrates the story sound utterly disgusted with its observations. Disgusted, but still funny in that dry manner the Brits pull off so well. I hope Audible uses him as a narrator a LOT more.
  • David Harbour (You Have Arrived at Your Destination). He’s just reading the story, but he puts feeling into it. Nothing overacted or melodramatic, but just a super entertaining narration. 
  • Janina Gavankar (Randomize). Gavankar elevated what I thought was one of the weaker stories in the collection and made it a lot more interesting with her skillful narration. As with Jason Isaacs, she had a broad range of accents and inflections that really brought the characters to life.

Audiobook Challenge 2019

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audiobook-challeng-2019

I discovered the Audiobook Challenge on The BiblioSanctum recently and decided I want to play, too!

As posted on The BiblioSanctum, here is a quick review of the rules of the challenge:

Challenge Details

  • Runs January 1, 2019 – December 31, 2019. You can join at any time.
  • The goal is to find a new love for audios or to outdo yourself by listening to more audios in 2019 than you did in 2018.
  • Books must be in audio format (CD, MP3, etc.)
  • ANY genres count.
  • Re-reads and crossovers from other reading challenges are allowed.
  • You do not have to be a book blogger to participate; you can track your progress on Goodreads, Facebook, LibraryThing, etc.
  • If you’re a blogger grab the button and do a quick post about the challenge to help spread the word. If you’re not a blogger you can help by posting on Facebook or Tweeting about the challenge.
  • Updates plus a giveaway will be posted twice during the year. The first update will be June 30, 2019, and the last update will take place on December 15, 2019.

Levels

  • Newbie (I’ll give it a try) 1-5
  • Weekend Warrior (I’m getting the hang of this) 5-10
  • Stenographer (can listen while multitasking) 10-15
  • Socially Awkward (Don’t talk to me) 15-20
  • Binge Listener (Why read when someone can do it for you) 20-30
  • My Precious (I had my earbuds surgically implanted) 30+
  • Marathoner (Look Ma No Hands) 50+

Her Grace’s audiobooks:

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Binti

12605487
Fuzzy Nation

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The Winter of the Witch: A Novel

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Neverwhere

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All This I Will Give to You

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The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time

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Get Well Soon: History’s Worst Plagues and the Heroes Who Fought Them

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The Salt Roads

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Magna Carta: The Birth of Liberty

40135122
The Pearl That Broke Its Shell

43660486
Ghost Wall: A Novel

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The Tale of Hill Top Farm

I have no idea why the images are not aligning nicely. Whatever.

So far, I have listened to 12 audiobooks this year. It takes me a long time to get through most audiobooks because I often can’t listen as much as I want to. I usually only get to listen when driving, which isn’t all that often, all things considered. But so far, I am fairly pleased with my progress! I’ve made it to Stenographer status. Hopefully by the end of the year, I will be at Binge Listener.

What are some of your audiobooks you have listened to this year?

Fuzzy Nation

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12605487Fuzzy Nation by John Scalzi

I read it as an: audiobook

Narrator: Wil Wheaton

Source: my own collection

Length: 07:19:00

Publisher: Audible Studios

Year: 2011

Humans have scattered across the galaxy and on the planet Zarathustra, they are mining for sunstones, incredibly rare gemstones. Jack Holloway, independent surveyor and contractor for ZaraCorp, has just discovered a giant seam of sunstones when he accidentally blew the face off a cliff at a survey site. Because of issues with his contract and legal maneuvering, it is unclear whether Holloway or ZaraCorp owns the seam, though the law is leaning in Holloway’s favor. ZaraCorp lawyers and owners are now out to bribe the hell out of Holloway to get him to play nice with them, even though they are willing to do anything to get their hands on that seam, including sabotaging his vehicles and putting his life in danger. If the legal machinations weren’t complicated enough, Holloway encounters adorable, fuzzy creatures on his property. Promptly naming the the Fuzzys, he contacts an old friend of his, who drops the bomb that the Fuzzys may actually be sentient beings. If true, it would mean that ZaraCorp and Holloway himself are invaders on a sovereign planet.

See, here’s the thing that I love so much about good sci-fi. You can read it on its surface, and it’s just a fun story. Fuzzy Nation is a fun story. It has action and creatures and bad guys and good guys (well, they’re all right) and it’s set on not!Earth and all the things the tick the boxes for fun sci-fi. But if you read even a little more deeply, this is also about so much more than just a fun story. There’s corporate greed, environmentalism, racism, and colonialism. Those are just the big ones. I’m sure there are dozens of other issues I could pick out, legalities or the way evidence is handled, for example. But this book tackles corporate greed head on. It shows how so often, giant corporations only seek to increase their own profits and don’t care a thing about the people or communities they disrupt or destroy. Money is the only thing that matters to them. The people in charge see the effects of their actions and decisions and make the decisions anyway, opting for more money instead of morality.

Environmentalism ties in to that, because in their desire to make more and more money, ZaraCorp twisted itself into Gordian knots trying to get around or find loopholes in environmental laws so it could continue to extract the gems. Their nod to keeping the environment healthy is to plant a few puny saplings when they leave a site. To some people, that might seem adequate, rather than leaving a place alone and not mining for a thing that isn’t a necessary commodity in the first place.

The major issues come when the Fuzzys show up. What determines sentience? What makes someone a person? Holloway recognized their intelligence right away, and his friend Isabelle realized they were likely sentient as soon as she saw them. But of course, ZaraCorp and its lawyers and LEOs argued otherwise. They don’t look, act, or, most importantly, talk like humans, so how could they possibly be people? History is riddled with examples of colonization being justified because the invaders were bringing civilization to the savages, who were of course not recognized as fully human because they didn’t look, act, or talk the same way as the invaders did who brought “civilization” with them. What a load of bullshit. But it is the course so much history has taken, and once humans make it to the stars, I can easily see the same thing happening with smaller, less advanced races like the Fuzzys. It will be the Long Walk or the Middle Passage all over again, because humans basically suck.

As a long-time Scalzi fan, I thought this was a terrific read. One of his best? Maybe not. But fun, certainly, and covering a lot of relevant topics. I never read Little Fuzzy, so I can’t compare the two, though in the intro, Scalzi said something about how that book was a product of its time and he wanted to update it. Yay, I guess. I get a little tired of rebooting old things, but since I never read the original, this was new to me so I’m not worn out on it. Whatever, I liked it and thought it was fun and thought-provoking, which is how I like my sci-fi anyway.