Between the Covers

"American Rust" - a review (sort of)

American Rust is Philipp Meyer's first novel, but you'd never know that from its assured prose and evocative imagery. On a friend's recommendation I picked up the audio version, and I can't quite wait to get back to the car to find out what's going to happen next.

Set in a dying - maybe already dead - steel town in the Mon valley outside of Pittsburgh, the novel follows the lives of two friends, aimless young men who didn't bother to flee town when they had the chance after high school. Considering the trouble they find themselves in, they should have gone to college - one to play football, the other to study science - when they could have. The countryside they traipse through is gorgeous and scenic - and toxic, from chemicals and from people whose lives and souls have dried up and shriveled when the jobs disappeared.

The audiobook is read by Tom Stechschulte, who shocked me about halfway through by pulling out a true, hardcore Pittsburgh accent (in the voice of a waitress one of the boys runs into along the way). Now, a Pittsburgh accent is not easy to identify unless youns know it, but there it was, loud and clear. Once again, I'm struck by how much better a good reader can make a audiobook.

But American Rust would be just as compelling if you were reading it yourself. The book's just out in paperback, too.

"American Pastoral": Wow. Just...wow.

So after dragging my heels and rolling my eyes and complaining, I finally started listening to Philip Roth's American Pastoral on audio - thanks, Broward County Library!

You aren't going to believe this: I love it. I'm on the second disc (of 14), and more than twice I've gone back to listen to passages again.

Purists will demand I actually read the book, instead of having it read to me, but as always in the case of a fine audiobook, the reader adds to the experience. In this case, the reader is the late Ron Silver (whom I loved as campaign advisor Bruno on The West Wing), who swiftly managed to persuade me he is Zuckerman, talking to me as I drive the mean streets of Miami (and Hollywood).

One of my resolutions for 2010: More audiobooks.

An open letter to Philip Roth fans

Dear friends:

I have tried. God knows, I have tried. But I can't warm up to Philip Roth. I find him repetitive, tiresome. He seems to be from a generation so far removed from mine I can never quite grasp what about his writing inspires so many people. (For the record, he's not that removed from me generationally speaking. And I like Williams Faulkner and Shakespeare just fine.)

For awhile I thought it was because I was female. But no - I've met a few female Roth fans along the way.

Maybe, I thought, I have read the wrong books. I've only read a few. So when I made a deal with a friend to read something by Roth - in exchange, she would attempt again to read White Teeth by Zadie Smith, a novel I love and she couldn't get more than 10 pages through - I thought: Well, here's my chance. She won't pick anything too guycentric. 

 She went easy on me and chose Indignation, a slim, recent novel, that she promised me was good. She said it was OK to listen to it on audio, so I dutifully checked it out from the library. The first CD started out interestingly enough; if nothing else, the reader's New York accent was amusing. And then I got to the second CD and while I can't tell you here what turned me off - the Miami Herald will not allow me to use the colorful terms in which Mr. Roth describes  sexual frustration and/or consummation - I can tell you that if it had been my CD I would've whipped it out the car window on I-95, probably causing a massive pile-up and further endangering the lives of drivers already overwhelmed by the new plastic pole installation. (Seriously, doesn't DOT realize we have some really stupid drivers in Miami?)

My friend finished White Teeth (and admitted she liked it, all you haters). So I suppose I must trudge onward. But I don't want to.

So many people have told me: "But American Pastoral is one of the best books ever written!" Maybe I can substitute that instead. Or The Plot Against America - I like alternate history (though I expect it's less thrilling than Inglourious Basterds). I simply can't take any more 1950s sexual hysteria. I CAN'T DO IT.

Signed,

Connie

Audiobook of the Year contenders

Here are the contenders for Audiobook of the Year, as chosen by the Audio Publisher's Association:

Brisingr by Christopher Paolini, read by Gerard Doyle

The Graveyard Book by Neil Gaiman, read by the author

A Wolf at the Table: A Memoir of My Father by Augusten Burroughs; read by the author

The winners will be announced on May 29.

Unabridged "Slumdog" audiobook due out in March

BBC Audiobooks is releasing the unabridged audiobook of Vikas Swarup's Q&A - from which the multi-Oscar winning film Slumdog Millionaire was adapted - on March 24, to coincide with the release of the DVD version of the film.

The book, read by Christopher Simpson, will cost $29.95 for nine CDS or $25.95 for digital download.

The abridged version is available now, but who wants to listen to abridged audiobooks? I will never understand it. It's like those old time Reader's Digest novelizations. What's the point?

The World Without Me

A confession: I had to give up on the audiobook for Alan Weisman's The World Without Us , which received much acclaim. Time named it a top book of the year, and every book critic in the land raved about it.

I listened to the first CD but just never warmed up to it. I can't quite say why. The premise is intriguing enough: What would the world be like if humans were to disappear immediately off the planet? OK. I'll bite. But hearing someone drone on about how our houses would fall apart struck me as somewhat dull, duller even than Al Gore's famous Academy Award winning Power Point presentation (which I enjoyed thoroughly, for the record).

To me, it felt repetitive (and yes, this is based on a fairly small sampling, 1 CD out of 10). But I do stick to my rule: If you are not enjoying a book, and you don't have to read it for class or no one is paying you to read it, BAIL.

Listening to "Lolita in Tehran"

I'm back on the audiobook bandwagon, and I just started Asar Nafisi's Reading Lolita in Tehran (I am convinced I am one of the only people who hasn't read it yet.) Nafisi has a new memoir coming out in early January, Things I've Been Silent About: Memories, so this seemed like a good time. (She'll also be in Miami at the end of January, but more on that later...)

A happy surprise: The book is read by Lissette Lecat, who reads the No. 1 Ladies Detective Agency novels. She's one of my favorite readers, and, I suspect, the real reason I fell in love with Mma Ramotswe and Co. in the first place.

Things I overheard while talking to Alan Alda

During a rather grim week for those of us at 1 Herald Plaza, I had a great thrill: talking to Alan Alda about his new book Things I Overheard While Talking to Myself. Alda, who appears Tuesday night at Temple Judea, was kind and funny, and we chatted about everything from M*A*S*H to his work as the host of Scientific American Frontiers to his book, which picks up right where his first memoir Never Have Your Dog Stuffed left off.

Things I Overheard is also a memoir of sorts, with biographical tidbits wrapped around chunks from talks Alda has given over the years, all in the name of searching for meaning in life and our fascination with it. I'll give you a tip: I'm sure the books are fun to read, but I listened to Alda read both on audiobook, and that could not have been more entertaining. He's a great reader, naturally, and his voice is so familiar and wry and self-deprecating. These books are a great example of how an audiobook can actually add to the experience of reading.

I also asked him if he would have voted for Arnold Vinick, the Republican candidate he played on the final two seasons of The West Wing. He laughed. "I don't think he would've won the nomination in the first place," he said, adding that he loved working on the show. Strange how this guy ended up on my favorite show as a kid and one of my favorites as an adult. If he'd managed to play Giles on Buffy the Vampire Slayer we would have had a trifecta here.

I'm one of those people just the right age to have grown up on M*A*S*H. It came on when I was a kid and the finale - still the most watched episode of TV in history; sorry, Sopranos - ran when I was in college. We gathered to watch in our apartment above the sinkhole in Gainesville and watched on our junky TV, and all the girls wept at watching Hawkeye fly off into the sunset.

You can read my interview with Alda here. And you can see Alda at 7:30 p.m. Tuesday at Temple Judea, but remember, you need a ticket. They're $5 and available at any Books & Books outlet, and the $5 can be applied to the cost of Alda's book or any other book at the store.