Category / Reviews

by Michael Janairo

Audiobook review: “Nature Girl”

“Nature Girl” by Carl Hiassen. Read by Lee Adams. Unabridged, 11.5 hours, 9 CDs. Random House Audio. $39.95.

Honey Santana, the titular character, aims to rid the world of an evil menace with a convoluted plan to change a slimy telemarketer by bringing him to the wilds of Florida’s beautiful Ten Thousand Islands.

A wacky plot, colorful characters, bad decisions and a Florida setting are the main ingredients of Hiassen’s fictional world. And “Nature Girl” includes a half-white, half-Seminole man in the midst of an identity crisis, ghosts, an old bald eagle, a phony religious sect, sexual harassment, a sexy coed, a private investigator, adultery, gambling and gunplay. But it just doesn’t work.

Perhaps it’s because Honey is off her meds, meaning she’s not the usual hypocritical, narcissistic, hubristic hothead that Hiassen’s satire often targets; rather, she’s suffering from a clinical problem, and it’s hard to laugh when that’s the engine of the novel’s unfocused plot.

For the most part, Adams does a good job of keeping the action going and characterizing the main players, but for some reason both the Florida State coed (from Ohio) and a 12-year-old boy sound like Valley Girls.

by Michael Janairo

Audiobook review: “State of Denial”

“State of Denial” by Bob Woodward. Read by Boyd Gaines. Abridged, 7 hours, 6 CDs. Simon & Schuster. $29.95.

This book is difficult to take. I loaded it onto my iPod and listened to it at the gym while TV screens showed captions on CNN and Fox announcing new Iraqi and American casualties in Iraq.

Among the many outrages recounted in the book — advisers too timid to give President Bush bad news, distortions and manipulations by former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld (especially in terms of troop requirements), Bush and Karl Rove exchanging fart jokes — what stands out most is Bush’s insistence on body counts of enemy dead as a gauge of progress.

Woodward points out the fallacy of body counts with the example of the Vietnam War, which left more than 1 million Vietnamese and 58,193 Americans dead — and the U.S. still lost.

Woodward does the United States a great service with this hard and necessary look at the inner workings of the Bush administration.

Gaines does a good job in reading the book by giving a straightforward performance to highlight Woodward’s words and quotations, without resorting to impersonations.

by Michael Janairo

Audiobook review: “Sherlock’s Legacy”

“Sherlock’s Legacy” by Ed. Lange. With a full cast and narrator; music by Will Severin. Unabridged, 1.75 hours, 2 CDs. New York State Theatre Institute Family Classic AudioBooks. $16.95.

The legendary detective is in his retirement and regrets never having married or having fathered a child. But then a young woman arrives, and mysteries soon abound — including a murder.

Though the play begins slowly, the pace soon quickens — perhaps a little too quickly to be plausible. But the fun of the play is spending time with classic characters of Holmes and Watson in this richly imagined production.

The full cast does a wonderful job of conveying the setting of England in 1920; however, the audio quality is uneven. Some performers’ voices are crisp, while others sound as if they are speaking in a hollow box.

Nonetheless, the detailed study guide holds true to the institute’s pedagogical mission.

by Michael Janairo

Not so big in Detroit

A cover story I wrote from the Times Union about two audiobooks by Murakami — clocking in at nearly 1,000 words — is sent out on the wires and any paper that picks up can do whatever they want with it.

Here’s what the link to what the Free Press did with it, including giving star ratings. I feel so Ebert-ish now.

by Michael Janairo

All about the NYTimes Book Review

The Elegant Variation has all the links you need about:

Everything you ever wanted to know about the New York Times Book Review but were afraid to ask.

by Michael Janairo

Time for a new book review publication?

There’s growing chatter online about this (which I first heard thanks to the Complete Review).

This discussion is happening at the Open University:

ENTHUSIASM FOR A NEW BOOK REVIEW:

by Jeffrey Herf

Thanks very much to Cass Sunstein, Steven Pinker, Eric Rauchway, Linda Hirshman, Richard Stern, and David Bell. I’m very glad to see their enthusiasm for the idea of a new book review. They offer a host of good practical suggestions and lessons from past efforts. The practicalities of a new publication are the most difficult issues. I hope our discussion will come to the attention of one of people with the will and the means to respond to the problem I described and that my Open University colleagues agree should be addressed.

by Michael Janairo

Edith Wharton’s “The Mount”

The blog the Elegant Variation reports on Michael Gorra’s review of the new Edith Wharton biography, which includes comments about her estate in the Berkshires, The Mount. The post is here.

Gorra’s Times Literary Supplement review of Hermione Lee’s EDITH WHARTON is here.

by Michael Janairo

Book buzz and a blog

Hisham Matar’s “In the Country of Men,” which was recently released, has been getting a lot of buzz lately.

Here’s NPR on the book (with an interview):

Hisham Matar fled Libya in the 1970s as a 9-year-old boy. This week, he releases his debut novel, In the Country of Men, a story told through the eyes of a Libyan boy. Like Matar, the boy’s father is a political dissident hunted down by the Libyan government.

Here’s the Boston Globe interview.

And, even better, here’s the blog The Complete Review on it.

A bit about the Complete Review. This is how it bills itself:

A selectively comprehensive, objectively opinionated survey of books old and new, trying to meet all your book review, preview, and information needs.

Another way of thinking of it is that it is utterly fascinating and a wonderful service for readers.

For “In the Country of Men,” for example, it compiles 13 reviews of the novel (so far) and gives the book a final grade of B-.
The Complete Review has covered 1,807 books so far. Give it a look.

by Michael Janairo

AP ends its book review package

AP is dropping its book review package.

The Associated Press is ending its book review package.

“This is a sad turn of events for book reviews. AP reviews, even small, ran far and wide, and always helped sales,” said a book-company publicist who alerted E&P to AP’s decision. The publicist requested anonymity.

When E&P asked AP about the decision, Linda M. Wagner, the wire service’s director of media relations and public affairs, said in a statement today: “AP is revamping its Lifestyles coverage to focus more resources on topics like food and parenting, and as a result we are discontinuing the book-review package that had moved through that department.”

She added that AP “remains as committed as ever” to covering books — via reviews, features about authors, etc. — through its Arts and Entertainment Department.

The NBCC president weighs in here.