Audio Book Review: The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn as performed by Elijah Wood

The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain

performed by Elijah Wood
Unabridged

Audible

2010

My Rating

✯✯✯✯✯

Purchase from Audible 

I grew up reading this book and whether you like it or not, whether it makes you uncomfortable or not, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn remains a time-honored classic. So for the sake of space, this is a review of the audio book only, whether the story was captured in a compelling way or not.

If, like me, you love the 1993 film version of this story that stars Elijah Wood, well, needless to say this audio book PERFORMED by him should make you positively giddy. Which it definitely did me when I ran across it by accident while browsing Audible the other day. My eyes just about bugged out of my head like a stomped on bullfrog. Now where is that quote from because I know it's from somewhere?! Now I'll be up all night trying to remember!

Ahem, back to the audio book as performed by Elijah Wood.

To be totally and completely fair, I wasn't sure what to expect. Yes, Elijah made a terrific Huck. When he was 12. I didn't really have that much confidence that he would be able to recreate the character he portrayed so vividly when he was a boy. And even if he was able to recreate being Huckleberry Finn, what about all the other voices and local syntax that Mark Twain just LOVED using in his stories? Could he master every single voice and make it unique? I just wasn't sure about his skill set.

My doubt in his voice performance was UNJUSTIFIED! To the max!

What makes an audio book narrator a cut above the rest? Performing convincingly as uniquely individual characters within a story. Somewhere about 1/3 through the story, I forgot that it was Elijah voicing Jim. Because he became Jim. Just as he became Huck Finn and Tom Sawyer and his deadbeat father and every other single character you mean along the way including the King and the Duke.

I've never before encountered a reading of such a complex book that was so completely easy to follow. There were perhaps a few times at the slow parts where I think Elijah may have been wearing down a tad, but he gained energy again and those brief moments of lost connection were soon forgotten. 

There is a good chance that this reading will become the quintessential audio book performance of The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. My one regret is that I didn't find out about it until just NOW. I could have been loving Lij's narration for years! Now comes the hope, albeit dim, that he may take to performing other audio books. Who knew he was so well suited for the job? ❤

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Audible trick so you don't spend a fortune!

For those of you who've never heard of it, Audible is a partner company with Amazon and it only sells E-audiobooks. That's its business. But one thing that makes it different is that the company evolves and offers specialized readings to its users, like a new offering of Alice in Wonderland performed by Scarlett Johansson or The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn read by Elijah Wood. Pretty cool, huh?

Well, if you're anything like me, when you find something you love, it can be addicting. Audible is the same as any other website, whether you have a "membership" with the monthly fee attached or not. It compels you to buy and before you know it you've spent hundreds of dollars that probably could have been put to better use on that new vacuum cleaner or a replacement dishwasher to bring your kitchen out of the 70s. Am I right?

But I discovered a brilliant trick with Audible!

A lot of the audiobooks have a partner Kindle book on Amazon. Sometimes, or actually a lot of the time, that Kindle book is listed for a really reduced price. Instead of the list price of $14.95, it's only $2.99 for a short time. Well, let's say the counterpart audiobook is $19.99 on Audible. BUT, if you purchase that Kindle book for $2.99 first, it will guarantee you a reduced price of the audiobook on Audible, going from $19.99 to perhaps as low as $3.99.

Or, in my recent case, I bought A Christmas Carol Kindle book for free and was able to buy the Tim Curry audiobook for $.99! Yay! Now that's what I call a bargain!

Just keep in mind that not all of the audiobooks work this way. If there is a discount available if you also own the Kindle book then Audible will tell you on the listing of the audiobook you're interested in. No muss, no fuss, just lots of convenience and dollars saved.

I hope you enjoyed this Audible trick and have fun listening, my friends! ❤

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Audiobook Review: A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens . . . read by Tim Curry

A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens

performed by Tim Curry

Audible

2009

My Rating

✯✯✯✯✯

Purchase from Audible

Every year at Christmastime, the Amazon audiobook company Audible releases an audiobook as a gift to its members. In 2009 that gift was a dramatic reading of A Christmas Carol by Tim Curry.

I was essentially just browsing through Audible last night, bored you might say, and hoping to find something for a reasonable price that I hadn't heard before. I couldn't even retrace the steps that eventually led me to A Christmas Carol, but as soon as I saw Tim Curry's name attached to the title, I knew, absolutely knew, that I had to have it. This is one of the best audiobook buys of my life!

I'm making the grand and likely true assumption that 99% of the people who will ever read this review have watched, read, or listened to a version of A Christmas Carol sometime in their life. So I'm not going to bother with a synopsis.

This reading is all about how a single man is able to elevate a story from being merely narrated to nearly dramatized. Tim Curry is his own cast. He is now and always has been a masterful stage and screen presence, mostly due to his voice which renders the audience awestruck and dumbfounded by its nuances. A voice that lives up to each and every single expectation you might have of him in his performance of A Christmas Carol.

Exquisite shivers creep up and down the spine during Marley's interlude with Scrooge. You warm your toes at Bob Cratchit's fire and tenderly run a hand through Tiny Tim's hair. You quake with Scrooge as he awakens to the realization that no one will mourn him at his passing. And your heels may tap just lightly on the floor when Scrooge awakens to realize it is Christmas morning and he has been given a second chance.

This reading is glorious! It is alive and ripe with a multitude of voices and inflections and tones, all from the talented throat of one man . . . Tim Curry. He in no way over-dramatizes or embellishes the story, but merely lets his voice carry these characters through to their conclusion. He breathes life into Dickens' characters in a way that I never dreamed possible.

This is one audiobook that I recommend with all my heart! ❤

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Audiobook Review: Lizzy & Jane by Katherine Reay (2014)

Lizzy & Jane

by Katherine Reay

2014, read by Hillary Huber

✯✯✯✯✯ (for the novel)

✯✯ (for the audiobook)

❤ Synopsis ❤

Two sisters, one nearly 10 years older than the other. In a fit of rebellion, Jane left home, leaving a void in her younger sister, Lizzy's life, a void that only widens when her mother dies of cancer. As soon as Elizabeth is of legal age, she's gone too, following her dreams to be a big-time chef in New York City. She has her restaurant, Feast, the potential for a romantic match the restaurant's financial backer, Paul. No need for family. But now her skills as a chef are slipping and she's losing the magic. Thinking a return home will stir the passion she once felt for food, Lizzy heads to Washington only to discover that her sister is now battling cancer, the same cancer that killed their mother. While Jane eventually came home and proved herself stable, the relationship between Jane and Lizzy is anything but. Except now Jane needs her and maybe this is a second chance to make their relationship work, just as their mother always hoped. After all, you don't name your daughters after the Bennet sisters in Pride & Prejudice without a good reason.

❤ The Novel ❤

First, do not read Reay's books unless you love classic literature or you will be completely lost with all the literary references. These women eat, sleep, and breathe Jane Austen, although this one also references a lot of Hemingway. And don't read this book unless you're at least a little bit of a foodie since food references are on almost every single page. 

Despite the heroines being named after the Bennet sisters, Lizzy's favorite Austen novel is Persuasion which also happens to my personal favorite. So I appreciated her insight and love of the novel, especially her thoughts on how Anne being forced to wait might have been a blessing, hence the following quote.

Second, if you've ever known someone, either a friend or a family member, who battled cancer than this book will be an inspiration and encouragement to you. While I'm fortunate in the good health of my immediate family and friends, I also realize that the pain, confusion, hurt, and anger over that dreadful diagnosis of cancer is very real. And this book offers at least gentle semblance of healing and hope.

Life and family are sometimes messy. I cannot connect to the reality of Lizzy and Jane's relationship, their anger, the long history of bitterness and snipping at one another. I don't know how defensiveness can be the first reaction you have to your sister. But then, I've been blessed with a best friend in my younger sister. I love her, so very much, and so my heart breaks when I remember the sad reality that a lot of siblings don't have the same relationship that I have with my sibling.

This book is about closing relational rifts, especially in times of pain and suffering. It's about forging ahead to reconciliation, about being tentative and trusting and transparent with family. It's about giving of yourself when your first reaction for decades has always been self-preservation.

I thoroughly enjoyed Reay's first book, Dear Mr. Knightley. It was a very sweet read, cute, but whatever I felt lacked in that novel has been found in Lizzy & Jane. Katherine Reay has matured into the author she was meant to become, and I hope and pray that she accomplishes much more with her writing in the years to come. I just know this book has already touched and softened many lives and that it will touch many more. That's the magic of books that connect to Austen. People read them, and they should this book!

❤ The Narrator ❤

I won't go too much into this except to say that I am THANKFUL that I didn't let my opinion of this novel hinge on the narrator. I started out just listening to the audio book and it was just so . . . depressing. Bone deep depressing with a droning tenor to it that just grated on me.

My advice? Skip the audio book on this one. I listened to exactly 33% of the audio book before picking up the actual novel. The best decision I ever made and the absolute saving of the brilliant Lizzy & Jane.

❤ Parental Guidance ❤ 

One of the things I like about Reay's work is that she doesn't necessarily preach to her readers. With that in mind, this is a little bit more of a clean read. I mean, Jane is honest with her sister that sex has no appeal right now because she feels shriveled and dry. Yes, it's a bit blunt and I was a bit shocked, but you know what? That's life! I'm comfortable with everything I read within the pages of Lizzy & Jane and there was nothing sexually questionable. Just some brutal honesty and a lot of family hurt that needed to be worked through.

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Audiobook Review: Love Comes Calling by Siri Mitchell (2014)

 

Love Comes Calling by Siri Mitchell

2014, read by Morgan Hallett

❤

 

My job gives me between 7 and 8 hours a day on the computer so I need SOMETHING to distract my brain, and audiobooks are perfect for that. Yes, I'm one of those people who can perform data entry while listening to an audiobook or a radio drama. The Lord has blessed me so much, and I'm incredibly grateful!

Anyway, I thought it would be fun to start reviewing the audiobooks I listen to, how well I liked the book itself, but especially who well I like the reader since the reader makes or breaks a story.

❤ Synopsis ❤

Love Comes Calling by Siri Mitchell is a simple and fun story, set in the 1920s, right smackdab in the middle of the flapper era. The heroine Ellis Eton is a young coed who tries and tries and tries her hardest to focus and do things right, just as is expected of her by her uppercrust family, but her mind wanders, she gets distracted, and before she realizes it, she's flubbed another test, or forgotten about a meeting, or misplaced directions. Literally, she's a mess. But she has a good heart, so when the daughter of her family's former housekeeper needs to take a trip for 2 weeks to bury her mother in her hometown, Ellis agrees to take her place at her job as a switchboard operator, or a "Hello Girl" as they're called. Ellis and Janie looked so much alike as children that they actually switched places for a day, so Ellis knows the scheme will work, especially since her fondest dream is to be a Hollywood actress and she knows she can pull off the switch. Except that being a switchboard operator is harder than she ever dreamed, and when she overhears something she shouldn't by not flipping a switch on her board, well, she suddenly suspects that someone is out to harm one of her oldest friends, Griff Phillips. As the heir to a substantial fortune himself, along with being an excellent college football player, Griff is near and dear to her heart, although Ellis doesn't realize how near and dear until she starts sticking to him like glue. Throw in a few speakeasys, uppercrust parties, and time at the lake, and you've got quite an adventure on your hands with Love Comes Calling!

❤ The Novel ❤

First of all, one of the things I love most about this book is the heroine. Siri herself admits to creating a heroine with ADHD before it was even diagnosed, and boy is she right! Ellis is at the height of ADHD so it's fascinating to be in her head where tries so hard and struggles to please her family and to remember and to do what needs to be done, but she just can't quite manage it. In that same vein, though, I'm sure a lot of readers will find themselves frustrated with Ellis' lack of concentration, which is why I'm mentioning her diagnosis right now so you know what you're getting into before you even pick up the book or audiobook.

My second favorite thing is how the Roaring Twenties is represented. Modern Americans have this glamorous vision of the 1920s lifestyles, the glitz, the fame, the parties, etc. But it wasn't all glamour. A  lot of it was sordid and vile and shameful, and this is the side Siri Mitchell represents so well that most other authors or films skip altogether. Fun and fabulous parties like the ones in The Great Gatsby are all well and good, but in Love Comes Calling, they're shown for being the life-draining, morality destroying binges that they are. And I love that honesty.

Griff is also pretty awesome because he's the one character that doesn't say "Ohhhhh, Ellis" whenever she does something wrong. He admires her spunk and fortitude and he's deeply in love with her. He also stands firm on his convictions and he won't bend to unlawful peer pressure. I was rooting for them from the beginning.

❤ The Narrator ❤

Narrators make or break the story that they're presenting. There is nothing worse than a narrator that drones on without changing tempo. I lose place in the story so easily with a narrator like that.

Thankfully, Morgan Hallett is a SUPERB narrator!

She has all of Ellis' mannerisms down perfectly, the inflections of each character, and the dramatic pitch needed for varying scenes. She engages the listener actively and I didn't want to go home from work one day because I didn't want to leave my story in the middle! You should hear her say "Oysters and clambakes!" just like I imagined Ellis to sound. Plus, she skillfully maneuvers the male voices, never an easy accomplishment for female narrators. But Morgan Hallett manages it flawlessly.

I've listened to dozens of audiobooks so far, and while I already knew I loved Love Comes Calling because I've physically read it, I love it even more now that I've heard it narrated with such skill and finesse!

❤ Parental Guidance ❤

This book isn't for the faint of heart. While I've made it sound fun, there is a lot of drinking and carousing, always with negative consequences. One of Ellis' friends dies because she drank bad alcohol in a speakeasy. There's also a police officer who, while not wholly bad, isn't wholly good either, and he steps aside and lets bad things happen instead of helping. There's no swearing of course, and only some mild kissing. Overall, all of the negative actions have consequences, just like in real life, and Siri Mitchell presents the light of Christ shining in the darkest of places.

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