Audio Books: Jeanne's Picks

 

Like Christy, I am something of a newcomer to audio books. While I have to say that I still prefer REAL books (i.e., paper!) I have listened to and enjoyed several lately. My taste in audio runs more to non-fiction and to things I have read before so that if I mentally tune out at times (because I think it is a good thing to pay attention while driving) I still know what is going on.  Here are some of my favorites, in no particular order:

 

Cleo by Helen Brown:  I have loved this book for years and given many copies to friends. When I learned that an audio version read by the author was available, I had to give it a listen.  Brown lost her beloved older son to a traffic accident. This is the story of how she grieved and then learned to love and live again.  It’s thoughtful, heartfelt, funny, honest, and most of all beautifully written.  Unlike some authors who read their own works, Brown does an excellent job: her voice is warm and expressive, giving a sense of intimacy.  Her New Zealand accent adds to the charm.  She enunciates so well, there’s no problem understanding her.  (I admit when I watch some British shows I feel I need to turn on the captions until I get used to the accent. Not a problem here.)

 

Bono by Helen Brown: Yes, I really like Brown’s work and hope there will be audios of all her books eventually.  In this one, Helen is feeling a bit restless and wonders if she can create a new, glamorous life in New York.  She approaches her publisher who, much to her surprise, loves the idea of a Big Apple visit. She can promote her books and—as part of the promotion—foster a special needs cat named Bono.  Who, Brown finds, is not inclined to be cooperative about being fostered.  This time the book was read by a professional actress who did a good job, though I confess it took me a bit to get over my disappointment that it wasn’t Helen (after reading her books and listening to audio, I feel we are on a first name basis.)

 

Kitty Cornered by Bob Tarte describes life with a menagerie of ducks, geese, parrots, bunnies, and cats. You know which part caught my attention.  Again, this is a book I have read, gifted, and read again.  This audio is narrated by a professional who does a good job but he doesn’t sound like the Bob I hear in my head so it took awhile for me to get into it.  I wanted to “coach” him into sounding the way I thought he should sound.  Other people who haven’t read the book and formed an opinion shouldn’t have this problem. The feline cast are all scene stealers: sweet Moonbeam (better known as Moobie) who learns to use her Elizabethan collar to her advantage; needy Maynard; free spirit Frannie; grouchy Agnes; pretty Tina; and Lucy the snapping crocodile disguised as a dilute tabby.

 

Mobituaries by Mo Rocca is a browser’s delight but also fun on audio.  For the uninitiated, Rocca likes to take topics and people he feels have not been appropriately appreciated and tells his audience about them.  It’s a fascinating and delightful look at subjects from Sammy Davis Jr., Prussia, Audrey Hepburn, disco, and much more.

 

Calypso by David Sedaris:  I had heard Sedaris on NPR so I was already familiar with his delivery and his humor.  I found myself alternately cringing and laughing as I listened to this.  I had read a previous book so I knew a bit about the family dynamics.  I’m not sure his humor is for everyone but I do enjoy his writing.  He does know how to turn a phrase.

 

Finally, the audio books that started it all, courtesy of a Book Bingo requirement:  the mother/daughter duo of Lisa Scottoline and Francesca Serritella reading their essays about, well, whatever catches their fancy.  With enticing titles such as I’ve Got Sand in All the Wrong Places and I Need a Lifeguard Everywhere but the Beach, I was easily drawn into the lives of these two women.  Most entries are humorous, but serious topics are covered as well.

 

Next up:  I'm listening to Jim Dale read A Christmas Carol.  ‘Tis the season! And though it's a story I've read and seen many times, there are bits I don't remember such as the discussion about "dead as a doornail." I'm not finished but I think I can highly recommend this one as well!

Feather Brained by Bob Tarte

Reviewed by Jeanne

Let me start out by saying I am a not a birder.  I can identify cardinals, robins, blue jays, and woodpeckers—providing the latter are pecking on wood when I see them.  That’s about it.  I admire people who at a glance or from six notes of a song can say with authority, “That’s a Greater Yellowbellied Sapsucker.”  Of course, they could be making all that up, because how would I know any differently? I was made aware of some birders’ obsessions in the book The Big Year by Mark Obmascik, but these were seasoned birders who had been identifying for years.  How on earth do these guys do that?

Fortunately, Bob Tarte came to my rescue with his book Feather Brained:  My Bumbling Quest to Become a Birder & Find a Rare Bird on My Own. Bob was not a natural birder.  At the tender age of nine in an effort to be cool, he set out for the park armed with a second-hand book on birds and a set of opera glasses. Let’s just say that first foray was less than successful.

A mere twenty five years later, Bob was ready to strike out again.  This time the impetus was due to an even rarer find: a red haired lady named Linda with a love of life in general and nature in particular.  He gets identification books, listens to recordings of bird song, and joins online birding groups where alerts are posted so members can rush to an area and maybe, just maybe, spot a bird for their life list. It becomes Bob’s mission in life to spot such a bird so he can alert the group and be the hero for once.  

The phrase “easier said than done” springs to mind at this juncture.

As with his earlier books (Enslaved by Ducks; Fowl Weather; Kitty Cornered), Bob writes with a self-deprecating humor.  Comparisons to Charlie Brown and his little red haired girl will not go amiss, although Bob also has to deal with Churchill’s black dog of depression.  His eye for detail and description is as keen as ever, even when prowling around a sewage pond for rare birds.  He’s accompanied on many of his expeditions by Bill Holm who, as Bob explains, “didn’t particularly like birds, but he liked them more than he liked people.” Bob’s strength as a birder is to identify birds by their songs, so he depends on Bill to spot the birds, point out his errors, and make unmerciful fun of him for being so wrong.  Even though some of the episodes border on slapstick in Bob’s recounting—I laughed out loud as he and Linda risk life and limb to check out an osprey’s nest built on a train trestle—the book was a wonderful look at how birders can be made, not born.  I found it reassuring as Bob misidentified wrens, grew frustrated at distinguishing calls, and sulked at birds that wouldn’t show up where they were supposed to be. 

But above all else, Feather Brained is a romance. Oh, sure, Bob learns to love birds and birding, but it is his love for Linda that shines through the pages.  They would seem to be polar opposites:  Linda is the free spirit who lived happily in a small trailer in the woods while Bob enjoys creature comforts like electricity and running water. Where Linda sees rainbows, Bob sees dark clouds with tornado potiental.  Love conquers all, however, and throughout the book Bob’s devotion never waivers, not through feeding mealworms to orphaned starlings, chipping away ice for the ducks, or being pelted with soggy monkey chow by a cantankerous parrot.  It must be true love.

And, hey—maybe I’ll take another look at that bird book I have in the basement.

Bob Tarte's website is http://www.bobtarte.com/

P.S. The Bristol Bird Club will meet at the library on Tuesday,  August 16 starting at 7:30 pm.  Their website is http://bristolbirdclub.org/ 

"Okay, I'm watching the bird.  Now what?" ~Melon

Fowl Weather by Bob Tarte

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Reviewed by Jeanne

I just finished a book which should have left me weeping.  It covered the death of a parent, the author’s struggle with grief and clinical depression, loss of more than one beloved pet, and a mother’s decent into dementia.  This isn’t my usual fare of choice, but then again this isn’t a usual book.

Readers of this blog will know that I already gave a rave review to Kitty Cornered (and no, it wasn’t just because of all the cats) and to Tarte’s first book, Enslaved by Ducks, which described just how a guy with no animal ambitions whatsoever ended up with bunnies, cats, geese, ducks, turkeys, a dove, a parrot and, well, I kind of lost track.  Suffice it to say one critter leads to another.

Fowl Weather is actually the second book, picking up not long after Ducks.  It’s another very funny book, filled with delightful and memorable characters, some of whom are even human; but as I indicated above, it faces many of life’s darker moments and does so not only with courage and grace but humor.  Laugh out loud humor. Really.

Early in the book, Bob gets one of those life changing calls when he learns his father has died suddenly. There had been no warning.  He’d been out shoveling snow, digging out from a Michigan winter, when he fell.  He made it as far as the bed before he succumbed to a heart attack. Numb, Bob and his sisters help his mother with arrangements, legal issues and practical decisions, and try to adjust to the new normal.

Many years ago I read a line that has stayed with me:  no matter how old you are, you’re never ready to be an orphan.  It still rings true.

Bob and his sisters take turns checking on his mother, all the while Bob is battling a return of his depression, serious illnesses among some of his beloved pets, and trying to deal with a former classmate who apparently believes that no one’s life is so complete that it can’t be better if she “helps” out.   A new complication soon emerges, as Bob’s mother calls to complain that the neighbors are shunning her and that some of them are borrowing things without asking.  Then come the calls about her lost keys, lost purse, and even lost car. I think the "purse finder" solution is particularly ingenious and thought a few seconds about the possibility of using it for my car keys, purse, and my grocery list but decided that wasn't quite feasible.

Among Tarte’s gifts is the ability to see humor and irony in even the grimmest situation.  He doesn’t belittle or make light of the problems; he does make them bearable without casting himself as a superhero or victim. The animals are still foremost among the characters, including Stanley Sue the African grey parrot (whose name evolved after it was discovered “he” was actually she), Ollie the pocket parrot version of Mussolini, Moobie the cat who trains humans to hold her water bowl for her and Rudy the dwarf rabbit who, if he isn’t the reincarnation of Houdini, does a fine impression nonetheless.

I can honestly say I haven’t read another book that handled such difficult issues while making me laugh so much.  I’d recommend reading Enslaved by Ducks first so that you understand how the Tartes amassed their menagerie but it’s certainly not mandatory.

The earlier review is here.

 Bob Tarte has photos of most of the furred and feathered characters posted at his website www.bobtarte.com.

Bob Tarte's Animal Magnetism

Reviewed by Jeanne

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As readers have noticed, I have a penchant for cat books.  I do like nonfiction at times, but when it comes to animals I tend to regard nonfiction books with suspicion. Those are the only books I routinely flip to the back and read the end before I start the book so I know if the animal in question survives or if I need to lay in an ample supply of tissues. 

That’s how I approached Kitty Cornered:How Frannie and Five Other Incorrigible Cats Seized Control of Our House and Made It Their Home by Bob Tarte.  Cats seemed okay at the end, so I decided I’d read a chapter or two.  I had a pretty good idea of where this was going by the diagram of the house (including the area where black cat Agnes makes daily attempts on Bob’s life) and the cast of characters (“Lucy:  snapping crocodile disguised as a ‘diluted tabby’”), but by the time I laughed my way through the introduction, I was sure he couldn’t sustain this level of humor.

So help me, he did.  He kept me laughing from the first chapter to the last and all the ones in between. Bob has a wonderfully semi-cynical, self-deprecating sense of humor and a keen eye for the absurd. I resisted the impulse to call friends up in the middle of the night to read passages from the book, but oh, the temptation was there.  The true reason I didn’t was that I was afraid I wouldn’t be able to stop laughing long enough to read the passages aloud in understandable English and might be mistaken for an obscene phone caller.

But I have to say that the sentence that completely won me over and made me know that I would love this book came right after Agnes -um, "accidentally"  intersperses herself between Bob's foot and the stair:  "I pitched backward, trying to avoid her, my hand attempting to latch onto the nonexistent rail which I had been intending to have someone else install for years."

That is the story of my life.

Lest you think I was too much swayed by the feline aspect of this book, let me hasten to add that I was so amused by that first book that I checked out Tarte’s first book, Enslaved by Ducks:  How One Man Went from Head of the Household to Bottom of the Pecking Order.   This filled in a lot of background as to exactly how Bob, a non-animal person, ended up with rabbits, several varieties of ducks, geese, turkeys, a pocket parrot, doves, parakeets, and I can’t remember what all else.  He lays the blame at the feet of Linda, described as “long suffering wife to unfortunate author,” a country girl with Tennessee roots who likes having animals around. It all started out innocently enough with one bunny, Binky.  Binky was a Dutch dwarf rabbit which, as Bob found out much too late, is a breed characterized as being “moody.”  This is sort of like saying Dr. Jekyll had some personality quirks.  Binky’s favorite pastime was chewing, and while he was especially fond of electrical cords he also enjoyed books, furniture legs, carpet, shoes and electronic cables.  Just to vary his activities, he also liked to play hide and seek—inside the house walls.

You’d think Bob would have been discouraged by this, and he was.  It just didn’t stop him and Linda from accumulating a veritable zoo, primarily of birds. By the end of the book, he was even hand-raising orphan songbirds and complaining just as loudly as he did at that first bunny.  Some of these characters made appearances in Kitty Cornered   which is his most recent book.  This means I need to re-read that now that I know the origin of Ollie, Stanley Sue, et al and sort of catch up with what’s been going on with them.  However, I’m going to wait until I read Fowl Weather, his second book, so that I’m sure I know all the characters.

Whether or not you know a Muscovy duck from a call duck, you’ll be entertained by these books. My personal favorite section, though, has to be the one where their cat Moobie has to wear a cone which becomes her “Funnel of Happiness.”  I won’t tell you how.  You have to read the book, because I don’t think there is any way they could possibly make a movie—at least not one as funny as this book.

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You can see photos of the cats & other characters as well as read more about Bob and his books at www.BobTarte.com.  He also has a lively Facebook page and Twitter account, though the latter is periodically usurped by one or more of the cats, bent on dispensing feline advice and wisdom.

 

  

"What are we looking for?"