I don’t seem to be finishing many paper books at the moment, but I am tearing through audiobooks. If I continue at this rate, I might end up listening to as many books this year as physically reading them. Thanks Audible Plus! (Not a sponsor, but I’m open to offers.)
Here are three more that I’ve listened to recently…
Surprised by Joy (1955) by C.S. Lewis
I’ve actually got the book on my shelves, but I decided to listen instead. I thought it was about his encounter with Jesus and decision to become a Christian – and it is, but only at the end of what is really a memoir of his childhood and early adulthood. With emphasis on childhood. It takes us through his days at various different schools, and really delves into what makes these positive or negative experiences. Nobody has better expressed how awful P.E. is, and what a blessing it is not to have to do it anymore.
I really enjoyed this book, and Lewis’s gentle thoughtfulness. The only downside with the audiobook is that I think it would have been better in Lewis’s (presumably) Northern Irish accent. The fact that the narrator was English was particularly odd when Lewis was talking about feeling out of kilter in England, as an outsider.
Come Again (2020) by Robert Webb
One could hardly ask for a better narrator than Olivia Colman, and in Come Again she often juggles three or four distinct accents in conversation with each other. She is brilliant, but sadly the book isn’t. It’s about a middle-aged woman called Kate whose life has fallen apart in the wake of her husband’s death from a brain tumour that had been growing for decades – but with almost no symptoms. She wishes she could go back to when they met at university, and warn him. And one morning she wakes up to find out that her wish has come true – she is waking up on the day she met him, as a 19-year-old.
This part of the novel is brilliant. Kate is snarky, funny, and a complex emotional character. The book is often very poignant, as well as delightfully funny (though some tangents on Brexit and Donald Trump, while I wholeheartedly agree with Webb’s/Kate’s stance, don’t really cohere). The trouble is that it doesn’t work at all with the rest of the novel – which is about gangsters trying to track down a memory stick that exposes the secrets of a powerful man. The final quarter of the novel, particularly, is very weak – car chases, fights, and all sorts of nonsense that lets down all the emotionally sophisticated narrative that preceded it. If only an editor had spoken to Webb about not putting ALL his ideas in one novel.
The Adventures of Sally (1922) by P.G. Wodehouse
Oh, inject Wodehouse straight into my veins. What a delightful experience. The plot scarcely matters – it includes a surprise inheritance, various actresses, a theatre impresario, boxing, jaunts across the Atlantic, broken engagements, irritating brothers, love at first sight and all the other usual Wodehouse ingredients. Sally is funny, spirited, and with a lovely dryness. As usual, it is Wodehouse’s mastery of the humorous sentence that, time and again, makes this novel a hoot. I particular loved Ginger and his inability to translate his own brand of slang.
He glanced over his shoulder warily. “Has that blighter pipped?”
“Pipped?”
“Popped,” explained Ginger.
As before, anything you’d recommend from the Audible Plus catalogue? Do let me know! (I think I paid £3 for Webb’s book, but the other two were free.)
In general, I have found the Audible Plus catalog to be a huge disappointment (except for all the Wodehouse). A Scribd subscription for $9.99/month provides me with tons of books and audiobooks – that I actually want to read/listen to and might otherwise buy. I don’t plan to renew my Audible subscription when it runs out this year. Listening to a book just because it’s free doesn’t seem like a good idea to me. Please let me know if I’m wrong and am missing something. Thanks – always enjoy your blog.
Oh sorry that you haven’t found things you like – I’ve been quite lucky. There were a couple things on my wishlist already that were there, for instance. It is definitely a mixed bag, and it takes some searching, but I’ve been generally really pleased. But definitely agree that it’s not worth listening to something just because it’s free – still have to be discerning.
I have loved listening to a number of Anthony Trollope novels from the Audible plus catalogue. Timothy West narrates them beautifully.
CS Lewis had – to my ears – an “of its time” RP accent, at least by the time he was broadcasting in the 1940s. I think it’s a class and period thing, like upper class Scots of the early 20th century not sounding Scottish. https://youtu.be/JHxs3gdtV8A
(Clip of CS Lewis speaking)
Oo thanks for finding that – yes, I take it back, the narrator was pretty close to this.
Come Again sounds a very muddled concept. Almost as if the author had two ideas but neither was strong enough on their own for a novel so he shoved them together
I haven’t had an Audible subscription for a few years because I wasnt listening to them as quickly as I wanted to an the credits just kept building up. So I switched to using the free service in the library but the choice is really poor. So I may end up having to bite the bullet with Audible again
Yes, Come Again was so infuriating because there was a really good book buried in there.
Nice! I have also finished quite a few audiobooks since the beginning of the year.
I need to try again Wodehouse. Last time I tried, I had a hard time with the British accent. Funny, because I learnt the UK English all along my years a a student in France. But after living in the US for 20 years, I now have issues with the British accent!!
Wodehouse is so good though, that would be great in audio
Oh interesting! I don’t think it would be right to have Wodehouse in any other accent, but maybe that’s my prejudice :D
I have listened to audiobooks quite a bit ever since they came on audiocassettes! And I have enjoyed quite a few books from the Audible Plus catalog. Not sure if the same titles are available in the US and UK, but I listened to all the Daisy Dalrymple books by Carola Dunn and also the even more enjoyable but much shorter series of mysteries set in Cornwall. Many Ngaio Marsh books included and several Agatha Christies and Ellis Peters, and as you say quite a bit of Wodehouse. I am currently listening to an enjoyable version of Kim by Kipling for my Book Club, and I have found that most ‘classic” authors have at least a few of their titles included. Oh, yes, they also have several unabridged Lord Peter Wimsey novels as part of the Plus Catalog, although I had previously purchased those.
I’ve read all of this, but the Ellis Peters—but some, esp. Dorothy Sayers, would be fun to listen to. Thank you for posting all these names.
Matthew has an Audible subscription but you’d have to listen an awful lot to keep up with it; he does at least an hour a day and is pausing his subscription again this year! Mind you, he rarely reads a book that’s under 10 hours as he doesn’t feel he’s getting the value! The Robert Webb sounds such a shame – do people just not have editors these days?
Come Again sounds completely baffling. The Wodehouse isn’t one I’ve read and sounds a total joy, as always :-)
I’m not as a rule an audiobook person – at least when it comes to fiction! But these all sound fascinating. As for Lewis’s accent – not remote Irish as Susanna says (I spotted that clip too!)
I also reread Surprised by Joy this month — not as an audiobook, though. Accents are so important, aren’t they? The right or wrong one can really make or break an audiobook. Did Lewis himself retain an Irish accent? There must be some descriptions of it from those who heard him lecturing. And Wodehouse has to be done with the proper accent, for sure!
Back to SBJ, I was surprised on this reading to find how little really there was about his conversion to Christianity — almost nothing. There was a fair amount about his struggle with merely becoming a deist, but his Christ experience seemed to be almost too moving or overwhelming to write about. This got me even more curious and interested, of course, but I don’t know if he wrote about it elsewhere.
I love The Adventures of Sally. I’ve listened to the Jonathan Cecil audio so many times. The scene you quoted from never fails to make me laugh helplessly. I can’t imagine any other accent for PGW. In fact, I find it hard to read his books in print because they come to life so wonderfully via audio.