Me And Audiobooks!

 Do you consider listening to an audiobook to be reading? I do, though I rarely listen to a book I haven’t read first. The reason for that is because I mostly listen to them in bed, where I am likely to fall asleep. It doesn’t matter as much if I know the story. A lot of people listen to them in the car or while doing housework. I sometimes listen to them while I’m doing housework or over dinner.

Also, I like to enjoy them as a performance. Quite often, the audiobook is read by a well known actor, such as Stephen Fry, who read the Harry Potter books. Nigel Planer, whom you might know from The Young Ones or Hogfather, is hilarious reading Terry Pratchett’s novels. I personally like Tony Robinson best for Terry Pratchett’s books, but he reads the abridged versions.

Kerry Greenwood’s novels are beautifully read by Stephanie Daniel(Phryne Fisher) and Louise Siverson(Corinna Chapman). 

I bought one of Joanne Harris’s Loki novels, Gospel Of Loki, read by the delightfully funny Allan Corduner, who absolutely sounds to me like Loki would.

But although I have about fifty audiobooks of my own, I borrow quite a few from my local library by download. Currently I’m listening to Kerry Greenwood’s Death Before Wicket, the novel in which Phryne Fisher visits Sydney. My local library has quite a few Kerry Greenwood audiobooks.

In recent months, I have discovered that a lot of audiobooks are available on YouTube. I don’t recommend most of the Harry Potter books, which are not read by well known actors - in fact, they sound like they are not read by real human beings. But most others are the ones I have mentioned before - Terry Pratchett’s books read by the likes of Nigel Planer, and I have just discovered that the Kerry Greenwood mysteries are available, read by Stephanie Daniel and Louise Siverson. Which is great, because the ones from my library are mostly out on loan.

Quite often, when a book is out of print, you can still get them in audiobook. Barbara Hambly’s Bride Of The Rat God is no longer in print, though the reworked versions, Silver Screen Mysteries, are easy to get, and Amazon often sells them cheaply in audiobook.  Bride Of The Rat God is beautifully read by Marguerite Gavin. I hadn’t heard of her before I bought the audiobook, but love her now.

If you haven’t bought any audiobooks, why not check them out on YouTube first? They are free and you can listen to them any time. Or listen to them from your library.

What do you think? Are you a fan?

Just Been To See… Disclosure Day

 I went to my local cinema to see the newest Steven Spielberg movie, Disclosure Day. I hadn’t heard of it till a few days ago. But I enjoy SF films and Steven Spielberg is a director I respect. And the score is by John Williams. The music isn’t his usual symphonic type, though I hear it was done on purpose. 

There is a lot of action, with cars zooming along, attempts to kill the main characters, but there is much more to it than that.

Two couples, Margaret and her boyfriend Jackson, Daniel and his girlfriend Jane, are on the run and being chased by government agents led by villain Noah Scanlon, who is after a piece of alien technology Daniel has stolen with the intention of showing it and some vital videos to the world. Literally. The films have been there since Roswell in the 1940s. The aliens were not invaders and interrogators have tortured them, all there in the films. As a result, there is some alien technology controlled by Wardex, the agency led by Scanlon, who uses it to find and communicate with Jane and others. 

Margaret, a meteorologist working for a TV station, finds herself, the day before the main story, with powers she hadn’t known she had. She and Daniel, when they meet, feel as if they have met, but don’t know how or when.

Any more and there will be spoilers so that’s as far as I can go, but it’s well worth watching. Interesting that the villain - who thinks he is the good guy - is played by Colin Firth, who, in his time, was the sexiest Mr Darcy.

He is the only actor allowed to use his British accent, but there are others who have to be American for the film. Daniel is played by English actor Josh O’Connor. Emily Blunt plays Margaret. You might have seen her before, as Mary Poppins. Eve Hewson, who plays as Jane, is Irish, the daughter of U2 singer Bono.

I enjoyed it very much. I hope you do too. 

Juniper Wiles by Charles De Lint. Ottawa: Triskell Press 2021

This novel is one of the recent stories set in the world of Newford, that  delightful town somewhere in Canada , where  there  is  magic, music and craft.  The main characters casually practise magic  and  play music or write. There is an annual  festival of fairy themed music and art, and some of those  who attend are actual fairies. 

Juniper Wiles is a former actress who has returned to Newford after spending  several years in a TV series called Nora Constantine, playing as a  teenage detective. To her surprise, she finds people  calling her by the name of the character she played, including a ghost who wants her to solve a mystery for him before he can move on. She must do some mystery solving, reluctantly, with her friend July Coppercorn, who appears in other De Lintvnovels, and find the actual  Nora Constantine , who lives in another universe and has gone missing; the universe is based on an unpublished novel, and Nora  is probably a prisoner of the villain. 

 This novel was entertaining enough   For me  to buy the next book in the series.  I’m reading it now. 

It’s available in ebook and print, as well as audiobook .