Bergljot

To begin with I found this book of limited interest, all these French names of streets and coffee houses sounded a bit pretentious and I didnt care much about Hemmingways tales of Gertrude Stein, Ezra Pound or James Joyce although I admit the stories of Scott Fitzgerald were amusing. However, after a while I started to sense an undercurrent running right through the book. And this was the love between Hemmingway and his first wife Hadley. They were indestructible, I think he says several times. And because they are so obviously content and happy a sense of foreboding creeps in (after all you know he married four times). And when the disaster strikes in one of final chapters (and this should have been the final chapter) it is heart-rending. It made me wonder if the remorse he felt didnt last all his life and not just until Hadley got married again. This background story made this book a great book after all.

Maybe not the best Wallander story but good all the same. I think this is Mankell's first Wallander book and the character and his background appears fully created here.
It took time to get used to the narrator.

May be not as well constructed as David Copperfield, which I listened to before, but very enjoyable even so and the reading first class.

There are some audiobook authors that I can always rely on for a reasonably good detective story and Ann Granger is one of them (Reginald Hill and Henry Mankell also). Granger does not always stick to the storyline but gets there in the end.

Trollope is always a good value in Audiobooks, over 20 hours of a well read story that keeps you glued to the headphones - even though you may have heard it nearly all before in other Trollope stories

Not the best Dalziel & Pascoe - but good enough. Pascoe is in the lead this time and maybe that is why the plot seems to wander around a bit, but it keeps you listening.

This classic story - apart from being highly entertaining and dramatic - is a very good value, over 30 hours of listening

“The house of silk” is very true to the original stories of Sherlock Holmes but makes the characters, especially Holmes, more human. The story is classical, quite melodramatic and keeps you listening. The reading by Derek Jacobi (as Watson) is perfect.

This used to be one of my favourite Ngaio Marsh books but somehow this did not work so well in the audio form. The humour somehow does not come over very well, the old ladies are pathetic but not funny and the dialogues are quite dated.

The Woodcutter is a classic Hill story (without Dalziel and Pascoe), nice and long and keeps you glued to the ipod. It is a well built up story but goes a bit out of hand in the end (rather implausible ending although quite satisfactory). Well read although the main caracter has a very grumpy voice.

As one would expect from Bill Bryson this is very informative and entertaining but I think I would rather have this book in its paper edition. You feel you would like to go back and forward to check up on different things – might there even be an index in the paper edition whic,h would help?