Annie

I have one tip for those of you considering buying American Psycho: if you start it, commit to finishing it, no matter how it might make you feel.

See, you will get a few hours in and wonder what Ellis and his protagonist, Patrick Bateman, are rambling on about. You???ll hear about every outfit anyone wears, what it looks like, what it???s made of, what label it carries, and possibly where it was bought. You???ll meet a lot of unpleasant people trying to one-up each other with restaurant reservations and other signs of status, and you will probably care about none of them. Well, maybe Jean the secretary. But that???s it.

There is a point, I promise. What better way to illustrate a society so wrapped up in itself and its greed? In the midst of all this excess, a man can casually admit over dinner that he tortures and murders people, and no one even notices. Conversation goes on as before.

You???ll get through that, and then the killing will start. It is relentless and nearly unbearable. You will think, ???This is vile, hateful stuff. It???s misogynistic. It???s misanthropic. It???s nothing but torture porn.??? But it???s not torture porn. No one writing a book intended merely to titillate would dedicate 20 minutes to a detailed monologue on the recordings of Huey Lewis and the News. No way. There???s more to this book.

If you make it to the end, you will be rewarded. The last few hours are where Ellis shows you what a masterpiece this is. There is a scene, one of the most riveting I have encountered in my life, between Bateman and a sinister real estate agent, Mrs. Wolfe, that will scare you senseless and knock your socks off. And with this one scene, Ellis turns the narrative on its ear. You will wonder if Bateman is really the monster he makes himself out to be. If he is, he is not the only monster in this book. And if he???s not, then what???s really going on? Is Bateman a psychopath, or is he experiencing some sort of psychotic break? The whole story comes a little unhinged before coming to an end that satisfies without clarifying a thing.

There were times when I thought I???d never make it to the end. At certain points, I was convinced it was the most unnecessary book ever written. I???m glad I stuck with it.

So, no one at Audible wants to address the missing 4 minutes in Chapter 3?

My Library says part one is 6 hours 31 minutes. iTunes tells me it's really 6 hours 27 minutes. Hmmm.

I can't believe no one is listening to these very knowledgeable fans and seriously looking into the issue. Random House Audio was even worse when I contacted them. Nothing but pat replies, and we all deserve better.

And I just cancelled my Audible membership after 5 years. A sad day indeed.

In the final minutes of Requiem, Lena notes that the Cureds are looking for certainty. They choose the procedure as a form of protection against the unknown. And while she understands the sadness and grief of change, of not being sure, she has chosen faith instead of knowing.

It makes sense, then, that the book ends with uncertainty. What is more uncertain than loving someone? No, we don't get a whole lot of closure. But that's the point. Requiem would be a failure if it wrapped up everyone's lives in pretty little packages, and I would have been disappointed.

This book is beautiful, haunting and poetic, like the two that came before. And Sarah Drew is magnificent.

I love a great survival story, but this one is merely satisfactory.

There's a lot of "this happened, and then this, and then that" in Ghinsberg's tale. He shares many icky details about parasites and infections (what happens to his feet is truly disturbing) that bring the ordeal to life. He doesn't spare his ego at all, describing one highly embarrassing injury (ouch!) and a couple of gross-out moments involving soiling himself. You really do feel for the guy, and his increasing frustration and despair is obvious. Almost everything goes against him, and even though we know he survived, it does seem doubtful at many points in the story.

But ultimately, there's not much depth here. I like survival stories that have something to say about the human condition, and while Ghinsberg touches on topics like religion and talks about a special talisman given to him by a relative, it is "interesting" rather than "significant".

I bought this book looking for a fun, sexy, campy "romp". I wanted to imagine what those prim and proper characters from one of my favourite novels were REALLY up to, the bits Bronte wouldn't tell us. I wanted to see taboos broken. I wanted sex to explode off every page.

What I got was a seriously abridged version of the classic with seven or eight sex scenes added in. That's less than one sex scene per hour. You cannot call that erotica. And the sex is so...bland. It's all male/female, for starters. And no threesomes, groups, etc. No voyeurism. No kink. Sure, a riding crop makes a token appearance (it doesn't really get used), and at once point Jane's hands are bound above her head with a bed curtain tie. Yawn.

On the plus side, the reader was very good. She might be the only reason I finished the book.

Kids are being murdered in some pretty brutal ways, and yet they spend an awful lot of time discussing their crushes. I find this distracting and ridiculous.

Also distracting is the bad writing. I cannot tell if it's the fault of the author or the translator, but this book contains grammatical errors, at least one confusion between meters and centimeters, and this horrible line: "For a moment, Yutaka fell silent, but then he answered immediately." You cannot have that "moment" and then an immediate answer. There are dozens more lines like this that made me laugh out loud and took me out of the story.

I feel bad for the narrator. I cannot evaluate his performance fairly because the writing is stilted and unnatural. I suspect he did what he could.

All of this is unfortunate because there is something interesting in this book. I was fascinated by ways the relationships between these kids unraveled because of distrust. And given what is revealed at the end about why the program exists, it makes perfect sense. Making people suspicious of one another has always been a key tactic of totalitarian states. But there is too much bad writing, and I could not enjoy the story.

Note to those about to listen: You might want to find a list of characters online and print it out for reference. I am one of those people who has trouble with foreign names, and there are so many characters in this book and the names are sometimes so similar that I lost track a few times. I mean, there's one scene with Yukie, Yuka AND Yuko. I nearly lost my mind.

I mean, when you are promised "extreme genital arousal", what can you do?

The thing about erotica is, I'm pretty particular about my tastes. I think most people are. I can appreciate widely varying styles in other genres, but not in erotica. I'm so particular, I usually write my own.

While My Family Sleeps is not as hardcore as I would like. It also moved a little slow, with more rumination over the sex about to happen than actual sex. I guess some people like anticipation. Not me. And maybe there was too much worrying by the main character about whether or not he was cheating, gay, etc.

Now, I loved the set up. The pseudo-incest (gawd, am I really going to submit this review??), the voyeurism, the bi-curious theme...this REALLY should have worked for me.

There is no doubt that this is a well-written story. The author is talented and an okay reader, and some people will enjoy it. But I did not. I feel bad about that, but the fact is, my genitals remained...unaroused.

For many of the reasons already stated here by other reviewers, this story was a disappointment. It never came together for me.

First, these kids are going to the moon! THE MOON! Where is the sense of wonder? The writing is flat when it should be brimming with urgency. It's a pretty great subject, but it sounds like the author knows about as much as I do about the moon...which is to say, not much. Where are the details that bring such things to life for readers/listeners? Everything gets skimmed over. Months of training for the mission come down to a few paragraphs. The launch and subsequent landing on the moon get the same sparse treatment.

(And yet the author wastes pages and pages telling us about the ex-girlfriend of one of our lucky space-traveling teens...for no reason I can see.)

Second, there was too much "telling" and not enough "showing", and I never felt a connection to any of the characters because I could not get inside their heads.

Also, it contains the most dismal excuse for a romance imaginable. It is almost as if the author realized that all YA novels MUST contain a love story (it's some kind of rule, apparently) and threw one in at the last minute.

Finally, I disliked the narrator. She was okay when not trying to do accents, but it was the accents that really ruined the reading for me.

The second half was marginally better than the first half. There were some creepy moments, and the ending was good (if predictable). But I'd give this one a pass if I were you.

At last, that year I spent studying art history pays off!

Not that you need to know anything about art history to enjoy this book. The chapter guide is very helpful. Well, I discovered it just after I'd finished the book, but it LOOKS helpful. Have it handy while you listen.

So, here is Moore doing what he does best, crafting a story that is intelligent and moving, but also bawdy and goofy. There's that mystery I mentioned, and some romance, lots of sex and other "vices", and thoughtful ruminations on the nature of inspiration and the sacrifices that must be made for art.

The main character, baker/painter Lucien Lessard, is great, but it's Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec who steals the show as Lucien's drunken horndog sidekick. We need another book about him!

The narration is superb. I loved what Euan Morton did with Fool, and his performance here is just as lively.

I can't give Sacr?? Bleu a full five stars for the story. I want to, but it doesn't quite equal Moore's masterpieces Lamb and Fool. There are some aspects of the story that don't quite gel, and maybe it gets a bit too complicated for its own good. But it's really, really close. I've already started listening to it for a second time.

I listened to this book over two days, and at the end of it I felt pretty depressed. The many stories of neglect, abuse and trauma were overwhelming, but I could not stop listening, and alternately felt anger, disbelief, sadness and hope.

The brain science, I admit, went over my head in several places, but the ultimate message of the book (that relationships are the agents of change) rang true. The final hour or so is a plea for stronger communities, better support for families and education about children and their development, cooperation over competition, and a parenting style that allows kids to take risks, make decisions and experience the world.

The authors' theory that solid relationships can go a long way to preventing problems, or fixing them once they've happened, makes a lot of sense to me. And I appreciate that while medications are sometimes necessary for these kids, they are by no means the most important part of their therapy. The authors also reject the notion that we are all slaves to our genes and that these kids turned out the way they did because they were programmed to do so. I feel there is some hope in these messages.

I did not even know Delirium was the first book in a trilogy until I spotted Pandemonium on the Audible front page a few days ago. What an unexpected thrill! I loved Delirium and really needed something good to listen to this week.

To start, the narration is perfect. All the emotion and poetry of the book is there in Sarah Drew's performance.

The structure of this story is different from the more straightforward one used in the first book. This one flips back and forth between "Then" (Lena's time in the Wilds) and "Now" (her adventures in New York as part of the Resistance). I think this helps keep the pacing even, spreading the romance over the entire book rather than squeezing it into the second half. It was not hard for me to keep track of where she was, and both narratives are equally compelling and heartbreaking.

Bits of it dragged, though, especially Lena and Julian's long trek underground. And some of the plot developments were predictable, like the Resistance having a darker side. But these are minor quibbles.

The ending was startling, though not unexpected. I cannot wait until the next book. Hope I'm not waiting too long!