Supreme Courtship

By: Christopher Buckley

Narrated by: Anne Heche

Length: 8 hrs and 38 mins

Publisher's summary

President of the United States Donald Vanderdamp is having a hell of a time getting his nominees appointed to the Supreme Court. After one nominee is rejected for insufficiently appreciating To Kill A Mockingbird, the president chooses someone so beloved by voters that the Senate won't have the guts to reject her - Judge Pepper Cartwright, the star of the nation's most popular reality show, Courtroom Six.

Will Pepper, a straight-talking Texan, survive a confirmation battle in the Senate? Will becoming one of the most powerful women in the world ruin her love life? And even if she can make it to the Supreme Court, how will she get along with her eight highly skeptical colleagues, including a floundering Chief Justice who, after legalizing gay marriage, learns that his wife has left him for another woman?

Soon, Pepper finds herself in the middle of a constitutional crisis, a presidential reelection campaign that the president is determined to lose, and oral arguments of a romantic nature. Supreme Courtship is another classic Christopher Buckley comedy about the Washington institutions most deserving of ridicule.

©2008 Christopher Taylor Buckley (P)2008 Hachette Audio

well written, well read, very funny

No surprise that Christopher Buckley is a brilliant author like his father. Although very erudite, I didn't have to go to the dictionary every few sentences like I do for a WFB novel.

Clear audio and very well performed by Anne Heche. The snippet of sample audio from the book is not a good example of the quality of reading Ms. Heche brings to this book. She does the main character magnificently.

I was literally laughing aloud as I listened.

Great Buckley Novel with Great Voice Acting

Another great book by Christopher Buckley! I had already read No Way to Treat a First Lady and loved that book as well. Sometimes you just need to laugh about the government that we find ourselves being blessed with and these novels allow us that opportunity. I especially enjoyed the voice acting for this novel done by Anne Heche. I had no idea how good she was at taking on different voices with different personalities.

Anne Heche's narration is unlistenable

I've been looking forward to this book, which has gotten great reviews and sounded like a lot of fun. Unfortunately, the narration makes it impossible to listen to. Heche uses an arch, ironic tone for every single sentence, which wrings any hint of humor from the text. I tried to stick with it, hoping that her irritating mannerisms would eventually fade into the background, but to no avail. I finally had to give up. I've listened to hundreds of audio books, and I have to say that the narration here is the absolute worst I've encountered.

Disappointed

I have to say I was disappointed with this book. Like all Christopher Buckley novels it had its moments, some of them quite funny, but it tended to lose focus near the end, meandering off in aimless directions. I honestly think he started writing this book without any idea of how to end it, and when it came time to "tie a bow" on it, he just piled a bunch of absurd situations on top of each other. In that respect it was kind of like "No Way to Treat a First Lady," his other weak effort. His best work (by far) is "Thank You for Smoking," a textbook case of how satire should be written: witty, incisive, and especially understated.

I can't stress that last point enough. Buckley's "Smoking" was funny precisely because the basic concept of the book - a roguish tobacco spokesman with a silver tongue fights nanny state moralizers - did not seem so outlandish and impossible, and by the end of it we were rooting for the anti-hero Nick Naylor in spite of ourselves. This one start's with an absurd premise - a Judge Judy type justice on the Supreme Court - and piles on the craziness from there in giant, heaping spoonfuls. I don't want to spoil the surprise for those of you who want to listen to it, but the story ends with a constitutional crisis of such epic insanity it would have flummoxed Maimonides, and a presidential election so convoluted it would have made the 2000 Florida debacle seem simple. Add to this the fact that most of the the novel's characters, including the protagonist a TV judge named Pepper Cartwright, come across as a little self-absorbed and unlikeable, and the whole thing really feels like a waste of time.

Wanted to like this

...but the attitudes toward women are straight out of 1950's America. Just couldn't finish it. When was the last time you were in the presence of an actual woman who burst into tears because she was stressed out?"