Summer Reads.
I finally made it through my first audiobook of the summer, Clara and Mr. Tiffany. It takes a LOT longer to listen to an audiobook than it does to read the book on my own or listen to it on the Kindle which was frustrating at times, but probably a good thing as it gave my brain time to process. I actually didn’t really care for this book which surprised me as I usually like Susan Vreeland’s stuff. It may have been the narrator too….her pronunciation bugged me which is really idiotic of me to say, but it’s true. She didn’t pronounce anything incorrectly and read quite well, actually, but I tend to fixate. At any rate, I’m now eligible to win an iPad through my library’s summer reading program as I’ve logged more than eight hours of reading. I could use an iPad!
After that one, I started to listen to Sarah’s Key. MISTAKE. It’s a very well-written book with an engrossing story, but I knew right off the bat that it was going to be sad. I used to be fine with sad…some of the best books on my shelf that I’ve chosen to keep are sad stories and I find that I get more out of them because the story is more engaging for some reason. More real. But apparently I’m no longer able to handle sad, especially sad that involves the hurting or death of a child. I just picture B in that situation and my brain wants to shut down. So I looked the plot up and decided that I probably shouldn’t read it as it does involve lots of hurting and deaths of children, particularly one mind-blowingly awful death that I can’t get out of my head. I know, I know. This is abnormal. I’m working on it. At any rate, I’ve decided that I should probably stay away from the sad books….at least for a little while.
That one was followed by The Book Thief which actually starts with the death of a child, but it’s very brief (and not heart-wrenchingly drawn out as they were in Sarah’s Key). It’s supposedly a “young adult” book, so it can’t be too bad, right? I’m giving it a try. The narrator is a British man and I keep trying to picture what he looks like, especially when he switches voices. I see him as a large man with dark hair and a blazer with leather patches on the elbows. Sort of like Orson Welles. I did this for the woman who narrated Clara and Mr. Tiffany as well, but she looked nothing like Angela Lansbury when I found her on the internets.
So now I’ve got more on my to-read list: The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Society, My Life in France, The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, Sacré Bleu, The Art of Fielding, and a few others. These are the ones I have in my queue right now. Of course I have no idea if any of these are sad as I’ve forgotten the synopsis since I requested them, but I’ll give them a try at least.
Anyone out there have any recommendations for upbeat summer reads?
