Category: Books / Audiobooks

Just finished my latest Audible book last week – it was called The Underground Railroad by Colson Whitehead.

Before that, I had been reading a book about somebody’s life – and death – during the Holocaust, and like a bloody eejit I thought this might be a light-hearted foil. Why was I so dumb? Well, it isn’t a phrase that is commonly used in the UK, so it was only when I started that I learned that the book was about slavery.

It is an award-winning book – it won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 2017. That was the reason I chose it. I thought a book which won something like that was bound to be a good read. It took a while to get into it, though – I put it down about halfway through and didn’t pick it up again for a few months, so it wasn’t massively engaging. Second-time, I started from scratch but got all the way through.

It is about a slave-girl on a Georgia plantation, who escapes, and the tale follows her run up north. Obviously there are twists, but…you’ll have to read the book.

The thing I found strange about the book was that the Underground Railroad was written as an actual railroad – choo, choo, and so on – where my understanding is that it is a figure of speech. I had to do a double-take when I heard that.

I guess overall it was a good story. There was one part I’d have done very differently. They send a slave-catcher after her, who duly catches her, but at one point the tables are turned and she has a gun on him. She rides off, leaving him tied up. And, of course, he later comes back to haunt her. Me? I’d have shot him between the eyes. It’s simple – him or me. But I suppose the book would only be half as long if she’d done things my way!

Anyway, the subject matter was nowhere near as lightweight as I’d hoped – I assume that despite the story being fiction, the author made it as true-to-life as possible, and some parts are horrific – but overall I’d say this was a good read.

Must be six months ago, I posted about my latest Audible choices. Here’s where I am at.

The easiest to talk about first: my Naomi Klein book. It was a good book but really it talked in too many names and numbers for an audiobook; I felt bombarded.

I was about 2/3 of the way through, slowly plodding my way through, when, one day, I just fancied listening to something else. That was that.

It’s a good book, it was just very hard-going. I must try and listen to it again at some point.

I kinda just assume that everybody knows who Louis Theroux is. If not, he’s a documentary-maker, his films air on BBC2 here, a channel aimed more at thinking than being entertained. He’s half-American, about the same age as me and he started his career making documentaries for Michael Moore on TV Nation. I think Theroux’s docs are less overtly political.

I quite enjoyed this book, and it was an easy read. It was essentially an autobiography. Since we’re the same age, maybe that should be my next project? He’s a likeable chap, but you know when you meet a psychologist, you feel they’re looking you up and down to determine if you’re an axe murderer? Come on, that can’t just be me! I think if you met this guy, you’d just be left wondering if you’re his next project. And he is obsessed with the now-disgraced UK DJ, Jimmy Saville.

My third book was far nd away the most difficult read. Renia’s Diary. It is still only recently released, so it should probably still be available. She’s in a part of Poland over which everybody played ping-pong. Originally the Nazi-Soviet Pact carved Poland up. She was in the Soviet part, and life continued. It’s funny, because even though we tend to think of 1939 as the kick-off, she lived relatively normally after this and finished her schooling. Then the Nazis declared war on the Soviets, and initially made quite rapid advances. So, she ended up living under the Nazis. But she lived under them for a while too – it was only really in 1942 that she started to speak more frequently about ghettos.

Actually, very little of the book concerns itself with current affairs. It is mostly her feelings for her boyfriend. It surprised me how innocent it all was – all these thoughts of true love. blah, blah, when, really, she’s talking about kisses and cuddles. In my day we just ended up shagging each other silly. I guess a lot of the lack of current affairs must have been fog of war, but also this is a young girl. And maybe that’s how you get through these things, by concentrating on the good things?

I think the remarkable thing about the diary is just that it got published at all. She left it in the trust of the boyfriend, and in fact the last few entries are by this guy. He survived the war, and got to the USA.

Years later, he tracked down Renia’s sister, who had also survived the war – Renia’s mother and sister posed as Catholics in Warsaw, living outside the ghetto. They also ended up in the USA.

She then put the diary into a safety deposit box, unread for decades, and in fact, it was her children who did the spadework.

As it happens, I canned my Audible subscription a couple of months ago. I was accumulating credits each month, and not spending them anywhere near as quickly.

Audible’s fiddle is that they take away those credits if you cancel your membership. It is most definitely a con trick – those credits are mine, bought and paid for. The way around their little “rule” was just to put the remaining credits into some acceptable books, although that required an instant choice. I can, at least, read these books at leisure. I can still use their app, I’m just not accumulating their credits.

So future listens will include:

• Jamaica Inn. I started this last night,
• The Underground Railroad, a recent-ish novel that I heard was pretty good,
• The Tattoist of Auschwitz. I can’t handle this one, yet,
• An Alexandre Dumas triple-bill. The Three Musketeers, The Man in the Iron Mask, The Count of Monte Cristo. I always liked Dumas, I’ve read (properly read) the first and last, years ago. I think Musketeers, I read in the original French. Monte Cristo was, I think, an enormous read. But so good I could easily read these books again.

After these books are exhausted, I might consider buying another subscription.

I’d let my Audible subscription go off the boil, I get a new credit every month and had accumulated three credits to spend.

Audible is a bit of a fiddle, because if I were to decide to halt my subscription, I lose these credits (even though I already bought them). Like many services, it is easy to subscribe but if you want to unsubscribe, some care is required.

I think I can spend every credit on a book (now), then halt the subscription, then read (i.e. listen to) each of the books, at my leisure. But it’s a bit of a pain that I can’t just stop buying new credits and cash them in one by one, whenever I feel like a new read.

The jury is still out on whether I keep the subscription, especially as I don’t use it so much any more. I’ve thought a few times about canning it, but after all it is only quite a small amounteach month. However I have decided that I need to do more than just sit on this growing pile of credits.

So, I’ve just spent my three. I thought I’d share my choices.

Straight in at #1 (actually, I’m not doing this in any particular order), I found a book on an interesting subject. A subject that interests me, in any case.

A book by Canadian (I think) author Naomi Klein, about the conflict between making money and the environment. I think we’re pretty adept at paying lip service to the environment in order to make a fast buck, but ultimately we’re headed for a crunch of some kind, so I was interested in what this woman had to say. It was written in the early 2010s, I guess, so we have a few more years of data to go on. I wonder if anything will have changed?

So, I’m about 2 baths into that book. I only really listen to Audible when I have a bath.

In at #2, still waiting to be opened, is a book by Louis Theroux.

I’ve got to love Louis Theroux. Seriously. His subject matter is, er, not what I’d choose myself, but nevertheless I enjoy his documentaries, and will usually record them if I see that they’re on TV.

I’m not even sure what this book is about, but figured it would be worth a read.

My last choice – I have no more credits until next month – was the one book that I really wanted.

It was only released a few weeks ago, and only on Audible for the last few days.

I know little about Renia’s Diary, save for a little of the back-story. Renia Spiegel was Polish and Jewish, and from 1939 she kept a diary about life – and ultimately, death – under Nazi occupation.

I don’t read paper books any more, because they are difficult on my eyes, and Audible is easier, but Renia’s story is exactly the kind of book that I used to read – an auto-biographical book by a first-time writer, somebody who’s had an experience worth sharing, and who’s not making a living by selling books. You can keep your “actor” and “sportsman” nonsense, I’m not interested, give me a real story any day. So I have high hopes for Renia, that’s why she’ll be last.

Here’s a scenario for you all to consider. I’ve criticised my current Audible read in a previous entry, but it does provoke some thought.

The woman, originally from the C20th, has been transported (somehow) to the C18th.
The man is, and always has been, of the C18th.
The tale is set in the C18th, when they are also married to each other. Bear with it – if you bought that she could get back to the 18th century in the first place, this other should be no problem!

They’re having a row. She snaps at him, “why d’you always want to behave like bloody John Wayne?” Obviously, the response is “who’s John Wayne?”

Think about it. To try to explain movie star, you first have to explain movie. You probably then need to go back to still photography, how an image can make its way onto a piece of film…

What a bloody nightmare! 🤣