February Audiobooks

February was a very good reading month. There weren't any books that were disappointing. My favorite was Demon Copperhead. It lived up to all of the great press that it's received since publication. For something lighter, I really enjoyed Factory Girls.

What books do you have to recommend this month?
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The Nix
By Nathan Hill, Read By Ari Fliakos

I'm not sure I know how to describe this book except that it's long and rambling and I really liked the ending. It's kind of about a mother and son relationship but it's also about decisions of the grandfather that ultimately affected the mother and son. But it's a lot more than that. It's incredibly detailed and goes off onto a lot of other tangents with other characters.

I know I'm rambling but I seriously don't know how to describe it. There's a lot of detail about many of the supporting characters that, frankly, could have been edited out. It's 22 hours long and should have been about 15 max but I enjoyed it and I'm glad I read it.

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The Librarianist
By Patrick deWitt, Read by Jim Meskimen

Bob Comet is a retired librarian who has lived a very quiet and solitary life with his book. One day he helps a lost woman find her way home to the senior center where she lives. After the visit he decided to volunteer there and eventually discovers he had history with one of the residents.

The book is a walk through his life to show how he got to this solitary place. The book is a little slow to start off but it was worth the wait. He's a very likable character. It reminds me a little of Mike Gayle's All The Lonely People but it's not quite that good, but still a good read.

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Demon Copperhead
By Barbara Kingsolver, Read By Charlie Thurston

I loved this book.

This book has been showing up on a lot of recommendation lists and I understand why. It's a masterpiece. Kingsolver took Charles Dickens' David Copperfield as her inspiration to tell the story of an orphan in Appalachia in the middle of the opioid crisis. 

Demon is Damon and was born to a single mother in a single-wide trailer in Virginia Appalachia. He inherited his bright red hair from his deceased father so his nickname was easy for his schoolmates. When his mother dies he finds himself in the foster system that is sometimes just a child labor system. It's a hard life and it's just the beginning. It's a wonderful book with some difficult scenes. If you read via audiobooks I think you will also love the narration. Being from SW Virginia, I can say that it was spot on.
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Factory Girls
By Michelle Gallen, Read By Amy Molloy

It's 1994 in a small Northern Ireland town. Maeve Murray has just finished school and is awaiting her exam results to see where she will be able to go to University. She's taken a summer job at a shirt factory with her 2 best friends. These Catholic girls will be working alongside Protestants which will bring it's own challenges.

The book brilliantly mixes the vibes and challenges of the time with a good dash of humor as we follow Maeve's adventures and challenges in the last summer of her youth. It's perfectly narrated by Amy Molloy.
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The Engineer's Wife
By Tracey Enerson Wood, Read By Libby McKnight

Emily Warren Roebling was the wife of the Chief Engineer of the Brooklyn Bridge. She was one of the most important women of her time. It's well documented that during the building of the bridge her husband developed health issues from " the bends" and was eventually mostly bedridden. Emily educated herself in engineering and handled on-site management with her husband's guidance from home. At a time when women were starting the suffrage movement, Emily was a quite powerful and influential woman. You can read a wonderful book about the building of the bridge called The Great Bridge by David McCullough.

Enter this book. This is a historical fiction account of Emily's life and it's mostly fiction. As a piece of women's literature, it's a perfectly fine and entertaining book. For Emily, though, I was a little offended to have her life reduced to a fictional love interest.

If you decide to read it, be warned that the narrator has a number of jarring mispronunciations in the narration. 

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