I love Audio Books

(photo from Hotlistens via Facebook)

I just had to smile when I found this photo on Facebook today! 

I have been listening to audio books on my daily commute and am loving it.  I have always enjoyed listening to drama and horror but this weekend, I started my first "paranormal romance".  

I have forgotten how much I love the Psy-Changeling series and Heart of Obsidian by Nalini Singh is really just hitting a nerve with me right now.  It is awesome!  

I am starting to wish for traffic jams!

Super 6 Sunday : My TBR list

Super 6  that are on my TBR list since more than 6 months (.. and I always forget I want to read!)  That is a difficult choice to make . . .I am always a bit behind :) And I have many wishes and many books waiting. 

The oldest book in my to-read list on Goodreads is Uglies.  Still sounds like something that I would like to read . . .

Everybody gets to be supermodel gorgeous. What could be wrong with that?

Tally is about to turn sixteen, and she can't wait. Not for her license - for turning pretty. In Tally's world, your sixteenth birthday brings an operation that turns you from a repellent ugly into a stunningly attractive pretty and catapults you into a high-tech paradise where your only job is to have a really great time. In just a few weeks Tally will be there.

But Tally's new friend Shay isn't sure she wants to be pretty. She'd rather risk life on the outside. When Shay runs away, Tally learns about a whole new side of the pretty world and it isn't very pretty. The authorities offer Tally the worst choice she can imagine: find her friend and turn her in, or never turn pretty at all.

The choice Tally makes changes her world forever... (Goodreads - added December 2009)


This book was added in February this year (don't you just love the cover?) 

Mallory killed her boyfriend, Brian. She can't remember the details of that night but everyone knows it was self-defense, so she isn't charged. But Mallory still feels Brian's presence in her life. Is it all in her head? Or is it something more? In desperate need of a fresh start, Mallory is sent to Monroe, a fancy prep school where no one knows her . . . or anything about her past.But the feeling follows her, as do her secrets. Then, one of her new classmates turns up dead. As suspicion falls on Mallory, she must find a way to remember the details of both deadly nights so she can prove her innocence-to herself and others.

In another riveting tale of life and death, Megan Miranda's masterful storytelling brings readers along for a ride to the edge of sanity and back again. (Goodreads)


Broken Destiny is definately still on my TBR pile.  It was written by a fellow South African, so I HAVE to read it (and soon!).

 Ava knows much more, and feels much more than she is allowed to. When she starts questioning her origins and the destruction of Earth, things go horribly wrong for her. She is saved by a Minoan boy from an attempted kidnapping on her life – the perpetrators are evil Zulus and their dark ancient magic. Humans and Minoans are forbidden to interact with each other, and as she is taken back to their village she finds out why – they know of her, her kind and her destiny to save a dying race. Ava must rid them from the Council’s ruling and free the galaxy of The Shadow. Her destiny is to rise above the fall, because within her soul is the key to an archaic weapon that has been missing in the mix of a genetic code since the time of the ancients. As the prophecy unfolds she learns of her bloodline – a bloodline that makes her less human than she could ever have imagined. She alone has the power to destroy or save, but the mind-shift is a horrible thing. Ava will become what she hates to save the ones she loves. Beaten, poisoned, possessed and betrayed by her own emotions, she has no choice but to rise above it all… for that is her Destiny. (Goodreads)

What if you only had one day to live? What would you do? Who would you kiss? And how far would you go to save your own life?

Samantha Kingston has it all: looks, popularity, the perfect boyfriend. Friday, February 12, should be just another day in her charmed life. Instead, it turns out to be her last.

The catch: Samantha still wakes up the next morning. Living the last day of her life seven times during one miraculous week, she will untangle the mystery surrounding her death—and discover the true value of everything she is in danger of losing. (Goodreads)

For Mina Singer, falling in love with a knight on a white horse was never part of the plan.

Finding herself catapulted into fairyland she discovers that the Real World is not quite what she thought and fairyland is not quite what she imagined.

The question is... who will come out alive? (Goodreads)



An intelligent computer game with a disturbing agenda.

When 16-year-old Nick receives a package containing the mysterious computer game Erebos, he wonders if it will explain the behavior of his classmates, who have been secretive lately. Players of the game must obey strict rules: always play alone, never talk about the game, and never tell anyone your nickname.

Curious, Nick joins the game and quickly becomes addicted. But Erebos knows a lot about the players and begins to manipulate their lives. When it sends Nick on a deadly assignment, he refuses and is banished from the game.

Now unable to play, Nick turns to a friend for help in finding out who controls the game. The two set off on a dangerous mission in which the border between reality and the virtual world begins to blur. This utterly convincing and suspenseful thriller originated in Germany, where it has become a runaway bestseller.

Ursula Poznanski is an award-winning children’s author. She lives in Vienna, Austria.

What are some of your forgotten books?

 Super Six Sunday is an original bookish meme hosted at Bewitched Bookworms. 
You can see the weekly schedule of themes here.

Audiobook Review: Killing Floor

 
Killing Floor 

by Lee Child 

Series: Jack Reacher #1 
Genre: Crime Fiction 
Source: my own audio copy 
Narrator: Dick Hill 
Length: 14 hrs and 47 mins 
Original Publication Date of book: 
17 March 1997 

Ex-military policeman Jack Reacher stops in Margrave Georgia for less than a half-hour to check out a decades-old needless murder, and is arrested for murder. Ten days to stop the villains, or die. Working for the US Treasury, Joe left Jack clues, starting with this too-shiny Southern town, where a senile barber gets $1,000/week without customers. (Goodreads)

My thoughts:
I have never looked at the Jack Reacher series before. I tried to watch the movie starring Tom Cruise and could not finish it (my husband fell asleep). I don't know if it was the story or just casting . . . it just did not work for me. 

Then while reading some of the comments on my Goodreads Audiobook Group, everyone was agreeing what a great narrator, Dick Hill is. I was looking for something to add to my daily commute audio, so I listened to the audio sample available on audible and fell in love with his narration from the start. His calm voice just epitomized what I think Jack Reacher should be. Cool, calm and collected. 

The story is a simple crime thriller although there are some surprises that caught me off guard (don't worry, no spoilers). I enjoyed the way the story flowed and how Jack handled some of the difficult situations – luckily he does not have to worry about rules and procedures . . . and just imagine this 6'5” man with mascara all over his face so he could hide in the dark bushes. The other motorists probably thought it was a crazy woman giggling by herself in the car. 

All in all, I really enjoyed everything about this experience. The story was good and the narration excellent. The only negative I can think of is that at times I got irritated with the sentences all ending in “right” . . . but as you progress in the book, your mind starts blanking out the word for you :)

Review: The Uninvited

The Uninvited
by Liz Jensen
 

Source: eARC from NetGalley
Published by Bloomsbury Publishing PLC 
Publication date:  08 January 2013 

A seven-year-old girl puts a nail gun to her grandmother's neck and fires. An isolated incident, say the experts. The experts are wrong. Across the world, children are killing their families. Is violence contagious? As chilling murders by children grip the country, anthropologist Hesketh Lock has his own mystery to solve: a bizarre scandal in the Taiwan timber industry. Hesketh has never been good at relationships: Asperger's Syndrome has seen to that. But he does have a talent for spotting behavioral patterns and an outsider's fascination with group dynamics. Nothing obvious connects Hesketh's Asian case with the atrocities back home. Or with the increasingly odd behavior of his beloved stepson, Freddy. But when Hesketh's Taiwan contact dies shockingly and more acts of sabotage and child violence sweep the globe, he is forced to acknowledge possibilities that defy the rational principles on which he has staked his life, his career, and, most devastatingly of all, his role as a father. Part psychological thriller, part dystopian nightmare, The Uninvited is a powerful and viscerally unsettling portrait of apocalypse in embryo. (Goodreads)

My thoughts:
I loved Hesketh's character.  I admired how he coped with the outside world while suffering from Asperger's Syndrome.  His ability to spot patterns in the strange things that started happening all over the world, just draw me in.  I enjoyed all the interviews with the characters that was part of the first of the unusual happenings.   

Unfortunately after the first part of the book, I started feeling irritated with him.  His disability causes him to not connect with other people but his son, Freddy, is the exception.  Let me just say that I am not a parent.  I don't know if I would have felt different if I was.   But his blind obsession with the fact that his son would not turn into a stranger like the rest of the children of the world, just irked me.  I wanted to shake him and force him to look at the facts.  If I had in the story in book form, I probably would have thrown it across the room a few times. 

The ending just sort of crept up on me.  I have read some reviews, that mentioned that they felt cheated but I can see that there was no other way out for the characters.

All in all, it was a satisfying read even with the irritating stages.  I guess that is the essence of a good book when you feel like shaking some sense into the characters.

PS:  Just on a little side note that has no other use than just me venting -  there is little editing adjustment in the NetGalley edition.  Every word that uses the letter-combinations "ff", "fi" or "fl" will just have those letters omitted completely.  I assume it was to stop "would-be-torrenting" but still . . . annoying!

Review: The Sum of my Parts: A Survivor's Story of Dissociative Identity Disorder

The Sum of my Parts: A Survivor's Story of Dissociative Identity Disorder 
by Olga Trujillo 

Source: eARC from NetGalley 
Published by New Harbinger Publications 
Publication Date: 01 October 2011 

By the first day of kindergarten, Olga Trujillo had already survived years of abuse and violent rape at the hands of her tyrannical father. Over the next ten years, she would develop the ability to numb herself to the constant abuse by splitting into distinct mental “parts.” Dissociative identity disorder (DID) had begun to take hold, protecting Olga’s mind from the tragic realities of her childhood. In The Sum of My Parts, Olga reveals her life story for the first time, chronicling her heroic journey from survivor to advocate and her remarkable recovery from DID. Formerly known as multiple personality disorder, DID is defined by the presence of two or more identities. In this riveting story, Olga struggles to unearth memories from her childhood, and parallel identities—Olga at five years old, Olga at thirteen—come forth and demand to be healed. This brave, unforgettable memoir charts the author’s triumph over the most devastating conditions and will inspire anyone whose life has been affected by trauma. (Goodreads)

My thoughts: 
This was a very difficult book to read. I have never known anyone that have been abused but I can imagine it must be devastating. The first six chapters telling the hell that Olga went through was horrible. Here and there, I had to skip a paragraph as it just seemed unbearable, even for an outsider. 

It is a miracle that Olga survived, physically as well as mentally. Her mind protected her, making different rooms where some of the bad could hidden. But this wonderful self preservation also caused her to “forget” the abuse, giving her parents the opportunity to sell her again and again. It was heartbreaking reading about her excitement for a special date with her parents, knowing what was really in store for her. 

After the first chapters, we learn about the long road that Olga had to walk to become the woman she is today. She had developed a multiple personality disorder and has a few identities, only identified by her age at the time that they were formed. Three was the first personality that entered her consciousness when she started her sessions with her doctor. Three described the “first” rape by her father. Olga was devastated. How could she continue, knowing what the past held? 

Even with all her success (both professionally and personally) there is still some days that she does not pick up the warning signs. Some days are just too much. Some days she falls back into the awful self destructive routines. I understand that this type of book will never have a “happy ending” but it was hard to know that Olga struggles, even today. She is a very brave woman and I take off my hat to her . . .