Listening report: January 2012

Posted on 2012-02-02 by montsamu

On the heels of three audiobooks in the last bit of December (The Thirteen Hallows by Michael Scott and Colette Freedman, Earthbound by Joe Haldeman, and The Lost Gate: Mithermages, Book 1 by Orson Scott Card) I listened to six audiobooks this month; not too bad. It’s more than I had planned for, but several of them are quite short, and none of them are 30-hour epics:

  
  

AUDIOBOOKS HEARD IN JANUARY:

REGRETS:

SEEN BUT NOT HEARD:
  • Greatshadow by James Maxey (Solaris, Dragon Apocalypse book 1) — Greatshadow is the primal dragon of fire, an elemental evil whose malign intelligence spies upon mankind through every candle flame, waiting to devour any careless victim he can claim. The Church of the Book has assembled a team of twelve battle-hardened adventurers to slay the dragon once and for all. But tensions run high between the leaders of the team who view the mission as a holy duty and the super-powered mercenaries who add power to their ranks, who view the mission primarily as a chance to claim Greatshadow’s vast treasure trove. If the warriors fail to slay the beast, will they doom mankind to death by fire?
  • Giant Thief by David Tallerman (Angry Robot, Easie Demasco book 1, audiobook coming May 1) — Meet Easie Damasco, rogue, thieving swine and total charmer. Even the wicked can’t rest when a vicious warlord and the force of enslaved giants he commands invade their homeland.  Damasco might get away in one piece, but he’s going to need help. Big time.
  • Down Here In The Dark by Lee Thompson (Delirium Books, Jan 30, 2012) — no audio news
  • The Great Game: The Bookman Histories, Book 3 by Lavie Tidhar (Angry Robot, Jan 31, 2012) — no audio news
  • Chasing the Moon by A. Lee Martinez (Orbit, Jan 31, 2012) — no audio news
  • Heir of Novron (Riyria Revelations) by Michael J. Sullivan (Orbit, Jan 31, 2012) — no specific audio news, but book 1, Theft of Swords, is coming to audio in 2012
  • Collection: The Door Gunner and Other Perilous Flights of Fancy: A Michael Bishop Retrospective by Michael Bishop (Subterranean, Jan 31, 2012) — no audio news
  • YA: Article 5 [Goodreads] by Kristen Simmons (Tor Teen, January 31) — “New York, Los Angeles, and Washington, D.C., have been abandoned. The Bill of Rights has been revoked, and replaced with the Moral Statutes.”
  • Everything is Broken by John Shirley (Prime, Jan 24, 2012) — no audio news
  • Non-genre: The Ice Balloon: S. A. Andree and the Heroic Age of Arctic Exploration by Alec Wilkinson (Knopf, Jan 24, 2012) — no audio news
  • Hitchers by Will McIntosh (Night Shade Books, Jan 24, 2012) — no audio news
  • The Way of the Sword and Gun: The Malja Chronicles (Volume 2) by Stuart Jaffe (Jan 12, 2012)
  • Percepliquis by Michael J. Sullivan, Robin Sullivan, Devi Pil and Michael Sullivan (Jan 16, 2012)
  • MM9 by Hiroshi Yamamoto (Haikasoru, Jan 17, 2012) — no audio news
  • The Thorn and the Blossom: A Two-Sided Love Story by Theodora Goss and illustrated by Scott Mckowen (Quirk Books, Jan 17, 2012) — no audio news for this two-sided book of two stories, which can be read from either direction
  • Taft 2012: A Novel by Jason Heller (Quirk Books, Jan 17, 2012) — no audio news for this debut satire from Heller
  • In the Lion’s Mouth by Michael Flynn (Tor, Jan 17, 2012) — no audio news
  • Non-fiction: Postcolonialism and Science Fiction by Jessica Langer (Palgrave Macmillan, Jan 17, 2012) — no audio news, excerpt at io9
  • Machine by Jennifer Pelland (Apex Books, Jan 17, 2012)
  • YA/Short: Hana by Lauren Oliver (HarperCollins, Jan 17) — a novella in the same world as Oliver’s Delirium
  • Dark Victory by Michele Lang (Tor, Jan 17, 2012) — ” Magda Lazarus was a reluctant witch until the dire threat of Nazi Germany convinced her to assume the mantle of her family’s ancient powers. ” — also subject of thisrecent Big Idea piece on John Scalzi’s Whatever blog
  • The Rook by Daniel O’Malley (Little, Brown and Company) — “The body you are wearing used to be mine.” So begins the letter Myfanwy Thomas is holding when she awakes in a London park surrounded by bodies all wearing latex gloves. With no recollection of who she is, Myfanwy must follow the instructions her former self left behind to discover her identity and track down the agents who want to destroy her.
  • The Liminal People by Ayize Jama-Everett (Small Beer Press, Jan 10, 2012) — no audio news
  • A Path to Coldness of Heart (Dread Empire) by Glen Cook (Night Shade Books, Jan 10, 2012)
  • City of the Lost by Stephen Blackmoore — from Library Journal: Stephen Blackmore brings his crime-writing background to January 2012’s City of the Lost (DAW), a first-person noir about a Los Angeles thug turned zombie
  • Blueprints of the Afterlife by Ryan Boudinot (Jan 3, 2012)
  • Dust of the Damned by Peter Brandvold (Berkeley Trade, Jan 3, 2012) — werewolves in the American old west
  • Faith by John Love (Night Shade, Jan 3, 2012) — no audio news for this debut combining military sf and space opera
Meanwhile, listening to shorter books and having some vacation and travel time, I’ve been able to finally get to some “real” reading: finishing Inheritance by Christopher Paolini; finishing Dario Ciriello’s memoir of a year on the “Mamma Mia” island of Skopelos in Greece, Aegean Dream; reading two short novels, the classic Herman Hesse Siddhartha and an ARC of The Liminal People by Ayize Jama-Everett (Small Beer Press, Jan 10, 2012); and finally getting back to the all-novella anthology Panverse 3, which I’d read about half of so far before getting endlessly distracted; and starting Greatshadow, besides.

Currently listening to: Claire DeWitt and the City of the Dead By Sara Gran, Narrated by Carol Monda for HighBridge Company

Up next: Mr g: A Novel about the Creation By Alan Lightman, Narrated by Ray Porter for Blackstone Audio

FEBRUARY PLANS:

Listening:

  • Pilgrim of the Sky by Natania Barron (Candlemark & Gleam, audiobook date TBD but hopefully finally in February)
  • Throne of the Crescent Moon (The Crescent Moon Kingdoms, #1) by Saladin Ahmed (Brilliance Audio, 7 Feb 2012) — concurrent with the DAW hardcover, Phil Gigante narrating
  • Codex Written by Lev Grossman (Random House Audio, 7 February 2012) — this is likely the Random House UK production of Grossman’s 2004 thriller
  • Exogene by T. C. McCarthy, read by Bahni Turpin for Blackstone Audio (Orbit, 28 Feb 12) — sequel to 2011’s Germline
  • Filling in with more Blackstone Audio MP3-CD review copies: Little, Big by John Crowley; The Hum and the Shiver by Alex Bledsoe; A Canticle for Leibowitz by Walter M. Miller, Jr.; Immortality, Inc. by Robert Sheckley

Reading:

  • Greatshadow  by James Maxey (Solaris Books, January 31, 2012) — up next after I finish with Panverse 3
  • Through the Valley of the Nest of Spiders by Samuel R. Delany (Magnus Books, February 7, 2012) — a long one, waiting for that phone call from my bookstore that says “It’s here!”
  • Arctic Rising by Tobias S. Buckell (Tor, Feb 28, 2012) — no audio news, so it looks like I’ll be reading this one in March
  • ARC of After the Fall, Before the Fall, During the Fall: A Novel by Nancy Kress (Tachyon, Apr 1, 2012) — no audio news — “The year is 2035. After ecological disasters nearly destroyed the Earth, 26 survivors—the last of humanity—are trapped by an alien race in a sterile enclosure known as the Shell.”

Whew. What are you reading/listening to this month?

APPENDIX: TABLE OF CONTENTS for DISTRUST THAT PARTICULAR FLAVOR:

Disc 1:

  • 1-4 Introduction: African Thumb Piano
  • 5-9 Rocket Radio – Rolling Stone, June 1989
  • 10-12 Since 1948 – Autobiography for the author’s website, November 2002
  • 13-14 Any ‘Mount of World – Addicted to Noise, March 2000
  • 15-16 The Baddest Dude on Earth – Time Asia, April 2002
  • 17-19 Talk for Book Expo New York – May 2010
  • 20-21 Dead Man Sings – Forbes ASAP, November 1998

Disc 2:

  • 1-7 Up the Line – A Talk for the Director’s Guild of America, Los Angeles, May 2003
  • 8-18 Disneyland with the Death Penalty – Wired, September 1993
  • 19-20 Mr. Buk’s Window – The Globe and Mail, September 2001
  • 21-23 Shiny Balls of Mud: Hikaru Dorodango and Tokyu Hands – Tate Magazine, September-October 2002

Disc 3:

  • 1-3 An Invitation – Preface, Labyrinths, Jorge Luis Borges, 2007
  • 4-5 Metrophagy: The Art and Science of Digesting Great Cities – Review of London: The Biography by Peter Ackroyd, in The Whole Earth Catalog, Summer 2001
  • 6-9 Modern Boys and Mobile Girls – The Observer, April 2001
  • 10-22 My Obsession – Wired, January 1999

Disc 4:

  • 1-5 My Private Tokyo – Wired, September 2001
  • 6-8 The Road to Oceania – The New York Times, June 2003
  • 9-10 Skip Spence’s Jeans – Ugly Things, 2003
  • 11 Terminal City – Introduction to Phantom Shanghai: Photographs by Greg Gerard, 2007
  • 12-13 Introduction: “The Body” – Introduction to Stelarc: The Monograph by Marquard Smith, 2005
  • 14-16 The Net is a Waste of Time – NY Times Magazine, July 1996
  • 17-21 Time Machine Cuba – Infinite Matrix, January 2006 — contains “distrust that particular flavor of italics” from which the collection gets its name

Disc 5:

  • 1-2 Will We Have Computer Chips in Our Heads? – Time, June 19, 2000
  • 3-10 William Gibson’s Filmless Festival – Wired, October 1999
  • 11-14 Johnny: Notes on a Process – Wired, July 1995
  • 15-21 Googling the Cyborg – Talk for the Vancouver Institute, February 2008

Note: the recording includes the post-essay reflections by Gibson on the essays themselves as well as the brief source attributions.

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