Adventures in Audio

Yesterday we drove from Orange Beach, Alabama to our home in Fort Smith, Arkansas.  Normally this drive is about 660 miles. Yesterday, though, in rural Mississippi about 12 miles west of Yahoo City (Where my husband earnestly would like to see a Piggly Wiggly...) we came to a bridge that was closed for the day. Yes, just for the day. As we were on a small state road, and in Mississippi this means a really small ill paved two lane road, we had to find our own detour. Although the workers had blocked the bridge and put up a sign indicating the bridge would only be closed from 7am to 5pm on this particular day, they hadn't bothered to mark a detour. Therefore, we used google maps to find one. Remember, this is rural Mississippi in the Delta region. This took an inordinate amount of time because we had to back track quite a bit, the next bridge over that river (I think it is the Yazoo River?) was 15 miles away as the crow flies (that's a guess) and many of the roads marked on Google maps are not paved and, in fact, are not even roads. Seriously. Just a path between fields... We do not go off road in our little Honda, of course. We drove through some tiny towns and lots of rural nowhere and it added about an hour to our drive, I suspect.

Anyhow, this misadventure, as well as a stop to accept and make a bunch of important phone calls (can't be driving in rural Arkansas and be sure to have continuous good mobile phone coverage) meant our drive was nearly 14 hours total, or way longer than usual. What on earth does this have to do with reading, since this is a blog about reading? WELL, it means we listened to many hours of a new audiobook!

New Audiobook Adventure!

My husband is such a nice man, he agreed to help me in my year of reading women authors. He let me choose a woman-authored audiobook for our drive home, rather than our usual long drive audiobooks (unabridged Tom Clancy thrillers, mostly). So, I chose a female-authored thriller:

7. At Risk [2004] by Stella Rimington [audible.com audiobook]. Rimington is a former Director General in the British Security Service (MI5) who writes novels relating to that setting with particular attention to counter-subversion, counter-espionage and counter-terrorism. 

This book is the first in a series that follows the career of Liz Carlyle, a fictional (of course) employee of MI5. So far it is exciting, interesting, adventurous, funny, a bit scary, detailed, and suspenseful, with an interesting mixture of subtle and not so subtle characters.   The narrator, Jennifer McMahon, reads beautifully, using a convincing range of accents.

Continuing Reading Projects

At bedtime, I also read a very little bit of the other two books I currently have going on Kindle , but not enough to really say anything new about these:

4. Middlemarch [1872] by George Eliot (aka Mary Anne or Marian Evans) [Kindle].

6. The Dispossessed [1974] by Ursula Le Guin [Kindle].

I did not listen to any short stories yesterday since we dove right into the driving first thing in the morning. So, I still have several short stories left to go in this book:

3. Interpreter of Maladies [1999], short stories by Jhumpa Lahiri [audiobook].

I will definitely listen to another one on Thursday!

Open for Suggestions!

While I started compiling a potential 2015 reading list a couple of months ago, it is not written in stone and I am open for suggestions. Several of my friends have given me specific suggestions or links to lists of excellent books. Keep them coming!

Books Completed in 2015

Down here I will list the completed books with links to their info page on Goodreads and to the reviews I have written. I hope I can figure out how to link to my Amazon reviews eventually (Anyone? Anyone?). They are identical to my Goodreads reviews, really, but I know some people aren't on he Goodreads website. I suppose I also have to decide whether to number these in the order finished or in the order started? Decisions, decisions...  Numbers can be so confusing for me...

1. Among Others [2011] by Jo Walton [Kindle]. 5/5 stars [review: Goodreads; Amazon].
2. Knitting for Beginners [2014] by Susan Wilters [Kindle]. 2/5 stars [review: Goodreads; Amazon].
5. The Story of My Life [1902] by Helen Keller [Kindle] 4/5 stars [review: Goodreads; Amazon].