The White Company by Arthur Conan Doyle

Source: LibriVox (zipped mp3s)
Length: 14 hr, 43 min
Reader: Clive Catterall

The book: Although known now as the creator of Sherlock Holmes, Arthur Conan Doyle considered The White Company and his other historical fiction as his best work. The title refers to an English mercenary band of archers during the Hundred Years' War. The book follows the adventures of two men from very different parts of the feudal hierarchy: Alleyne, a second son of a minor nobleman who after being raised in a abbey, goes off to find his fortune and John, a massively strong peasant who has been kicked out of the same abbey for flirting and drinking. They both fall in with Aylward, an enthusiastic recruiter for the White Company.

The story takes a long time in getting started, with plenty of descriptions of everyday life in the 1300s before the action gets going. Perhaps Conan Doyle was trying to set up a connection with the characters before thrusting them into danger, but they never seemed more than two-dimentional to me. The action set pieces are quite exciting and worth the wait. Although this was a fun book, I'd have to disagree with Conan Doyle and go with the Sherlock Holmes books as his greatest legacy.

Rating: 7 / 10

The reader: Catterall's narration is outstanding. He's a gifted narrator, using his tone of voice and pacing to play up all the action and humor that's in the text. His character voices are particularly well thought out. Sam Aylward's rolling baritone perfectly brings out the bravado of the old soldier. This is a top-notch recording. I'll be looking forward to hearing more of Catterall's work soon.

Ben-Hur by Lew Wallace

Source: LibriVox (zipped mp3s)
Length: 23 hours, 22 minutes
Reader: Mark F. Smith

The book: Nowadays, Ben-Hur is mostly known as the basis for the Oscar-winning film adaptation starring Charlton Heston in the title role, usually shown in reruns in this week before Easter. In its own time, the novel Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ was an unprecedented publishing success, spending years atop the best-seller list and sparking an expanded market for novels.

The novel continues to appeal mainly because of its Count of Monte Cristo-like core story of action, romance and revenge in which the title character, a Jew living under Roman rule, is stripped of all his possessions and sentenced to row in the galleys. The subtitle, A Tale of the Christ, refers to the story of Jesus, which intersects Ben-Hur's life. To modern readers, this religious theme seems tacked onto the beginning and the end, but it was an important reason for the novel's success as Victorians dropped their previous views of the immorality of novels and embraced religious fiction.

Part of the appeal of the book was that Wallace applied the best research of his time to put the story of Jesus into historical context. Of course, having done the research, Wallace feels the need to explain it at great length. These long descriptions, along with a tendency to indulge in religious-philosophical debates in King James English tend to drag down the story. Despite these failings, Ben-Hur is still a good book, though not a great one.

Rating: 7 / 10

The reader: I feel like I'm saying this every few months, but Mark Smith is a solid reader. I'll admit I didn't listen to the entire book; I alternated between reading a few chapters on my phone and listening to some chapters in the car. But when I was reading on my own, it was Mark's voice in my head. He's got a wholesome American accent that he modifies for the different characters, but his voices are not overdone or hammy. The sound quality is perfect and although his pacing is a bit slower than I prefer, that's better than being too fast.

(Entered in the Book Review Wednesday contest at Cym Lowell. Follow the link for reviews of other books by various bloggers)

The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexander Dumas

Source: Lit2go (iTunes U link)
Length: Over 30 hours
Reader: Rick Kistner

The book: Set during the exile and return of Napoleon, The Count of Monte Cristo begins with the unjust imprisonment of Edmond Dantes. Dantes eventually escapes prison, and with the help of a massive fortune, becomes the Count of Monte Cristo. With his disguise in place, Dantes proceeds to find those from his former life, rewarding the families of those he loved and punishing those who betrayed him.

What a doorstopper! Reading The Count of Monte Cristo is a massive undertaking but one that is very rewarding. Getting through this novel would be a tedious chore if it weren't that the tale is so full of adventure and intrigue. Knowing a bit about the reign of Napoleon, especially the events of the Hundred Days, will help, since Dumas certainly assumed his audience in the mid 1800s was familiar with their own country's no-so-long ago history. Still, there are so many twists and subplots that it's easy to get lost. You just have to trust in Dumas's storytelling and know that everything will be explained in the end.

Rating: 8/10

The reader: This is an epic undertaking for any reader. Rick Kistner does a pretty good job with it, as usual. There are some audible lip smacks and slight noises, but that's easily overlooked for an unabridged free copy of such a large book read by a single reader. To be honest, I didn't listen to the entire book; I listened to some chapters and read some chapters.

(This review was entered in a contest for Book Review Wednesdays. Follow the link for other book reviews from other blogs.)

The Magnificant Ambersons by Booth Tarkington

Source: Librivox (zipped mp3s)
Length: 11 hours, 18 minutes
Reader: Mark F. Smith

The book: The Magnificent Ambersons won the Pulitzer Prize in 1919 for best novel and was famously adapted by Orson Welles in what is widely regarded as a potentially great film ruined by studio meddling. More recently, the book was included on the Modern Library list of the 100 greatest novels of the 20th century. Because of these accolades, I was perhaps expecting too much from this book, so it was not surprising that I was disappointed.

The novel starts out well, introducing a family who has made their fortune in building up the commercial and residential sections of their town during the late 1800's. In the first few chapters, Tarkington beautifully sets up a pair of potential romances as well as the seeds of conflict. He then squanders the entire middle part of the book by simply reiterating the characterizations that he so efficiently established at the beginning, while beating the reader over the head with the fact that automobiles have changed the face of America. The changes in society due to new transportation could have been an interesting thesis, but very little happens in these chapters that wouldn't be improved by cutting the length. The story recovers to a satisfying conclusion in the last ten chapters or so, but not before most of my interest was lost.

Rating: 6 / 10

The reader: I've said many times before, but it bears repeating that Mark Smith is one of Librivox's best readers. His excellent narration is one of the reasons why I was able to continue listening through the doldrums of the middle chapters. Smith's petulant whine for the spoiled Georgie is spot-on and his Ward Cleaver-like George Amberson captures the character's geniality. If you're going to listen to an audiobook of The Magnificent Ambersons, this should be it.

The Red Badge of Courage by Stephen Crane

Source: LibriVox (zipped mp3s)
Length: 4 hr, 45 min
Reader: Mike Vendetti

The book: To wrap up my August back-to-school assigned reading month,  I'm reviewing a book that seems to be the bane of every high school American literature student. I really, really, really hated The Red Badge of Courage when I was forced to read it in my junior-year English class. Reading it again, I realize it's not so bad, though still not an especially exciting read.

The book mainly concerns a young soldier in the Civil War. Despite the premise, it's not an exciting adventure book, but instead a mediation on the young man's thoughts and experiences around the time of a battle. The main character flees panics and flees during the first engagement he's in and the book seems to meander along as he encounters various people behind the battlelines. Like the young soldier, the book eventually regroups and produces a fine conclusion, but it's a long journey to get there.

Rating: 6/10


The reader: Mike Vendetti is a professional voice-over actor with an inspiring voice. His deep baritone rumbles like a far-off cannon, making him a perfect pairing with this novel. With Crane's description-heavy text it is easy to fall into a drone, but Vendetti avoids this by giving dramatic emphasis to his reading. The recording is clear and beautifully done.

"Red Shadows" by Robert E. Howard

Source: LibriVox (zipped mp3s)
Length: 1 hr, 2 min
Reader: Paul Siegel

The story: Robert E. Howard is probably best known for his muscular barbarian, Conan the Cimmerian. This story introduces one of Howard's other great action-adventure characters, Solomon Kane. While Conan is hedonistic anti-hero, Kane is a Puritan and a righteous avenger of God. With his adventures set in the early 1600s, Kane pursues his enemies with rapier and flintlock, exacting divine vengeance with a dour visage.

In this story, Kane finds a young woman, raped and dying and vows to kill the leader of the bandits that murdered her and looted her village. Kane's pursuit ranges across continents and into the heart of dark Africa. This is a story full of slashing swords and purple prose. Howard is one of the better pulp fiction magazine writers and his stories crackle with action. This story, and those like it, are one of my favorite literary guilty pleasures.

Rating: 8/10

The reader: Siegel's expressive narration adds to the atmosphere of dark adventure. He adopts a variety of accents that sound as if they came from 1920s radio villains, as befits this type of pulpy story. The recording has a bit of hiss that I could detect, but nothing distracting.

(Cover image from SFFaudio)

The Last of the Mohicans by James Fenimore Cooper

Source: LibriVox
Length: 17 hr, 18 min
Reader: Gary Sherwin

The book: The Last of the Mohicans is set in upstate New York during the French and Indian War. Natty Bumppo, known to the British-allied Indians as Hawkeye and to the French and their Indian allies as "Le Longue Carabine," is a scout in the hotly-contested portage between the Hudson River and the Great Lakes. He and his friends Chingachgook and Uncas, the last two members of the dwindling Mohican tribe, pledge to help two young ladies and their escort through the forest to Fort William Henry where their father is in command of the British forces. But the forest is filled with the French-allied Huron Indians, so it will take all of Hawkeye and the Mohicans' skill to get them through alive.

I was expecting this book to be a plodding period drama with long-winded descriptions of the American frontier and boring philosophical speeches on the noble savage. Cooper did throw in a few of these, but I found the descriptions moving and the speeches short and to-the-point. For the most part, this book was much more fun than I expected. Cooper designs some exciting action sequences with interesting devices for the heroes' escape. His villains and heroes alike are well-formed characters, despite borrowing heavily from American Indian stereotypes. The main asset of the book, however, was the setting. The French and Indian War is a short chapter in most American textbooks and little more than a footnote in European history, but Cooper's story is a great example of literature making history come alive.

Rating: 8/10

The reader: Sherwin's reading is that of an amateur, but a talented amateur. He stumbles over a word from time to time, and noises like page turns and edits are clearly audible. His tone and pacing, however are near-perfect. Sherwin does voices with varying success. His voicing of the villain is scarily menacing, while the comic choirmaster's voice is hilariously funny. On the other hand, the female characters' voices made me cringe at times. His natural voice is fairly deep, which is liability for the women characters, but for his narration and male voices it's a great asset. Fortunately, most of this book plays to his strengths, so I can highly recommend this reading.

"Fokker Filibuster" by Robert Sidney Bowen

Source: Dial P for Pulp (MP3)
Length: 52 min (story itself is about 20 min long)
Reader: Elisha Sessions

The story:The pulp magazine stories of the early 20th century were often cookie-cutter genre pieces. Despite their cliches and political incorrectness, however, the best of these stories are still entertaining for a modern audience. In fact the pulps have experienced a resurgence as the Internet has made stories long out of print once more available to a wider audience.

In this story, Lt. Joseph Todd is a World War I fighter pilot in the US Army Air Service. Todd is a good pilot, but he has one problem: he can't land on the tiny battlefront air strips without damaging his aircraft. True to the conventions of this type of story, Scott is called up on a suprise mission where he will have one last chance to redeem himself.

I found this story predictable, but still an exciting action-adventure piece. The plot has plenty of bursts of aerial and ground fighting coming one after the other. "Fokker Filibuster" isn't a memorable story, but it is a fun one.

Rating: 6/10

The reader:The Dial P for Pulp podcast combines reviews of pulp fiction, drama, and games with readings of stories from classic magazines or their modern imitators. "Fokker Filibuster" starts at about 29 minutes into this episode. Sessions reads with great liveliness. His character voices are spot-on and his narration conveys the bang-pow attitude of the genre. The story begins and ends with a plane engine effect at the that flies straight through the headphones from one side to the other, setting the stage for a well-produded recording.

Silas Marner by George Eliot

Source: Librivox
Length: 6 hr, 46 min
Reader: rachelellen

Silas Marner: The Weaver of Raveloe is a book about a man first isolated by his community, then brought back in. Silas is kicked out of the weaver's guild after being wrongly accused of theft. He tries to begin a new life in the hamlet of Raveloe, but his attempts to join the community are regarded with suspicion. He falls in to hoarding the gold he gains from his weaving, and it takes an unlikely series of events to draw him back out again.

Elliot manages to alleviate the pathos of Silas's story by interspersing it with the story of two sons of the village's major landholder. These active personalities lift the resigned mood of the narrative and provide an engine to the plot. Eliot's vivid descriptions of Silas's cottage, of formal dances, and of the people of Raveloe likewise give the story a life it would otherwise lack.

I think the themes of isolation from the community in this story as as relevant today as when they were written. Personally, I know only one of my neighbors well, a few others by name, and most not at all. Although online communities are wonderful things, I believe that George Eliot would still want us to connect to our physical communities.

Rating: 7/10

The reader: Librivox reader rachelellen provides a captivating performance. Her warm alto voice lends life to Eliot's sometimes antiquated prose. She doesn't attempt elaborate characters, but pronounces words distinctly with an American accent. Listening on headphones, I could hear a faint background hiss, but no other noise. This is a good straightforward recording that brings out Eliot's language to its full potential.

A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens

Source: LoudLit / Literal Systems (direct link)
Reader: Jane Aker
Length: 16 hrs, 15 min

The book: Usually, I find Charles Dickens too sentimental for my tastes. A Tale of Two Cities is my favorite Dickens book because he gives his characters some depth and sets them in an interesting time. Typical of Dickens' work, there's still the extremes of the supremely good Lucie and supremely bad Madam Defarge, but he also throws in characters in shades of gray, like Monsieur Defarge and Sydney Carton.

The plot is doled out piecemeal, as is normal for serial novels, with a go-nowhere subplot about one of Lucie's suitors taking up too much space in the middle of the novel. I also found the chapters about Jerry to be tedious and full of supposed humor regarding wife abuse. Once the action moves to France, however, the pace picks up and I found myself doing a few more laps at the gym to find out what would happen to Charles, Lucie and the doctor.

The historical background is, of course, the French Revolution. I'm not sure how much actual research Dickens did into time period beyond what was generally known in the history books. I don't have a good handle on the historical events of the Revolution in all its complexity and contradictions, so I can't really comment on his verisimilitude. Dickens' portrayal, however accurate, of the persecution of the poor by the rich and the resulting bloodthirstiness of the Reign of Terror trials is something that will stick in my mind.

Rating: 7/10

The reader: Jane Akers is a marvelous narrator. She speaks at a slow pace with clear enunciation. She performs a wide variety of accents for the characters which makes Dickens' often difficult dialect much easier to understand. The recording is professionally done at a studio with no background noise or hiss.