L&L: Around the World in Eighty Days by Jules Verne

I just have to note that this is one of my favorite audiobooks. It is plot motivated and the characters are grand, and those elements together make it easy listening.

- I selfishly loved all the action in Nebraska because I've spent a lot of time on the Platte River. I was enchanted by the travel in India as well (I will be traveling there soon), because I was mentally comparing Verne's India with Wilkie Collins' India in The Moonstone. Both are strongly colonial and judgmental.

-The portrayals of America were entertaining. Justice of the peace? Hah!

- My biggest frustration with the book was Aouda. The woman who is given no agency, frequently no words, and a fierce Stockholm syndrome that becomes legitimate once Mr. Fogg decides to love her.

L&L: Survivor by Chuck Palahniuk

Here we go! It's a quick look at the satirical novel Survivor. I like it a lot more than I anticipated.

- I liked the way it played with a lot of social commentary at once--the televangelism, the celebrity status, the cult obsession, sex shaming, noeveau riche, etc.

- Fertility Hollis. What a gal. Did she set this all up to get back at Tender? She and The Caseworker were not great portrayals of women, but I think I would rank Fertility over the Caseworker.

- Narrative style and structure were a big plus for this story.

L&L: The Friday Night Knitting Club by Kate Jacobs

- I don't like that this became a cancer story. Knowing that it's a series book, I wish things could have ended without all the cancer. I thought getting all the damned people together was good enough.

- James and Georgia are too cheesy, which is totally subjective and I realize there is some charm to Georgia's ignorance of James' intentions. But only some.

- This particular audiobook was kind of distracting because of the narrator's attempts at different voices for the characters, particularly the questionable Scottish.

So I started Anne of Green Gables

This girl is the most annoying character I think I've ever encountered. Seriously! She's worse than all those horrible people in The Great Gatsby!

Is this supposed to be some satirical rendering of Romantic literature, a la Jane Austen? Because I feel like I'm trapped inside the YA alternative to Mysteries of Udolpho. But worse, because there's no mystery and it's short. This is vaguely what I think Little Women must be like, but with less attractive characters.

What also scares me is that, if I had read this in my youth (about age 11 much like Anne), I probably would have developed a knack for hyperbole and flowery language  even more than I was already prone to do with my incessant poetry writing.

I can't decide if it's better or worse that I'm encountering Anne of Green Gables as an audiobook. I'm not sure if it's better that I'm listening to it (less effort than to have to read her stupid wandering commentary, which I actually probably wouldn't do) or worse because I have to hear the whiny insipid annoyance. 

Oh, the tragedy! Anne would approve of what she's putting me through right now.

Caught Fire

All right, I get it, finally: the obsession with The Hunger Games trilogy. I've listened to two of the three books, and I'm eager to start the third--although not for some time, because I just started the audiobook Death Comes to Pemberley. I can't say I'm as enthralled as everyone who was reading it during its heyday, but I'm very much enjoying it. It's sick and twisted at its core (awesome) and laden with stupid teenage indecisive love (lame. C'mon, Peeta, have some emotion other than heartsick-sacrificla-lamb), but it works.

The narrator, Carolyn McCormick, is my favorite audiobook personality so far. I might search out other books she's read, just because she read them.