Tag: Audiobooks

BOOK REVIEW: A Brush with Darkness

A BRUSH WITH DARKNESS: Learning to Paint After Losing My Sight by LISA FITTIPALDI - FIRST EDITION - 2004 - from Gian Luigi Fine Books Inc. (SKU: 037026)
Pictured:  Book Cover – A Brush with Darkness

by Lisa Fittipaldi

What happens when you lose your sight? How do you feel?  What do you feel?  How do you go on?

Lisa Fittipaldi lost her sight.  It was unexpected, unplanned. She was thrust into a world without sight and suddenly everything was different. Even the simplest acts, like brushing her teeth, became an overwhelming ordeal, one event among countless others that had to be relearned and conquered.  It was her husband who  put paints and brushes in her hands and told her to go with it.  I suspect she had painted before, or at least expressed an interest, but this was different.  This was learning to paint when she did not even know how to walk.

Lisa Fittipaldi articulated so many of my experiences.  I could relate to her trials and tribulations, her awarenesses, her triumphs and failures.  Yet I was born that way, always having to learn to do things my way, all the while dealing with people who just do not get it.

This book is inspirational. A must-read for anyone who has lost their sight, or hearing, a finger, a leg, or anything else that others may label a disability. You just may find an inner strength that makes you even better.

 “Being blind is like being blond. It just is.”    (p. 125)

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Available through BARD and bookshare:

BOOK REVIEW: The Secret Life of Bees

Pictured:  Book Cover showing a jar of honey on a window ledge.

By Sue Monk Kidd

This book was recommended to me. At that time, I thought bees? Really?  A whole book about bees? Bees are interesting, I give you that. Pretty, too, as long as they keep their stingers to themselves. They are productive, organized, and contribute to the world.  See?  I know a little about bees already.  But a whole book about them?  A paragraph, maybe two, would be okay, not a whole book.  So I passed this one by.

Well, it came up again from a second source at a time I was desperate for a book to settle in with, so I tried it. Surprise, surprise!  I got sucked in immediately.  Yes, I learned a lot about bees.  Yes, I even learned from the bees.  But the bees did not keep me hooked on this book.  Rather it was the characters that kept my attention.  It was Lily what’s-her-name, and the calendar sisters, and Rosaleen,  and Zach, and the Daughters of Mary.

And I don’t like books about religion.  I am not looking for inspiration or devotion, not from a novel anyway.  But there was lots of religion, religion that miraculously (if I may use that term) didn’t turn me off but kept me going.  It was a different kind of religion, a kind they adopted and adapted and made strictly their own.  And it was beautiful.

In brief:  A young white girl in a small southern town in 1964 runs away from an abusive home and is taken in by colored folks.

Great characters, great storyline, great adventure.

Keep the faith!

 

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Available through BARD and bookshare.

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AUDIOBOOK: The Other Woman

Pictured:  Book cover

by Sandie Jones

The other woman is not the best friend who slept with her fiancé.  Sure, there is one of those, but she is not the other woman. The other woman is not the mistress, the temptress nor the stalker. The other woman is actually none other than Emily Havistock’s future mother-in-law.

Emily is head-over-heels in love with the perfect guy, Adam Banks. And nothing will shake her commitment to him, not even his evil, manipulative, maniacal mother, Pammie.

I say Get Out Now! Run!

Mothers-in-law get a bad wrap. It is hard to adjust to new family with different ways of seeing things and doing things. There is that awkwardness that seems always to be there, even as it fades. So how far does it go?

Yet I do not hate Pammie. Unlike Emily, I do not like Adam. I want to shake some sense into Emily. What doesn’t she get?

Well written, suspenseful, with plot twists that work. In the end, I do hate Pammie, and Adam,  and Emily. And I hate James, too! I have been through a lot!

 

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Available through BARD.

AUDIOBOOK: The Secret Wisdom of the Earth

Pictured: Book cover

by Christopher Scotton

It had been a horrific few months for Kevin and his family, and the tragedy lives on and roots itself in new agonies.  Kevin and his Mom return to Mom’s roots in rural Kentucky in hopes of each finding a way to deal with their grief and guilt.

Then Paul Pierce is brutally murdered.  Who would do such a heinous thing, and why?  Paul was a gentle man who showed strength and caring and concern for his friends and neighbors,  always readily supportive for anyone in need.  After 18 years as a vital part of the community, Paul had made one fatal error – he had come out.  His homosexuality was always known and accepted by all, but never acknowledged. Now it hung like a banner across the town, across the surrounding hollers and villages.

What greater retreat than tramping, time alone with nature.  Pops (Doc Peebles, veterinarian), Kevin Gilooly (his grandson), and Buzzy Fink (Kevin’s new and only friend)  set off on a 20-mile trek through woods, across mountains, and past man-made coal-mining devastation.  Instead of the quietude and escape from daily life, they must deal with the unthinkable.

A well told, gripping tale.  I was only disappointed in the ending, which revealed the story to be a flashback.  I thought the ending was a little slow and unimpressive following all that came before.

This book is beautifully written with clarity of imagery. I loved the writing style and the stories – my favorite scenes in the Tellin Cave.

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Available through BARD and bookshare.

AUDIOBOOK: Girl, Stolen

Image result for girl, stolen cover
Pictured: Book cover showing a girl with her hands held up covering her face so that she cannot see.

By April Henry

A 16-year-old blind girl sick with fever, cough, and misery of pneumonia, lies curled up in the back seat of her stepmom’s car in a mall parking lot. Her stepmom Danielle has dashed into the mall to pick up new prescriptions to fight the pneumonia. The car keys dangle in the ignition, the door is unlocked. It has only been a few minutes at most.

The car door opens and soon the car is moving quickly out of the parking lot. Cheyenne Wilder, huddled in the back seat, realizes it is not Danielle at the wheel.

Kidnapped! That was not Griffin’s plan. His mission was to steal packages from vehicles in a busy parking lot. Spotting the key in the ignition changed his plan.

Cheyenne’s harrowing adventure had begun. Cheyenne is sick, she is blind, and now she is terrified.

Written for young adults and older, this book is carefully crafted and beautifully written. There are no loose ends. It is suspenseful, scary, and packs an emotional wallop. Blind and visually impaired people of all ages will identify with the protagonist while sighted people will gain insight into the challenges of blindness and ancillary acquired skills.

 

 

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Available through BARD and bookshare.

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AUDIOBOOK: The Couple Next Door

Image result for the couple next door
Pictured:  Book cover

by Shari Lapena

The baby is gone!  Anne and Marco had been at the 40th birthday party of their neighbor next door.  Their houses are attached; they share a wall.  It was just Anne and Marco and Cynthia and Graham celebrating Graham’s birthday with dinner and drinks.  They brought the baby monitor with them.  They would hear the baby and they would take turns checking on the baby every half hour.  Cynthia did not want a fussy baby at her dinner party.

When Anne and Marco returned home after 1:00 in the morning, the baby was gone!  Her crib was empty.  She is barely six months old – she did not walk or crawl away, she could not be hiding in a closet, but they scoured the house looking for her anyway.

The hours ticked by, the days passed slowly . There were clues.  There were suspicions.  There were accusations. Secrets unraveled. So many secrets! Through the anguish, the sobs, and the clenched hands, there was still no baby.  Hope flickered and was dashed time and again.

So many lies! Cover-ups.  Who is protecting whom?  What to believe?  Whom to trust?  Most of all, where is the baby!

What I think does not matter.  Except that I was dead wrong!

Shari Lapena is turning out to be my favorite author.

 

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Available through BARD and bookshare.

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AUDIOBOOK: The Death House

Image result for the death house
Pictured: Book Cover depicting a young couple holding hands at the water’s edge under a night sky.

by Sarah Pinborough

The Death House by Sarah Pinborough is a horror story. It is a mix of a 19th century orphanage and a futuristic leper colony. Toby was snatched from his home and dragged kicking and screaming to a waiting van while his mother stood by helplessly. He is taken to the death house where he joins other children who, like him, are “defective.” Toby’s blood had tested positive.

The death house is an old secluded boarding school-type facility on an island somewhere in northern England. When the sickness becomes evident, children are taken in the night to the sanatorium on the top floor never to be seen again.

And I have questions.

  1. What is the illness?
  2. Why are the children taken from their families?
  3. There are no indications of contagion. So why are the children removed from society?
  4. Why are the children permitted no contact whatsoever with their families?
  5. What happens in the sanatorium?
  6. Are the children alive when taken to the sanatorium presumably to die, or are they already dead?
  7. Since the children die sometime during the night, are they killed at that time?
  8. What happens to the children after they are taken to the sanatorium? (It must be pretty crowded up there!)
  9. How could Louis, at his tender age, possibly complete even step 1 of the mission he is assigned by Toby?
  10. How can Toby tell the story? Spoiler Alert: Toby is dead!

As much as I enjoyed the story as written (and I did), development of this dystopian society would have greatly enhanced the experience. We are left instead with a love story. This is the discovery of young love, with beautifully written scenes of sexual awakening and exploration.

I was looking for dystopia.

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Available through BARD and bookshare.

Voice Dream Reader App

I normally read audiobooks. The choices available on BARD are extensive. The quality of each and every book is outstanding. There are no robtic voices but instead are human readers who give professional performances. Many of the offerings are commercial audiobooks that have been adapted for the National Library Service. And it is all free!

Every now and then, a book comes across my radar screen that I really want to read but it is not yet available on BARD. Granted, it does not happen often, but it happens. Most of the time I simply hope that book will be made available in the near future, but sometimes I just want it now.

That happened to me this week. Someone We Know by Shari Lapena was recommended to me but was not available on BARD. So I downloaded it from bookshare. I downloaded the book to my Voice Dream reader app on my iPad.

Voice Dream provides many options. I can choose to read the print or have the print read to me. I can even switch back and forth – reading some of the print and having some of it read to me – at my discretion. Either way, everything is customizable from font size to tone of voice, and so much more.

When I choose to read the book in print on my iPad I have found that Arial or Helvetica work best for me, using font size 60. I set the bold also. I am most comfortable with standard black letters on a white background, but there are times I prefer to invert the colors, and that is an easy accommodation to make.

VD 1
Pictured: A screenshot of the Voice Dream Reader as it displays on my iPad.  This image shows Arial font in bold, size 60, black lettering on a white background. One sentence is highlighted in blue. Controls along the top and bottom of the screen are displayed.

Voice Dream will read to me, if I so choose. Sometimes I set Heather to read, sometimes Paul, and sometimes Salli. There are so many to choose from. Each of these speaks in a manner and style that is comfortable for me.

Voice Dream is not just a reader. There are additional features to help the reader get around the book or document, such as highlighting, setting bookmarks, a dictionary, and writing notes. Everything is searchable, too.

A light tap on the screen will expose controls along the top and bottom of the screen. At the top are speech and audio settings as well as other controls. At bottom are the playback audio controls.

Lots of hand gestures are available to help the reader move quickly and easily through every book and document.

Last but not least, Voice Dream imports books from various sources like bookshare and Gutenberg. It imports articles from web addresses and from scanned documents.

Voice Dream is assistive technology that puts everyone on the same page.

VD at the APP Store
Pictured: A screenshot of Voice Dream Reader as it displays in the App Store. 

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Choice Magazine Listening – and it is FREE

Choice Magazine Listening (CML) is a nonprofit organization that provides audio recordings of memorable articles, stories, interviews, essays and poems from outstanding current magazines, completely free of charge, to blind, visually impaired, physically disabled or dyslexic adults in the United States.  Based in Port Washington, NY, CML has proudly served the blind and print-disabled community since 1962.

Every winter, spring, summer and fall, thousands of eligible people in the United States receive Choice Magazine Listening in a specialized format exclusively for use by people with disabilities.  The special digital talking-book player needed to listen to CML is provided, free of charge, by the National Library Service for the Blind and Physically Handicapped, Library of Congress.  The player is portable, extremely easy to use, and offers outstanding sound quality.  These audio selections will not play on just any computer, phone, or portable player because special formatting is required for them to work.  If you are already a member of the National Library Service, then you are well on your way to even more interesting reading.

New recordings are made available four times a year.  All eligible people can download complete and unabridged selections from the CML website or, by choice, have a digital cartridge mailed to them.

For more information, please visit their website.  While you are there, sign up for their newsletter.  Enjoy!

Choice Magazine Listening

Audiobook – Educated: A Memoir

By Tara Westover

Educated: a Memoir
Pictured: Book cover for Educated: a Memoir – showing a well-sharpened pencil point.

Everyone has a story.  I enjoy reading memoirs because it is always a long, hard look into someone else’s unique life. This memoir is striking.

Tara Westover is the youngest of seven children. The family lives on a mountain in Idaho.  It is remote, sparsely populated, no telephone, no schooling.  The government is the enemy, the medical world is the enemy.  Y2K is approaching and that will surely be the end of the world – unless you are prepared.  Even the youngest work the junk yard, finding what they need for survival, and for their livelihood.

There is recklessness beyond words, numerous near-death experiences, accidents that defy survival, and love that looks like anything but.

Where they come from and what they achieve in a world of chaos is unfathomable. This is Tara’s story. Be prepared to wallow in the muck, wander fearlessly, experience physical and mental torture, and search for love.

This book leaves me with a lot of questions and a lot of food for thought. For instance, I would like to hear from the medical community about how people (yes more than one in this family) can experience brutality, suffer brain injuries and other severe medical injuries, yet can survive, with no medical attention, and even return to normal living, or at least what is normal for them.  I would like to hear from psychologists and sociologists to explain how people can live in the type of environment that was described and emerge financially successful.   Three of the seven children were reported to succeed educationally at the doctoral level without any educational foundation whatsoever, while four of the children remained uneducated and immersed in the lifestyle of their upbringing.  Perhaps I just want to hear from other readers!

Be warned, all who enter. This is not an easy story to read.