Tuesday, January 25, 2011

52 books - numbers 5 and 6.

Bookie wook number 5 is 'No one Noticed the Cat' by Anne McCaffrey

This book has been missing for a while - I found it in J's book case. It has been an awful long time since I read it (it was published in 1996). Like a lot of McCaffrey's books it is set in another land and has strange beasts and a fairytale feel to it. The two main characters, a young King and his extraordinary feline, are well rounded for a fairly short book.The only thing is that if I say to much about the storyline then it would ruin it for anyone who fancied giving it a look.  I like the story, it definitely isn't a taxing read but is enthralling enough to keep the pages turning. For me it is a sit and read in one session book being only 127 pages. A jolly entertaining way to pass a winters evening when there was nothing on TV.

Bookie wook number 5 'A Study in Scarlet' by Arthur Conan Doyle.

After my mammoth Sherlock Holmes binge last winter, I thought enough time had passed to revisit Holmes and Watson. I downloaded this as free audio book via Libravox and was lucky to find it a really good version with just one narrator (who had very few pronunciation issues). I had never read this one before so although episode 1 of the recent TV series was based loosely on it, the majority of it was quite new to me. I enjoyed the growth of the relationship between Holmes and Watson - though not knowing this hadn't ruined the other SH books  that I read and the plot was complex enough to intrigue. I have a feeling I may have read a shortened version somewhere that missed out the whole centre section that takes place in Utah - I had never come across that before and at first thought my recording had gone wrong and I had part of another book. It made the whole story have a greater depth and explained the reasoning behind the murders very well.
I do love Holmes so am biased  in the pleasure I get from this sort of audio book and it passed a good few hours knitting time for very quickly indeed.

I think Librovox on the whole have a really good choice of titles and once you find a few good narrators then it is a service that also being free is wonderful. I have the app in my iPod Touch and it downloads quickly and plays really clearly. Brilliant.

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