When Giants Walked the Earth review

No Country For Old Men review

It's difficult to imagine a better narrator for NO COUNTRY FOR OLD MEN by Cormac McCarthy than Sean Barrett, (after hearing this short novel performed), although (knowing his work) I'm sure that Tom Stechschulte is also superb in his version. What makes Barrett a great choice to speak the killer's words here is oddly similar to what made Javier Bardem a great choice for the character of Anton Chigurh in the Coen brothers movie version. Barrett has an understated, calm, but not quite laid-back air about his delivery, with vocal characteristics to match. There's an element of tension present that the mirror surface can't quite hide. You expect the worst to happen, and it does. As for the story, if you're unfamiliar with it, it's about a escaped killer tracking a man who found a bag of money related to a failed drug buy. Tommy Lee Jones plays the sheriff in the movie, and he's trying to find both men before they find each other. Sounds simple enough. But as this morality tale plays out against the stark backdrop of west Texas it also expands its reach past mere entertainment into the realm of literature by extending its scope beyond three men in the desert to the bigger questions that have plagued man from the beginning. Hearing this "audio movie" version will be instructive for Coen brothers fans and screenwriters too, since you can compare, as I did, the dialogue between the book and the movie, and so see what choices the Coen brothers made in editing. Surprisingly, they stayed pretty much with the story, (except for one major scene), and were true to the dialogue too, but there are other subtle differences. (Some scenes were tightened, others emphasized by the Coens. Little extra dialogue was added, but some was subtracted.) By comparing, you will be able to figure out why (and which) things work better on the screen or on the page. As reader, Sean Barrett is an appropriate guide to this very original story, with spot-on west Texas accents and believable female characters, too. Speaking in the voice of the killer, though, he's chillingly real and a minimalist just like Chigurh himself--a man of few emotions, attuned to destiny, accepting of fate, just telling it like it is, whether you like what truths are revealed about the world or not. (Naxos)

More Classic Audiobooks

HAWKE by Ted Bell is an exciting adventure novel set in Cuba about the English descendent of the pirate Blackhawke--a man turned decorated naval hero who is investigating the the disappearance of a Soviet stealth submarine, and comes up against a plot to overthrow Castro by some modern day pirates. Read by actor John Shea, HAWKE was a first for Bell, and rivals Clive Cussler's fiction for action and adventure. However, we do recommend listening to this audiobook at home, rather than in heavy traffic, because while Shea nails all the accents and characters here, his dramatic tendencies are toward an intense whisper sometimes, which may have you fiddling with your car's volume control. So enjoy doing your dusting, dishes, and yes, even windows.

International politics is a mess these days. But the instabilities and volatile nature of third world regimes has always supplied fuel for suspense writers like Tom Clancy and Robert Ludlum. Clancy's "The Sum of All Fears" and Ludlum's "The Bourne Identity" were both made into movies, of course. Which one was better in print? I'd have to say Bourne because Ludlum, more than Clancy, knows how to pace a story. He knows what to leave out. Which is not to say his new novel THE JANSON DIRECTIVE is not a big book, like most of Clancy's solo books were. It is. But there's more bite to it.  You aren't lectured to, and it is not so much a history lesson, with 900 characters and descriptive passages about every weapon ever developed. It is also one of his best, prophetically mentioning Osama bin Laden and al Qaeda while involving suicide bombers in a plot about a billionaire philanthropist kidnapped by rebels on an island in the Indian Ocean. Reader Paul Michael ("The DaVinci Code") has a gift for accents, and makes this one of the most enjoyable and involving political thrillers in years.  {Audio Renaissance}

Have you ever wished you could throttle the punk driving around your neighborhood at 2 AM playing rap or rock on subwoofers loud enough to shake your house? In the novel LULLABY by Chuck Palahniuk the main character can do just that, and from a distance. See, he knows an ancient culling song--an African chant which can kill anyone who hears it. Over time, all Carl Streator has to do is think the chant to kill people with it. He learned the song while investigating sudden infant deaths as a reporter, and is now traveling the country trying to destroy all remaining copies of the book from which it came. This offbeat horror novel, by the author of "Fight Club," was original and provocative, although the idea for the song reminded me of an old Twilight Zone episode based on a story by Sydney Sheldon. Narrator Richard Poe, gifted with focus and authority, has culled all other readers with his voice to end up as the best-- and only--man for the job. (Recorded Books)

Twenty five years ago, when it was easier to pass bogus checks, Frank J. Abagnale Jr. was called The Skywayman because he traveled the world posing as a Pan Am co-pilot while "hanging paper," as the fraud is known. His exploits are chronicled in CATCH ME IF YOU CAN, an amusing autobiography which is now a movie starring Leonardo DiCaprio. Barrett Whitener successfully and entertainingly interpreted the conversations and thought patterns behind Abagnale's bold, freewheeling scams--from fooling bank clerks and seducing flight attendants to playing con games on airport personnel, prison officials, and FBI agents. With fraud still America's #1 crime, this fascinating memoir is a true life cautionary tale of interest to anyone wishing to avoid becoming a victim. Was Abagnale caught? Yes, he was, and spent a horrific six months in solitary confinement in a French prison, without clothes, light, bed, or even a toilet. . . that is, just before he was deported to the U.S., and promptly escaped again. How? Well, by dismantling the plane's lavatory toilet and climbing down through the hatch upon touchdown at night, of course.  (Blackstone Audiobooks)

Finally, John Fusco's PARADISE SALVAGE is an outstanding first novel, a very literate mystery with heart and soul. Despite negative reviews from Publishers Weekly and Library Journal, citing long descriptive passages as bogging down the plot, I think the novel's attention to detail are what make the story unique. This original, sensitive, and believable tale was not written on an assembly line, following a formula, and can be described as a coming of age story about an Italian-American boy named Nunzio Paradiso, who sees a dead body in the trunk of a car just before his father puts that car through the family's junkyard crusher. Who was this dead man? You'll want to find out as much as Nunzio does, even as the twelve-year-old sometimes seems uncertain of what he actually saw himself. This vacillation in a boy losing his innocence rings true to the listener because we all remember being told, whenever we related something bizarre we'd witnessed as a child, that it was only our imaginations playing tricks with us. Local mafia is implicated in Nunzio's mind, or perhaps corrupt politicians in their small Connecticut town--a town where the Paradiso family must weigh a need to preserve their past Italian traditions against their need to survive in the present. The reader, Brian Emerson, tells the story from the boy's point of view--clear, sonorous, and on target. Despite the fact that Emerson's is a grown-up and masculine voice, we get the sense that an older Nunzio is telling the tale from memory, looking back on it in order to relive his lost childhood. This is confirmed by a diary or journal mentioned, which Nunzio calls "the amazing summer adventures of Nunzio." Emerson's voice, together with excellent sound level quality, projects well, and so could easily be understood over car stereo speakers in heavy traffic. As for Fusco, he is a screenwriter whose credits include the movies "Thunderheart" and "Young Guns." As gifted as they come, and with sharp eye for dialogue (if not pacing), Fusco knows how to make words resonate long after being heard. (Blackstone)