Briar Patch Books

Category: Audio Books

  • Pride and prejudice and peril

    Jane Austen is such an interesting literary phenomenon. She wrote novels in which very little happened, other than people going to balls, taking walks, getting married and worrying about how many pounds a year they have or might expect to have. Some of her characters are deliberately portrayed as silly; others are admirable because they…

  • H Is for Happy New Year

    When it comes to mysteries, I usually like cozy, village-type mysteries better than ones featuring hard-boiled detectives and on-page violence. But there are exceptions. I enjoyed Sue Grafton’s series starring P.I. Kinsey Millhone way back when she was working through the early letters of the alphabet. Then somehow I lost touch with Kinsey around “M”…

  • All aboard for a magical ride

    Because I listen to audio books when I drive, I’ve developed a rating system that involves how far extra I’ll drive to keep listening to a book if I reach my destination in mid-chapter – or even mid-book.  This one cost me a lot of extra miles and gas. But that investment paid off handsomely…

  • Dangerous mountain

    Remember Charles Frazier, the North Carolina writer who made a huge splash with his first novel, Cold Mountain, in 1997? Then word got out that he received a staggeringly large advance for his second novel, Thirteen Moons, nine years later. As a result, there was more media attention to the business of publishing his books…

  • A chorus of voices from our past

    The saga of the Japanese “picture brides” who came from Japan to California after World War I is a sad chapter of American history that is unfamiliar to many of us. More of us know a little about the later internment of these women and their families, along with other Japanese Americans, during World War…

  • A wonderful book, with flowers

    Here’s another one of those books I might have missed had I not listened to its audio version during my commute (and, truth be told, sometimes while driving a little extra to see what happens next). And what a loss that would have been. This book is a true work of art. By Linda Brinson…

  • Listening and laughing

    There’s an odd thing about audio books. I find that I can enjoy listening to books that I most likely would not read. That’s been true of some pretty heavy nonfiction. And now I’ve found it to be true of one of Janet Evanovich’s Stephanie Plum books. I started to say “mysteries” or “thrillers” instead…

  • Have some bread and a good story

    Out of some probably silly literary snobbery, I tend to shy away from the sub-genre of novel about groups of women. I know there are some fine ones. Lee Smith’s The Last Girls, about a reunion of four college suite mates on a riverboat trip down the Mississippi, is a wonderful book. I read that…

  • Families, friends, lovers

    I am becoming so addicted to listening to books on CD when I drive alone that I find is distressing when I don’t have an audio book with me. Elizabeth Berg is the author of a number of best-selling novels, but I had never read any of her books before I listened to her latest…

  • A classic, worth revisiting

    Jane Eyre provided good, diverting company for me recently when I made a quick driving trip to and from Morehead City to take my son a few things he needed before his ship deployed to the Mediterranean. By Linda Brinson JANE EYRE. By Charlotte Bronte. Read by Josephine Bailey. Random House Audio. 21 ½hours. 18…