A good audio book makes commuting significantly more pleasant. Before my trip to Ireland, I listened to the dark but funny Angela's Ashes, read by author Frank McCourt, and got a big kick out of it. Next I selected Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed, by Jared Diamond. This is a sort of environmental social history, looking at how ancient and modern societies manage their limited resources and either flourish or self-destruct. But the narrator was kind of stuffy, and had this kind of Is-it-New-England-or-British-or-what? accent that made me sleepy. So I gave up on that.
Now I have the marvelous Anansi Boys by Neil Gaiman. Gaiman is the master of updating ancient myth to contemporary times (see his comic book series Sandman). In Anansi Boys, we meet the two sons of the ancient god of storytelling, Anansi. There's Spider, who inherited his father's godlike powers, and then there's Fat Charlie, who didn't. Fat Charlie grows up thinking he's just an ordinary guy, until his father dies and he meets his mystical brother, who's trying to steal Fat Charlie's girlfriend. Adventure and hijinks ensue! I read that Gaiman called his book a "magical-horror-thriller-ghost-romantic-comedy-family-epic," and that seems about right.
And the audiobook is fabulous. Narrator Lenny Henry can do it all: men and women, young and old, mortal and immortal. And he really savors the language, he sounds like he's having as much fun reading it as I'm having listening.
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I thought of you a few days ago when I picked up a children's book adapted from _Angela's Ashes_. I think it's titled _Angela and the Baby Jesus_, which may tell you which story it narrates from McCourt's novel. It's very well done.
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