Sukey's Favorite

David Sedaris: Live at Carnegie Hall
By David Sedaris
Time Warner AudioBooks, $17.98
70 minutes, CD, ISBN 1586215647

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Laughter is one of the best cures for the blahs and blues, and few people make me laugh more than David Sedaris. But be warned, a hearty dose of Sedaris may be hazardous to your health—causing you to drive past your exit, trip on the treadmill or walk into a snow bank. With this caveat in mind, the audio doctor soundly prescribes David Sedaris: Live at Carnegie Hall. This is Sedaris at his best, tackling and tickling many of the usual suspects—his family, the foibles of youth, the difficult French and their difficult language, and even NPR, where he got his start.

Controversial commentators

REVIEWS BY SUKEY HOWARD

It's early in this election year, but the combative political climate is heating up fast. We'll try to let you know what's available audio-wise from the professing pundits. Award-winning economist and New York Times columnist Paul Krugman reads selections from The Great Unraveling: Losing Our Way in the New Century, his informed, fascinating chronicle of "economic disappointments, bad leadership and the lies of the powerful."

Noam Chomsky, both venerated and vilified, is "arguably the most important intellectual alive," according to the New York Times. His latest, Hegemony or Survival: America's Quest for Global Dominance, challenges the "grand imperial strategy" of the Bush administration and explores how it may imperil our future. Agree or not, there's much to ponder here.

Arianna Huffington didn't win the gubernatorial race in California, but that's not going to stop her from speaking out in her signature savvy style. And she does just that in Pigs at the Trough, her frank, funny take on corporate greed and political corruption.


Once upon a time in the Bronx

Eight-year-old Bianca, wearing her Superman cape fell, or jumped, out of the window of her aunt's Bronx apartment building. Nothing is ever the same for her earthy, eccentric, extended Italian-American family. Sacred Time, Ursula Hegi's latest novel, follows them through the next five decades as they deal with the risks and pleasures of love, the quotidian ups and downs of life, growing up and growing older, always shadowed by a gnawing grief. Hegi gets it more than right: the time, the place, the people are vivid and authentic, as are the alternating voices—Bianca's mother, aunt, cousin and twin sister—that tell the story. And the voices you hear—Mercedes Ruehl, Bobby Cannavale, Annabella Sciorra—are so perfectly matched to the characters that you easily forget you're listening to actors. An audio presentation that touches the heart and lingers there.


Murder in the museum

P.D. James is among the very few mystery authors who transcend genre. The Murder Room, her latest Adam Dalgliesh mystery, finds the ace poet/detective and his crack Scotland Yard team confronting first one grisly murder, then another in a small, private museum on the edge of London's Hampstead Heath. Defying coincidence, both bizarre killings duplicate crimes from the years between WWI and WWII, represented in the museum's popular Murder Room. The pace is unhurried, allowing for musings on reverence for the past, class and privilege, and how a murder can mirror the time in which it's committed. But the suspense does mount, as does the number of possible suspects, their possible connections and motives. Charles Keating performs this reading with consummate skill, inhabiting every role, seamlessly switching accents and fine-tuning the emotional intensity.


Please note: audios may be available in formats other than the ones reviewed here.

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