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Great gifts for deserving ears
REVIEWS BY SUKEY HOWARD We want to remind you that audios, long and short, offer sound options for sound presents and solve gift-giving quandaries. Just check out the new releases and check off the names on your gift list.
Homer H. Hickam, Jr.'s Rocket Boys: A Memoir, performed by Beau Bridges, is the kind of all-American story that makes it clear that dreams can still become reality in this fair land. "Sonny" Hickam grew up in Coalville, West Virginia, where the coal mine and high-school football were the only major concerns. Just after the Russians launched Sputnik in 1957, Sonny, mesmerized by the soaring satellite, launched himself and a loyal band of friends into the all-consuming task of making their own rockets. They became the "Rocket Boys" and, in time, town heroes. The Boys started small, but within a few years their rockets hurtled high above the mountains. Hickam, now a distinguished NASA engineer, tells his story with feeling and appreciation and often sounds as amazed and pleased as when his first rocket took flight.
A Memoir By Homer H. Hickam, Jr. Simon & Schuster Audio, $24 4.5 hours ISBN 0671582720
Susan Isaacs believes in the American gift for dreaming, too, and in happy endings. So, even if her new, and most welcome, novel, Red, White and Blue, takes on bigotry, hate crimes, and a nasty group of white supremacists, you can be sure that the good guys -- and a gal -- will prevail. Yet, while giving us this charming, disarming love story, Isaacs confronts tough issues and asks us to ponder the nature of our country and the motivation of people who would destroy our democracy. But don't let a little pondering put you off -- this is Isaacs at her witty, wonderful best, and John Shea's reading only adds to the enjoyment.
By Susan Isaacs HarperAudio, $25 6 hours ISBN 0694519820
Short stories make excellent audios, and this season's selections are better than ever. American Masters: The Short Stories of Raymond Carver, John Cheever, and John Updike offers you the literary luxury of hearing 20 unabridged selections from the collected works of these three extraordinary creators of short fiction. The 17 superb stories that make up Selected Fictions and Poems by Jorge Luis Borges are taken from the brilliant new translation of his entire opus by Andrew Hurley and read here by George Guidall. Best-selling author Jeffrey Archer shows off his gift for adroit, entertaining plot twists and suspense in Selected Stories, performed with perfect aplomb by British actor Martin Jarvis. Ethan Coen of the Coen brothers who gave us Fargo and Blood Simple has written Gates of Eden, a collection of short stories, read by an all-star cast, that echoes with the same intensity, irony, and imagination that mark his films. And if you know any cat lovers, what could be more purrrfect than The Greatest Cat Stories of the 20th Century, ten tales of feline-centered intrigue, murder, and crime by ten masters of mystery fiction.
The Short Stories of Raymond Carver, John Cheever, and John Updike Random House AudioBooks, $29.95 7.5 hours ISBN 0375404767
By Jorge Luis Borges Penguin Audiobooks, $24.95 6 hours ISBN 0140868488
By Jeffrey Archer HarperAudio, $25 6 hours ISBN 069452056X
By Ethan Coen Simon & Schuster Audio, $25 5.5 hours ISBN 0671582801
Dove Audio, $25 6 hours ISBN 0787116823
We've all played it again and again, and the characters from Casablanca have a permanent place in our collective romantic imagination. Now, with Michael Walsh's As Time Goes By: A Novel of Casablanca, and this ten-hour unabridged audio, we have the prequel and the sequel in one captivating tale of love, war, and adventure. In seamless flashbacks, you'll discover where Rick, Ilsa, valiant Victor Laszlo, and dapper little Louis came from and what secrets they carried with them. And, as Walsh sends them behind enemy lines to do what they have to do, you'll find out what became of them. In his extraordinary reading, Alexander Adams provides these fleshed out characters with their unforgettable movie voices.
A Novel of Casablanca By Michael Walsh Time Warner AudioBooks, $34.98 ISBN 1570426317
If ten hours doesn't seem grand enough, tune in to The Century, the 15-hour audio companion to ABC News' T.V. extravaganza (due to air this spring on ABC and the History Channel). It's anchored by Peter Jennings and offers a sweeping retrospective of the sounds of our century, in the voices of the people who shaped it and the people who lived it, including many archival recordings added exclusively for this presentation. One of the first millennia mega-mementos on audio, this will make a nifty gift as we count down to 2000.
BDD, $75 15 hours ISBN 055347751X
By Tom Wolfe BDD Audio, $27.50 8.5 hours ISBN 0553478907
By Philip Roth Dove Audio, $36 11 hours ISBN 0787117986
By Barbara Kingsolver Brilliance, $44.95 16 hours ISBN 1567404081
By Toni Morrison Random House Audiobooks, $39.95 12.5 hours ISBN 0375404872
By John Steinbeck Penguin Audiobooks, $49.95 21 hours ISBN 0140868445
By Anne Rice Random House Audiobooks, $44.95 16 hours ISBN 0375404341
Sukey Howard reports on spoken word audio each month.
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Take flight
Red, white, and new
'Tis the season for shorts? You bet
Play it again, Sam
Long listens
While we're into long listens, here are some winners that definitely fall in the not-to-be-missed category. Tom Wolfe's long-awaited, much-heralded A Man in Full is fabulous, and then some, as performed by John Ogden Stiers. Ron Silver reads Philip Roth's new novel, I Married a Communist in an excellent unabridged presentation. Every word of Barbara Kingsolver's latest, highly acclaimed, novel, The Poisonwood Bible, is read by Dean Robertson. Toni Morrison, who reads as beautifully as she writes, has recorded Beloved in its entirety. All 21 hours of John Steinbeck's great American classic, The Grapes of Wrath, are read by Dylan Baker in a recent release. And, if you don't find vampires a bit too dark for this season of light, you can sink incisors into The Vampire Armand, Anne Rice's latest, dazzling installment of The Vampire Chronicles.