LISTENING: The Last of the Mohicans by James Fenimore Cooper

Read by Robertson Dean. Published by Santa Ana, CA: Books on Tape, p2006.
Immensely enjoyable once I got used to the ornate language. The discriptions of nature and the insight into human nature are excellent.

LISTENING: What I Did for Love by Susan Elizabeth Phillips

Read by Julia Gibson. Published by Westminster, Md.: Books on Tape, p2009.
Really well done and entertaining romance about a young Hollywood celebrity.

LISTENING: Espresso Tales by Alexander McCall Smith

Second novel of the 44 Scottland Street series; audio book performed by Robert Ian MacKenzie.

For the most part it is as funny as the first book, with majority of the same characters, but a bit sad in places too.

See the real Scotland Street, kindly posted by Linda on her Occasional Scotland blog.

LISTENING: Summer of My Amazing Luck by Miriam Toews

Read by Erin Moon. (An excellent reader.)
Recorded Books, 2009 (Book published by Turnstone Press, Canada, 1996.)

"Toews's first novel, The Summer of My Amazing Luck, finds humour and poignancy in unexpected locales. The protagonist is a teenaged single mother, on welfare, who moves to a low-income housing project in Winnipeg to escape the emotional trauma left in the wake of her own mother's death. Toews invokes, ridicules, and defies class-based stereotypes in her portrayal of these lively characters' daily struggles, from cheap strollers to lost love, and joys. This book won the 1996 John Hirsch Award for Most Promising Manitoba Writer, and was adapted into an award winning drama by playwright Chris Craddock." - The Canadian Encyclopedia

LISTENING: 44 Scotland Street by Alexander McCall Smith

Read by Robert Ian Mackenzie; first book of the 44 Scotland St. series.

An absolutely delightful series of vignettes about the characters occupying 44 Scotland St.

READING: Depths by Henning Mankell

Miraleste Library Book Club selection for June 2009.

2006, The New York Press. Translated from the Swedish by Laurie Thompson. Set in 1914 in Sweden.

Mankell is the writer of Kurt Wallander mysteries (I have not read any of them yet) for a total of 37 novels and many plays.

I do not recommend this book - it is very dark, without being at all uplifting. ("...a dark immovable story that literally measures the depths where Fascist personalities grow." - from Expressen, Sweden).

LISTENING: Life Sentences by Laura Lippman

Read by Linda Emond.

An interesting story about a best seller writer of memoirs who returns to Baltimore seeking to discover more about a childhood friend who was sentenced for killing her baby, and in the process realizes that she did not quite capture the truth in her last book.

LISTENING: Remember the Sweet Things: One List, Two Lives, and Twenty Years of Marriage by Ellen Greene

Recorded Books Inc., 2009. Narrated by Barbara Caruso. "The author describes her struggles with divorce and single parenthood before meeting her husband, Marsh, whose many kindnesses she would jot down and make into a cause for thanks and celebration every Valentine's Day."

READING: I Will Plant You a Lilac Tree: A Memoir of a Schindler's List Survivor by Laura Hillman

Miraleste Library Book Club selection for May 2009.

From the book jacket: "Laura Hillman (nee Hannelore Wolff) was born in 1923 in Aurich, Germany, near the North Sea. She was the third of five children born to Karoline and Martin Wolff. Five years after Hitler came to power, Laura was separated from her town and family. The events Laura witnessed in the camps kept her from writing for many years, but she finally set out to write her memoir, facing for the first time the circumstances that led to her survival. Laura now lives in Los Alamitos, California, and devotes her time between talking in high schools and colleges about her experiences and being a docent at the Long Beach Museum of Art."

LISTENING: Unaccustomed Earth: Stories

by Jhumpa Lahiri, read by Sarita Choudhury & Ajay Naidu

From Publishers Weekly

"The gulf that separates expatriate Bengali parents from their American-raised children—and that separates the children from India—remains Lahiri's subject for this follow-up to Interpreter of Maladies and The Namesake. In this set of eight stories, the results are again stunning."