Death of the Author

 Fiction by Nnedi Okorafor

https://www.audible.com

Zelu is a Nigerian-American woman who has been partly paralyzed since age 12. She is the second born of a large and loud family, and a child of parents from two different African tribes: Ibo and Yoruba. All of these things make up part of who she is, but none of them define her as much as this: Zelu is an author.

This book is about both Zelu and her writing, combining elements of her novel, scenes from her life, and interviews of her family and close friends about her. It has wonderful and believable characters, and I would give it a very high rating… except for the ending. 

Without resorting to spoilers, I can’t tell you the ending of course. Let me just say it was ambiguous and anti climactic. So this book is well written, and the narration on the audiobook is stellar, but it’s been demoted down to one thumb, or less. 

The Greatest Love Story Ever Told

Nonfiction by Megan Mullally and Nick Offerman

https://www.audible.com

This hyperbolically named book by the married actor/comedians is pretty funny, but not hysterically so. 

It was a bit too long and repetitive; if you like these people already you'll probably like it. If you don't know who they are you will be bored. 

The Lost Girls of Willowbrook

 Fiction by Ellen Marie Wiseman

https://www.audible.com

I could not finish listening to this book because it was about a girl imprisoned in a mental institution and I can't handle that subject emotionally. (I should have realized it from the description, I know. Sometimes I don't read the descriptions.)

I'm logging it in as Did Not Finish because I like this author and have read other books by her; I don't want to find myself in the middle of this one ever again.

I also read by this author (and finished!!): The Orphan Collector

The Last Word

 Fiction by Taylor Adams 

https://www.audible.com

Emma Carpenter is house sitting for the winter in a lonely beach home on the Pacific coast. She is grieving deeply, escaping through binge-reading, and flirting with suicide. But when a murderer comes after her, she will discover that she doesn’t really want to die. Still, she might be killed anyway…

This book had twist after twist after twist. I loved it!

I also read by this author: Eyeshot

The Stranger in Her House

Fiction by John Marrs

https://www.audible.com

This was a very exciting story that kept making turns I didn't expect. Most of the characters were rather terrible people but you couldn't help being sympathetic to some of them anyways.

I also read by this author: You Killed Me First

Everyone is Watching

 Fiction by Heather Gudenkauf

https://www.audible.com

Five people are competing in a reality show called "One Lucky Winner," each hoping to win a prize of ten million dollars. But this competition is long on hype and short on details; no one knows what exactly the competitors will be required to do or how they have been chosen. And the challenges will be streamed live at unexpected times, not recorded and aired on a schedule. 

Supposedly these things are meant to make the show different and exciting, but also they serve to keep everyone guessing and the contestants off-balance. But it quickly becomes clear that there is something strange going on behind the scenes....

This was a fast-paced an exciting story, but the plot was WAY over the top. I couldn't help but think it stretched the reader's willing suspension of disbelief to the breaking point. And I felt like the characters were less likeable and believable than they could have been. Still, it was pretty fun to read.

I also read by this author: This is How I Lied

That Summer

 Fiction by Jennifer Weiner

https://www.audible.com

When Diana was fifteen she went to spend the summer on Cape Cod as a mother's helper for a professor her parents knew at home in Boston. She had hoped to have fun and maybe even find love, but she came back broken and depressed, refusing to tell her parents what had happened to change her.

More than twenty-five years later another woman named Diana, this one nicknamed Daisy, is navigating a particularly difficult stretch of motherhood with her own fifteen-year-old daughter and wondering why she feels dissatisfied with life. Then she meets the other Diana, and discovers that maybe what she really needs is a friend.

But the reader can tell that there is something else going on under the surface of the friendship between these two women, and eventually a secret will explode to the surface.

This was a good story with great characters and I liked the realistic nature of the plot and resolution. Still it got a little heavy-handed and Big-Issue driven at times.

I also read by this author: Big Summer

The Wondering Years

 Nonfiction by Knox McCoy

https://www.audible.com

This was a fun and funny memoir about the author's life and faith journey.

Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Cafe

 Fiction by Fannie Flagg

https://www.audible.com

I had read this novel years ago, but I thought I'd try it on audio book. It was doubly good with the Southern lady narrator!

I also read by this author: The Whole Town's Talking

The Undoing Project

Subtitled: A Friendship That Changed Our Minds
Nonfiction by Daniel Lewis

https://www.audible.com

The titular Friendship that Changed Our Minds was between two Israeli psychologists, Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky in the middle of the twentieth century. While these men were pretty interesting and their work very interesting, this book itself was not all that interesting.

Although the author gave a lot of information about both men (and a lot of extraneous information, including irrelevant things about his previous successful book Moneyball ), the book didn't read like a story about people. I don't like stories that aren't about people.

I think I would have done better just to read their psychology papers.

Destructive Reasoning

 Fiction by Scott Meyer

https://www.audible.com

This is the second book in the "Authorities" series (see below), and it is as funny and interesting as the first. In this story, Detective Rutherford and the other members of the Authorities travel from their native Seattle to Los Angeles, trying to catch a killer who is targeting actors.

I also read recently by this author: The Authorities

Based on a True Story

 Nonfiction? by Norm MacDonald

https://www.audible.com

I put a question mark after the word "nonfiction" above because, although this book is labelled as a memoir, the story seems to be almost completely made up.

Norm MacDonald was indeed a comedian who was on Saturday Night Live in the nineties, and he was alive in 2016 and doing stand-up when the book was written (he has since died), but the rest of this "memoir" is quite fictitious.

Also it's not funny. At least the first half isn't. I gave up.

Circle of Days

 Fiction by Ken Follett

https://www.audible.com

Ken Follet began writing about British history with the book The Pillars of the Earth, (set in 12th century) and continued in the rest of the Kingsbridge series to explore several other eras. Now he's going WAY back, to the time of Stonehenge.

It is a testament to this author's genius that he can write a story about primitive humans and make the characters just as compelling and real as modern people. This book is amazingly good.

I also read recently by this author: The Armor of Light

Vera Wong's Unsolicited Advice for Murderers

 Fiction by Jesse Q. Sutanto

https://www.audible.com

Vera Wong is an old Chinese lady who runs a teashop and is smarter than almost everyone else. At least, according to her own opinion she is. So when she finds a dead man in her tea shop one morning, she already knows that she will be better at solving the murder case than the police.

This was a fun and lighthearted mystery. It was a little too slow for an audiobook.

I also read by this author: Dial A For Aunties

Remarkably Bright Creatures

 Fiction by Shelby Van Pelt

https://www.audible.com

I tried reading this book in print several years ago and couldn't get into it, but I heard people raving about the audio version. I decided to give it a another chance with the slightly different medium.

Interestingly, I liked it much better in the audiobook version. It's a weird premise: the narrator is an octopus, and that's the reason I was hesitant at first. But actually, the octopus is only one of the narrators. There's also Nova, the woman who cleans the aquarium at night where Marcellus the octopus lives, and Cameron, a young man who comes to visit the aquarium while searching for his father.

This turned out to be a fun book.

The Family Experiment

 Fiction by John Marrs

https://www.audible.com

In a futuristic Britain, the divide between rich and poor becomes ever-wider, and government control over individuals grows stronger and stronger, as the line between private corporations and public entities blurs. In this installment of the story, couples who can't have biological children compete on reality TV for the opportunity to have AI kids.

Wait, what? Just accept the premise. It's the dystopian future!

This book is listed as #3 in the "Dark Future Series," which includes The One, The Marriage Act, The Passengers, and The Minders. I have read all of these and I think they have the order wrong; this one is more like number four or five. But that's not important, I guess.

The important thing is that this book was really good, especially in audiobook form with the different narrators.

The House of My Mother

 Nonfiction by Shari Franke

https://www.audible.com

Family vlogger Ruby Franke was big news a couple of years ago when she and her best friend Jodi Hildebrand were convicted of neglecting and abusing Ruby's four minor children. No charges were brought up concerning the two oldest kids, Shari and Chad, because the two of them had already left home.

In this story Shari tells her own story of how Ruby's abuse of her children started long before she met up with Jodi, and how the support and validation Jodi gave her escalated everything exponentially.

This was an honest memoir and very interesting, but it was also extremely sad.

Once was Willem

 Fiction by M.R. Carey

https://www.audible.com

This was a very interesting story, set in a 12th century England where magic is real. It’s imaginative and has great characters.

I also read recently by this author: The Boy on the Bridge

Corpies

 Fiction by Drew Hayes

https://www.audible.com

I'd call this a parallel novel in the "Super-Powered" book series. (see below for the last one of those)

In this book, Owen Daniels (whose sons Herschel and Roy are main characters in the Super-Powered novels) decides to come out of his self-imposed exile and rejoin the world of superheroes. But after so long out of the game, the only team who is willing to take him is a group of Corpies, supers who offer services for corporate hire.

As I would expect from this author, this was a really good story.

I also read recently by this author: Super Powereds Year Four

By the Pricking of My Thumbs

 Fiction by Agatha Christie

https://www.barnesandnoble.com

This story, starring recurring characters Tommy and Tuppence Beresford (see The Secret Adversary and N or M?) was not as engrossing as most of Agatha Christie's stories. Still, there was a good mystery and a surprising ending.

I also read recently by this author: At Bertram's Hotel