Einstein: His Life and Universe by Walter Isaacson (audio)

Posted on September 12, 2012 by pagesofjulia

A.Word.A.Day recently sent me, among other valuable tidbits, a quotation that perfectly describes Einstein (thought I, being in the middle of his biography):

A harmless hilarity and a buoyant cheerfulness are not infrequent concomitants of genius; and we are never more deceived than when we mistake gravity for greatness, solemnity for science, and pomposity for erudition.– Charles Caleb Colton; Lacon: or Many Things in Few Words; Longmans; 1837. Quoted by A.Word.A.Day, August 31, 2012.

And here’s the poster child for that very thought: hilarity and cheerfulness (among other qualities) combined in one of the geniuses of the modern era.

Walter Isaacson is a well-respected biographer. (His other works include biographies of Kissinger, Ben Franklin, and most recently Steve Jobs.) This well-regarded biography of Einstein appears to be very well-researched and thorough, and I thought the audio narration by Edward Herrmann was well-done and well-suited.

What I liked best about this book was its characterization of Einstein, the charmingly rumpled, distracted, unique genius with the twinkling eyes and the mad wild hair who rode a bicycle. There were times I didn’t like Einstein, too: in the course of separating from and later divorcing his wife, he didn’t treat his two sons very well. It felt like he expected them to behave like little adults – or perhaps more accurately, he behaved like a child. He wasn’t entirely sweet to his wife, either, which is of course common in divorces but no less charming for that. But Isaacson’s portrayal of of Einstein’s mental style was lovely to read: how he thought in pictures, in objects in action, in “thought experiments” and not in words; the way his aversion to authority and accepted truths freed him to think such outlandish thoughts that he revolutionized science; these are the singularities that made Einstein Einstein, and that was an important lesson to take away. Also, it was fun to read the story of his life with the advantage of hindsight – that this is Einstein we’re talking about here – and see all the rejections and belittlings he underwent, and sort of chortle at the irony. (Correction of a well-known myth: Einstein did not, in fact, fail math. He did rather well. However, there was that teacher that said he would “never amount to much.” That part is true.)

I observe that my decision not to pursue a subject like theoretical physics was a very, very good decision. I can follow all sorts of things, grasp all sorts of concepts, but not this. My eyes glazed over within moments of the science-talk beginning (dangerous for driving). I positively cannot “get” Einstein, and I’m comfortable with that. But it made this book a little more difficult than I would have liked, because the book is rather science-heavy. I think there are different ways to do this job, of writing a biography of a scientific figure, or other science-based nonfiction. I think of Soundings or even The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, both lovely narrative works about science and people that treated the people more heavily, and in more depth, than they did the science. The science was there, present (necessarily), and well explained, made accessible by explanation, but the people shown brighter. That worked for me. Here, in Einstein, it was Einstein himself that I was most interested in, and I liked it when his personality, his public image, his family dealings, etc. were at the forefront. Isaacson lost me entirely and quickly every time he wandered into physics and relativity. One way is not better or worse, but different; and it’s clear which style I prefer for my scientific nonfiction.

That said, the man played a starring role, and I believe Isaacson’s intention was to put in the science needed to place Einstein in context. I learned a lot about Einstein, I was entertained by his foibles and eccentricities (the not wearing of the socks! oh my), I was charmed. I was provoked to contemplate some of the troubling moments in world history that Einstein witnessed and participated in (Germany in the 1930’s, fascism, McCarthyism, the atom bomb, on and on). In a nutshell, Isaacson captures well the humanity of Einstein: his charm, his flaws, and his genius, all in one. This biography is moving, entertaining, and very informative. If you’re so inclined, you might even learn some physics from it. 🙂 I can see why Isaacson’s stock as a biographer is high, and I forgive him for baffling me here and there.

Rating: 7 quanta.

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The Warmth of Other Suns: The Epic Story of America’s Great Migration by Isabel Wilkerson (audio)

Posted on September 3, 2012 by pagesofjulia

I didn’t really know what this book was about when I picked it up – only that it was well-regarded. I’m so glad it found its way into my hands. Isabel Wilkerson has taken on a large-scale, ambitious subject here, and rendered it beautifully. And the audio reading by Robin Miles is lovely to boot.

The “great migration” in the subtitle refers to the movement of black Americans out of the South and into the northern and western United States in 1915-1975. Wilkerson starts from the very beginning, looking at the experiences of former slaves just after Emancipation in an impoverished region struggling to rebuild with a new order of things. The creation and expansion of Jim Crow laws designed to hold blacks down took time after the end of the Civil War to take effect. In the new caste system, former slaves and their descendents were unable to move up in the world and were in constant fear for their lives if they were to misstep around Southern whites. By 1915, they had begun to move out of the South, in what became a mass migration along lines so distinct that enclaves of blacks from specific towns and states were recreated in new locations.

Wilkerson shifts between two ways of studying the Great Migration. Sometimes she takes a broad view of history, in which she cites her own interviews (she states that she did over 1,200) with migrants and their descendents as well as a number of historical sources, to render the story of the Migration generally. And sometimes she follows the specific personal stories of three individuals who she interviewed at great length over a long period of time, traveling the country with them and becoming part of their lives. (In this respect, the journalist/author becoming part of the family of her subject, I was reminded of Rebecca Skloot’s amazing The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks.) George Swanson Starling moved from Eustis, Florida to New York City, later sending for his wife Inez to join him there. He had to leave Florida suddenly because a friend tipped him off that a lynch mob was coming for him; he had been involved in organizing his fellow citrus pickers to demand higher wages. Ida Mae Brandon Gladney moved with her husband George and their two children, with a third on the way, from Mississippi where they had been sharecroppers. They would eventually end up in Chicago, by way of Milwaukee. And Robert Joseph Pershing Foster was an ambitious surgeon and veteran from Monroe, Louisiana, with his heart set on Los Angeles. Known as Pershing in Monroe, he would resettle as Robert (or Bob, or Doc) in LA and send for his wife and daughters to join him there, where he built a new life in high society with the big house and booming practice he’d always wanted.

I found this shifting back and forth between the broad view and three personal histories extremely effective. Anecdotes from the lives of Southern blacks drove well home the misery of their bottom-rung status there; some of these stories are horrific, but important to show the desperation some migrants felt when they left their homes in the South. National trends played a role – for example, during WWII demand for Florida’s citrus was high while the supply of labor to pick the fruit was low, with everyone off at war, and this imbalance led to George Starling’s ability to demand higher wages. And the history of Chicago’s race relations and residential segregation puts Ida Mae Gladney’s home ownership into the proper perspective. You get the point. The history is well-documented and, I’m convinced, well-researched; and the personal stories make it all, well, personal. I was deeply involved with our three representative individuals by the end of the book and, yes, I cried.

I love that Wilkerson brought such a large-scale, important trend, that has had such huge effects on American history, to life the way she did. I also like that she examined the broad effects of the Great Migration, in terms of the cultures of both white and black residents of the North and the South, and took the time to show that black migrants were really far more like immigrant groups in history than like migrants within their own country. I recommend this book as part of a study of American history – but one need not be an academic to appreciate it. The story of the Great Migration is made accessible here, and I’m glad I know more about it now. This 19-disc audiobook (over 600 pages in print) went by easily. This is how I like to take my history lessons. Check it out.

Rating: 8 train rides north.

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Death of a Valentine by M.C. Beaton (audio)

Posted on August 23, 2012 by pagesofjulia

This is my first experience with M.C. Beaton, who I know is popular for both her Agatha Raisin series and her Hamish Macbeth series, of which this is one. You know me, I’m unafraid to jump in mid-series; and when it comes to audiobooks, I’ll take what I can get, which is how I ended up listening to Death of a Valentine.

I’ll start on a positive note. I liked the Scottish Highlands setting, with those local-flavor items like food & culture, and particularly in audio form when I was able to get the accent as well. Hamish Macbeth is an unoriginal but likeable bachelor policeman, unhappy with his recent promotion to Sergeant, which has landed him with an assistant. And here is my first negative: the assistant, Constable Jodie McSween, is intolerable. She became a policewoman more or less by accident, and has always capitalized on her good looks and general affability to get by. She has no interest in or aptitude for police work. And her raison d’être in Macbeth’s precinct of Lochdubh is… to land him as her husband. Never mind that all those good-looking, intelligent, proficient policewomen (and other professional women) out there just took a blow from this miserable character. She didn’t do this book any good, either.

The mystery story is unremarkable but mildly enjoyable. The local beauty queen in the next town over has been blown to bits by a letter bomb on Valentine’s Day, and as soon as the coppers start looking into things, her reputation falls apart. It becomes increasingly clear that instead of a dear, sweet, innocent, Godly little beauty, she was a manipulative jerk bent on stealing other girls’ boyfriends, and worse. And then lovestruck boys start dropping like flies. Hamish is on the case, and he’s pretty competent. There’s a rather fun interlude involving an elderly escaped lion that Hamish befriends; and he has a dog and a cat who accompany him around the countryside a good bit, and that’s nice and cute at all, although they’re not very well-developed characters. Hamish also has a small collection of female friends that he discusses his case details with (not advisable, I wouldn’t think, but this is a fairly fantastical story) and that drive Josie mad with jealousy.

But the sideplot of Josie’s love for Hamish is altogether nauseating and truly offensive. I’m pretty tolerant of the mistreatment of women in the fiction I read, when it’s in pursuit of a good story, but this is just rubbish. She’s worthless, unlikeable, mooning, needy, and dumb as dirt. Am I supposed to care about what happens to this woman? No, I join Hamish in being perplexed and annoyed by her strange behaviors. She tries to drug and date-rape him, in consummately inept fashion. I mean, really.

I finished this book. I wanted to see (hear) what would happen. I generally interpret this desire to finish a book as a redeeming quality. I don’t know, there were some cute moments, but there were also some distasteful moments. I can’t quite decide, for example, if all the moaning about marriage as a miserable end of all the fun (“those who were not married found the whole idea of a wedding romantic, and those who were had a feeling of schadenfreude that some other poor soul was about to be chained in holy matrimony”) is funny or just plain offensive. In the end, while I found some moments in Death of a Valentine cute, my overall impression leans towards a) being offended by the insufferable Josie and the depiction of women in general, and b) rolling my eyes at a ridiculous plot and underdeveloped characters. No more M.C. Beaton for me, thanks.

Note: good marks to narrator Graeme Malcolm, who was funny and heck, I don’t know Scottish accents very well but I found his amusing and convincing. I don’t hold this book against him.

Rating: 3 puppy dogs.

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Teaser Tuesdays: The Warmth of Other Suns by Isabel Wilkerson

Posted on August 21, 2012 by pagesofjulia

Teaser Tuesdays is a weekly bookish meme, hosted by MizB of Should Be Reading. Anyone can play along! Just open your current read to a random page and share a few sentences. Be careful not to include spoilers!

I think we’ve all heard a lot about this bestselling work of nonfiction; I’m going to end up adding my voice to those recommending it, and I can say that Robin Miles’s narration of the audiobook is worthwhile as well. Check out this piece of writing:

From Louisiana, he followed the hyphens in the road that blurred together toward a faraway place, bridging unrelated things as hyphens do. Alone in the car, he had close to two thousand miles of curving road in front of him, farther than farmworker emigrants leaving Guatemala for Texas, not to mention Tijuana for California, where a wind from the south could blow a Mexican clothesline over the border.

Aren’t the hyphens lovely? And I appreciate the geographical detail, that these migrants within their own country traveled further than the international ones we hear so much about. This makes me think of an experience I had at the Rio Grande down at the Texas-Mexico border. I hope you’ll indulge me…

I was down in & around Big Bend National and State Parks with friends, mountain biking and checking out the hot springs. We visited one hot springs right on the Rio Grande, and the enterprising Mexicans across the river had set up a little honor-system sale of arty crafts: they had set out scorpions twisted out of wire and the like on a rock, with prices labeled, and we were to leave our money behind (I was told) and they would paddle over after dark to retrieve it. We looked across the river, some 15 feet, and saw people in the trees watching us back. This drove home to me how small, how subtle is the physical border between two political states, and made me marvel at the huge difference our governments expect us to see between someone born on one side of this little trickling dirty stream of a river, and someone born on the other. It seems like an cruelly arbitrary way to decide who gets what advantages in life. I had to conclude that if I were born on the “wrong” side and thought I saw opportunity on the other, I too would wade across. What’s a little muddy water, anyway? That image, of the tiny Rio Grande as border, was recalled to me by Wilkerson’s point about the wind blowing a clothesline across.

I’ve been distracted. Call this a teaser of the feelings and musings that Wilkerson has evoked in just the first few tracks of this lovely (audio)book. I recommend her.

And what are you reading this week?

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The Perfect Storm by Sebastian Junger (audio)

Posted on August 20, 2012 by pagesofjulia

In October 1991, a number of factors converged to create a storm of inconceivable strength off the Massachusetts coast. Vessels large and small struggled in its path, and a few didn’t make it out. Sebastian Junger follows a few of the men, women and boats involved in this remarkable work of nonfiction. He begins by introducing us to Bobby Shatford and his girlfriend Chris, and their town of Gloucester, Mass. Bobby and Chris wake up hungover – Bobby has a black eye – and drive around town, visiting with friends and Bobby’s mother Ethel, bartender at the Crow’s Nest, and making final arrangements for Bobby’s departure on the Andrea Gail, a small fishing boat with a crew of six. We then follow Bobby’s path and that of his fellow fishermen: the two men who get funny feelings and refuse to sail with the Andrea Gail, and the five who join him on her for an intended 4-week fishing trip. We track their fishing, the decisions made by their captain Billy Tyne, the radio communications between Tyne and other fishing boat captains. We watch the storm approach, checking in with meteorologists and getting quick lessons in storm formation, and we visit other boats as well, including the Satori, a 32-foot sailboat, and the Eishin Maru, a Japanese longliner, both fated to have complications and exciting moments. We also get to know two rescue crews, made up of Air National Guard pararescue jumpers and Coast Guard rescue swimmers. I won’t give too much away (although, all of this being a matter of historical record, it’s out there), but not all of the characters introduced survive the storm.

That’s about all I want to say about the events detailed here; you can find out more by reading the book yourself (or listening to the audio, as I did – more on that in a bit), which I highly recommend. And here’s why. This is an incredibly adrenaline-pumping adventure tale. There are sad endings for some of the men and women involved, yes, but there is also great heroism, amazing skin-of-your-teeth survival, drama, even a love story or two mixed in. The human interest, in other words, is huge. For excitement, really, could you ask for more than rescue swimmers jumping out of a helicopter into the storm of the century to rescue men and women from sinking ships or from the open ocean? I submit that you could not.

In addition, the story is told in a unique way. Junger jumps subjects throughout: we meet a few characters in Gloucester, then we review the fishing history of the town of Gloucester, then we study up on commercial fishing for a bit, back to the characters… eventually we get lessons in meteorology, the physics of boat building, wave formation, and what exactly happens when a person drowns. As I wrote before, Junger is fairly strict and journalistic in following the facts. Where parts of the story he tells are unknown, he doesn’t claim to know, but he does interview people who have been through similar scenarios and survived; so we get an educated estimation of what the players might have been through, while making nothing up. It’s a method I respect; I found it both dramatic and fully-wrought, and reliable.

The audiobook I listened to is excellent, too. Read by Richard M. Davidson, it has all the taut, tense action it needs without ever feeling over-dramatized. And as a bonus, it includes a recording of the author speaking about the making of the book. This flows like his-side-only of an interview; I imagined someone in between asking specific question. Like the foreword, I found this a substantial addition. At the time of the storm, in 1991, Junger was working as a high climber, taking trees down for a tree company, and selling freelance magazine articles for a living. The storm inspired him, and he wrote a chapter about it, initially for a book he conceived about various dangerous jobs: the commercial fishermen of Gloucester would have been joined by loggers, smokejumpers, forest-fire fighters and the like. But his agent landed him a deal for a whole book about “the perfect storm” – whereupon Junger became anxious. How would he fill a whole book with just the storm? he wondered. (I loved hearing the author, in his own voice, discuss his nerves! And the whole process, really.) So he decided to follow all the sub-plots and related topics he could, to flesh it out, and this is why we are treated to the lessons in weather, boats, the fishing industry, etc. What struck me about this is that it is a rather Moby-Dick method, and ironically, while that classic work of fiction is notoriously difficult to read (come on, even its fans admit this, right?), this work of nonfiction – even though readers often fear nonfiction will be dry or cumbersome – flowed delightfully and effortlessly. Those subplots mightily enriched the whole. Even the questions left unanswered, about the fates of those who disappeared and whose remains were never found, Junger turns to advantage. As he says, because he investigated the experiences of others who lived through similar situations, we get a richer, more layered story than had he interviewed a sole surviving fisherman.

Sorry for another long review! (Usually this means I really liked the book.) In a nutshell: moving, emotional, adrenalizing, scientific, faithful, thrilling! Check it out.

Rating: 8 swordfish.

EDIT: I also reviewed the movie, here.

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Escape From Camp 14 by Blaine Harden (audio)

Posted on August 15, 2012 by pagesofjulia

Shin Dong-hyuk was born in 1982 inside Camp 14, one of North Korea’s no-exit political prison labor camps. He was raised in the camp, starving, ill, beaten, and forced to work for his life. His education was meager and consisted of the bare understanding of camp politics necessary to make him a compliant worker; he was trained from birth to snitch, to betray his classmates and relatives, to serve his masters. The concepts of love, kindness, trust, and familial relationships were unknown to him. At age 23, he escaped the camp and traveled on foot out of North Korea, into China, and would eventually make his way to South Korea and later, the United States. As far as we know, Shin is the only prisoner ever born in one of these camps to escape.

Blaine Harden is an experienced journalist, who covered North Korea for years, as well as other declining nations. He tells Shin’s story in a professional manner. Many of the details of Shin’s life, and camp life generally, cannot be confirmed or denied, because we have so few sources of information on the subject. (North Korea maintains that there are no such camps, although they are visible on satellite photographs.) Harden treats this information as a professional journalist, researching and confirming where possible, and giving his well-thought-out reasons for believing (or not) those details that are not confirmable. More difficultly, in this book, Shin recants an important fact about his life as he had claimed it for years. I felt that Harden made a reasoned case for believing the later story given. I was impressed with how he handled the problems of his source’s reliability, which I found an interesting issue. Additionally, Shin does not speak English, so Harden conducted his many interviews with interpreters; this of course raises new questions. When Harden says Shin chooses a certain word to describe a certain time in his life, I wonder who in fact chose that word. Naturally it was the interpreter who chose the word, and not knowing Korean, I can’t know how literal a translation it was, or whether there were several English words that might have been used. I don’t mean this as a criticism of Harden’s (or the interpreter’s) work; I just want to note that I’m always intrigued by the questions raised.

Shin states that Kim Jong-Il (and his successor) is worse than Hitler, because while Hitler tortured and killed his enemies, North Korea does so with its own people. This book makes that argument: the atrocities committed at these labor camps are appalling. It’s true, I was not well educated on North Korean conditions before I found this book. I suspect there are many of us who could learn a lot on this subject. I am not sure I can communicate to you here how shocking the details are – I’d really rather you go out and get a copy of this book – but I will tell you that no one is spared, no human dignities are allowed, there is murder and torture. These details are not spared, either, so be prepared for the graphic explanation of the torture Shin endured leading up to his mother’s execution. It’s not an easy book; but I do think it’s important that we know, so still I recommend it.

Shin’s story is mind-boggling. It is perhaps too obvious to state, but he had terrible luck to be born in the camp, and terrible things happened to him there; but his escape began a run of rather astonishing good luck. Harden puts the escape, and Shin’s overland journey (as well as many other parts of this story) in perspective by interjecting the accounts of other escaped prisoners and scholars on the subject. In this case, he describes the political climate at the time of Shin’s escape, showing how much luck it took for him to make it out of the country as he did. His good luck, though, mostly applies to his physical escape. Not surprisingly, his mental, emotional, psychological escape is still underway. As Harden points out at the beginning, most survivors of the Nazi death camps, the Soviet labor camps, and other centers of atrocities tell a story that has three parts: a relatively good life before capture; horrors on the inside; and then attempts at recovery after escape or release. Shin’s story is fundamentally different. Having been raised for 23 years on the inside, from birth, his release was to a world unknown. The trauma he is still trying to repair is staggering, unimaginable to the rest of us. Apparently Shin is like many North Korean defectors in being inclined to refuse psychological treatment – related to difficulties with trust – and his road has never been an easy one. His story as told here does end with a modicum of hope. But he is still struggling.

Again, this is a deeply disturbing book to read (or in my case, listen to), but I think it’s important to know what Shin and other North Koreans are going through. Please look out for Escape from Camp 14. I recommend the audiobook, which Harden reads himself. His delivery is matter-of-fact but that serves his story well.

Rating: 8 grains of rice.

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Teaser Tuesdays: The Perfect Storm by Sebastian Junger

Posted on August 14, 2012 by pagesofjulia

Teaser Tuesdays is a weekly bookish meme, hosted by MizB of Should Be Reading. Anyone can play along! Just open your current read to a random page and share a few sentences. Be careful not to include spoilers!

I’m listening to Sebastian Junger’s The Perfect Storm on audiobook, read by Richard M. Davidson. I find it quite interesting so far. Some of the passages I’m enjoying the most describe life in the small fishing town of Gloucester, Massachusetts, and I’ve chosen a teaser for you today that depicts the role one special bar plays in the lives of fishermen.

Fishermen who don’t have bank accounts cash paychecks at the Crow’s Nest (it helps if they owe the bar money), and fishermen who don’t have mailing addresses can have things sent right to the bar. This puts them at a distinct advantage over the IRS, a lawyer, or an ex-wife. The bartender, of course, takes messages, screens calls, and might even lie. The pay phone at the door has the same number as the house phone, and when it rings, customer signal to Ethel whether they’re in or not.

A proper home away from home, hm?

What are you reading this week?

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book beginnings on Friday: Escape From Camp 14 by Blaine Harden

Posted on August 3, 2012 by pagesofjulia

Thanks to Rose City Reader for hosting this meme. To participate, share the first line or two of the book you are currently reading and, if you feel so moved, let us know what your first impressions were based on that first line.

Happy Friday! I have a book to share with you today that is not so happy, though. Journalist Blaine Harden narrates this audiobook himself, which I find to be a fine choice. I’ll let the book beginning introduce you:

Nine years after his mother’s hanging, Shin squirmed through an electric fence and ran off through the snow. It was January 2, 2005. Before then, no one born in a North Korean political prison camp had ever escaped. As far as can be determined, Shin is still the only one to do it.

And this is the story of Shin Dong-hyuk. So far I am discovering my own very poor knowledge of North Korea, and marveling at the atrocities. But it looks to be a great book, and an important one in that we could all stand to be better educated about North Korean human rights abuses. So, happy Friday indeed.

What are you reading this weekend?

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preview chapter: Doctor Sleep by Stephen King (audio)

Posted on August 2, 2012 by pagesofjulia

As noted yesterday, there is a teaser chapter at the end of Stephen King’s The Wind Through the Keyhole for his upcoming book, Doctor Sleep. I am giving this one chapter its own post here because it grabbed me hard. Good job, Mr. King, you have me salivating for a book that’s not out til 2013. Thanks.

Doctor Sleep will be a sequel to King’s huge 1977 hit, The Shining, upon which was based the 1980 Stanley Kubrick / Jack Nicholson movie by the same name. I have neither read nor watched The Shining, but after listening to King’s reading of the first chapter of Doctor Sleep, I will. I have a copy of the audiobook (sadly, not read by King) on its way to me now. I got the storyline of both the book and the movie, and the differences between the two, off Wikipedia. I won’t regurgitate what I read; if you too need the background, go read up (book – movie).

Doctor Sleep opens with Danny Torrance seeing dead people again, a few years after the death of his father and other frightening events at the Overlook Hotel. Dick Hallorann comes to town to help him deal with the trauma and the apparently very real risk of the ghosts (are they ghosts? these decaying corpses?) doing him bodily harm. Dick arms young Danny with a tool to protect himself, but the chapter ends with a sort of “and then they were safe… or were they?” moment. Oh the suspense!

Here I am pimping Stephen King, I suppose, and I don’t think he needs my help. But just the one chapter held my interest so thoroughly that it began to eclipse the wonderful Wind Through the Keyhole that I had just finished. I am impressed, am I intrigued, I am seeking out more Stephen King. Check him out.

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The Wind Through the Keyhole by Stephen King (audio)

Posted on August 1, 2012 by pagesofjulia

Edit – Update! I’ve just linked up to The Stephen King Project blog, where we’re being encouraged to read King (or listen!) and share our reviews. Thanks Natalie for the reminder. I didn’t join on purpose with a plan or anything, but I’m happy to be here now. …and back to the book review.

My word, this is lovely. I have never been disappointed in Stephen King, but this is definitely my favorite of those I’ve read. The Wind Through the Keyhole is part of the Dark Tower series, to which I am new, and therefore I appreciates the introductory remarks, in which King notes that it is not necessary to have read others in the series, but it would help to know a few facts about MidWorld, which he then relates. It’s true: I didn’t have any trouble following the action or keeping track of the rules of this alternate world.

King employs the story-within-a-story format here, and puts it inside another story for good measure. I got so immersed in the innermost story, about young Tim and his frightening journey into the forest in the starkblast, that when it ended I expected the book to end! I suppose it might have been jarring to then return to the story of young Bill and the skinman (which is in turn being told to the characters of the outermost story), but it wasn’t. I was just relieved that there was more to hear.

Stephen King reads this audiobook himself, and does it beautifully. I have listened to a handful of author-narrated audiobooks, and they have all been great. The actors, or professional narrators, are often wonderful as well, but some of these authors do amazing jobs too. Barbara Kingsolver’s reading of The Lacuna was extremely impressive, because of all the different accents necessary. It makes me marvel that a person can be such a talented artist in two different media! But I’m getting off track. Stephen King does a great narration, everything felt very real, and I was comforted knowing that the names of his imaginary lands and people were pronounced just as the author imagined them in his head.

So what is this book about? It opens with Roland Deschain and his traveling companions, chatting on the road to who-knows-where (presumably this is part of a larger storyline that I would know if I were reading the series). A particularly strange and threatening storm called a starkblast is coming, and they seek shelter, and find themselves up all night in the howling wind; so Roland agrees to tell them a story. This is where we leave the outermost story and enter the middle-layer story.

Roland is a young man and a novice gunslinger. I quote Stephen King’s foreward: a gunslinger is “one of a small band that tries to keep order in an increasingly lawless world. If you think of the gunslingers of Gilead as a strange combination of knights errant and territorial marshals in the Old West, you’ll be close to the mark.” He has just lost his mother – killed her, in fact, in an obviously traumatic incident that is only alluded to in this book – when he takes a trip with fellow youngster gunslinger, Jamie, to solve a mysterious series of bloody murders in a small mining town. It is theorized that the murders are being committed by a skinman, a shapeshifter. Roland befriends a young boy, Bill, who has witnessed his father’s murder, takes pity on him, and sits down to tell him a story Roland’s mother used to tell him when he was a little boy. This is the innermost story, and it is called – what do you know – The Wind in the Keyhole.

Once upon a time, in an ironwood-logging town called Tree, Big Ross is killed by a dragon in the woods. His partner, Big Kells, marries Ross’s widow Nell, and becomes stepfather to the boy Tim. Tim’s story is an adventure and sort of a dark and frightening fairy tale. He finds out a sinister secret about his stepfather and takes a journey deep into the treacherous forest where his father was killed; he encounters strange creatures, dragons, fairies, tigers, good magic and bad magic. This innermost story is the one we spend the most time with, and is set in a marvelous otherworldly world, fully developed, filled with creatures and characters and conventions and rules, fascinating and glorious and strange and scary, but also rather sweet.

Roland concludes the telling of The Wind Through the Keyhole to Bill, and then concludes the telling of Bill’s story to his companions, so that we close the stories we’ve opened and finish back with the elder Roland and his companions weathering the starkblast. There is a sense of circularity, and completeness.

The outermost story, of Roland and his fellow travelers, is engaging and also set in another world (MidWorld) I found interesting and would like to hear more about. The middle-layer story, of the young Roland seeking the skinman, involves some good old-fashioned detective skills and has a satisfying conclusion. But the story of young Tim and his quest through the forest was clearly the star. I was entranced, and sorry it was over. I shall be searching out more King, without a doubt! And I appreciated his narration, as I said earlier; I hope he’ll continue to narrate his audiobooks.

Stay tuned: tomorrow I’ll tell you about the teaser chapter for an upcoming book that was included at the end of this one.

Rating: 7 puppy dogs.

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