JimOCR
4 books read for LibriVox
- Anna comes into a fortune on her twenty-first birthday and her miser father still won't let her spend a shilling of it, and Bennett makes you feel that quiet suffocation on every page. A small, sad, careful book about duty and money in the Potteries; slow, but it earns its heartbreak.
- These two aren't young lovers, they're middle-aged, vain, magnificent messes who keep wrecking empires over each other, and you half want to shake them. Stay for Enobarbus, the dry-eyed friend whose barge speech about Cleopatra is worth the whole play.
- You settle into Plumfield, where Jo and Professor Bhaer turn a lively household of boys into a rough-edged school of kindness, work, and second chances. Nat’s shy arrival and the daily scrapes make it warmly episodic, a little preachy at times, but deeply comforting if you like character over plot.
- You’ll like watching Dr. Thorndyke turn the odd physical details at 31 New Inn into evidence, with Freeman’s patient, almost laboratory-like reasoning doing the heavy lifting. It’s methodical rather than breathless, so it suits you when a mystery’s pleasure lies in thinking alongside the investigator.