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Good Reading : August 2010
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word of mouth audio books REVIEWED BY ELIZABETH BENTLEY Dark Mirror Barry Maitland Read by Taylor Owynns There's a lot going on in Barry Maitland's new crime yarn. The seductive, murky world of the Pre-Raphaelites acts as a backdrop to the action and provides the weapon, so to speak, for the mysterious murder of a beautiful young PhD student in the London Library. Despite the glamorous elements of sex, arsenic,Victorian art and books, Dark Mir ror is at best a serviceable thriller. There are too many signposts to the killer and, though Maitland tries hard to make DI Kathy Kolla and her boss, DCI David Brock, flesh-and-blood haracters, they come off tiff and two-dimensional. His one attempt at shock as revolting as it is nnecessary, and does little to heighten the tension. Taylor Owynns offers a valiant but wobbly performance on the various British accents and gives the impression that she was scratching around for ways to differentiate the characters. ★★ Louis Braille $54.95 10 CDs (12 hours) Selections from the Collected Verse of A B Paterson Read by Bill Conn Nobody seems to have time for Australian bush poets anymore. Maybe it's the endless covers depicting Frederick McCubbin paintings that makes the eye slide away in search of fresher stuff. This audio suffers from the same clichéd cover art, but the work inside is delightful. Paterson had a great gift for yar ning in verse and listening to his poems feels like you've drawn up a stool with an old cobber in a cor ner pub to hear the latest tall tale. Bill Conn is the perfect choice for Paterson's work. He kicks off with everybody's favourite, The Man from Snowy River, and we're off and running down the breakneck slopes in chase of the famous colt from Old Regret. This selection slides nicely from the humour of Old Pardon, Son of Reprieve to the elegiac On Kiley's Run and back to the farce of The Man from Ironbark. Listeners familiar with the poems will enjoy re-acquainting themselves with Banjo's lively banter. And those new to his verse will probably be surprised at how much joy they can get out of a simple hour's worth of Aussie bush culture. ★★★ Vision Australia $24.95 1 CD (1 hour) Piano Lessons Anna Goldsworthy Read by Jane Nolan Wow. Maybe if I'd had Mrs Sivan to teach me piano, I wouldn't have given upatthe endofYear3 and consequently forgotten to play anything but a sketchy version of Chopsticks. Goldsworthy's beguiling memoir of her childhood piano career is a masterpiece from start to finish. Nostalgic, truthful, witty and often painful, this audio is pure joy to listen to. Goldsworthy drops each word like a note and there's not a bum one among them. The story begins with Goldsworthy aged nine, being taken for her first lesson with the redoubtable Russian exile. 'She's on the Liszt list', notes Goldsworthy's grandfather, meaning her teacher was taught by a teacher who was taught by the great composer imself. As the young irl struggles to meet he impossibly high xpectations of her eacher, as a student of music, school and life, she faces the destruction of her dreams to become a concert pianist. More remarkably, she overcomes them. In the company of such an over achiever, it would be easy for a listener to become daunted. But Goldsworthy's talent is to make us an intimate part of her own fears and failures as well as triumphs. Beautifully read by Jane Nolan, Piano Lessons is the sort of audio you'll want to sneak away and listen to every chance you can. ★★★★★ Louis Braille $49.95 7 CDs (7 hours, 30 minutes) Nam Le Jon Cleary James Roy Judith Clarke Gail Jones Alice Pung Alex Miller Murray Bail Steven Carroll J.C. Burke Shane Maloney Garry Disher M. J. Hyland Anthony Eaton James Moloney Steven Herrick Victor Kelleher Helen Garner David Malouf Kate Grenville Randolph Stow Peter Goldsworthy Peter Corris Libby Gleeson Steven Amsterdam Carole Wilkinson David Metzenthen Gabrielle Wang and many more… The New Way of Reading To order & for complete catalogues: 346 Macaulay Road, Kensington Vic 3031 Phone: (61 3) 8378 1259 Fax: (61 3) 8378 1204 E : lba .sales@visionaustralia .org VAaudio sales@visionaustralia.org W : w ww.louisbrailleaudio.com or w ww.visionaustralia.org/ audiobooks Vision Australia Audio Publishing
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