Season’s greetings reading chums! Who has time to sit and read while they are running around getting ready for holidays whatever one might observe. You might also be experiencing difficulty at holiday time especially when so much world turmoil might be jamming up your brain. Whatever the reason you might be experiencing difficulties with reading, I hope this mini post finds you well. In this issue of Bookisshh we will take a quick peek at a pair of audiobooks that I’ve recently listened to. Please note, that for the few audiobooks that have worked for me, I sampled at least 20 audiobooks to find the 2 featured in this post. Why the audiobooks worked for me was pure luck. I didn’t know much about them, so my expectations were none. Expectations are sure problematic aren’t they? So open your minds and your ears too! Enjoy!

I learned about this little doozy from a podcast, Booktalk Etc. and this is likely the only book that I’ve ever followed up with from the podcast. Upon listening to Big Swiss, I was completely surprised by the recommendation after listening to it! I’m not one for sexy content and I tend to read heteronormative works when romance is part of the narrative (which is a rare read for me). This book has some open door bedroom scenes and they are not heteronormative.

The plot of this book is what I found interesting: In a small town in a Pacific Northwest groovy community a therapist treats clients and a transcriptionist creates transcription notes for the therapist to review treatment and publish about it later. The transcriptionist is female and she is struggling with her adult life. She lives in a rundown farmhouse with an eccentric roommate and other rodent insect visitors plus her dog. The transcriptionist is lonely, queer and is titillated by the session recordings between a therapist and his female, German gynecologist client who is struggling with both her marriage to her husband and her sexuality—she enjoys female anatomy.

This story goes all over the place. At times it made me embarrassed to listen to so I fast-forwarded by speeding up play to 1.5. I really just wanted to see what Beagin was going to do with the plot. It doesn’t end how this tiny description suggests it might. There’s a stalker, a goat courier, a love story and a betrayal. It’s clever. I never heard of this author and she has a twisted sense of humor which took me by surprise and made me admit to myself that I’m a little uptight. I’m no less uptight for reading this regardless of whose intimacy is being featured. I like the fact that bedrooms have doors and prefer them closed—including in my reading. Enjoy!

Doppelgänger by Naomi Klein

I learned about “Doppelgänger” from a podcast, On with Kara Swisher because Klein was a guest talking about her book which weaves together the backstory of how she’s often mistaken as Naomi Wolf—hence her doppelgänger aka “The other Naomi”— and how her life has been threatened due to the political views of the other Naomi. Klein also deep dives into various conspiracy theories regarding the Chinese Communist Party and other conspiracies generated most especially by Steve Bannon on his War Room podcast which is a little crazy if I must say…

Klein also looks at how digital technology and algorithms feed off dramatic responses often fueled by hate, racism, antisemitism, elitism, white supremacy and incel packs, can disrupt, cancel and severely impact innocent people’s lives. Klein shows how the ill intending infuse the internet and all of its spaces, then crowd source, educate, radicalize, cause disinformation, misinformation, danger and war in every area of our lives. Somehow she ties it all together but I found myself overwhelmed at this accomplishment.

Klein narrates her own book and it is intense. This is another one that I had to listen to on fast-play. I would have offered more patience had Klein maybe left some of her personal information regarding her family life out of this book because for research purposes Klein wanders into anti vax communities that center families with neuro atypical children looking to cast blame for their child’s differences. When the personal crosses over to the professional for the sake of transparency it confuses Klein’s credibility. This perhaps would have been more effective in a book of its own. However, it’s Klein’s book and not mine so I focused on the larger issues that explain the impact that social media platforms have on social outlook and status quo. It was interesting but I’d enjoy it better as actual reading instead of listening.

In closing, I’m just not the best audio book person, I’ll still keep trying and sharing either ones I can actually finish or have enjoyed. Please feel welcome to let me know about any audiobooks that have worked for you.