audiobook reviews – Secret Thoughts

Frankenstein

I listened to the original Frankenstein by Mary Shelley on Audible. It was interesting.

After discovering the “epistolary novel” in Who Was Jane Austen? Sorting Fact from Fiction, I was eager to read one of the classics for an example of one. Frankenstein is told through the narrator Robert Walton, a sea captain on an Arctic expedition. The introduction of the novel is a series of letters Walton writes to his sister. The rest of the novel is a novel that Walton writes for his sister, relating the story Frankenstein tells him, the story Frankenstein’s monster tells him, and Walton’s own experiences of the two.

In some ways, Frankenstein seems like a deeply flawed novel, at least by modern standards. Arguably, Walton is discardable, and his presence negates the need for Frankenstein and his monster to ever interact or make peace with one another by telling each other their story. Walton serves as the link to reader in telling the two stories.

The melodramatic writing could also be seen as a problem. Today, melodramatic writing is mocked and discouraged, but Victor isn’t shy about telling the reader/Walton repeatedly how dearly he loves his dear friend Henry and his dear childhood friend Elizabeth and how wretched he is without them. His monster is equally verbose is recounting his wretchedness. Both of them go into detail about how pitiable they are, Victor suffering from mental breakdowns and the deaths of his closest friends and family and the monster lamenting what an outcast he is. While Frankenstein (2025) suggests that Victor is the asshole playing the victim, both of them put on quite the pity party for themselves in the book. Walton himself also tells his sister repeatedly how much he pities Victor and wants to help him. The book ends with Victor dying and the monster proclaiming he will burn himself to death on a pyre. It’s such a bleak book with such a bleak ending it’s laughable.

Perhaps its flaws are why Frankenstein has been adapted so many times and in so many different ways. When I think of “Frankenstein,” I think of the image of Victor screaming with maniacal enthusiasm, “It’s alive!” something I can’t imagine the Victor in the book ever doing. Mary Shelley never even says that electricity resurrected the monster, but that’s primarily how adaptations portray it. To name some other changes adaptations have made

Frankenstein is a mad scientist and the bad guy.
The monster is a mindless beast and the bad guy.
Frankenstein actually creates a bride for the monster.
The monster falls in love with Elizabeth.
Robert Walton is discarded as a narrator.
The monster is called Frankenstein.

It’s as if everyone who made an adaptation of Frankenstein saw the seed of a great idea but poorly executed and proceeded to bring what they saw to light. It’s kind of amazing how many different great ideas people imagined from the same source material.

Who Was Jane Austen? Sorting Fact from Fiction

Following how much I liked Pride and Prejudice, I listened to Who Was Jane Austen? Sorting Fact from Fiction, a series of essays written and narrated by Stephanie Insley Hershinow.

What I found most interesting was that Pride and Prejudice may have originally been written as an epistolary, a series of letters exchanged between characters. I’d never heard the term before. This theory makes a lot of sense considering how much of Pride and Prejudice focuses on reading and writing letters. Epistolary novels were common at the time, Frankenstein and Dracula being late examples, but when I think about the concept of them now, they seem much more rare and experimental. House of Leaves actually fits the extended definition of an epistolary: collections of any type of documents. Perhaps the letters, in-depth movie analyses, lists, and editor footnotes that compose House of Leaves aren’t so experimental after all, although people in the 18th century would probably shocked by the bizarre formatting and content.

Jane Austen was among authors who moved away from the epistolary format at the start of the 18th century. Perhaps she could be considered an experimental writer!

Shipwreck: How a Captain, Company, and Culture Sank the SS El Faro

Shipwreck: How a Captain, Company, and Culture Sank the SS El Faro features re-enactments of the crew transcript from the ship SS El Faro’s final hours alongside the narrator Maeve McGoran’s investigation and commentary on what lead to the ship’s demise. Factors such as the crew’s inability to question their captain due to the ship’s culture, pressure from the company to deliver supplies on time, and inaccurate weather information resulted in the captain and crew steering the ship directly into a hurricane with confidence that they were avoiding it. All 33 crew members died. Only one body was found briefly before the Coast Guard abandoned it due to its state of decay and the need to seek survivors at the time. Even knowing the outcome from the beginning, this audiobook was deeply disturbing to listen to. It seems like required listening for any ship captain, but the narrator claims nothing has changed about maritime culture since the incident occurred.

As a fan of Deadliest Catch, I’d like to think my favorite ship captains would never take the risks or have the ego the captain of the El Faro did. Enough ships have sunk and lost crew members been commemorated in the course of the series’ twenty seasons that I’d hope everyone would be cautious… but then, I remember all the risks they have taken. Captain Phil Harris threw a blood clot and later had a stroke while confidently captaining his ship. Captain Sig Hansen has operated his ship through numerous heart attack-like symptoms and complications, including while delirious. Captain Keith Colburn has also captained his ship through heart attack- and stroke-like symptoms. I guess the best I can hope for is that they remain reasonable enough to not steer their ships into hurricanes or that their crew members are headstrong enough to reason with their captains’ egos when necessary.

Her Last Christmas

Similar to my thoughts on Silent Hill f–and really any story that features the protagonist’s loveless relationship with their significant other–Her Last Christmas by Claire McGowan made me wonder, “What is this lady even doing with this guy?” The protagonist Emma joins her boyfriend Michael and his fellow wealthy friends for Friendsmas in the Alps. Emma doesn’t know how to ski; Michael’s friends are unwelcoming, drunk, and high; and Michael, seeming to prefer his friends’ company, does little to nothing to help Emma feel comfortable.

In the end, I determined their relationship makes sense in a similar way that Hinako and Shu’s relationship makes sense in Silent Hill f. Her Last Christmas is told from Emma’s distorted, first-person perspective. She claims she doesn’t partake in excessive alcohol or drugs, she paints herself as a victim, and speaks somewhat demeaningly about the other characters’ relationships and careers. That is, she makes herself sound good to the reader, perhaps better than she is in reality. There must be a reason she attracted people like this, including Michael, into her life though. Indeed, the end of the book reveals that Emma is as willing to set her morals aside to protect her career as the other characters are to protect theirs. Emma choosing Michael, a popular politician, was likely motivated by her desire for status, wealth, and career advancement. While she decides to part ways with him, she still participates in covering up a murder.

A couple funny thoughts I had while reading…

Toward the end of the book, Emma runs into a snow storm without proper clothes in a fit of hysteria. She tells the reader repeatedly she knows this is a bad idea but doesn’t know what else to do. I thought to myself of the author, “I can hear you telling your beta readers that you know your protagonist is being an idiot.”

Emma: “[Michael’s] wife had accused him of domestic abuse, and women didn’t lie about that sort of thing.”
Me: Why did you give Ms. Heard muffins!?

Team Topologies: Organizing Business and Technology Teams for Fast Flow

First of all, buying this book as an audiobook was a mistake. It’s a textbook with diagrams to look at, best absorbed through reading. Also, I work as a software engineering team lead. Spending my free time reading books about what I do for work everyday is a quick way to burn out.

That said, the information is interesting. It explains different patterns of structuring teams within an organization based on the organization of the code for the software the business supports and how these patterns ease development of the software. For example, a system for sending and receiving packages might be organized into two teams: one that handles everything about sending packages and one that handles everything about receiving packages. This allows developers to specialize in one area and communicate often with other specialists on their team rather than requiring all developers to know a lot about both areas. This reduction in cognitive load increases the speed and quality of development, reduces mistakes, and improves developer experience. The company I work for has been practicing these principles for the past year and a half. It works well, much better than the team structure we had before.

The book also made me feel like an imposter. It states that toxic team members need to be identified and removed for the health of the team. Individuals must put the team before themselves by, for example, being on time to meetings and helping team members to complete current work before starting new work. Me, I’m chronically late to meetings, I’m a rule bender and breaker, and I split my time between current and future work. I reason that I’m late to meetings when I don’t see the point of them, especially at 7:30am. Developers may have work now, but they won’t have enough or any if no one is figuring out what happens next. I’m a free-minded introvert operating the best I can in an extroverted world. And it’s been working pretty well. My team and I get a lot of work done.

Still, I’m a team lead. I’m supposed to be showing my developers how to behave professionally, even when I think nobody gives a crap about me or needs an announcement that I’m going to be at an appointment for the next hour. It’s very possible that I’m a toxic team member that makes team topologies fall apart.

The Nuremberg Trial

For being a 25-hour-long audiobook about post-World War II, The Nuremberg Trial by Ann Tusa and John Tusa was surprisingly interesting. My favorite section of the book, about the first third, was dedicated to explaining the many complications of executing a fair trial against 22 German military and political leaders. The first decision was who would judge the Germans. The Polish were ultimately excluded, leaving the trial to be overseen by French, English, American, and Russian judges. This required enough collaboration between the four nations, Germany, and their slightly differing views of fair judgement. The Russian view was the most troubling as it came with a preconception that the purpose of the trial was to exact punishment, not determine guilt. That Germans had knowledge that they were committing crimes against humanity throughout the war also had to be established for there to be grounds to even hold a trial. A location needed to be found for the trial to take place, somewhere with prison facilities to keep the defendants secure and comfortable accommodations for lawyers, judges, attendants, and viewers of the court proceedings. Germany was the most appropriate place, but much of it was war torn and destitute. After much reasoning with the Russians, who insisted the trial take place in Berlin, Nuremberg was chosen for its historical significance and for being fairly intact. Lawyers willing to defend the defendants needed to be provided. Food for everyone needed to be provided, of which American provisions were the best. Someone needed to pay for all this. The judges even had to decide such trivialities as what to wear. Wigs and dresses? Military uniforms? Black gowns? After all the previous decisions and coordination, it’s not surprising that they settled on wearing whatever they wanted.

The most interesting complication, however, was solving the language barrier. The trial was conducted in four languages: English, Russian, French, and German. All documents associated with the trial had to be translated into all four languages, which was more difficult to accomplish for some languages than others. For live court proceedings, the trial used IBM’s universal simultaneous translation system. The first time I heard this term, I thought the narrator was going to tell me about some Star Trek-esque futuristic device. In reality, everyone in the court room was provided a set of wired headphones. The listeners could switch between four channels, each connected to the microphone of a human translator for that language. The translators were seated in isolated compartments within the courtroom where they could hear the court proceedings but minimize the noise of each other’s translations. Judges, lawyers, defendants, and other speakers in the court room also had visibility to two lights. Yellow was an indicator from the translators to slow down. Red indicated to stop speaking to allow the translators to catch up. I thought it was an impressive use of technology for the time period but also adorable for its primitiveness.

After all the introduction, preparation, resolution of conflicts, and coordination leading up to and continuing throughout the trial, it’s amazing that this trial happened, and as fairly as it was, at all.

Pride and Prejudice (Lulu Raczka Adaptation)

If Pride and Prejudice took place in the modern day, so much drama would happen through text messages instead of letters. The characters spend so much time writing and talking about letters.

Also, the protagonist’s love interest Mr. Darcy made me feel very old fashioned when he justified his behavior to Elizabeth by writing a long and thoughtful letter rather than sitting her down and having a conversation. I have done this multiple times through emails, long messages, and even physical letters to try to resolve a conflict, voice a complaint, or tell someone something important. I also appreciated that Elizabeth took the time to read it and understand him even though she was angry. It pisses me off when I write a long message to someone, and they don’t bother to understand it or they reject it.

Overall, Pride and Prejudice features my kind of communication! I’ve never read the book (although I would like to now), but this audiobook/radio play adaptation was much better than the 1984 adaptation at least.

1984 (Joe White Adaptation)

Big Brother would approve of this audiobook/radio play adaptation of George Orwell’s 1984. 75% of the words have been replaced with heavy breathing and lip smacking.

On the subject of what content is there though… In some ways, 1984‘s world still parallels common conservative criticisms of modern socialist and big governments. The fictitious totalitarian superstate Oceania restricting language and spreading propaganda as facts, for example, eerily parallels real governments’ tendencies to emphasize certain views and suppress others.

Some of George Orwell’s other predictions for the future, however, haven’t aged as well. For example, the citizens of Oceania are encouraged to have children for the good of the Party. Having sex out of love or for pleasure is forbidden. In today’s reality, conservatives are more likely to complain that sex for pleasure, devoid of its biological purpose of procreation, is celebrated and used by governments to distract the first-world population from their replacement by third-world immigrants.

Red Letter Media gave another example of 1984 showing its age in the course of a somewhat relevant discussion about AI and dystopian futures. George Orwell imagined that, in the future, the government would place cameras everywhere to watch everyone. As the future has actually unfolded, today, almost everyone has a camera almost at all times, built into their smart phones at their own request. Everyone is watching everyone else, ready to record inappropriate behavior and use those recordings incite public ridicule or other life-destroying consequences. We did it to ourselves! We are our own Big Brother!

The Way Home: Tales from a life without technology

In The Way Home: Tales from a life without technology, Mark Boyle relates how he created a lifestyle without electricity, plumbing, and other technological commodities. To demonstrate the practicality of living this way to the reader, he builds the cabin he and his wife live in, an outhouse area, a garden, and interestingly, a natural hot tub powered by firewood, presumably on a piece of land he owns and has enough money to pay taxes on for at least the one year he wanted to experiment with living this way. He makes allowances for some technology like pencils and paper for writing but rejects other tools that would make his work easier in favor of more primitive tools or doing the work by hand. I can’t remember specific examples from the book, but as a generic example, rather than using a wheelbarrow to move stones, he would carry stones by hand. Seeming to contradict his purpose, he indirectly makes use of cars to hitchhike to visit his parents, the local pub to visit with his neighbors, and the modern mail service to send and receive letters.

I don’t think the point of the book was to strictly live without technology though. The author’s purpose was rather to connect himself more to nature and people. His selective use of technology seemed to be for the purpose of forwarding those goals. I related to his rejection of the Internet and phones the most. In our ability to connect with people around the world, we’ve forgotten about the people immediately surrounding us. The convenience of speaking to loves ones over the phone means, conflictingly, visiting them in person less. Despite their appearance of creating connections, these things have separated us from people by being too convenient, too far from our immediate reality, and too difficult to resist.

Ironically, the author’s wife left him toward the end of the book. I can’t say I’d want to live like this either. I don’t like living in reality. 😛 Although, I suppose the author also doesn’t like living in reality, the one where humans are naturally inclined toward progress and efficiency. Still, Boyle has some interesting perspectives nurtured by his enjoyment and sense of purpose in living this lifestyle.

The Year of Magical Thinking

Near the beginning of The Year of Magical Thinking, Joan Didion promises that you will experience what she did in your lifetime. Specifically, she was referring to the feeling of disbelief following the death of someone dear. For example, following the sudden death of her husband, she described feeling that as long as she thought certain ways or didn’t acknowledge certain things, her husband would come back. She knew he was dead today but wondered, “What about tomorrow?” She saved her husband’s shoes with the thought that he would need them when he came back.

I can believe her promise and relate to her sentiment. Even five years later, it doesn’t seem real that I’ll never see my mom again. My cat Jiji passed away in June this year. I held on to a box of food I bought for her for months. I still have a baggy of her medications in a closet. These things are “special” in some way, a part of her, and can’t merely be thrown away.