"Travel" Books

I was in the car for eight or nine hours this weekend, so that means audio books!

I listened to The Miraculous Journey of Edward Tulhane by Kate DiCamillo on the way up to Vermont. I chose that audio book because I felt I ought to read Tulhane, but wasn't looking forward to it. I thought The Tale of Desereaux was well written, but I didn't like the voice and didn't find the book at all memorable. So I thought multi-tasking with an audio book while driving was a good way to knock off what I felt was an obligation.

Well, I actually enjoyed this book about a china rabbit that is very full of himself and only begins to love others when he has suffered a great deal. (Gee, when I put it that way, it sounds kind of sadistic.) I thought it was a little heavy-handed with the message in a couple of places but I was able to overlook it. DiCamillo is very good at characterization and she can create characters very quickly. I particularly liked the father of the dying girl and the guy who repairs dolls at the end of the book.

I did wonder, though, why this china rabbit didn't just shatter.

Judith Ivey did the reading for this audio book and who knows how responsible she was for my response?

I also tried listening to The Teacher's Funeral by Richard Peck. Though I have liked Peck in the past, I felt The Teacher's Funeral didn't have enough funeral and had too much traditional ah-shucks-but-I-hated-school-when-I-was-a-kid. I had to give up.