Books and Bites, Ep. 109: Audiobooks with Multiple Narrators === Carrie: [00:00:00] Welcome to the Books and Bites podcast. Each month we bring you book recommendations and discuss the bites and beverages to pair with them. I'm Carrie Green and I'm here with my co-hosts, Michael Cunningham and Jacqueline Cooper. Michael: Hello. Jacqueline: Hello everyone. Carrie: So today we're kicking off the Winter Books and Bites Bingo. And this is a smaller bingo sheet that we'll play from now through March 31st. So this one will have nine squares, and if you complete all nine squares, you'll have a chance to win a $50 Joseph Beth gift card, and you'll also earn a special Books and Bites bookmark. Michael: Yes. Carrie: If you turned your previous card in kind of early, that information may be a little bit different because originally we were just going to [00:01:00] have a bookmark at the very end, but we decided to be more generous, so you'll get one just for completing this card. So, yeah. What else do we wanna tell 'em about this? Michael: Yeah, so one of our prompts is read The Anxious Generation or another book about mental health. We will be having a book talk discussion on The Anxious Generation. It'll be on Thursday, February 26th at 5:00 PM Registration is required, so you just want to get our website, go to our events and look for that. I think registration probably opens on January 26th. About a month before the actual program. Carrie: Mm-hmm. Michael: And one of the other prompts we want to point out is our Not So Silent Book Club, which we will have on Tuesday, March 24th at 6:30. And if you can't attend that, you can also read in the library for one hour. So Carrie: yeah. So it is kind of on the tail end of the deadline for the card. So hopefully [00:02:00] you'll, you'll save that and come in and we can spend some time chatting about what you've done so far for the bingo card. And we can have some silent reading or listening time. Michael: Yeah. Jacqueline: Mm-hmm. Don't forget teenagers can listen too, so not just adults. So if you're a teen or you have some teens, come and get your bingo card. Michael: Yep. We have them on our books and bys display right in front of the reference desk or Carrie: mm-hmm. Michael: You can also print one off yourself, or I believe you can submit it online through the Books and Bites webpage. Carrie: Yes. That will be available in March. So you can't, you can't submit now because even though it is a smaller card. It would be hard to finish the whole thing by, by now. So Jacqueline: yeah, through March 31st. Michael: That's impressive. If you've already got it done. Carrie: Yeah. Yeah. [Laughter] Jacqueline: I've just started, so I've only done one [00:03:00] square so far. Mm-hmm. How about you guys? Michael: Me too. Carrie: Yes. So. Today we are talking about audiobooks with multiple narrators, and this is one of the prompts on the bingo sheet. And this is something, you know, we've kind of talked about this before, but more and more people are listening to audiobooks and we had a recent social media post about statistics from our library. And in 2025, JCPL patrons listen to 150,111 eAudiobooks. Jacqueline: That's awesome. Michael: Wow. That's a lot. Yeah, Carrie: that is a lot Jacqueline: I can tell. 'cause a lot of times when I go to to look for an audiobook on Libby, sometimes the wait time is Michael: Oh, be months. Jacqueline: Could be months. So get go ahead and put your holds on if you, it's something you wanna listen to. Michael: Yeah, I mean, I didn't used to be an audiobook listener. [00:04:00] But ever since had kids. That's the only, that's the only time, or the only way I can actually get any reading done now. Jacqueline: Mm-hmm. Michael: Is on, is a to and from work listening in the car. Mm-hmm. Jacqueline: I just, yeah, I love listening to audiobooks. I mean, I would rather do that than watch anything on TV or, or even listening to the radio. It's the first thing I do when I get in the car is turn on an audiobook. Carrie: Mm-hmm. Michael: Same. Carrie: Do the audiobooks that you listen to, do they tend to be different than what you would read? Or can you pretty much listen to the same thing you would read? Michael: I think I pretty much listen to what I would read. Sometimes it might branch out, but it also really depends on the narrator who's narrating this. Carrie: Yes. Definitely. Michael: Because sometimes it's like, oh, I really wanna read that book. And I was like, I can't listen to this. Carrie: Yeah. Michael: I have to. I'm have to read this one. Carrie: I know. I think we've all had that experience before of like, no, I, I like in Libby. 'cause they give you a little [00:05:00] preview. Mm-hmm. So you can, if it's a narrator you're not familiar with, you can listen and see if, if you think you're gonna like that person's narration. Jacqueline: Mm-hmm. Sometimes you think it might be like, oh no, but you kind of get used to it though. Like there was one, I was like, oh, I'm not sure. I really wanna listen to her, her voice. [Laughter] It's a little irritating. But yeah, after, after a while I just, it kind of forgot about it. And they've really improved audiobook. Michael: Oh yeah. Jacqueline: I mean, some of these narrators are just really, really good. Michael: Yeah. I mean, Carrie and I listened to So Far Gone last year. That was an excellent narrator doing that. Carrie: Mm-hmm. Yeah. He is one of my favorite narrators. Michael: Really good. Carrie: Mm-hmm. That was a Eduardo Ballerini. Michael: Mm-hmm. Oh yeah, yeah, Carrie: yeah. And you know, he is an actor and I think sometimes there's like this crossover between. You know, I mean some people [00:06:00] just do voice narration, but then one of my favorite audiobooks that I listened to last year was Tom Patchett by Anne? No, Tom, Tom Lake by Anne Patchett. I'm confusing the, [laughter] author with a title and it was narrated by Meryl Streep and Michael: Wow. Jacqueline: Oh Nice. Carrie: She did an excellent job and I would love to listen to more audiobooks if she, if she was the one narrating them. Michael: One that while you're talking, the one popped in my head, Kate Mulgrew. She's Captain Janeway on the Star Trek Voyager, and she was, Red in Orange is the New Black, but she's read a couple of Joe Hill's books, like I believe it was, um, what was it? Nosferatu and the Firemen. I mean, she does a fantastic job. But she really gets into it too. Carrie: Yeah. Yeah. And you know, I really love audiobooks that have multiple [00:07:00] narrators. 'cause that even brings it up an extra, extra level to have multiple voices. Michael: Mm-hmm. Makes it more immersive, I think. Jacqueline: And some of them are like, they'll do like plays even. With the Agatha Christie, I've noticed that she's got some, a lot, a lot. It'll be like a cast almost. Mm-hmm. Where they have so many different characters. Carrie: Yeah. Michael: What is that? Um, really popular Dragon series that's out. Oh man, by Rebecca Yaros. Jacqueline: Is it The Fourth Wing? Michael: Yes. Okay. And on Hoopla I've noticed that there's, you got the audiobook version of it, but you, you also have the dramatization. Jacqueline: Mm. Michael: So is that where they include more? I haven't listened to it, but I was thinking maybe that's more, a little more extra, like maybe sound effects and things like that. I have listened to, I think a, a Star Wars book years ago where there were like, like you, they would have sound effects for like the doors opening and stuff and mm-hmm. Dramatic music in the background. [00:08:00] So I'm wondering if that's more of a, maybe a thing, a trend or something. Jacqueline: I think so, and I think if the book, one of the prompts that, about reading a book about the train one. Michael: Mm-hmm. Jacqueline: And I think there'll be some, I've heard of train whistles and stuff in, in audiobooks that I've listened to, so. Carrie: Mm-hmm. Michael: Okay. Jacqueline: Yeah, Carrie: I think the ones that are dramatization, 'cause I've listened to or started to, I didn't actually make it through. There was like a BBC dramatization of a Jane Austen novel. Mm-hmm. And they kind of take out, you know, the, like the markers of he said, she said, Michael: oh, really? Is that? Okay. Carrie: So, because it's like they just have the different actors reading it. Michael: Gotcha. Carrie: So you don't get the, like the introduction of that you do when you're reading and you kind of need that information. Michael: Yeah. Okay. Jacqueline: Yeah. I think I've noticed that too, which I prefer that personally. Yeah. Carrie: Mm-hmm. Jacqueline: The he said, she said kind of gets annoying. [Laughter] [00:09:00] Michael: Especially like so, yeah, he said, she said. He said she like, okay. Carrie: Yeah. Yeah. All right, well, let's go ahead and get to it. Jacqueline: All right. The audiobook I chose is The Fifth Wave by Rick Yancy. This is the first young adult novel in the Fifth Wave Trilogy. The audiobook published by Penguin Audio is a dystopian science fiction story. The book lends itself well to multiple narrators because it is told from several points of view. The female voices are read by Phoebe Strohl, and the male voices are read by Brandon Espinoza. In the introduction, Intrusion 1995, narrated from an omniscient perspective, we learned the intruder has come for the baby inside a sleeping woman. [00:10:00] The novel begins with a shadow placing an alien inside the womb of the sleeping woman. "The baby is not harmed--the intrusion breaks no skin and violates not a single cell. The woman and the baby awaken the next day, but the alien remains dormant until the child reaches puberty." The story then shifts to Cassie's perspective. She's a 16-year-old normal teenager who recounts the history of the invasion and her old life. The author intertwines events starting from the day the alien spaceship arrives to the present day. Her narrative includes her experiences and relationships. While Ben and Evan, the other two main characters narrate their stories. The gist of the story is that the aliens' attacks arrive in waves. In the beginning, the spaceship arrives, but the government receives no contact from the aliens. The ship is just hanging in the air for 10 days. Everyone begins to question, why are they here? Are they friendly or are they going to attack earth with flying saucers and missiles? Cassie jokes [00:11:00] that many people expect a typical alien invasion like in the movies, but what happened was far worse. First, the hum of human noise died out. Everything electronic went out. Cars stopped working. Planes began dropping out of the sky, and people started attacking each other, looting and pillaging. People no longer knew who to trust. The first wave of the alien invasion took out half a million people. Before this wave, all Cassie had to worry about was whether to tell Ben a popular high school athlete that she liked him, but then the second wave, earthquakes and tsunamis, the literal waves that destroyed the coastal cities, killing 40% of the population. Then the third wave killed 97% of the population with a deadly virus, which disseminated the remaining population, killing Cassie's mother and Evan's family. Then the fourth wave: aliens took over human bodies appearing as silencers to hunt survivors. [00:12:00] Cassie and her family find sanctuary on a military base. They are safe, right? When help arise in the form of a school bus, soldiers take her little brother, Sammy, claiming they're taking him to safety. They refuse to let Cassie and her father come, promising to pick them up on the next trip. Sammy and Cassie do not want to be parted. When her father overrules her, she promises Sammy that she will find him. Too late, her father realized that this is part of the fourth wave. The soldiers are the enemy. The enemy looks just like them. Only Cassie escapes alive when everyone else is gathered by the enemy into one room and shot. The only thing Cassie has to live for is her promise to Sammy. Aliens took over human bodies appearing as silencers to hunt survivors, but it is dangerous out there, and she has no way of knowing what the fifth wave will be. But she's determined to find Sammy or die trying. When Cassie is shot by a silencer, Evan finds and helps her recover, [00:13:00] but she's suspicious of him. She does not know if she can trust him. His story has too many holes. Through Evan's narrative, we learned that he is one of the aliens implanted in humans, but the reader does not know what Evan is planning either. Like Cassie, we are also in the dark. Why has he helped her? Who is he really? And can she trust him? Will he turn on her before she finds Sammy? Themes of trust, hope, and humanity are reiterated throughout this novel. I found Nancy's writing to be imaginative. He can be quite funny at times. Cassie's character delivers a lot of witty quips that readers will find humorous. All the action and fighting will be sure to appeal to readers who like adventure and science fiction. If you've not checked out The Fifth Wave audiobook yet, I highly recommend it. For my bite, I chose homemade bread, a recipe from tastes better from scratch, which Evan somehow made during the alien [00:14:00] invasion. Carrie: That's impressive. If you can make bread during an alien invasion. [Laughter] Jacqueline: Yeah. And the aliens kind of come where there's fire. So like that's another thing. Why? Why is he cooking? [Laughter] So we just don't know about him. You'll have to read the book to find out. Carrie: Okay. Michael: How many books are in this series? Jacqueline: There is a, it's a trilogy so far. Michael: Trilogy? Okay. Jacqueline: Mm-hmm. Yeah. The second book is another character's story kind of veers off and then we go back to Cassie's story again and more of Ben's story. So it does kind of like you could just read the first one, but you kind of want more after you. It's pretty good. So you want more, more like now? Wait. Their aliens are still here. Michael: I started reading it a long time ago and I remember it takes place or it opens in Cincinnati, [00:15:00] right? Like Jacqueline: Right. They're in Cincinnati quite a bit. Michael: Okay. Jacqueline: Yeah. It's kind of cool, isn't it? Michael: Yeah. You didn't ever see any books take place in, Jacqueline: in Cincinnati, ohio. Michael: Cincinnati. Yeah. Jacqueline: I think they might mention Kentucky too. In the book, I believe. Michael: How does it stack up to the movie? You remember a movie was made several years back. Jacqueline: I did watch the movie actually after I read the book, 'cause I never watched the movie before. And it was the, there was some differences, but in reality it was pretty good. I think the book was pretty good, you know, 'cause you don't ever, there's not, you don't actually see little green men because the aliens are actually in human form, so it's not too crazy like Star Wars or anything. Michael: Or like, what was that movie? Independence Day? Jacqueline: Yeah. Which they mentioned that, you know, the aliens, I think that's part of this gripping, is they don't know, you know, who the enemy is. And the father, the father asks her several [00:16:00] times, well, do you know who the enemy is? And, and she's like, what? And he's like. Who's shooting at you. That's who They're whoever's shooting at you. That's the enemy. Michael: They're like cylons from Battle Star Galactica. Huh? They watched it. It's on the show. Jacqueline: Yeah. I think a long time ago Carrie: I'll have to take your word for it. [Laughter] Michael: My book this month is Spider to the Fly by JH Markert, a Kentucky author. I listened to the audiobook through Hoopla Digital. The story is told through three different points of view, each with its own narrator. Ellie Isles, her teenage daughter, Amber, and Edward Slough. That choice really enhances the listening experience. Sometimes when one narrator has to switch between genders or perspectives, it can pull you out of the story. But here, the [00:17:00] separate narrators help ground each character and make the tension feel more immediate and personal. The story opens when Ellie Isles watching the news one day, only discover that the latest victim of the I 64 murders looks exactly like her. Same face, same features. Six years later, Ellie has moved herself and her daughter to Ransom, Kentucky, the hometown of her deceased doppelganger and has dedicated her life to uncovering the connection between them and solving the I 64 serial killings. These murders, also known as the spider murders, the victims covered in numerous spider bites. Ellie runs an online true crime blog tracking the case, and over time she's amassed millions of followers. While the spider is still at large, and the body count has grown to 29 victims. Ellie has managed to help police identify multiple victims along the way. Then everything comes to a head. Ellie's therapist Ian Brock, the adoptive son of Ransom's most respected couple, Bartholomew and Karina Brock, both well-renowned therapists themselves, [00:18:00] is found wandering the nearby woods, holding a gas can. His parents' house has been set on fire. Bartholomew and Karina are dead. Ian has no memory of setting the fire. Despite that he's charged not only with their murders, but with the spider killings as well, backed by DNA evidence. Ian insists he didn't do it. He believes he has a twin who's responsible. That claim sets off a chain of events full of twists, revelations, dark berried truths. As the investigation unfolds and Ellie digs deeper, something strange begins to happen. After the deaths of Bartholomew and Karina Brock, Ian and his adopted siblings start remembering things, memories that were buried, erased, or deliberately hidden. Ellie begins remembering things too. Their parents weren't who everyone thought they were, and all of them remember one place: the farm. Markert weaves a tense, twisting story about identity, memory, guilt, and the horrors that can hide beneath respectability, made even more immersive by [00:19:00] a well-produced audiobook. "It was around this time of night. At least twice a week when Amber would pop up from the couch when they were watching TV or come out of her room and say, how do brownies sound, mom? Ellie would inevitably respond, they sound good to me." Just like Ellie and Amber, I thought brownies sounded pretty good too, and decided to pair this with s'more brownies, a combo of two of my favorite desserts from a recipe found on Seriouseats.com. This recipe calls for ingredients like graham crackers, marshmallows, bittersweet chocolate, and espresso powder. I haven't had this recipe, but I have had s'more brownies before. They are amazing. Carrie: So is it like layered like a, s'more or is everything kind of in the brownie? Michael: I believe there's a, a layer graham cracker. You got the brownie and then you got the marshmallow top. Carrie: Okay. Yeah. Yeah, that sounds good. Jacqueline: So your story is set in Kentucky? Michael: Yeah. Jacqueline: Which is, so [00:20:00] we're in the Midwest so far, Michael: Kinda like right between Louisville and Lexington. Jacqueline: Oh, okay. Michael: Somewhere in there. Jacqueline: Yeah. Michael: Mm-hmm. Apparently he's got a whole, he, he's got several other kind of serial killer Jacqueline: mm-hmm. Michael: Thriller suspense books, and they all kind of take place in that same area, so, Carrie: okay. Jacqueline: Yeah. Michael: Got a whole Kentucky. Jacqueline: Yeah. They talked about Fort Knox in this book, so, which is in Michael: Yeah. Jacqueline: of course in Kentucky, but, so there's like a, is there a giant spider? Is that, Michael: no, not a giant spider. It's, it is very complex. A lot. Carrie: Yeah, I was wondering how that worked. Michael: A lot going on. So apparently the serial killer will drug the victim and release spiders who will bite the victim. Jacqueline: That sounds horrible. Michael: Very poisonous spiders. Like a lot. Jacqueline: Wow. Creepy. That doesn't, that sounds horrible. Carrie: That's creepy. Michael: Yeah. Jacqueline: Pretty [00:21:00] creepy. Is that a horror or genre or Michael: It's, I wouldn't call it straight horror. More horror adjacent. So it's kind of more like a suspense serial killer thriller. So on the spectrum, it's. Jacqueline: It's, Michael: maybe there in the middle. Jacqueline: A dual book, what do they call it? Michael: It kind of, yeah, it kind of leans into it a little bit, but not, Jacqueline: yeah, Michael: full horror. Jacqueline: Not full far horror. Michael: So if you like any kind of suspense serial killers, Jacqueline: I do, but I don't, know about the spider part. [Laughter] Michael: Spiders aren't a lot. There's a, there's a few spiders. Jacqueline: Oh, okay. Okay. Michael: It's not very grizzly or go into depth. Too much depth about the, Jacqueline: about the spider, Michael: details about that. Jacqueline: Okay. Yeah. So I'll probably just brush over that. I, I have done that sometimes. Michael: I don't like spiders either. I, I get you. Yeah. I can't, too many legs. Jacqueline: I don't want 'em crawling on. Michael: Mm-mmm. Too many eyes, too many legs. Nope. [Laughter] Jacqueline: Yeah. Oh, there's any spiders in your book, Carrie? Carrie: No. No Spiders.[00:22:00] So I continued with Jess Walter, who I talked about last month, and my husband and I listened to his book The Cold Millions on our recent holiday travels, and it was a great way to pass the time on a long drive. Walter is a writer who never seems to get stuck writing about the same characters and concerns. Here he focuses on two brothers orphans, Gig and Rye Dolan, hobos from Montana who find themselves at the center of the 1909 Labor fights in Spokane, Washington. 23-year-old gig is an active member of the Industrial Workers of the World. 16-year-old Rye joins the cause out of love for his brother. When they're arrested during a protest, the [00:23:00] underage rye goes on a speaking tour after his release with a pregnant 19-year-old real life IWW organizer Elizabeth Gurley Flynn in an attempt to get the remaining protestors out of jail. The naive Rye gets swept up in a cause he doesn't fully understand, caught between the labor activists and the coal baron who claims he'll help free gig. This sweeping historical novel gives voice to tramps and activists, shady detectives and policemen, as well as vaudeville performer, Ursula the Great-- all expertly narrated by a full cast, including my favorite, Eduardo Ballerini as Rye. It's an action packed, often violent adventure story with a excellent writing and wit that I've come to expect from Walter. If you enjoyed Rednecks, you might enjoy this story of a labor fight on the other side of the [00:24:00] country. When they're not protesting or tramping, rye and Gig board with Mrs. Ricci, an Italian widow who owns an apple orchard in Spokane's Little Italy. Pair this novel with minestrone, an Italian bean soup that's perfect for keeping warm on a cold night. There's a great recipe in An Everlasting Meal, where Tamar Adler writes that "Minestrone is the perfect food. I advise eating it for as many meals as you can bear, or that number plus one." Jacqueline: I think Kentuckians would really like this book, because of all the coal activists and stuff. It would really hit home with them. Carrie: Mm-hmm. Yeah. You don't really think about coal being in other parts of the country, but yeah. It was-- is. Michael: Yeah. Yeah. I mean, yeah, it's, there's a bunch of, I remember there was a whole thing in Alabama with coal mining too. Carrie: Yeah. Michael: So he was a member of the, the wobblies? Carrie: [00:25:00] Yes. The wobblies. [Laughter] Yeah, and it just really like, you know, there's just all these different facets to the story. There's the coal operator and then there's these policemen who are like busting up, you know, what really was free speech protests, you know, they were just exercising their right for free speech and they were put into, you know, just crammed into these tiny cells, you know, hundreds and hundreds of protestors. Yeah, some pretty, yeah. Pretty terrible conditions. And plus, you know, it's the, it's the Old West, so there's like prostitutes and you know, this vaudeville show, Ursula the Great, Ursula the Great was this vaudeville performer who did like a strip tease in a cage with a live [00:26:00] cougar. [Laughter] Michael: What? That's real? Carrie: Well, I don't know. I don't know if that part was real. A lot of it was, Michael: Ursula was a real life. Carrie: Yeah, that, that I don't, that I'm not sure about. I do know that the young organizer, Elizabeth Gurley Flynn, she was based on a real person of the same name. Michael: Interesting. Jacqueline: A lot of protestors that are just, you know, protesting get put in jail even though they're just, you know, Michael: I remember around that time, I think Joe Hill, I think he worked with IWW they, they strung him up. Jacqueline: Mm Carrie: Oh yeah. Michael: Yeah. The cops did. Yeah. Carrie: Yeah. Yeah. It was a lot of shady, shady stuff. Michael: Oh yeah. Carrie: And then there was like, what was in Rednecks where you have these kind of crooked detectives who are working for the mine [00:27:00] operators. So you have that in the story. And then there is a detective who's investigating the detective. I mean, it was, Michael: oh, wow. Carrie: It was pretty, pretty involved. Michael: Did they have the, um, felts or Pinkerton's? Carrie: Yeah. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Yeah. Jacqueline: People who fought in those labor unions, they really went through a lot. Carrie: Mm-hmm. Jacqueline: I think it's not, Michael: yeah, that's a history that's kind of left out of the books. Jacqueline: Yeah. It is. Carrie: Mm-hmm. Yeah. Jacqueline: I think that would be a good book for teens to read too, with the, maybe not the part about the striptease, but the other stuff. [Laughter] Sounds like a pretty good book. Carrie: Well, I mean the main characters are pretty young. It does have some violence. Yeah. I don't know. You know, maybe an older teen, but I'm not sure. Jacqueline: Mature reader. Carrie: Yeah. Teen reader. Yeah. Carrie: And plus the [00:28:00] writing. Jacqueline: Mm-hmm. Carrie: You know, is maybe a little more difficult than, than a lot of teen books, but still very good. Yeah. Haven't read anything by just Walter that I didn't like so far. So. Thanks for listening to the Books and Bites podcast. Our theme music is The Breakers from the album in Close Quarters with the Enemy by Scott Whiddon. You can learn more about Scott and his music at his website, adoorforadesk.com.