My Favorite Read of 2024

I have become an audiobook devotee. When I first started listening to books about fifteen years ago, I did it only when driving. Listening and driving seemed to require different parts of my brain, enabling me to pay attention to the road and a book at the same time– similar to listening to the radio. I didn't have the same experience at home. If I tried to listen to a book at home, I found myself itching to do something with my hands or eyes and became distracted from the book.

But in the last few years, I realized that there were things I could do at home that allowed me to stay busy and yet focus on an audiobook. I can do laundry and listen. Empty the dishwasher and listen. Make meals and listen. Eat meals and listen. I can brush my teeth, wash my face, change my clothes, and even lie in bed awaiting sleep and listen.

Sure, in the morning I may have to rewind a little to find the last spot I recall, but that is easy to do. And at the end of the workday, when my eyes are tired from reading books and short stories on my computer for clients, I can turn on an audiobook and do online jigsaw puzzles or game at the same time. The brain is a miraculous thing.

It is thanks to audiobooks that I was able to read (can you use the word read for listening to an audiobook? I feel like the answer is yes but it also is not quite right)158 books, as well as three novellas and two novelettes, for pleasure in 2024. What about short stories, you may be wondering. I read those on paper or Kindle. I find I am kinder to authors I listen to, am more willing to shrug off some problems that might have me reaching for my red pen with a paper copy. Since I buy reprint rights to short stories for Black Cat Weekly, I want to ensure I am always vigilant with shorts.

That said, I'm no pushover with novels, novellas, and novelettes. I keep notes on the ones I really enjoyed, what I liked, what concerns I had, and I rank them. It makes things easier come award season to figure out what to list on my nomination ballots. And should a book I enjoyed be named a finalist, I already have notes about that book to help me make up my mind before I vote.

That's not to say I won't reread a book or story that is named a finalist. Indeed, either last year or the year before that I narrowed my Anthony Award choice in one category to one book I had read a few months before and one I finished shortly before voting time, so I read the first book again to better compare the two. Anyway, this is all building up to my saying that I read– okay, listened to– a whole lot of books in 2024, and one easily topped my list. It is… drum roll, please…

“Blood Moon,” a novelette by Linda Castillo. It came out in 2022 from Minotaur Books. The print length is sixty-four pages. Audible says if you listen to it at regular speed, it should take about ninety minutes.

Castillo writes a series about Kate Burkholder, a formerly Amish sheriff in the village of Painters Mill, nestled in a rural Ohio county. When the series began with Sworn to Silence in 2009, Castillo had a book come out each year. A few years later, Minotaur started publishing a novelette by Castillo midway through each year for fans like me who needed their Castillo fix. The novelettes often are a bit lighter and more humorous than the novels. The crime might not even be murder. “Blood Moon” is a perfect example.

In this tale, there is a monster afoot in Painters Mill. Several people have an encounter with it. From their stories, you can imagine different urban legends, and Sheriff Burkholder and her significant other, John Tomasetti, an agent with the Ohio Bureau of Investigation, are on the case.

“Blood Moon” has great suspense, fantastic dialogue, and a solid ending. This novelette is set quite a ways into the series, and I think you would enjoy it even more if you read all the books and novelettes that came before it. There is character development throughout the series that would make the interactions in “Blood Moon” more meaningful to you if you followed the characters from the start. But you certainly could read “Blood Moon” as a standalone should you choose to.

Linda Castillo

You may be wondering why I read a 2022 novelette in 2024 if I love this series. I read so many series that I sometimes fall behind, and that has happened here. But don't worry. I will catch up. I have much to look forward to, and I'm not the only one who thinks so. Books in this series have landed on the New York Times bestseller list, and just last year, Castillo's novel An Evil Heart won the Sue Grafton Memorial Award and her novelette “Hallowed Ground” won the Edgar Award for Best Short Story. If you like reading police procedurals, you won't go wrong by picking up anything in this series.

Want to learn more? Castillo has written interviews with Burkholder and Tomasetti. You can find them here and here.

Before I go, a little BSP. If you would like to read my short story “A Matter of Trust,” which his eligible for the Agatha Award, among others, you can find it on my newly revamped website. Just click here.

Happy reading!

Ear Reading

Source: audible.com

Once upon a time, I only consumed books via paperback and hardcover. Ebooks either were not a thing yet. When they were, they were kind of lame in the era before Kindle. Then there were audiobooks. But producers worked a bit too hard to turn them into radio plays. To me, reading was words on paper. End of discussion.

And then, during my waning days as a pizza delivery driver, someone took me to a store down the hill from my apartment at the time. It was the early 2000s, so cassettes still existed. My first audiobook, an unabridged version of Loren Estleman's A Smile on the Face of the Tiger. It came on eight cassettes that, amazingly, my cassette deck didn't eat it. Or any of the other books I rented on cassette. Or borrowed from the library.

About that time, producers of audiobooks had struck the right balance of simply reading the book and having the reader perform. Sometimes, the wrong reader could have hilarious results. For instance, the 80-something William Windom reading a Spenser novel. It was like grandpa hitting on Susan Silverman. On the other hand, Burt Reynolds nailed Spenser by basically reading him as a parody of...

Burt Reynolds.

But for me, it expanded my reading lists. At the time, I didn't need to expand my reading list. I regularly could read a book a week, and this was before speed reading. So, are you really reading a book when you listen?

There are some differences. When I reviewed books, I sometimes had to email authors to get the spelling of a name or a word. Especially if it was science fiction. On the other hand, listening to a book is passive. Load up your book, and someone reads it to you. Reading print or ebooks takes effort. (And really, in terms of content, I no longer differentiate between ebook and print. You still have to scan the text.)

This passivity has become a godsend. For the past two years, I've had to add caregiver to my many hats, as well as working two jobs. Audiobooks let me make up the shortfall as I couldn't read as many print books anymore.  

And the Audible subscription is the absolute last thing that goes when I have to tighten the belt. A credit a month gets me any book I want. But does the reader make a difference?

Well, there's a difference between RC Bray reading The Martian and Wil Wheaton reading it. I bought both versions. Bray can fake an Indian accent without making it sound like a parody. Wheaton just imbues Kapoor with his own world-weary sarcasm.

But while it's listening instead of seeing, I consider it to be the same as reading a book. The delivery does make for a different experience, but I am consuming narrative. For the longest time, I listened mainly to nonfiction on audio and read fiction. Over time, it became audio for scifi and reading everything else. Now both are an eclectic mix. 

Recently, I learned to speed read, which let me get through King's 11/22/63 in just over a week. Contrast that with when I read Under the Dome, which took months.Currently, I'm reading Blacktop Wasteland in hardcover. And frankly, I like the option of slowing down when I read an author with a distinctive voice. Audio might not actually work for me on this one. I need to hear SA Cosby unfiltered. On the other hand, the reader of Iain Banks's Consider Phlebas manages to stay out of the way of the narrative. It's a thin line the readers have to walk.

Why Can’t I Listen To Audio Books?

Back in the days of cassette tapes, I experimented with the idea that listening to audio books would help me get through my growing to-be-read list. To get started, I bought the novel  A Dark-Adapted Eye by Ruth Rendell writing as Barbara, with Sophie Ward doing the reading. The total listening time of the two cassettes was three hours. I wish I could tell you how much I enjoyed the novel, but I don’t remember whether I enjoyed it or not. I don’t even remember what it was about.

The problem was as I sat in my easy chair listening to the book, I couldn’t keep my mind on what the reader was saying because I kept nodding off. I think, but I’m not sure, that I finally fell asleep. No, it wasn’t the voice of the reader. Later that same year, I bought a CD about ancient cultures and, as with the novel, I don’t remember finishing it because I believe I fell asleep again.

I can listen to old radio programs like “The Shadow,” “The Green Hornet” or “Inner Sanctum” without dozing off because I hear the different voices of the different characters. Listening to the single voice reading a book on a cassette or CD, however, seems to put me to sleep no matter how good the reader is.

No matter how much I think about it, I can’t solve the puzzle of why I can’t listen to audio books. So, I’ve decided not to try to listen to War and Peace on an audio book. 

Any method that encourages people to read should not be dismissed. Audio books are not only good for readers with poor eye sight but also for readers who, provided they can stay awake, want to reduce that pile of to-be-read books or reread the classics.