The Plot to Save Socrates
By Paul Levinson; Read by Mark Shanahan
7 CD’s – 10 Hours – [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: Listen and Live Audio
Published: 2006
ISBN: 1593160747 or 9781593160746
Posted by Scott D. Danielson
The Plot to Save Socrates
By Paul Levinson; Read by Mark Shanahan
7 CD’s – 10 Hours – [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: Listen and Live Audio
Published: 2006
ISBN: 1593160747 or 9781593160746
Posted by Scott D. Danielson
The Consciousness Plague
by Paul Levinson, read by Mark Shanahan
7 CD’s – 9 hours [ABRIDGED]
Publisher: Listen & Live Audio
Published: 2003
ISBN: 1593160380
Themes: / Murder / Memory / Mystery / Cognitive Anthropology /
Detective Phil D’Amato has to solve a series of murders, but he and many others begin losing chunks of their memory. It turns out a functioning memory is quite helpful when trying to solve crimes, but D’Amato manages anyway. Levinson wrote it in first-person, so when D’Amato realizes there is important information he had forgotten, you don’t know it until he knows it. That really worked well for me, giving me that startled, disconcerted feeling one would actually have in that situation.
Early in the book Phil D’Amato declares himself a “lone wolf” and immediately begins butting heads with shortsighted superiors. But if the book promises at the beginning to be cliché, don’t believe it. Detective
D’Amato brings aboard a number of collaborators as he gets the bad guy.
There are a few unbelievable moments. For example, Dr. D’Amato decides to fly to Scotland to speak with a man face to face because he is warned that the man is “really monotone” when talking over the phone. Perhaps I lack the proper empathy, not having previously been subjected to such a monotone telephone conversation that I’d rather cross an ocean just to have a face-to-face conversation, but I found the few moments like this distracting.
On the other hand, what do I know? Levinson won the Mary Shelley Award for Outstanding Fictional Work in 2003 for this novel. The plot is really quite intriguing, and pulled in credible ideas from a number of fields such as Cognitive Anthropology. (I get the feeling he googled some other areas of expertise for enough information to throw them in the mix, but let a non-googler cast the first stone.)
Mark Shanahan does different voices for over a dozen characters. How well does he do? With that many voices it depends on whether you’re a glass-is-half-full or half-empty kind of person. He actually has the perfect voice for a New York forensic detective and even the silliest voice was attached to one of the more endearing characters, so it worked for me.
Posted by Mike
Here are the New Releases for this month:
The Consciousness Plague
By Paul Levinson, Read by Mark Shanahan
ISBN: 1593160380
Abridged
Listen and Live Audio
Scott: This is an 8 hour abridgement… Amazon shows that the book is 340 pages long, so it’s almost all here.
Dead as a Doornail
A Sookie Stackhouse Southern Vampire Mystery
By Charlaine Harris, Read by Johanna Parker
ISBN: 1419337300
Recorded Books
Empire of the East
By Fred Saberhagen, Read by Raymond Todd
Unabridged
ISBN: 078134976
Blackstone Audio
Scott: This one’s on my TBR shelf… Saberhagen is a writer I haven’t read (or heard).
The Historian
By Elizabeth Kostova, Read by Rosalyn Landor and Jim Ward
Unabridged
ISBN: 1594830363
Time Warner Audiobooks
Pendragon Book 3: The Never War
By D.J. MacHale, Read by William Dufris
ISBN: 1597372510
Brilliance Audio
Pendragon Book 4: The Reality Bug
By D.J. MacHale, Read by William Dufris
ISBN 1597372596
Brilliance Audio
Tolkien’s Ordinary Virtues
By Mark Eddy Smith, Read by Simon Vance
Unabridged
ISBN: 0786178299
Blackstone Audio
Scott: This one caught my eye – it’s a kind of “Life Lessons from Lord of the Rings”
Velocity
By Dean Koontz, Read by Michael Hayden
Unabridged
ISBN: 0739315552
Random House Audio
The Vor Game
By Lois McMaster Bujold, Read by Grover Gardner
Unabridged
ISBN: 0786177330
Blackstone Audio
Scott: Blackstone will be releasing several of Bujold’s Vorkosigan novels – this is the first!
Wee Free Men
By Terry Pratchett, Read by Stephen Briggs
ISBN: 0060785985
Harper Audio
In the podcasting world, here’s some of the titles that have been published:
Escape Pod
“In His Footsteps” by Paul E. Martens, Read by Stephen Eley
“Oasis” by Greg van Eekhout, Read by Stephen Eley
“Snow Day” by Jennifer Pelland, Read by Deborah Green
“Strange Girlfriend” by Scott Janssens, Read by Stephen Eley
Podiobooks continues their serials of Morevi: The Chronicles of Rafe and Askana by Tee Morris & Lisa Lee, The Pocket and the Pendant by Mark Jeffrey, and Earthcore by Scott Sigler.
Other new developments – Timberwolf Press is now offering some of their titles for sale at Paperback Digital, which has also branched out into eBooks.