Transitive Verve

Thoughts at a glance: **** (I really liked it) Summary:  This is a large, photo-filled, coffee-table book about the musical Hamilton , which (in case you have no exposure to pop culture whatsoever [in which case, how'd you find my obscure little blog???]) is a hip hop musical about Alexander Hamilton. Thoughts:  While I do actually own a physical copy of this book (which is awesome, by the way), I chose to listen to this as an audiobook. The book itself consists mainly of the full libretto of the musical (with annotations from LMM himself about the various lyrics and musical lines, etc.), with short "behind the scenes" chapters interspersed throughout, lining up chronologically with the songs at times, and discussing the history of the musical itself from all different angles: the writing, the development, the choreography, everything. The audiobook gives you all the chapters first, with an introduction from co-writer Jeremy McCarter (as in, he wrote the chapter p...

Soulless is the first book of the series I can't remember if I've ever discussed audiobooks before on this blog, at least in their own separate posts. (I may have mentioned previously how much I LOVE the audiobooks for The Illuminae Files , but they didn't get their own review.) I love audiobooks, but I enjoy them most when I get something extra from the experience that I couldn't get while reading it, you know, traditionally. For me, that "something extra" usually relies really heavily on the narration-- I love different voices and emotion. (Am I weird? I only like to listen to audiobooks for books I've already read. Like watching a movie adaptation.) And that's a big part of what I loved about Emily Gray's narration of Gail Carriger's Parasol Protectorate  series. Without getting into too much detail about the plot (at risk of spoilers), Gray had to distinguish between so many characters and their accents and personalities: the ever-p...