What I'm reading at the moment

White Teeth
by Zadie Smith

narrated by Jenny Sterlin

"Archie's life has disintegrated. Fresh from a dead marriage, middle-aged Archie stretches out a vacuum hose, seals up his car and prepares to die. With the opening of a butcher's shop, his life is saved, and soon he is on his way to beginning a new life with a young Jamaican woman looking for the last man on earth."

I haven't listened to many serious modern books - the audio medium seems to work better for the classics and for light, frothy detective novels. The previous exception to the rule was "The God of Small Things" by Arundhati Roy, narrated by Carole Boyd (Lynda Snell from The Archers), and what a good job she made of it - my best ever audio book, alongside Alan Rickman narrating Thomas Hardy's "Return of the Native." I thought I'd try this one to test the theory again, and while the book's not bad, the rule still holds. Oddly, the reading seems to be from a US version: there are little clues like the use of the word 'diaper' for nappy and 'bangs' for fringe.