Hello Book Dragons!
Another week breezed past me, and the weekend is finally here! What are you all up to this weekend? Have you watched the new Bridgerton Season 3? I only watched the first episode yesterday and I am planning to binge-watch it today 🥰
Today’s post is all about audiobooks and a recent one that I listened to. Do you listen to audiobooks? If you ask me, I don’t often listen to audiobooks because I tend to get distracted quite easily and end up missing out on chunks of the narration. But every weekend, I try to sit back and relax, put on my earbuds and listen to an audiobook. I mostly listen to them on Libro.fm and if you love listening to audiobooks, you can use the Promo Code SWITCH on Libro.fm to get 2 bonus audiobook credits for free!
Over the last weekend, I listened to Babette written and narrated by the author, Ross Eliot. It was probably my first time listening to an audiobook that was narrated by the author himself! Read the review below to know what I thought of it 💜💖✨
This narrative spans a period from 1998 until 2002, during which in his early twenties, Ross Eliot relocates to Portland, Oregon and eventually moves into the pantry owned by Dr. Babette Ellsworth, an arcane history professor.
Her strange life unfolds in stories, about the 1928 kidnapping in Eastern Washington carried out by a mysterious French woman named Germaine Bonnefont, about life in occupied Europe during World War II, about the Czarist assassin of Rasputin, East Indian soldiers who fought for Nazi Germany and Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh, whose cult perpetrated a 1984 bio-terror attack in Oregon.
In between travels with Dr. Ellsworth, Eliot befriends many unusual people within Portland’s diverse subcultures. These relationships lead to dance parties at historical monuments, Scrabble games with a nocturnal jazzpunk and perilous encounters with a beautiful sex scam artist. Eliot cares for his professor until her tragic final death in 2002. However, Eliot has only begun to uncover the layers of Babette’s story and he delves into Dr. Ellsworth’s complicated lives exposing murkier secrets than ever suspected.
Now, it’s been a while since I listened to an audiobook and when I learned that the author narrated the audiobook himself, I was quite intrigued to listen to it!
Babette: The Many Lives, Two Deaths and Double Kidnappings of Dr. Ellsworth is a memoir where the author recounts his memories of Dr. Ellsworth and who Babette was. This book is such an interesting combination of fiction and non-fiction. It’s like the author’s own way of paying tribute to a person who left a deep-rooted mark in his life.
Babette Ellsworth’s life was unlike anyone else’s. Through each chapter, it was interesting to learn more about the life she led, the kind of person she was and the darkest times of her past. While the beginning of the audiobook introduces the character of Babette, the latter part focuses more on the interactions between Babette and the author and the other people of the academia.
Set in Portland, the author narrates his journey through young adulthood spanning the years between 1998 to 2002 while exploring themes of gender identity, sexuality, subcultures, life and history of the times, religious theories and existentialism.
The fact that the book doesn’t try to answer all the mysteries tied to Babette’s life is probably the real-est part about the book mimicking the exact way we do not find answers to all our questions in life.
Get your copy of this fiction non-fiction crossover memoir here.
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Signing off,
Sohinee aka bookarlo
Sohinee Reads & Reviews 