Give it a Listen

I thought I would include reviews of things that I listen to once a week or so, depending on how long a listen it is.

The Murder of King Tut - By James Patterson & Martin Dugard - Little, Brown & Co. Read by Joe Barrett - 6 hours - Non-fiction

The book is told in three time periods; during the research/writing by James Patterson (1st person), during Howard Carter's life 1922+ and King Tut's time. I enjoyed the jumps between time periods because it gave some insight into what Patterson & Dugard were doing and thinking during their long discovery mission and writing, Carter's frustrations and pitfalls before and after his successes at finding the tomb, and the speculation into Tut's brief life and the events surrounding his death.

The research/writing chapters were introspective and interesting to hear the process and the frustrations and speculations. Patterson and Dugard did extensive research so as to include a lot of facts or factual based information which is time consuming. I liked what Patterson says about writing, "Don't fake anything.", and I don't think he and Dugard did.

Carter's chapters were wonderful and painful. He has a tragic fullness of himself that is beautifully written. His obsession with all things Egyptian is his triumph and his downfall.

The one thing that bothered me about the Tut chapters was that he was called Tutankhamun, or Tut, through the entire piece and not Tutankhaten before he was king. The story itself is speculative for the most part. But, the story of his and his queen, his half sister, Ankhesenamon (Ankhe) was interesting and moving at times. It accurately portrays the period and the descriptions of events and scenes were vivid. If you like Phillipa Gregory's non-fiction but based on fact books, you will like this section particularly.

I really enjoyed Joe Barrett's baritone voice. He had a nice smooth cadence with good voice fluctuations between character's - he was definitely better with the male voices. It was read at a nice clip so could run without bogging down through slower parts. It was a very quick listen that didn't even make it 4 days.

Overall I would give this a 7 out of 10 since there weren't any new revelations but it was interesting to hear the voices from the past come alive.