John Paul the Great, by Peggy Noonan

This audiobook was obtained from the Alachua County Public Library through Netlibrary.com. It was read by the author and was 8 hours and 30 minutes long.

This book is almost as much about the author, Peggy Noonan, as it is about Pope John Paul II. This is a very personal recollection of Pope John Paul II by a woman who was greatly affected by him.

Noonan, the former speech writer for Ronald Reagan and George H. W. Bush, was only a nominal Catholic when she was covering the election of John Paul II by the College of Cardinals as a reporter for CBS. What she learned about him from this fairly close perspective caused her to examine her own life and what she believed. Subsequent close encounters, including a personal audience near the end of his life, had a deep impact on her, and she is not shy about discussing how she arrives at her own need for God.

There is also a good bit about Mother Theresa, who Pope John Paul began pushing for beatification as a saint soon after she died. And, as fawning as Noonan is about Pope John Paul in general, she is pretty tough on him for not dealing directly with the American sex scandals involving priests molesting minors and the church bureaucracy that covered it up.

This was very skillfully written, very touching, and very challenging to anyone who saw the Pope as a mere figurehead in history. Give it 4 stars.

A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, by James Joyce

This was yet another free audiobook download from NetLibrary. It was 11 hours and 16 minutes long, and was read by Donal Donnelly.

One of the great things about audiobooks is that you can get some of those intimidating "classics" of literature and listen to someone else read them. I seem to recall finding a copy of Joyce's "Ulysses" in my father's bedroom (Mom would never have read this), opening to the first page, and closing it after about ten seconds. I was worn out already. I went back to the comics.

This is the kind of dense and thoughtful reading that gets assigned to students because it is believed that it will do them some good. And I believe it does. The character development is quite vivid and deep. You really get inside the head of Stephen Dedalus, an autobiographical shadow of the author who appears in some of Joyce's other works. This book is also very philosophical and critical of the Catholic Church, although it is not without its sentimental side.

Personally, I enjoyed the book. But I also have to admit that it probably goes down better as an audiobook. Reading this Irish accented prose and dialog and preachy monologues off the printed page might be a different story. That said, the narration was very good and contributed to the good quality of the overall experience. This is the first 3 and a half star review I have given.