James Baldwin: Giovanni’s Room

Read by Dan Butler

I chose something I was familiar with to ease me into the experience of audiobooks, but that was pointless. It’s been so long since I read it, that it was as if I was encountering the work for the first time, though it was just as sad as I remember. I completely forgot about the conversation between David and Hella about what it means to be a woman. The narrator did well with the French (he only slipped once using the hard G of Giovanni instead of the soft French G of Guillaume). He had a very nice cadence that shifted in all the right places and was maintained throughout the book–I think that helped keep the somber and increasingly desperate mood.

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