aoodiobooks
audiobook enjoyer! horror, mystery & comedy ✨🏳️🌈
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aoodiobooks started reading...
3w
Native Speaker
Chang-rae Lee
In Native Speaker, author Chang-rae Lee introduces readers to Henry Park. Park has spent his entire life trying to become a true American—a native speaker. But even as the essence of his adopted country continues to elude him, his Korean heritage seems to drift further and further away. Park's harsh Korean upbringing has taught him to hide his emotions, to remember everything he learns, and most of all to feel an overwhelming sense of alienation. In other words, it has shaped him as a natural spy. But the very attributes that help him to excel in his profession put a strain on his marriage to his American wife and stand in the way of his coming to terms with his young son's death. When he is assigned to spy on a rising Korean-American politician, his very identity is tested, and he must figure out who he is amid not only the conflicts within himself but also within the ethnic and political tensions of the New York City streets.Native Speaker is a story of cultural alienation. It is about fathers and sons, about the desire to connect with the world rather than stand apart from it, about loyalty and betrayal, about the alien in all of us and who we finally are.
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aoodiobooks started reading...
3w
Murder in Constantinople
A.E. Goldin
A gripping, immersive historical murder mystery in which a wayward boy from London's East End is pulled into the hunt for a serial killer on the eve of the Crimean War London, 1854. Twenty-one-year-old Ben Canaan attracts trouble wherever he goes. His father wants him to be a good Jewish son, working for the family business on Whitechapel Road, but Ben and his friends, the 'Good-for-Nothings', just want adventure. Then the discovery of an enigmatic letter and a photograph of a beautiful woman offer an escapade more dangerous than anything he'd imagined. Suddenly Ben is thrown into a mystery that takes him all the way to Constantinople, the jewel of an empire and the centre of a world on the brink of war. His only clue is three 'The White Death'. Now he must find what links a string of grisly murders, following a trail through kingmaking and conspiracy, poison and high politics, bloodshed and betrayal. In a city of deadly secrets, no one is safe - and one wrong step could cost Ben his life.
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aoodiobooks started reading...
3w
The Chronology of Water
Lidia Yuknavitch
This is not your mother's memoir. In The Chronology of Water, Lidia Yuknavitch expertly moves the reader through issues of gender, sexuality, violence, and the family from the point of view of a lifelong swimmer turned artist. In writing that explores the nature of memoir itself, her story traces the effect of extreme grief on a young woman's developing sexuality that some define as untraditional because of her attraction to both men and women. Her emergence as a writer evolves at the same time and takes the narrator on a journey of addiction, self-destruction, and ultimately survival that finally comes in the shape of love and motherhood.
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aoodiobooks wrote a review...
3w
An excellent psychological horror! It's if The Yellow Wallpaper was 50x worse. A terror of confinement where societal pressure leads to mindless cruelty. It's giving body horror and suffocating slow descent into (understandable) madness.
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aoodiobooks finished a book
3w
Carrion Crow
Heather Parry
Marguerite has been locked in the attic of her family home, a disintegrating Chelsea house overlooking the stench of the Thames. For company she a sewing machine, a copy of Mrs Beeton’s Book of Household Management and trays of congealing food carried up to her with little regularity. Marguerite has been confined by her mother, Cécile, who is concerned about her engagement to an older, near-penniless solicitor, Mr Lewis, and wishes to educate her daughter on ‘proper’ married conduct – lest she drag the family’s good name into disrepute. But why is Marguerite pursuing the aged Mr Lewis in the first place? Why are her mother’s visits seemingly becoming less frequent? And just how much time has passed since the lock closed on the attic’s hatch?Carrion Crow is a transportive and gloriously gothic commentary on the constraints of polite society – and the even greater danger of conformity – that unfurls one family’s festering secrets.
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Post from the Carrion Crow forum
3w
aoodiobooks started reading...
3w
Carrion Crow
Heather Parry
Marguerite has been locked in the attic of her family home, a disintegrating Chelsea house overlooking the stench of the Thames. For company she a sewing machine, a copy of Mrs Beeton’s Book of Household Management and trays of congealing food carried up to her with little regularity. Marguerite has been confined by her mother, Cécile, who is concerned about her engagement to an older, near-penniless solicitor, Mr Lewis, and wishes to educate her daughter on ‘proper’ married conduct – lest she drag the family’s good name into disrepute. But why is Marguerite pursuing the aged Mr Lewis in the first place? Why are her mother’s visits seemingly becoming less frequent? And just how much time has passed since the lock closed on the attic’s hatch?Carrion Crow is a transportive and gloriously gothic commentary on the constraints of polite society – and the even greater danger of conformity – that unfurls one family’s festering secrets.
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aoodiobooks commented on a post from the Founder Announcements forum
3w
Product Updates + New App Version [2/5/2026]
Hi everyone, we've just released a big app update with many quality of life improvements, bug fixes, and some new features. These are all available on web as well. Please make sure your apps are updated to the latest version, 1.1.1, to see these changes! As a reminder, you can check out what we're working on and what's coming up next via the public roadmap (in the footer on web, in the more menu on the app)
Here's a list of updates:
- New Main Quest badge tiers, now viewable on the app
- ability to pin comments to your own posts, lists, and activity
- improved search on app: UI enhancements to make searching for things that are not books easier, removed the auto-populated most searched books from the search widget
- ability to track your progress in Time for audiobooks (HH:MM)
- progress bar / breakdown by status added to Plan
- estimated page count added to book page
- you can enlarge a book cover on the book screen by tapping the book cover
- rereading button (when you go to track a reread, the button says re-reading instead of reading)
- sort reviews by star rating
- filter options on Book Journey
- new search, filter, and sort options on Browse All Lists and Browse All Quests screens
- see more info about your followers and users you follow in the following/followers modals
- changed the button on the home feed "currently reading" books from "post in forum" to "go to forum" for easier access to the forum + encouraging folks to check existing posts!
We're working on monthly wrapups, reading streaks, and some prep for more stats next! We will also be making some additional enhancements to Quests (like: a book recommendations section similar to the Community Recs on book pages, stats for how many users earned each badge tier, and a feed tab like the new feed tab on book pages)
Thanks everyone and happy reading, Jennifer + Lucy
1985
249Reply
aoodiobooks DNF'd a book
3w
Old Soul
Susan Barker
The woman never goes by the same name.
She never stays in the same place too long.
She never ages. She never dies.
But those around her do.
When two grieving strangers meet by chance in Osaka airport they uncover a disturbing connection. Jake's best friend and Mariko's twin brother each died, 6,000 miles apart, in brutal and unfathomable circumstances.
Each encountered a mesmerising, dark-haired woman in the days before their deaths. A woman who came looking for Mariko - and then disappeared.
Jake, who has carried his loss and guilt for a decade, finds himself compelled to follow the trail set by Mariko's revelations. It's a trail that weaves across continents and centuries, leading back to the many who have died - in strange and terrifying and eerily similar ways - and those they left behind: bewildered, disbelieved, yet resolutely sure of what they saw.
And, at the centre of it all, there is the same beguiling woman. Her name may have changed, but her purpose has never wavered, and as Jake races to discover who, or what she is, she has already made her next choice.
But will knowing her secret be enough to stop her?
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aoodiobooks started reading...
3w
Old Soul
Susan Barker
The woman never goes by the same name.
She never stays in the same place too long.
She never ages. She never dies.
But those around her do.
When two grieving strangers meet by chance in Osaka airport they uncover a disturbing connection. Jake's best friend and Mariko's twin brother each died, 6,000 miles apart, in brutal and unfathomable circumstances.
Each encountered a mesmerising, dark-haired woman in the days before their deaths. A woman who came looking for Mariko - and then disappeared.
Jake, who has carried his loss and guilt for a decade, finds himself compelled to follow the trail set by Mariko's revelations. It's a trail that weaves across continents and centuries, leading back to the many who have died - in strange and terrifying and eerily similar ways - and those they left behind: bewildered, disbelieved, yet resolutely sure of what they saw.
And, at the centre of it all, there is the same beguiling woman. Her name may have changed, but her purpose has never wavered, and as Jake races to discover who, or what she is, she has already made her next choice.
But will knowing her secret be enough to stop her?
0
0Reply
aoodiobooks DNF'd a book
3w
Flesh
David Szalay
From Booker Prize finalist David Szalay, a propulsive, hypnotic novel, about a man whose future is derailed by a series of events that he is unable to control.Teenaged István lives with his mother in a quiet apartment complex in Hungary. Shy and new in town, he is a stranger to the social rituals practiced by his classmates and soon becomes isolated, with his neighbor—a married woman close to his mother’s age, whom he begrudgingly helps with errands—as his only companion. But as these periodical encounters shift into a clandestine relationship that István himself can barely understand, his life soon spirals out of control, ending in a violent accident that leaves a man dead. What follows is a rocky trajectory that sees István emigrate from Hungary to London, where he moves from job to job before finding steady work as a driver for London’s billionaire class. At each juncture, his life is affected by the goodwill or self-interest of strangers. Through it all, István is a calm, detached observer of his own life, and through his eyes we experience a tragic twist on an immigrant “success story,” brightened by moments of sensitivity, softness, and Szalay’s keen observation. Fast-paced and immersive, Flesh reveals István’s life through intimate moments, with lovers, employers, and family members, charted over the course of decades. As the story unfolds, the tension between what is seen and unseen, what can and cannot be said, hurtles forward until finally—with everything at stake—sudden tragedy again throws life as István knows it in jeopardy. Spare and penetrating, Flesh traces the imperceptible but indelible contours of unresolved trauma and its aftermath amid the precarity and violence of an ever-globalizing Europe with incisive insight, unyielding pathos, and startling humanity.
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aoodiobooks started reading...
3w
Flesh
David Szalay
From Booker Prize finalist David Szalay, a propulsive, hypnotic novel, about a man whose future is derailed by a series of events that he is unable to control.Teenaged István lives with his mother in a quiet apartment complex in Hungary. Shy and new in town, he is a stranger to the social rituals practiced by his classmates and soon becomes isolated, with his neighbor—a married woman close to his mother’s age, whom he begrudgingly helps with errands—as his only companion. But as these periodical encounters shift into a clandestine relationship that István himself can barely understand, his life soon spirals out of control, ending in a violent accident that leaves a man dead. What follows is a rocky trajectory that sees István emigrate from Hungary to London, where he moves from job to job before finding steady work as a driver for London’s billionaire class. At each juncture, his life is affected by the goodwill or self-interest of strangers. Through it all, István is a calm, detached observer of his own life, and through his eyes we experience a tragic twist on an immigrant “success story,” brightened by moments of sensitivity, softness, and Szalay’s keen observation. Fast-paced and immersive, Flesh reveals István’s life through intimate moments, with lovers, employers, and family members, charted over the course of decades. As the story unfolds, the tension between what is seen and unseen, what can and cannot be said, hurtles forward until finally—with everything at stake—sudden tragedy again throws life as István knows it in jeopardy. Spare and penetrating, Flesh traces the imperceptible but indelible contours of unresolved trauma and its aftermath amid the precarity and violence of an ever-globalizing Europe with incisive insight, unyielding pathos, and startling humanity.
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0Reply
aoodiobooks wrote a review...
3w
The lack of names, the soothing tone of the narrator, the familiar setting... Without fully committing our attention to what's actually happening, the horror slips away as easily as a forgotten nightmare. But once I gave it a little bit of scrutiny it's one of the most disturbing books I've read so far. I haven't read anything like this before. The gore feels unforced, innocent, it's almost beautiful. There are many layers to unravel. I've already read it twice this first run, but would love to read it again!
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