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Showing posts from July, 2015

FAMILYHOOD by Paul Reiser

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    If you are not a parent, you will probably not get much out of this book Published in 2011. Familyhood is Paul Reiser's follow-up to 1994's Couplehood ,   and 1997's Babyhood . Reiser is best-known for his television show Mad About You. If you have children you will certainly understand the big gap between the publication of Babyhood and Familyhood - life with children consumes your time. And, Paul is more than just happy about that fact, he is thrilled with it.  Paul Reiser. Photo by  Thomas Atilla Lewis When he wrote this book he his two sons were ten and fifteen years old. I just read it and my two daughters are nine and fifteen years old. So much of this book rang true to me, especially his discussion on page 24 about how hard it is to just sit down and have time to talk with his wife. He writes, "This may seem to be a mighty meager aspiration - to simply talk to the person with whom you have committed to share your life - but I assure you it i

A VISION of FIRE: A NOVEL (Earthend Saga #1) (audiobook) by Gillian Anderson and Jeff Rovin

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Published in October of 2014 by Simon and Schuster Read by the author, Gillian Anderson Duration: 9 hours, 34 minutes Unabridged A Vision of Fire is a mix of political thriller with sci-fi and a heavy dose of the occult thrown in as well. The book starts out with top-level negotiations taking place at the United Nations between India and Pakistan over the disputed region of Kashmir. Both countries are nuclear powers and both countries are sending troops to the border. An Indian ambassador is trusted by both sides and he is trying to broker a peace between them before a nuclear war starts. But, after dropping off his daughter Maanik at her school mysterious assassins make an unsuccessful attempt on his life. He reassures his daughter that he is fine and proceeds to the negotiating table. But, his daughter starts to have some sort of break down and starts clawing at her arms.  She is rushed home and heavily sedated because she is hurting herself. The translator for the ambas

THE PRICE THEY PAID: ENDURING WOUNDS of WAR by Michael Putzel

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Published in 2015 Michael Putzel has written a sort of unit history of C Troop 2/17th Cavalry 101st Airborne Division in Vietnam, also known as the Condors. The tales of combat in Vietnam and Laos are exceedingly well-told, riveting and harrowing. They tell of bravery, loyalty and loss and gave me a picture of a part of the war that I really knew very little about before. But, as good as those stories are, the real strength of the story is the story about what comes after the war. The title, The Price They Paid , is more than just story of who was injured and who died in the war. Certainly, they paid the highest price. But, the men who were injured, the men who lost their friends, even the men who went through unscathed - those men who survived to go home also paid a price and that is what I found most compelling. The book focuses on Jim Newman, a  man who started as a private in the army, worked his way to becoming an officer. In Vietnam he led his men in the Air Cavalry (

NPR DRIVEWAY MOMENTS: MORE about ANIMALS: RADIO STORIES that WON'T LET YOU GO

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Published in 2015 by HighBridge, a division of Recorded Books in May of 2015. Multicast performance Duration: 2 hours, 20 minutes Unabridged In a lot of ways the first story in this 30 story collection typifies the entire collection. It is called "Grizzly Encounters" and is an almost 6 minute long recounting of three different encounters with Grizzly Bears. We were on a long family trip and you could almost sense the family settling in for what was sure to be an interesting story. But, after we had listened to each of them sort of peter out to a "that's it?" moment I stopped the CD and asked if I was the only one that was disappointed in that story. Everyone, even the nine year old, thought the story was a disappointment. So, on to the next story - a story about bats in a mine that I remember most for telling me this was the sound of the bats that they had been hunting (and me thinking that this would sound great in the awesome speakers of the rental S

BRIMSTONE(Virgil Cole and Everett Hitch #3) (audiobook) by Robert B. Parker

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Published by Random House in 2009 Read by Titus Welliver Duration: 5 hours, 7 minutes Unabridged In the third book in this series, Virgil Cole and Everett Hitch do a lot, but at the same time I felt like this book went nowhere and made a lot of noise doing it. In short, Cole and Hitch begin the story looking for Cole's ex-girlfriend Allie French. You have to have read the first two books to even begin to wonder why Cole wants to find this woman again. They find her in the worst brothel in the worst part of town and rescue her and a fight ensues. They all leave town and eventually find a town that needs two deputies and they take the jobs. In the town there are multiple saloons, including one led by a former army officer who was cashiered from the service because he led his men on an attack on an Indian village and killed old people, women and children but no warriors.  There is also a church in town with a curious brand of Christianity led by a megalomaniac who believ

FOOD: A LOVE STORY (audiobook) by Jim Gaffigan

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Published in October of 2014 by Random House Audio Read by the author, Jim Gaffigan Duration: 7 hours, 17 minutes Unabridged My wife and two kids and I listened to Food: A Love Story as we drove on our family trip this summer. We are fans of Jim Gaffigan (I really appreciate the fact that our children can listen and he rarely uses an inappropriate word, let alone vulgar commentary or topics. If you are not familiar with Jim Gaffigan than stop reading this and follow this link to the Amazon page and read the lengthy excerpts that are provided. They give you a real sense of the book. If you are familiar with Gaffigan, he does go over a lot of stuff that he already covers in his stand up routines. But, he expands on them quite a bit and covers things that I never heard him mention in one of his specials. The book is obviously about food and Jim rarely deviates from it. He is not a "foodie". He is not driving out of his way to get something new. He is not travelin

MARVEL'S AVENGERS: THE AGE of ULTRON: THE JUNIOR NOVELIZATION (audiobook) by Chris "Doc" Wyatt

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Published by Marvel Press and Blackstone Audio on April 10 of 2015. Read by Tom Taylorson Duration: 1 hour, 34 minutes. Unabridged. This is my third audiobook of a junior novelization of a movie from the Marvel Cinematic Universe.  They adhere closely to the movies, have all been well-read, easy to listen to and, on the whole, quite enjoyable.  But, this one is troubling because it only covers half of the movie. Literally, this audiobook is about half of the length of the other audiobooks as well. If you have seen the movie, it only goes to the fight scene in the ship that is being harvested for scrap metal and it alludes to the Iron Man/Hulk fight scene. That's it.  Ultron Up to that point, it's an enjoyable audiobook. Reader Tom Taylorson does a very good job with the different voices of the Avengers, especially Thor. He also does an especially good job with the voice of Ultron - sometimes he sounds exactly like James Spader who voices him in the movie. The pro

MARVEL'S AVENGERS PHASE ONE: THE INCREDIBLE HULK (Marvel Cinematic Universe) (audiobook) by Marvel Press

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Published in 2015 by Blackstone Audio Read by Jim Meskimen Duration: 2 hours, 52 minutes Unabridged Marvel Press has released a series of junior novelizations of their Avenger and Avenger-related movies. The term "Phase One" in the title means that this is a pre-Avengers book that serves to introduce an Avenger. The publisher recommends them for ages 8-12 but my wife and I listened along with the kids in the car and we enjoyed it as well - my wife was really getting into it. I was the only one in the car that had actually seen the The Incredible Hulk  movie. This is a faithful re-telling of the movie. Unlike some novelizations, this one does not really expand past what the movie reviewer would have seen in the movie. No new secrets revealed or anything. The book starts with Bruce Banner already having been exposed to gamma radiation and having already changed into the Incredible Hulk. In fact, the real plot gets going five years after his exposure. Banner is on

MARVEL'S AVENGERS PHASE ONE: CAPTAIN AMERICA, the FIRST AVENGER (Marvel Cinematic Universe) (audiobook) by Marvel Press

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Published in 2015 by Blackstone Audio Read by Tom Taylorson Duration: 2 hours, 47 minutes Unabridged Marvel Press has released a series of junior novelizations of their Avenger and Avenger-related movies. The term "Phase One" in the title means that this is a pre-Avengers book that serves to introduce an Avenger. The publisher recommends them for ages 8-12 but my wife and I listened along with the kids in the car and we enjoyed it as well. The book follows the movie very closely, detailing how Steve Rogers tried to join the army multiple times during World War II but was always refused because he was too small and too sickly. Finally, he is noticed by a team of scientists and given the opportunity he has always wanted - he can join the army.  But, there's a catch.  He will have to be part of a group of men who are competing to see who can qualify to be part of an experiment to create a "Super Soldier" based on research already being done by a se