EVERYTHING IS TUBERCULOSIS: THE HISTORY and PERSISTANCE of OUR DEADLIEST INFECTION (audiobook) by John Green

Published in 2025 by Listening Library.
Read by the author, John Green.
Duration: 5 hours, 35 minutes.
Unabridged.

Goodreads Choice Award Winner for Readers' Favorite Nonfiction (2025)

Audie Award for Narration by the Author and Nominee for Non-Fiction (2026)

Normally, John Green writes YA fiction, but this is his second non-fiction book in the last five years. His first non-fiction book was an excellent series of essays called Anthropocene Reviewed. His second non-fiction book is an in-depth (but still, fairly short) look at the deadliest disease of human history - tuberculosis.

In Everything Is Tuberculosis, Green gives a quick history of the disease that has killed 1 out of every 7 humans that has ever lived (yes, that is truly an amazing statistic) and even in the modern world, tuberculosis kills millions every year. 

Over the years, tuberculosis has a lot of names and suspected causes. Before it got its current name, the most common name for tuberculosis in English was "consumption." No one really knew where it came from and they were equally ignorant of how to cure the disease. Oddly enough, most people (90%) who are infected with tuberculosis (TB) never develop any symptoms and are not able to spread the disease. This is called "latent tuberculosis." Literally, 25% of the world is walking around with latent TB and more are added every day.

Doctors describe latent TB as an infection that takes advantage of its host's weakened immune system to spread and become a full blown case of TB. Immunosuppresent drugs would do this, but more mundane things like famine, poor diet, an HIV infection, diabetes, cancer, or being an elderly person make an infection move from being latent to active.

Green makes the story personal by describing the treatment of a young man he met in Sierra Leone named Henry. Green deftly goes back and forth between the big picture discussion of treatments, the countless challenges of treating TB cases in high poverty countries like Sierra Leone, and Henry's specific case. 

This is not a happy book in any way. But, it is important and it is very well told.

I rate this audiobook 5 stars out of 5. It can be found on Amazon.com here: EVERYTHING IS TUBERCULOSIS: THE HISTORY and PERSISTANCE of OUR DEADLIEST INFECTION (audiobook) by John Green.

BOUDICA: A LIFE from BEGINNING to END (kindle) by Hourly History

Published in 2026 by Hourly History

Hourly History specializes in short histories that take about an hour to read. In the case of Boudica, that's more space and time than needed to fill in what we actually know.

Boudica was a queen of a Celtic people called the Iceni (or Eceni) who lived in what is now Eastern England. Her husband was older than her and he had made a deal with the invading Romans. He agreed to be a vassal state of the Roman Empire in the hopes of saving a semblance of independence. The agreeement stated that the Roman Emperor would receive half of the Iceni kingdom when the king died.

But, when the king died the Romans claimed the entire kingdom as their own. Boudica protested that the Romans were reneging on the deal and claimed the entire kingdom for her and her two daughters.

The Romans responded by invading and capturing Boudica and her daughters. They raped her daughters and flogged Boudica in public but did not kill her.

When Boudica recovered from her injuries, she appealled to the other Celtic peoples to rise up and destroy the Roman invaders and soon she she found herself leading a mob of 100,000+ men, women, and children descending upon three Roman cities and completely destroyed them, including Londinium - modern day London.

The Roman soldiers retreated from the mob until they gathered up enough soldiers to make a stand of sorts in a place of their choosing. The Celts had numbers, but the Romans had military discipline and despite being outnumbered by 10 to 1, the Romans routed the Celts.

Boudica fled the scene of the battle and killed herself. Her body was never discovered and her daughters disappeared from history.

In the past, I read an article in a history magazine about Boudica that told me about the same as this e-book did. The problem is that all of the history is told from the Roman point of view and they didn't even know much about Boudica. They do agree that the Romans were initially dismissive of her, they then abused her in some way, and they were completely surprised by the revolt she led. There's just not that much to tell.

I rate this history 3 stars out of 5. It tells the story, but it pads it from time to time by repeating facts or writing things in an overly-complicated way. Perhaps this one should have been a 45 minute history rather than an Hourly History.

This short e-book can be found on Amazon.com here: Boudica: A Life from Beginning to End by Hourly History.

THE LAST SUNDAY in MAY: A NOVEL (kindle) by Kate Clark Stone

Published by Lake Union Publishing in May of 2026.

Synopsis:

10 years ago Mack Williams was the hottest driver on the midwest sprint car circuit. She was the daughter of a sprint car legend, she grew up racing on her family's small town Indiana dirt track and she was on the fast track to the IndyCar series and its ultimate race - the Indy 500.

But, she got pregnant and immedately after that her father was in a devastating accident that left him disabled for many months. Between caring for her father, her baby, and managing the dirt track, racing took a back seat and eventually was just a forgotten dream.

Then, after ten long years, one of her racing heroes, Janet Joyner, shows up at the track after a long night of races. She was a female driver at the Indy 500 when it was still a novelty and never had a chance to drive a quality ride in the race.

Joyner is now the owner of a small one car race team that has flashes of racing competitively with the bigger teams. Shas an offer for Mack Williams - she has a seat available in a second car and Mack can try to qualify for the Indy 500 in just a few weeks if she can get a sponsor.

My Review:

Up front I have to state a few facts about myself. I am an Indy 500 fan. I have gone to every 500 since 1986 (except the Covid year when no one could go). I went to qualifications and practices for years before that with my father. I have been to just about everything you can do at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway - I have watched tire testing days, been to the old musem, been to the new museum, taken the bus tour around the track, and more. Once I paid $10 to drive my minivan around the track as a fundraiser for some sort of charity. I have been in a suite, I have been in the scoring tower, and I have been in the garage area when it was full of cars being worked on.

I got The Last Sunday in May for free as a part of Amazon Prime and was fully expecting to laugh it off of my Kindle app. The cover conveyed the idea that it was going to be about a female driver, but it didn't inspire much confidence.

Instead, I found it to be an unlikely story, but one that could happen. The Indy 500 is full of unlikely stories. I saw Al Unser, Sr. win the Indy 500 in 1987. He didn't have a ride when he arrived and the car was part of a display in a hotel in Pennsylvania when his deal was signed. I saw Billy Boat qualify a rebuilt Frankenstein of a car at the last second to make the Indy 500. In the 2026 Indy 500 a small team beat the historically best Indy 500 team of all time by a time of 0.0233 seconds - they were literally side by side.

I've seen championship teams struggle to make the field and little teams do well. I've seen front row starters wreck before the race even started and last row starters be contenders. Oddly, the front row wrecks are more common than people coming up from the last row to be contenders.

Danica Patrick in the 2006 Indy 500.

The Janet Joyner character is an amalgamation of Janet Guthrie, Lyn St. James, and Sarah Fisher. Fisher had a small team and could spot talent - she gave two-time Indy 500 winner Josef Newgarden his first ride in IndyCar. As of this writing, he has won a total of 34 IndyCar races - she was right to take a chance on him. Lyn St. James was very much interested in expanding opportunities for women in racing. Janet Guthrie could build a car from scratch, if she needed to.

There are a couple of questionable moments of geography that stuck out to this Indy westsider, but only a couple. 

The book likes to introduce new chapters with emails or social media comments from fans about Mack Williams. Some readers might find those to have been unrealistically harsh. I found them to be on the mild side. I have seen completely horrific comments about female and minority race car drivers on all sorts of social media and in the comments sections on racing fan pages. Sexually graphic comments are not uncommon.

It's not just from men. I got into a long argument on a Facebook article about Katherine Legge's performance in the 2026 Indy 500. She finished last in the 500, and a middle-aged woman was basically saying women should stay out of the race. She hadn't seen the race and she didn't know that Legge wrecked her car to avoid t-boning a male driver (a former 500 winner) who had lost control of his car on lap 18 right in front of her.

To sum up, I enjoyed this book. There was too much romance novel for my taste, but the book kept me reading and wanting to know what happened next. The Indy 500 stuff is improbable, but not impossible. I've seen the highly improbable happen before at the Indy 500 and I will undoubtedly see it happen again. 

Does she win? I would never tell what happened in a race - that ruins the anticipation of a race!

I rate this book 5 stars out of 5. It can be found on Amazon.com here: The Last Sunday in May by Kate Clark Stone.

HISTORY MATTERS (audiobook) by David McCullough. Edited by Dorie McCullough Lawson and Michael Hill.

Published in 2025 by Simon and Schuster Audio.
Read by John Bedford Lloyd, Dorie McCullough Lawson, and David McCullough.
Duration: 5 hours, 59 minutes.
Unabridged.

David McCullough (1933-2022) was a prolific historian, a two time winner of the Pulitzer Prize and a winner of the National Book Award. He was proud to be known as a writer that wrote smart, well-documented histories that were aimed at general audiences. 

McCullough was also known as well-respected narrator. You may know him as the narrator of Ken Burns' Civil War documentary miniseries. 

McCullough's daughter and his researcher put together this book as a collection of speeches, letters, and essays that were previously unpublished or only published in small publications. For example, he wrote a nice little essay for a local public library about his family's tradition of giving books at Christmas. 

Dorie McCullough Lawson introduces every entry in the collection, often including some context about her father's interest in the topic or why he gave a speech to this or that particular group. Sometimes, they are just annotated lists of books that McCullugh really liked (he was a man that liked to make lists) or speeches about authors that he admired.

Most of the readings were by narrator John Bedford Lloyd, but there are a couple of instances where there was a recording made of McCullough himself giving the speech.

There are a variety of topics, including Harry Truman, George Washington, and the time that a young McCullough really wanted to make a suggestion to then-candidate John Kennedy about a topic to include in his campaign stump speech. I was pleased to note that he mentioned three authors that I really like as authors to emulate - Bruce Catton, Michael Shaara, and Dr. Suess. 

I rate this audiobook 4 stars out of 5. It can be found on Amazon.com here: History Matters by David McCullough.

Robert F. Kennedy: A Life from Beginning to End (kindle) by Hourly History

 

Published in 2024 by Hourly History.

Robert F. Kennedy is remembered largely as a tragic lost opportunity due to his assassination as he was running for President in June of 1968 at the age of 43.

Hourly History specializes in short biographies and histories that a reader can read in about an hour. 

In this case, Hourly History has provided a lively, balanced biography that does not hide Kennedy's warts, but also lets the reader know why so many people had high hopes for him as he was mounting a late campaign for the Democratic nomination for President in 1968.

I rate this short bio 4 stars out of 5. It can be found on Amazon.com here: Robert F. Kennedy: A Life from Beginning to End (kindle) by Hourly History.

MATA HARI: A LIFE from BEGINNING to END (kindle) by Hourly History

 

Published in 2019 by Hourly History.

When I was a kid, people would mention Mata Hari whenever a woman in the news or in a story was supposed to have seduced men in order to obtain secret information. I didn't know anything about her besides that. I wasn't even sure she was a real person. If she was real, I didn't even know if she had actually done any spying or stealing of secrets until I ran across this short biography.

Mata Hari was indeed a real woman. She has a reputation of being a seductive woman from the Far East, but she was actually born in the Netherlands. She started out in a prosperous family, but they came upon hard times and she married an older military officer who was stationed in the Far East. 

When she returned to Europe she divorced her husband (he was abusive) and took on the character of a seductive dancer from the Far East and performed in shows. The shows started out small, but soon moved into larger and larger venues. She became famous, if not infamous, for her sexually charged dances (remember this is the early 1900s, so they were wild stuff for the day, not necessarily nowadays.)

Her story was always one of finding a rich man to take care of her and falling back on the exotic shows when the relationship with her patron went sour. Over time, her shows had smaller audiences because she was aging and other women were doing similar shows. 

When World War I broke out, she mostly ignored it. She crossed borders at will and sought favors from officers on both sides. It was rumored that she had contracted with a German officer to seek information from a French officer. She was captured and executed by the Allied powers despite scant evidence. 

Was she a spy? Maybe. Was she just trying to make a little money and not really serious about being a spy. In my opinion, probably. 

I rate this short e-book 4 stars out of 5. It can be found on Amazon.com here: Mata Hari: A Life from Beginning to End. 

NO COUNTRY for OLD MEN by Cormac McCarthy

 

Originally published in 2005.

Most people know this No Country for Old Men only as the 2007 movie from the Coen Brothers that won Academy Award for Best Picture. 

My father handed this book to me before he went off on his annual snowbird pilgrimage to Arizona and I finished it this morning.

Synopsis

In 1980, near the Texas-Mexico border scrublands, a hunter named Llewelyn Moss comes across a murder scene. There has been a shoot out and a fortune of drugs and money is left among the dead and dying Mexican drug dealers. Moss takes the immense amount cash, inexplicably returns for the drugs and the drug dealers begin to track him down, looking for the money.

The cartel sends out Anton Chigurh to retrieve the money. Chigurh is a true psychopath who relentlessly tracks down the money and kills almost everyone who can identify him to law enforcement. A second bounty hunter is dispatched to retrieve the money and possibly kill Chigurh who is leaving bodies all over the place and has a shoot out with acual members of the cartel as they close in on Moss.

An older sheriff tracks them all down and ponders the true meaning of his life and career as he sees his massive county become a war zone.

My Review

This book has a fantastic reputation, and I am not sure why. To me, this book has all of the hallmarks of a book that is popular because it should be. There is a Pulitzer Prize winner. The book is written in an intentionally odd stream of consciousness style, perhaps as an homage to William Faulkner's The Sound and the Fury. 

There is not a single quotation mark to be found in this book. Not one. I found this style to be annoying and difficult to follow because I couldn't tell if the character was thinking or talking to another person.

The chapters are sometimes numbered, sometimes not. I couldn't perceive any rhyme or reason to it.

Some chapters are printed in italics, some are not. I couldn't perceive any rhyme or reason to that, either.

I often found it hard to determine which character the chapter was about - the sheriff?, Moss?, Chigurh?, the bounty hunter?, Moss's wife? - until I was two or three paragraphs into the chapter. 

Maybe it was on purpose, designed to make the reader uncomfortable. Maybe not. Maybe it was a simple case of laziness as McCarthy had originally written the book as a movie screenplay and later adapted it into a novel.

I rate this book 2 stars out of 5. I know this isn't anywhere near what a vast majority of people would rate this book, but I just cannot see what they find so appealing about this book.

This book can be found on Amazon.com here: No Country for Old Men by Cormac McCarthy.

RACING the LIGHT (Elvis Cole / Joe Pike 19) (audiobook) by Robert Crais

 

Published in 2022 by Brilliance Audio.
Read by Luke Daniels.
Duration: 7 hours, 55 minutes.
Unabridged.

Synopsis

In Racing the Light, private investigator Elvis Cole is hired by a worried mother to find a missing podcaster that often deals in conspiracy theories. His mother is obviously very rich, since she comes to the office with a chaufer, two bodyguards (or "helpers" as she calls them) and a second car to serve as a "chase car" (extra protection hidden among the traffic of Los Angeles.) She suspects he was kidnapped because like her son, she is also extremely paranoid and prone to conspiracy theory thinking.

Everyone else thinks her son has run off to Las Vegas with a porn star he recently interviewed, but they are worried that he could get into a different kind of mischief and just needs to come home as soon as possible.

Elvis Cole starts digging and finds a lot of unexpected danger.

My Review

Over the last year I have gone out of my way to go back and systematically read all of the books from this series that I had missed. I thought I had read almost all of the Elvis Cole / Joe Pike novels, but it turned out that I missed almost half of them.

I went back and got the missing ones in order from earliest to latest and this one was the last one. It was also the weakest one due to all sorts of extra plot details that don't really go anywhere and maybe were intended to allow the opportunity for an extended commentary on the dangers of modern surveillance technology such as drones, hidden listening devices, and cameras.

All of this tech is impressive, but it gets outdone by nosy neighbors, tailing people in cars, random witnesses, and a doofus writing his pass codes on a piece of paper in an obvious place. Maybe we shouldn't be worried. Maybe we should - we can't depend on luck and the skills of someone like Joe Pike all of the time.

Parts of this book were excellent - such as top notch Elvis Cole wisecracks followed by Elvis Cole being a top notch human being when people just need someone to be there and say nothing. But, there was just as much stuff that seemed to be nothing but filler. 

I rate this book 3 stars out of 5. One of the weaker books in this overall excellent series.

This book can be found on Amazon.com here: Racing the Light by Robert Crais.

Reflections on the Civil War by Bruce Catton. Edited by John Leekley.

Would Serve as an Excellent Introduction to the Civil War

Originally published in 1981.

Bruce Catton (1899-1978) was the top Civil War historian throughout the 1950s, 1960s, and 1970s. His particular skill was not uncovering new research or having particularly keen new insights, although he did help move the Lost Cause narrative out of the mainstream. He was, first and foremost, a historian with a real gift for writing for the regular reader. He broke down the complex things and made them understandable and interesting.

Reflections on the Civil War was published after Catton passed away. It was pulled largely from tapes of Catton discussing various aspects of the Civil War and then edited by John Leekley. Leekley co-created the Civil War mini-series The Bue and the Gray with Catton.

Catton starts out with the standard discussion of what caused the war and then moves into other topics like why men joined up, daily life for the soldiers in the war, the  was like for the men, how the two armies geared up for the war (mostly as it was already being fought), and more before he gives a short summary of the war. 

Union General Ulysses S. Grant (1822-1885)

The last section concerns some drawings that had recently been uncovered. A young man joined the army in the first rush of enthusiasm after Fort Sumter and had decided to draw everyday pictures of camp life. He was hoping to sell them to newspapers or magazines as part of their war coverage. It turns out that he could not sell any because they were simply too mundane - not enough action and too much regular camp life. Of course, that makes them solid gold for historians.

Catton took the extra step - he researched the soldier and told about his experiences in the war based on the young soldier's writings and regimental histories. I thought this was going to be tedious, but it turned out to be the best part of the book.

This book is very well done. Like I noted before, the book was edited from audio recordings of Catton's lectures and question and answer sessions. He knew his topic so well and the book just flows wonderfully. 

I rate this book 5 stars out of 5. It can be found on Amazon.com here: Reflections on the Civil War by Bruce Catton. Edited by John Leekley.

ZACHARY TAYLOR: A LIFE from BEGINNING to END (Biographies of U.S. Presidents)(kindle) by Hourly History

Published by Hourly History in 2025.

Hourly History specializes in histories and biographies that take a reader about an hour to read. It seems appropriate length for Zachary Taylor, the President with the third shortest time in office (just 16 months).

Taylor had a short and rather vague political career, but his military career was rather lengthy. He fought against the Shawnee under future President William Hentry Harrison on the frontier in the War of 1812 in Indiana, Illinois, and Michigan. 

He fought in the Black Hawk War and served in what would later become Minnesota and Wisconsin establishing and upgrading a series of forts. Later, he fought the Seminoles in Florida and served as the overall commander of American troops in the War. 

He is most famous for his service as one of the two main generals that led the invasion of Mexico in the Mexican War. Taylor crossed from Texas into Northern Mexico, fighting a series of battles, eventually winning the Battle of Buena Vista in February of 1847. That battle cemented his reputation in the American mind and catapulted him to the Presidency in 1848, despite never having voted before and not really having political opinions that alligned strongly with any political party at the time.

On a personal note - one thing Taylor did have going for him was a working knowledge of the what was the American frontier at the time, having served or lived in Texas, Arkansas, Indiana, Michigan, Illinois, Minnesota, Wisconsin, Kentucky, Louisiana, and Mississippi. Taylor was a slave holder but was against the expansion of slavery into the territories taken from Mexico. he knew from personal experience that the climate of those areas were completely incompatible with the plantation style of slavery he practiced at his plantation in Mississippi. 

As I already noted, Taylor took ill in the summer of 1850 and died, probably due to some sort of food poisoning or a form of cholera. This book doesn't look much into the "what ifs" of a longer Presidency for Taylor who was pro-slavery, strongly anti-seccession, and against the spread of slavery. Could he have been the political figure that worked out a great compromise that would have prevented the Civil War?

I rate this short e-book 4 stars out of 5. It's pretty good, considering how short it is. It can be found on Amazon.com here: ZACHARY TAYLOR: A LIFE from BEGINNING to END by Hourly History.

CONQUERORS: HOW PORTUGAL FORGED the FIRST GLOBAL EMPIRE (audiobook) by Roger Crowley

Published by Recorded Books in 2015.
Read by Jonathan Davis.
Duration: 13 hours, 7 minutes.
Unabridged.

In the mid-1400s Portugal was poised to be a major world power, despite being a backwater of Europe in so many ways. Portugal sits at the western extreme of Europe, destined to be a minor player in European politics most of the time. All of Portugal's border touches Spain, so if Portugal wanted to interact with anyone but Spain they had to take to the sea.

IThe Portugese developed a new type of little wooden ship called the caravel, armed them with cannons, filled them with food, water, sailors, and stone monuments to mark the areas they explored. They pushed down the coast of Africa, hoping to find a way to the spices of Asia.

They were looking to trade, especially for spices because the Muslim countries had established a stranglehold on the spice trade with the decline and eventual fall on the Byzantine Empire in 1453.  They were also looking to link up with the fabled African Christian king Prester John, join up to defeat the Muslims, spread Christianity, and make a lot of money along the way.

And, with the exception of the Prester John part of the plan, that's basically what happened. Prester John turned out to be the Christian kingdom of Ethiopia. It was real, but not nearly as powerful as the Portugese believed - and it wasn't very interested in attacking the Muslims in a religious war. 

Conquerors: How Portugal Forged the First Global Empire is a pretty thorough look at the Portugese conquistadores and their escapades in the Indian Ocean. From the first, Portugal came with guns a-blazin'. They laid waste to cities, took slaves, took hostages, burnt ships, and were confrontational with almost everyone. 

Then, they headed home and made plans to return with even more ships. They made annual trips and made plans to make permanent posts from Africa to India. 

At this point, this history bogs down. It's not that it isn't accurate - it just becomes a litany of outrageous attacks by the Portugese, a minor setback, and then an even more audacious attack. It all kind of blurred together for me because Crowley didn't take a moment to pull away from the history to do a bit of analysis.

He didn't even step away to look at what the Portugese were doing in other parts of the world, such as Brazil and west Africa and put the Portugese efforts in the Indian Ocean into a larger context until the literal last three or four minutes of the audiobook. The title says it is a book about Portugal's empire and it ignores a lot of their empire.

The audiobook reader was Jonathan Davis. He is a very good reader and has a flair for accentuating the dramatic moments. But, he is also very slow. I rarely do this, but I set the audiobook player to play at 120% and he was still a bit slow at times.

I rate this audiobook 3 stars out of 5. It can be found on Amazon.com here: CONQUERORS: HOW PORTUGAL FORGED the FIRST GLOBAL EMPIRE by Roger Crowley.

JIMMY CARTER: A LIFE from BEGINNING to END (Biographies of U.S. Presidents) (kindle) by Hourly History

Published in 2025 by Hourly History.

Hourly History is a publisher that specializes in short histories and biographies in e-book form that are designed to be read in about an hour.

This limited format should have been enough for any other one term President, but with Jimmy Carter there is so much post-Presidential activity to cover that it came up a bit short.

This history spends a lot of time on Carter's early life - too much, in my opinion. Newsweek magazine once called Jimmy Carter the best ex-President ever*, and this book just doesn't tell enough about his 40+ years of being the most active former President of my lifetime. Clinton, W. Bush, and Obama all left the Presidency with enough vim and vigor to go out and be useful, but Carter did more than all of them have combined AFTER he was eighty years old.

The man was an author, a rogue diplomat, helped eradicate a truly gruesome disease, monitored elections around the world, helped build an amazing number of houses with his own hands, and taught Sunday School. I am sure I have left out 20 other things. 

This is a solid 3 star biography, but I would have moved the focus to say much more about post-Presidential years.

This e-book can be found on Amazon.com here: JIMMY CARTER: A LIFE from BEGINNING to END (Biographies of U.S. Presidents) by Hourly History.

*Newsweek may be right about Jimmy Carter, but I doubt they considered the amazing post-Presidential career of John Quincy Adams. See this book: Mr. Adams's Last Crusade: John Quincy Adams's Extraordinary Post-Presidential Life In Congress by Joseph Wheelan.

FAT VAMPIRE (audiobook) (Fat Vampire #1) by Johnny B. Truant

Published in 2024 by Nyifie Brothers Publishing.
Read by Joe Hempel.
Duration: 3 hours, 58 minutes.
Unabridged.

Synopsis

Fat Vampire is a unique entry into the long and storied history of vampire tales. Our protagonist is Reginald Baskin, a very overweight accountant who works for a company that sells fitness equipment. 

The rest of the office are bullies straight out an eighties frat house movie. Reginald tries to work late afternoon into the evening as much as possible and that is where he encounters the office IT guy, Maurice. 

Maurice only works the night shift. He wears dark robes and carries an umbrella as he walks home in the early morning twilight because he is a vampire - one of the oldest vampires in the world.

Another group of vampires try to harvest Reginald for his food and Maurice intervenes and converts him to a vampire instead to save his life. The problem is (as is often the case in vampire stories) Reginald is stuck with the overweight and way out of shape body he had the moment he became a vampire. That is a problem because the vampire community doesn't tolerate vampires that can't pull their own weight (pun intended.)

My Review

This is a unique story, but it is still a pretty average story. There is nothing wrong with it, but it's not very memorable, either. Case in point, I listened to this audiobook months ago and literally immediately forgot all about it as soon as I was done with it until I accidentally clicked on the "Finished" tab on my audiobook player this evening.

However, if you are a fan of vampire stories, you should give it a go.

Note: there are 10 books in this series at this time.

I rate this audiobook 3 stars out of 5.

This audiobook can be found on Amazon.com here: FAT VAMPIRE by Johnny B Truant.

THE WATCHMAN (Elvis Cole/Joe Pike 11) (audiobook) by Robert Crais

Published in 2008 by Brilliance Audio.
Read by James Daniels.
Duration: 7 hours, 52 minutes.
Unabridged.

Synopsis

Usually, books in the Elvis Cole/Joe Pike series focus on Elvis. Elvis is a private detective with a smart mouth. He catches a case, does some digging and his partner, tough guy Joe Pike, comes in when things get hairy. It's an old formula. You see it in Perry Mason, the Spenser series, and even Magnum, PI because it works. 

The Watchman is different. It starts with Joe Pike. He is on the run with a girl and a hit squad is after them.

Joe Pike is asked to babysit a witness because a Mexican drug lord wants her dead. Multiple hit teams have come after her. What makes it more complicated is that she is very rich and she has makes the newspapers regularly for being a party girl. If you were alive pre-social media, think Paris Hilton and Nicole Richie. 

Joe is using every trick he has and barely escaping. He reaches out to Elvis Cole for some detective and logistical help and what they find doesn't make things any easier...

My Review

The action comes on fast and is mostly maintained throughout. The reader is also treated to some a great deal of Joe Pike's backstory. It does explain a lot and helps the series as a whole, if not this particular story.

The reader is okay. He is good with voices, but I am not a big fan. In the end, he did not add or detract from the story. 

I rate this audiobook 5 stars out of 5. It can be found on Amazon.com here: The Watchman by Robert Crais.

WHEN BOOKS WENT to WAR: THE STORIES THAT HELPED US WIN WORLD WAR II (Audiobook) by Molly Guptill Manning

Published by Blackstone Audio in 2014.
Read by Bernadette Dunne
Duration: 6 hours, 49 minutes.
Unabridged.

When Books Went to War looks at the deliberate effort by the government of the United States to put books in the hands of its soldiers as they went off to fight in World War II. 

There were multiple reasons behind this idea. The first was simple: Reading books is a practical way to help soldiers pass the time. "Hurry up and wait" is a common refrain from soldiers of all eras and books helped fill the time.

Another reason was to remind the soldiers of what they were fighting for. Being on the front has a way of making life seem cheap and disposable, but reading a good story might help keep soldiers attached to the good things from back home. This may seem corny, but so many letters from the soldiers and sailors were written to the authors of these books that emphasized this very point.

Betty Smith, the author of A Tree Grows in Brooklyn wrote and spoke about all of the letters she got from soldiers that told them how her book reminded them of their home in any big city in America - Cleveland, Chicago, Boston, or wherever. She said she received 10 times more mail from soldiers than from civilians. 

One of the most important reasons to put books in the hands of soldiers was that being anti-book was a trait of the Nazis. They were infamous for holding massive book burnings and emptying libraries of books they disagreed with. The American program to put books in the hands of soldiers was the opposite - and it was intentionally designed to be that way. The bad guys take books away from you - the good guys want you to read and think for yourself and give you books to do just that.

Note: This philosophy contrasts strongly with the Trump Adminsitration's choice to ban nearly 400 books from the libraries of the various military academies. For example, here is an article from April of 2025 about 385 books banned from the Naval Academy. 

These books were designed to be as small and lightweight as possible. They were intended to go along with a soldier no matter where he went. The print was tiny, the margins were almost non-existent and they were usually stapled together. They could slide into a pack, a pocket, or in the nooks and crannies of any vehicle. They could bend to the counters of a pack.

Men read and re-read them. When books were handed out, men would be strategic about their choices in order to guarantee a wide variety of reading choices. Men from different units traded and some units created portable libraries in crates that went right along with the unit no matter where they went. Men were assigned to be the caretakers of the books.

Their was a lot of debate about the books they picked. They weren't policed too much when it came to content. Southerners were irritated at books that were critical of their Jim Crow laws. Steinbeck's Grapes of Wrath made the cut and it is hardly politically conservative. Some were strictly educational - books that explained science or math or philosophy. A great many were Westerns and there were a number of murder mysteries. By the time it was over, the U.S. government had printed 1,225 different titles and had given away 122 million books to its armed forces for free!

Here is a list of every book they printed.

This audiobook was interesting from beginning to end. As a book lover, it was inspiring to hear about men reading to their buddies in foxholes and men discovering that they actually liked reading. As a person that always has a book on hand, I understood completely.

I rate this audiobook 5 stars out of 5. It can be found on Amazon.com here: When Books Went to War: The Stories That Helped Us Win World War II. 

FORT SOLITUDE (DC COMICS: SECRET HERO SOCIETY #2) by Derek Fridolfs and Dustin Nguyen

Published in 2017 by Scholastic

Synopsis

The DC Comics Secret Hero Society series s a re-imagining of the DC universe with a comic twist. 

The first book in this series featured a Hogwarts-type school where only children with special talents are invited. Young Bruce Wayne suspects that there is more going on in the school than meets the eye and his new friends Clark Kent and Diana Prince join him to investigate.

Fort Solitude is book 2 in the series. The trio are invited to a special summer camp. They notice that this camp has an off vibe. Then, campers start to disappear. And, there are constant warnings about a scarecrow that stalks the woods at night.

The trio adds in a kid that runs really, really fast, a kid that wins every target shooting contest, and a kid with robotic implants - Flash, Green Arrow, and Cyborg. Clark also finds a journal with detailed notes from a girl that attended a previous session of this same summer camp - Lois Lane.

Using the clues from Lois' notebook, the campers investigate the camp and work together to figure out what is going on.

My Review

This was a fun read, but it's basically the same plot as the first book in this series. I liked the first book pretty well, but it just seemed cheesy to do the same plot twice in a row.

I rate this graphic novel 3 stars out of 5. It can be found on Amazon.com here: Fort Solitude (DC Comics Secret Hero Society #2).

STUDY HALL of JUSTICE (DC COMICS: SECRET HERO SOCIETY #1) by Derek Fridolfs and Dustin Nguyen

Published by Scholastic in 2016.

Study Hall of Justice is a YA graphic novel that is a re-imagining of the DC universe with a comic twist. 

Synopsis

Imagine a Hogwarts-type school where only children with special talents are invited. Young Bruce Wayne suspects that there is more going on in the school than meets the eye. The teachers are odd, not only quirky, but sometimes malicious - increasingly so.

Bruce starts to investigate, sometimes wearing a special costume to hide in the shadows, he begins to suspect that there is a malevolent figure running the school. He also encounters two other students who are looking into the school leadership - Clark Kent and Diana Prince.

My Review

While this book is aimed at middle schoolers, adult super fans of DC Comics will appreciate the easter eggs that abound. For example, Bruce Wayne's locker has shark repellent (from the 1960's Adam West movie) and movie stills from The Gray Ghost, a movie that inspires young Bruce Wayne to create his Batman personae (from Batman: The Animated Series.)

Coming of age themes abound, including each of the good guy trio acknowledging what makes them different, and coming to appreciate those differences in each other (see the picture to the right.)

It's a fun graphic novel. I rate it 4 stars out of 5.

This graphic novel can be found on Amazon.com here: Study Hall of Justice (DC Comics: Secret Hero Society #1)

JOHN BELUSHI: A LIFE from BEGINNING to END (Kindle) by Hourly History

Published in January of 2026 by Hourly History.

John Belushi has always known as a cautionary tale for me - an amazing talent that quickly rose to national prominence and then died of a drug overdose just when things really got going.

Hourly History specializes in short histories and biographies that take about an hour to read. In this case, this biography gives a lot of details about his early life, but simply fails to give the reader a sense of what Belushi or the characters he created on Saturday Night Live was like. 

It does no better with any of the four movies. Belushi only made 4 movies, but two of them are classics - The Blues Brothers and Animal House. You would think that there would have been a lot more about those movies and a lot less about his first really run-down apartment in New York City.

I rate this e-book 3 stars out of 5.

This e-book can be found on Amazon.com here: John Belushi: A Life from Beginning to End.

K IS in TROUBLE by Gary Clement

Published in 2024 by Little, Brown Ink.

An NPR Best Book of the Year.

K is a 10-12 year old boy living in an unknown European city in what appears to be the late 1800s. K Is in Trouble is a graphic novel that tells of his misadventures. 

In a series of stories, K runs into trouble with a talking fish, he meets a talking insect, and finds an intelligent crow. But, his real difficulties are with adults who don't listen. The adults at school don't listen, the police don't listen, the mayor doesn't listen, and his parents especially don't listen. 

I liked the art, but the stories were so-so. The last story is the best by far. 

I rate this graphic novel 3 stars out of 5. Not bad, not great.

This book can be found on Amazon.com here: K Is in Trouble by Gark Klement. 

HELL BENT: HOW the FEAR of HELL HOLDS CHRISTIANS BACK from a SPIRITUALITY of LOVE by Brian Recker

Published by Penguin Audio in 2025.
Read by the author, Brian Recker.
Duration: 6 hours, 40 minutes.
Unabridged.
 
My cousin reviewed Hell Bent on Goodreads and his review made me very excited to read it as well. 

I just re-read that review and I am still excited to read the book he described. The actual book is solid, but took a long time to get going and seemed like it was put together in an odd way - almost backwards and I think that diluted its strength.

Recker starts with a lengthy discussion of what happens if you fall out of your tribe's accepted truths. In this case, his tribe is American Evangelical Christianity, but you may have had a similar falling out with another group. For example, I have had a falling out with a lot of friends and family because I left my political tribe (I am a never-Trump Republican.)

This part was simply too long for me. I was far more interested in the actual discussion about the relative strengths and weaknesses of those that argue in favor of a Biblical case for an actual hell as a place of eternal torment for unbelievers. 

Recker looks into the Bible verses and looks at their context, not just the isolated verses. He follows up with a look at church history and sees where the actual teachings of the church changed over time. Recker delivers those arguments quite well and then shows how bad that the pro-hell argument really is for the ongoing growth of Christianity. 

I liked this book and think it has a well-earned place in any discussion of the topic. I rate this book 4 stars out of 5. It can be found on Amazon.com here: Hell Bent: How the Fear of Hell Holds Christians Back from a Spirituality of Love by Brian Recker.