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Showing posts with the label 3 stars

DARK of the MOON (Virgil Flowers #1)(audiobook)(abridged) by John Sandford

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  Published by Penguin Audio in 2007. Read by Eric Conger. Duration: 6 hours, 5 minutes. Abridged. Synopsis: Virgil Flowers works for the Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension (BCA) and has been brought in to the small town of Bluestem, Minnesota to investigate a double murder. Flowers was picked for this job because he is a great investigator and he grew up in Bluestem. On his way into town, he comes across a gigantic house fire. He recognizes it as the mansion of the richest man in town. The next morning, they discover that it is also the scene of a homicide. As Flowers starts his investigation there is yet another murder and the list of suspects keeps getting longer and longer... My Review: This series was highly recommended to me. It's a spinoff from the much larger (30+ books) "Prey" series featuring Lucas Davenport. Davenport appears in this series as Flowers' supervisor.  The author, John Sandford This book is abridged and I do believe that the abridgment h

BASS REEVES: TALES of the TALENTED TENTH, no. 1 by Joel Christian Gill

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 Published by Fulcrum Publishing in 2014. Artist and author Joel Christian Gill is writing and illustrating a series of graphic novels that look into the lives of lesser known, exceptional African Americans. His inspiration is this quote from W.E.B. DuBois: "The Talented Tenth rises and pulls all that are worth saving up to their vantage ground." In other words, some will rise up and inspire/lead the rest. This is Gill's way of providing inspiration. Bass Reeves was a legendary lawman in the Old West. He was a Deputy U.S. Marshal that chased down bad guys who would flee into Indian Territory (Oklahoma and Kansas) to hide from law enforcement in the neighboring states. If you've seen either of the two versions of the movie True Grit, that is the exact situation. The character Rooster Cogburn would have been real-life Bass Reeves' co-worker if Cogburn were a real person. The graphic novel tells about Reeves' childhood as a slave in Arkansas, how he escaped durin

THE MAGA DIARIES: MY SURREAL ADVENTURES INSIDE THE RIGHT-WING (and HOW I GOT OUT) (audiobook) by Tina Nguyen

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Published by Simon and Schuster Audio in January of 2024. Read by the author, Tina Nguyen. Duration: 7 hours, 23 minutes. Unabridged. Tina Nguyen is a mainstream reporter now, but she started out in the world of conservative media. How conservative? How about working for Tucker Carlson before he joined Fox News? Nguyen had a boyfriend that connected her to the feeder system of conservative politics and media. Go through these high school programs and you get invited to college programs like the Salvatori Center for the Study of Individual Freedom at Claremont McKenna College and then on to think tanks, conservative media, or a staff position with a politician. Nguyen broke up with the boyfriend and went into conservative media...until she realized it was all very small, very inter-related and, in the end, unsatisfying and unable to pay the bills. Also, she discovered that one of her mentors was a racist creep and so was the boyfriend that brought her into the movement.  The author, Ti

PALM SUNDAY: AN AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL COLLAGE by Kurt Vonnegut

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  Published in 1981 by Delacorte Press. Kurt Vonnegut offers this collection (he calls is a "collage") of fiction, non-fiction, interviews, and even a musical based on Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde.  As is the case with all collections, some parts of the collection are excellent and some parts are not very good. I believe that he first half of the collection is the best, mostly because of the inclusion of a history of the Vonnegut family in Indianapolis. Ironically, it was not written by Vonnegut, but by a family member who had married into the Vonnegut family.  Indianapolis is my adopted hometown and this Vonnegut family history reads like a history of the city from the mid-1800s to the mid-1900s. I found it fascinating reading, especially the story of the subscription brothel gentlemen's club that was frequented by the city's elite in an area that still has political "clubs" with fancy dining and smoking rooms more than 100 years later. It would be tacky to pay

EVERYTHING I LEARNED, I LEARNED in a CHINESE RESTAURANT: A MEMOIR (audiobook) by Curtis Chin

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Published in 2023 by Little, Brown, and Company. Read by the author, Curtis Chin Duration: 8 hours, 12 minutes. Unabridged. Curtis Chin grew up in the 1980s in and around Detroit, Michigan. His immediate family and his extended family shared ownership in a Chinese restaurant in Detroit's Chinatown. Chin spent a considerable chunk of his early life working, eating, and doing homework in the restaurant. Chin tells about how his family ended up in Detroit, how his parents met and got married, the sometimes uncomfortable extended family dynamic, and the decline of Chung's Cantonese Cuisine's once vibrant neighborhood. There is also plenty of discussion about school from kindergarten through a four year degree at the University of Michigan. These parts of the story often discussed the racial dynamics of going to school in Detroit's majority minority school system. Later, when the family joined the white flight to the suburbs, there was a new dynamic of going to a school wher

THE GREAT DECHURCHING: WHO'S LEAVING, WHY ARE THEY GOING, and WHAT WILL IT TAKE to BRING THEM BACK? (audiobook) by Jim Davis and Michael Graham with Ryan P. Burge.

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Published by Zondervan in August of 2013. Read by Jim Davis, Michael Graham, and Ryan P. Burge. Duration: 7 hours, 3 minutes. Unabridged. America's church members are dropping out of church at a record pace - millions upon millions over the last 2 decades and, according to the stats, the only thing that will slow the pace is the fact that Christianity in America will be so much smaller that it will statistically impossible to lose so many people without completely emptying the pews. The authors started out to identify a number of things such as: a) Who is leaving - is it the old, the young, the middle-aged? b) Who is staying? c) Why are they leaving? Is it toxic politics? Sex scandals? Abuse? Lost interest? No connection? d) Will they be willing to come back? What would it take? This book draws heavily from a religious attitude survey administered by Baylor University from time to time. I recently r ead another book on Christian Nationalism that used the same surveys and these boo

SLAVERY, RESISTANCE, FREEDOM (Gettysburg Civil War Institute Books collection) edited by Gabor Boritt and Scott Hancock.

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  Published in 2007 by Oxford University Press. The book consists of six essays about the experience of African Americans from the early American period through Reconstruction.  They are arranged in chronological order and, as is the way with all collections, of varying quality. I did not enjoy either of the two essays by one of the editors, Scott Hancock. I did enjoy reading two of them quite a bit. There are two strong essays that read more like small chapters from a Civil War history  about the United States Colored Troops (USCT) - the segregated units of black soldiers led by white officers.  The last essay was by Reconstruction expert Eric Foner. It was a bit tedious to read, but it ruthlessly lays to rest that old Confederate and neo-Confederate lie that Black Reconstruction (when Blacks could actually vote and the old leaders of the Confederacy were not allowed to run for office) just elected illiterate field hands to the highest offices. The men Foner describes were mostly (80%

THANK YOU for VOTING: THE MADDENING, ENLIGHTENING, INSPIRING TRUTH ABOUT VOTING in AMERICA (audiobook) by Erin Geiger Smith

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  Published in 2020 bt Harper Audio. Read by Lisa Cordileone. Duration: 6 hours, 3 minutes. Unabridged. As the title says, his book is intended to be a primer on the history of elections in America and how elections work now in different states. It was thorough enough without drowning the listener in details. The book does a solid job with both of those major topics without feeling partisan. Those topics comprise the first and last two hours of this audiobook. The middle two hours just felt like padding. There was an extended discussion of how to raise the voter participation rate that just dragged with discussions of how businesses can encourage employees to vote, ad campaigns from local government, and so on.  I would rate the first two sections 4 stars out of 5, but the middle section is a 2 out of 5 at best. That makes a final score of 3 out of 5. This book can be found on Amazon.com here: THANK YOU for VOTING: THE MADDENING, ENLIGHTENING, INSPIRING TRUTH ABOUT VOTING in AMERICA (

TRACKERS (Trackers, Book 1) (audiobook) by Nicholas Sansbury Smith

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  Published in 2017 by Blackstone Audio, Inc. Read by Bronson Pinchot Duration: 8 hours, 28 minutes. Unabridged. Synopsis: A Colorado police chief named Colton has organized a search for a young girl he suspects has been abducted. He reaches out to the best tracker he knows, Sam "Raven" Spears, for help. Raven is part Sioux and part Cherokee - an important fact because he soon suspects that the abductor is acting out a Cherokee legend featuring cannibals.  While Colton and Raven are on the hunt, there is a North Korean EMP attack on the United States. For those not aware, EMP stands for Electromagnetic Pulse. Nuclear weapons emit a pulse that absolutely fries most electronics. If you bomb a city normally, the pulse is limited by hills, buildings, and lots of other things. But, if you blow a nuclear bomb up high up in the air, the bomb doesn't do a lot of damage but the EMP kills all exposed modern cars (older cars have no computer systems, electrical systems, power plants

IT WILL ALL WORK OUT: THE FREEDOM of LETTING GO (kindle) by Kevin Hart

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  Published by Amazon Original Stories in August of 2023. The author Actor and comedian and author Kevin Hart delivers a short book on how give yourself and all of those around you a break by giving up that feeling that you have to literally do everything yourself and it all has to be done your way. There was literally nothing wrong with Hart's advice - it's actually excellent advice - but for a 44 page book it was repetitive.  Hart frequently attempts to put a bit of humor in the book, but I found myself wishing that I was watching Hart deliver a TED Talk so that the humor and stories would actually work so much better.  Maybe if this had been an audiobook.... I rate this e-book 3 stars out of 5. It can be found on Amazon.com here:  IT WILL ALL WORK OUT: THE FREEDOM of LETTING GO (kindle) by Kevin Hart

BAG LIMIT (Posadas County Mysteries #9) (audiobook) by Steven F. Havill

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Published in 2001 by Books In Motion. Read by Rusty Nelson. Duration: 11 hours, 59 minutes. Unabridged. Synopsis: Sheriff Bill Gastner is coming to the end of his appointed term as Sheriff of Posadas County - a border county in southern New Mexico. Bill has been in the department in one form of another for 31 years and he is looking forward to a well-deserved retirement with no real plans for how to fill his days. Bill Gastner has got a wild last few days as Sheriff  - he has a drunken teen driver with a fake driver's license issue by the department of motor vehicles, two damaged police cars, two other teens in the hospital, and more. My Review: I am a big fan of this series. I love old Bill Gastner - he has insomnia, happily eats the same pepper-filled burrito at the same restaurant 2 or even 3 meals per day, and relies on experience more than the speed an agility of younger officers. But, this book was padded with a whole lot of nothing. We meet Gastner's son and grandson who

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

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  Published in July of 2023 by Hourly History. Roy Orbison (1936-1988) was an early rock singer. As this book notes, the heart of his career is right after Elvis joined the Army and just before the Beatles broke it big. His hits include Pretty Woman  and Only the Lonely . Also, he is one of my favorite singers so I was pretty excited to read this short biography. I have no problems with the facts as laid out in this biography, although I was very disappointed by the disjointed and sometimes just plain old weird writing style. I have to wonder if this was written by an AI program. Because of the writing style I am going rate this e-book 3 stars out of 5. This e-book can be found on Amazon.com here: ROY ORBISON: A LIFE from BEGINNING to END by Hourly History .

AMERICAN REBOOT: AN IDEALIST'S GUIDE TO GETTING BIG THINGS DONE (audiobook) by Will Hurd

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  Published in March of 2022 by Simon and Schuster Audio. Read by the author, Will Hurd. Duration: 8 hours, 47 minutes. Unabridged. Will Hurd has done a lot of things in his 45 years. He has been an operations analyst for the CIA (working in Pakistan, India, and Afghanistan), he was worked in high-tech (including cyber-security and artificial intelligence), has served 6 years as a member of the House of Representatives from Texas, and is now a Republican candidate for President in 2024. This book was undoubtedly an attempt to introduce Will Hurd to a larger audience. I follow politics pretty well and I had never heard of Will Hurd until he announced his campaign for President in June of 2023 (to be fair, there are 535 members of Congress and most are not well known outside of their districts.) I heard about this book in a political podcast and, lo and behold, it turns out that my library had it. Just to let you know where I am coming from as I review this book, I am a Never Trump Repub

BOMBS AWAY (audiobook) by John Steinbeck

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  Originally published in 1942. Published in 2016 by Penguin Audio. Read by Scott Aiello. Duration: 4 hours, 36 minutes. Unabridged. 1942 was a rough year for America in World War II, especially in the early months. The Pacific Fleet was devastated and American troops were barely involved in the European Theater. As part of a total war effort, every resource had to be tapped, including pulling in famous authors like John Steinbeck to write books that assured the American public that the Army Air Corps/Air Force (he uses both terms interchangeably) had a plan, was implementing the plan, and it was going to be a successful plan.  Steinbeck was a bold choice to write what is basically a piece of American propaganda. His novels Of Mice and Men and Grapes of Wrath caused quite an uproar just a few years earlier with their criticism of the American capitalism. I think the reasoning was that if Steinbeck approves of what the Army Air Corps/Air Force was doing, it must be okay. A B-17 (left)

THE BIG BREAK: THE GAMBLERS, PARTY ANIMALS, and TRUE BELIEVERS TRYING to WIN in WASHINGTON WHILE AMERICA LOSES ITS MIND (audiobook) by Ben Terris

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  Published in June of 2023 by Twelve. Read by Tim Andres Pabon. Duration: 9 hours, 32 minutes. Unabridged. Ben Terris offers up a collection of stories about a few of the people that casual political observers have never heard of. I regularly watch the Sunday morning political shows and listen to political podcasts and I'd only heard of 4 of the people featured in this book, and only 1 of them by name.  That, of course, is the point of the book - a look at the movers and shakers below the obvious level of movers and shakers. Some move and shake a whole lot in the world of Washington politics, some barely do any moving at all, and some used to move and shake a whole lot but now have been sidelined by scandal. Terris looks at people like Matt Schlapp, who is the head of the Conservative Political Action Committee (CPAC) - the travelling roadshow of right wing politics. Schlapp is an example of a hyper-connected mover and shaker in the book. But, he also looks at people with less inf

AN ABUNDANCE of KATHERINES (audiobook) by John Green

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  Originally published in 2006. Published by Listening Library in 2019. Read by Jeff Woodman. Duration: 6 hours, 47 minutes. Unabridged. Synopsis: Colin Singleton is a child prodigy who has recently stopped being a child. He has graduated from high school, is preparing to go to a great college but he is unsettled by a couple of things. Number one: being a child prodigy means that you are potentially an important adult. Colin is aware that it is now time for potential to turn into something - anything - meaningful. Number two: Colin just got dumped - again. He has dated 19 different girls and all are named Katherine. Technically it is 18 different girls because Katherine 1 is also Katherine 19, but the point is pretty much the same. So, Colin is wallowing in self-pity when his best friend, a slacker named Hassan, comes to him and suggests that they need to go on a road trip. They head south through Indiana and eventually end up in Gutshot, Tennessee where Colin meets a girl named Lindse

WHITE EVANGELICAL RACISM: THE POLITICS of MORALITY in AMERICA (audiobook) by Anthea Butler

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  Published by Tantor Audio in 2021. Read by Allyson Johnson. Duration: 3 hours, 44 minutes. Unabridged. This book takes a short look at how the people that refer to themselves as Evangelicals and their forebears have dealt with race over time. An interracial marriage protest. The signs claim that interracial marriage is Communist and a sign of the anti-Christ. The book starts with the justifications that religious leaders used to defend slavery. After the Civil War, they modified those justifications slightly to defend the Jim Crow system. Butler contends that the Evangelical movements in the 1900's were worried about things like Communism, but it usually had a racial overtone to it - like when Martin Luther King was accused of spreading Communism to Black communities all over the country when he was just asking for the rights that White Americans already had. The heart of her book is about Billy Graham and what she calls out as a wishy-washy approach to racism. I am a bit more fo

YES PLEASE (audiobook) by Amy Poehler

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Published in 2014 by HarperAudio. Read by the author, Amy Poehler. Duration: 7 hours, 31 minutes. Unabridged. Amy Poehler tells about her life in this memoir. She is best known for her work on Saturday Night Live and her starring role in the NBC series Parks and Recreation . I love Parks and Rec so I decided to give her memoir a listen. She starts with her early life, her first jobs, college and finally discusses her pre- SNL career. From time to time she has guest readers come along and contribute audiobook-only material. Seth Meyers was no surprise, but Kathleen Turner, Patrick Stewart and Carol Burnett were. Her parents each read their own short chapters. It gave the audiobook a bit of a podcast feel. Most of the book was quite enjoyable, but there were too many instances of TMI (too much information.) For example, I now know Amy Poehler's feelings about men performing oral sex on her. I didn't need to know that. z The section about SNL was fun. The chapter on  Parks and

ME and EARL and the DYING GIRL (audiobook) by Jesse Andrews

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  Published in 2015 by Listening Library. Read by multiple actors from the 2022 movie adaption of this book. Duration: 6 hours, 9 minutes. Unabridged. Synopsis: Greg is a senior in high school. His plan has been to get along with everyone, be welcomed by every group but avoid being a part of any of them. So far, that has worked out.  His only friend is a kid named Earl. Earl is a rough sort of guy. Greg and Earl don't have a lot in common - they don't even hang out together in school. But, they do share a love of moviemaking. They watch movies, dissect them and even make their own movies.  One day, Greg's mom comes and tells him about a girl he knew in middle school. She had developed leukemia. It's a particularly tough form of leukemia and she is unlikely to live more than a few months. She wants him to befriend Rachel (without really realizing how big of an "ask" this is) and Earl comes along... My review: The author, Jesse Andrews I picked this book based o

HAYDEN'S WORLD: VOLUME 1 (audiobook) by S.D. Falchetti

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  Book published in 2018. Audiobook published in 2023 by S.D. Falchetti. Read by Shamaan Casey. Duration: 7 hours, 59 minutes. Unabridged. Hayden's World: Volume 1 is a collection of 5 short stories in a single "universe" centering around a corporation that is in the forefront in the exploration of our solar system.  Roughly the first half of the book is about top executives of the company and their new drive system that will push a ship to nearly light speed. There are a lot of high-minded speeches about mankind and the need to keep pushing boundaries. When I say speeches, I mean literal speeches lifted from testimony to some sort of U.N. body.  Speeches are not the best way to introduce a book, in my opinion. The first part is just slow. I nearly quit listening to the audiobook multiple times in the first hour or so. The first story has an exciting, game-changing twist at the end that is simply dropped. The last two stories are great examples of hard science fiction in