REVENGE of the TIPPING POINT: OVERSTORIES, SUPERSPREADERS, and the RISE of SOCIAL ENGINEERING (audiobook) by Malcom Gladwell

Published in 2024 by Little, Brown, and Company.
Read by the author, Malcolm Gladwell.
Duration: 8 hours, 25 minutes.
Unabridged.

Malcolm Gladwell delivers another immensely entertaining and informative rambling discussion of, well, so many things in Revenge of the Tipping Point.

Ostensibly, this is a look at the opioid epidemic, but Malcolm Gladwell's style always reminds the reader that the world is inter-related and complicated and so very interesting.

I plowed through this 8 hour audiobook in just a couple of days. I listened whenever I could and, honestly, I forgot that this was supposed to be a book about the opioid crisis during the 2nd hour and I did not remember he directly came back to the topic during hte 7th hour. In the meantime we had discussed medicare fraud in Florida, Cheetahs in zoos, the dangers of monocultures, Los Angeles as the country's epicenter of bank robberies, COVID superspreaders, vehicle emmissions, and more.

It was all so interesting and he does tie it all together. Also, we learn about unintended consequences in the last half hour.

This is my 8th review of a Gladwell book and I rated them all as 4 or 5 star books. I always think hard about listening to a new one because I know I am about to be immersed into a complicated, riveting set of stories and that's a commitment.

I rate this audiobook 5 stars out of 5. It can be found on Amazon.com here: REVENGE of the TIPPING POINT: OVERSTORIES, SUPERSPREADERS, and the RISE of SOCIAL ENGINEERING by Malcolm Gladwell.

TIRED of WINNING: DONALD TRUMP and the END of the GRAND OLD PARTY (audiobook) by Jonathan Karl

 

Published in November of 2023 by Penguin Audio.
Read by the author, Jonathan Karl.
Duration: 8 hours, 32 minutes.
Unabridged.

ABC News reporter Jonathan Karl brings us his third book about Donald Trump as President and as former President.

His first book covered candidate Trump and the first 3 years of the Trump Administration. The second book covered the last year of the Trump Administration with a special focus on all of the "stop the steal" claims. It was called Betrayal: The Final Act of the Trump Show. Too bad it was not in fact Trump's "final act." 

Karl has a long relationship with the former President. He interviewed 5 times before he even decided to officially run for President in the 2016 election. He's interviewed him multiple times since, including for all three of his books. Karl includes actual audio clips from those interviews (questions and answers) for the benefit of those that doubt.

If you think Donald Trump is awesome, this is not the book for you. I'm not going to go into the details because, at this point - after so many years of Trump's shenanigans, those details won't change any minds.

I thought this was an engrossing listen because I am very, very skeptical of anything that the 45th President is involved in. 

I rate this book 5 stars out of 5. It can be found on Amazon.com here:  TIRED of WINNING: DONALD TRUMP and the END of the GRAND OLD PARTY by Jonathan Karl.

MY NAME IS SALLY LITTLE SONG (audiobook) by Brenda Woods

 

Book edition originally published in 2006.
Audiobook published in 2019 by Listening Library.
Read by Asmeret Ghebremichael.
Duration: 3 hours, 0 minutes.
Unabridged.

Synopsis:

This short piece of historical fiction focuses on a slave family in Georgia in the 1790s. The main character is Sally. She has a brother, a mother and a father. The one thing that this family has going for them is that their owners have a policy of not breaking apart families.

That is the policy until relatives of the owners find themselves struggling financially. In a couple of days, Sally and her brother and 3 other slaves are going to be sent to the other plantation to help it get back on its feet again. 

The family decides to run away together rather than be split apart.

After some discussion with a friendly house slave who has done some traveling with the family, they decide not to head north. They haven't seen a map but they know that the trip across northern Georgia, South Carolina, North Carolina, and Maryland to get to Pennsylvania is just too far.

However, rumor has it that if they can make it to Florida (at the time, Florida was owned by Spain), they would be welcome to live with the Seminoles...

My Review:

The author, Brenda Woods

This short book would be an excellent addition to any history classroom or school library. It has compelling characters, provides details but does not wallow in them, and is very honest about early American history from the point of view of slaves and Native Americans. 

There are a variety of characters and they don't all hit the stereotypes. For example, not all of the slaves are sympathetic characters. 

I rate this audiobook 4 stars out of 5. It can be found on Amazon.com here: MY NAME IS SALLY LITTLE SONG by Brenda Woods.

Note: I reviewed this book because I read about it an article about Florida book bans in schools. I checked it out and this teacher doesn't find anything objectionable about this book. Here is a link to another article with a list of 176 books that were banned by a Florida county. 

LIBERTY'S EXILES: AMERICAN LOYALISTS in the REVOLUTIONARY WORLD (audiobook) by Maya Jasanoff

Published by Recorded Books in 2012.
Read by L.J. Ganser.
Duration: 16 hours, 10 minutes.
Unabridged.

In 1783, at the end of the Revolutionary War, Loyalists (Americans who opposed the American Revolution and stayed loyal to Britain) had a choice to make - stay and ride out the anti-Loyalist bias in the United States or move somewhere else.

In the two years between the last major engagement (Yorktown) and the official end of the war and withdrawal of British troops the British decided to evacuate any Loyalists that wanted to go to other parts of the British Empire. One of the biggest advocates of this position was Guy Carleton, the British commander in America after Yorktown who later went on to become the Governor-in-Chief of Canada. He had more to do with what happened in this history than any other single person.

Guy Carleton (1724-1808)

The British government made an effort to make things right for these Loyalists. Not many Loyalists were completely reimbursed, but the fact that an effort was made was extraordinary for the day. In some cases, Loyalists were offered large grants of land, in other cases they were offered smaller grants of land and in other cases they were offered pensions and partial reimbursements for lost property. All of these offers were new innovations and a sign that the British government wished to honor the loyalty they had shown.

Some loyalists wanted nothing more than to start over, some looked to just work themselves up the British societal ladder, some wanted to get away from British society and some looked for a chance to get even with the Americans. 

There was a racial component to this as well. The British had offered freedom for any slaves that left their masters and joined their armed forces. The Americans pressured them to return the runaway slaves (including slaves from George Washington and Thomas Jefferson) but the British refused to go back on their deal with the former slaves as a point of honor. However, those former slaves oftentimes were given less money and less land than white Loyalists when they arrived at their new homes.

The British tried to honor the commitments shown by the Native American allies as well, but not nearly as much. 

Loyalists ended up going all over the empire but mostly to Canada. There were several families that went to Bermuda and Jamaica and back to England itself. Several families of African descent moved to Sierra Leone in Africa as part of an experimental colony. A few went even further to India. 

The section on the Canadian settlement was, at first, interesting but it soon got bogged down. It was all relevant detail, but just too much for me. In fact, that's pretty much my review of the entire book.

I rate this audiobook 3 stars out of 5. It can be found on Amazon.com here: LIBERTY'S EXILES: AMERICAN LOYALISTS in the REVOLUTIONARY WORLD (audiobook) by Maya Jasanoff.

ELEVATION (audiobook) by Stephen King

 

Published in 2018 by Simon and Schuster Audio.
Read by the author, Stephen King
Duration: 3 hours, 46 minutes.
Unabridged.

Stephen King has a long history of publishing collections of short stories. I am usually not a fan of short stories, but I have no problem with a Stephen King short story. I think King is so good at making characters that the reader can identify with in such a short amount of time.

This collection is pretty short - just two short stories. Both feature older men.

The author

In one, we have a man living in Maine with a supernatural problem and also a misunderstanding with his neighbors. This one really feels like two stories, but it was pretty touching.

In the second story, a desperately lonely widower living in the Florida Keys is brought a gift by his older sister to get him up and moving again - a puppy.

These are both good stories - very enjoyable and always with a twist. They were read by Stephen King. It was neither a good thing nor a bad thing - his accent was great with the characters in Maine, but he is a good reader, but not a great one. 

I rate this audiobook 4 stars out of 5. It can be found on Amazon.com here: ELEVATION (audiobook) by Stephen King.

DESERT STAR (Renee Ballard /Harry Bosch mystery) (audiobook) by Michael Connelly

 

Published in November of 2022.
Read by Titus Welliver, Christine Lakin, and Peter Giles.
Duration: 9 hours, 37 minutes.
Unabridged.

Synopsis:

The latest Harry Bosch novel has Bosch returning to work with LAPD as a retired volunteer. Renee Ballard was offered a chance to "write her own ticket" because of her work (and very ugly internal politics) in the last novel.

With the help of a sponsor on the city council, she re-established the cold case unit. It has a shoestring of budget and she is the only full time officer in the unit. Everyone else is a volunteer with different skills - a former prosecutor who helps with search warrants, a former FBI field agent, an expert in making family connections with DNA results, an officer who retired early due to health reasons are part of the team. But, Ballard's biggest catch for the team is her sometime unofficial partner - retired LAPD homicide detective Harry Bosch.

Bosch may be old (70+) but he is up on the current technology and trends and he makes a big impact right away with some new ideas to apply to old case files. It's a good thing because that sponsor from the city council wants the unit to solve a cold case from his past...

My review:

One of the things I like best about this series is the fact that Michael Connelly has decided to let Harry Bosch age. Some characters, like James Bond, don't age. That has advantages in a thriller - the character can take a punch, he can run, he can romance the pretty girl.

But, over time it doesn't make sense.

More importantly, to me anyway, when the character doesn't age it is saying that old characters don't have much to offer if they can't run fast and beat up a room full of bad guys. Bosch has got a bum leg, an old Jeep and is a bit of a grump. But, he is full of drive, has no bigger ambitions than solving the next murder case and has lots and lots of spare time. 

The first 80% is a top notch police procedural. Some of the best Connelly has written. The last 20% of the book is good, too, but it is marred by a nonsensical plot point (see spoiler "note" down below) that makes it seem a bit more contrived.

It is clear that Connelly has put Bosch on a timer of sorts and this is one of the last Bosch books. I can respect that - Bosch books have been coming out for the last 30 years and Connelly is 66 years old. He still has time to end the series the way he wants to rather than have it go on in substitute author limbo like has happened to so many other authors like Robert B. Parker and his Spenser and Jesse Stone novels. 

Fans of Harry Bosch should not mourn yet. This book clearly is the first part of a two part series within the series. Bosch and his half brother Mickey Haller have a case to work on.

I rate this book 4 stars out of 5. It can be found on Amazon.com here: DESERT STAR (Renee Ballard /Harry Bosch mystery) (audiobook) by Michael Connelly.

*****Spoiler note*****

Harry heads off literally across the country from L.A. to Key West to confront a suspect without a cell phone. His cell phone is stuck in a car impound lot because his car was part of a crime scene. Throughout the whole book he has been texting, emailing, filming and recording with his phone. He is not a stereotypical old guy who has no idea how to use his phone and doesn't see a use for it. 

Connelly gives an explanation, but I think that the character Harry Bosch would have picked up a burner phone, got hold of Ballard and had her pass the phone number on to others while he was flying to Florida.

PRONTO (Raylan Givens #1)(audiobook) by Elmore Leonard

 

Originally published in 1993.
Published by HarperAudio in 2010.
Read by Alexander Adams.
Duration: 5 hours, 54 minutes.
Unabridged.

I am a big fan of the TV series Justified which features a character named Raylan Givens. I stumbled across this audiobook and was pleased to see that Elmore Leonard had done more than create a character for a TV show - he had written a whole series of books about that character.

Synopsis:

Pronto starts out in Miami and is mostly about Harry Arno, a man who runs an illegal bookkeeping operation (just to be clear, he takes illegal bets, he does do illegal accounting). Harry is ready to retire but is unclear how he will extract himself from the organized crime syndicate that "protects" his operation and likes their 50% take. Or...maybe it's less than that. Turns out Harry has been cooking the books for years and has been taking a cut out of the mob boss's cut for years, maybe even decades.

A U.S. Attorney has decided to take down the organized crime boss that Harry reports to. The U.S. Attorney assumes that Harry is basically honest with his organized crime boss and decides to pressure Harry by setting him up to look like he's skimming money from the organized crime boss's cut. The idea is to make the crime boss mad and Harry will run to the U.S. Attorney's office for protection in exchange for testifying in court.

U.S. Marshal Raylan Givens thinks that this is a raw deal so he gives Harry a warning. Harry pretends to go along and agrees to go into hiding if Raylan Givens is the one that takes him in. Raylan agrees and Harry ditches him in an airport and flies away to Italy. The U.S. Attorney decides it wasn't much of a loss, but Raylan can't stand the injury to his pride of having someone in his custody escape so he takes time off of work and goes to Italy to find Harry...

My review:

I was hoping for better. I rate this audiobook 3 stars out of 5, so it's not horrible - but I was hoping for better. 

Ezra Pound (1885-1972)

Most of the book is about Harry Arno. The second theme of the book is the American expatriate poet Ezra Pound. Pound had lived in the town that Harry Arno fled to and there are plenty of quotes from his poems and discussions about him throughout the last third of the book. Pound was anti-Semitic and openly supported the German Nazis and the Italian Fascists during World War II. Clearly, Elmore Leonard was interested in Pound and decided to work him into the book.

Unfortunately, this felt more like filler rather than anything that added to the story in any sort of meaningful way and I think it hurt the book quite a bit. I doubt I will be moving on to the second book in the series.

This audiobook can be found on Amazon.com here: Pronto (Raylan Givens #1) by Elmore Leonard.

A VOYAGE LONG and STRANGE: REDISCOVERING the NEW WORLD (audiobook) by Tony Horwitz

 

Published in 2008 by Random House Audio.
Read by John H. Mayer.
Duration: 17 hours, 16 minutes.
Unabridged.

In A Voyage Long and Strange Tony Horwitz set out to fill in a big gap in his understanding of American history. He vaguely knew that the Vikings arrived in the New World and did something or other and he knew about Columbus' voyage in 1492 and he knew about the Pilgrims and Plymouth Rock and the First Thanksgiving in 1621, but what happened in between? Also, what about the people that were already here?

Horwitz decided to find out what he didn't know and this book is a combined travelogue and history lesson. He starts with the small failed Viking settlement in Newfoundland, Canada, moves on to the Dominican Republic to learn about Columbus and comes to the United States to look at the first Spanish explorers and settlements in New Mexico and Florida. He also looks at the epic and eventually tragic expeditions of exploration that the Spanish sent out. Finally, he turns toward the early English attempts to explore and build colonies. 

A reconstruction of what a Viking longhouse in
Newfoundland may have looked like.

Typically, Horwitz starts out a section of his book by looking at the geographical area he is visiting as it is nowadays. He finds a variety of different locals to interview and lets them supplement the history he presents. Many times those local experts get very philosophical about how the past has influenced their homes.

Horwitz's roundabout way of discussing the history is almost always interesting - usually extremely interesting. However, the section on the Dominican Republic and a museum he visited there was too long and too repetitive. But, he bounces back from that and does a splendid job from that point forward.

I rate this audiobook 5 stars out of 5. It can be found on Amazon.com here: 

A VOYAGE LONG and STRANGE: REDISCOVERING the NEW WORLD by Tony Horwitz.

THE UNDOCUMENTED AMERICANS (audiobook) by Karla Cornejo Villavicencio

 

Published in 2020 by Random House Audio.

Read by the author, Karla Cornejo Villavicencio.

Duration: 4 hours, 53 minutes.

Unabridged.

Villavicencio is a "Dreamer", also known as a DACA kid. DACA is the program started by President Obama to deal with immigrants who came to the United States illegally as children. Generally speaking, the only country they've ever known is the United States and they had no say in immigrating to the United States. Congress refused to deal with this situation so President Obama created a program through executive orders. This meant that when President Trump came to office he was able to undo a lot of this plan with another executive order. 

Villavicencio's very personal look at the DACA program and the general mess of our immigration policy in The Undocumented Americans was inspired by the election of Donald Trump, but it was not what I was hoping for when I started listening to this audiobook. I was really hoping for policy analysis with a healthy bit of personal stories and interviews tossed in. 

Instead, this book is very much the reverse of the book that I was looking for. It was more of an extended highly personal rant about several immigration-related topics. Many of the (somewhat fictionalized, according to the author) stories she tells have compelling features, but I found the author's style to be too personal, as though the entire screwed-up immigration system was designed just to make her miserable, like most things in life. 

The author

Villavicencio is such a large part of this book that you literally cannot separate the author from the message or the stories she tells. I found her to be so annoying and almost intentionally unhappy that I was forcing myself to read the book, like it was some sort of assigned text. This was especially annoying because I really did agree with her at least 80-90% of the time. 

I rate this audiobook 2 stars out of 5.

It can be found on Amazon.com here: THE UNDOCUMENTED AMERICANS (audiobook) by Karla Cornejo Villavicencio.

OBVIOUSLY: STORIES from MY TIMELINE (audiobook) by Akilah Hughes

Published by Listening Library in September of 2019.
Read by the author, Akilah Hughes.
Duration: 4 hours, 58 minutes.
Unabridged. 

To be fair to Akilah Hughes, I had never heard of her before I heard her interview on NPR promoting this book. The interview was good enough that I got the book. If you are not familiar with her, she is a comedy writer and YouTuber with a pretty good following.

I really enjoyed the first half of Obviously - the part that talks about her early life. It was fun in tone and sometimes seriously funny, except for the story of her horrible 5th grade teacher. She tells her story in an episodic manner - by theme. Sometimes, the stories overlap and sometimes she (always confusingly, at first) tells them backwards, such as when she detailed her struggles with weight towards the end of the book.

But, when she makes her move to New York, the story changes its tone. It becomes a lot more about name dropping and telling stories about people she is angry with (personally and professionally, but mostly personally because she makes her professional life very personal). One of the most bizarre stories was the one in which she and a friend get into a friendship-killing fight over the relative talent of Rihanna. I like pop culture, but I have never been that into any single pop culture figure. I can't relate.

The audiobook was read by Akilah Hughes, which makes sense - she has a ton of practical acting and speaking experience. She did a good job as a reader.

I rate this audiobook 3 stars out of 5. I give 4 stars for the first part, 2 stars for the last part for an average of 3 stars. It can be found on Amazon.com here: OBVIOUSLY: STORIES from MY TIMELINE by Akilah Hughes.

TRIPWIRE (Jack Reacher #3) by Lee Child

First published in 1999.

Tripwire is the third book in publishing order in the Jack Reacher series (the sixth in chronological order - as of right now).

Jack Reacher starts out in the Florida Keys. He is digging swimming pools by hand during the day, working as a bouncer in a strip club at night and drinking lots of bottled water. It is mindless work, but he is getting enjoying that aspect of it. Then, a man from New York City comes to the bar where he is drinking a bottled water and asks if anyone knows Jack Reacher.

Reacher lies and says he never heard of the guy.

Composition with Red Blue and Yellow 
by Piet Mondrian. Reacher's favorite piece of art,
according to this novel.

Two more guys from New York City find Reacher at the strip club. They are different than the first guy - pushier and rougher.  Reacher has to get physical with them. When he finds the first guy dead on the street, he decides to head off to New York City to see if he can figure out who is looking for him.

What he finds, surprises him and takes him back in time in more than one way...

This is an early Reacher novel and it doesn't have the normal rhythms that you find later on (as of today there are 24 books and 18 short stories in the series). It's a good action novel, but it feels a little different than the rest of the series.

I rate this book 4 stars out of 5. This book can be found on Amazon.com here: Tripwire by Lee Child. 

BESSIE STRINGFIELD: TALES of the TALENTED TENTH, no. 2 (graphic novel) by Joel Christian Gill

Published in 2016 by Fulcrum Publishing.

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.

Bessie Stringfield (1911 or 1912 to 1993) was a remarkable woman by anyone's standard. Throw in the tough Jim Crow laws of the day and she is more than worthy of the accolades she has received from various motorcycle-based organizations.

The motorcycle was her true passion. At the age of 19 she received a motorcycle as a gift and hit the road for the better part of twenty years. She traveled, she raced and she performed in carnivals. Sometimes, she spread out the map of the country, tossed a penny up in the air and then headed off to the location where the penny landed.

It was a tough time for African Americans so she hit the road with a copy of the "Green Book" - a guide to restaurants, hotels and gas stations that welcomed African Americans. The book addresses racial issues in a couple of clever ways. Whenever the word n***** is used, a stylized caricature of a man in "blackface" is inserted. Secondly, whenever Stringfield is confronted by racists, they are partially or completely illustrated as crows with angry red eyes. There are crows driving trucks, crows telling her to go other places, crows wearing KKK outfits.

The author, Joel Christian Gill

Stringfield ends up using her motorcycle skills as a courier for the military during World War II.  After the war, she rides outside of the United States as well, but eventually settles down in Miami, Florida. She was called the Motorcycle Queen of Miami.

As a teacher, I love alternate ways to tell history. Breaking away from the little biographies with grainy black and white photos is a nice change of pace. This little "comic book" introduces a lot of heavy topics - gender stereotypes, adoption, racism and the responsibility of people in places of leadership to confront the big issues of the day (Stringfield sat on the sidelines during the civil rights struggles of the 1950's and 1960's). All of that in a comic book. You could trick students into talking about all sorts of big concepts without them even knowing what was going on...

I rate this book 4 stars out of 5. It can be found on Amazon.com here: Bessie Stringfield: Tales of the Talented Tenth, no. 2. 

To see my review of another book in this series click HERE.

STRANGER: EL DESAFÍO de un INMIGRANTE LATINO en la ERA de TRUMP (en español) by Jorge Ramos

Published by Vintage Español in 2018.

If you are not a viewer of Univision, you may be unfamiliar with Jorge Ramos. He is a news anchor/reporter for the network. I knew Ramos for one reason - he was literally thrown out of a major press conference during the Iowa Caucus season for asking then-candidate Donald J. Trump too many pointed questions about the centerpiece of his campaign - the wall. 

Ramos (on the left with no tie) trying to ask
then-Candidate Trump a few tough questions
during that Iowa press conference. 

Ramos was born and raised in Mexico City, but moved to America for additional journalistic training and in search of the opportunity to be more free in his journalistic practice. He kind of lucked into broadcast journalism but he has run with it and done quite well for himself. He has become an American citizen as well.

Ramos addresses the press conference story right away. It's not as dramatic as it looked on TV, because the future President did let him come back into the press conference and did a private interview with Ramos afterwards. This moment set a couple of precedents, however. Trump and the press have had a rocky relationship, to put it mildly. Also, Ramos brought up a great number of statistics to the candidate and he ignored the facts, preferring to go with his gut. 

Another precedent was set as well. While Ramos was cooling his heels outside of the press conference, a Trump supporter, complete with a red "Make America Great Again" hat, told Ramos: "Get out of my country!" Ramos informed him that he was an American citizen, only to be told: "Whatever!" For the first time in years, Ramos felt like he truly was a stranger in his adopted country, thus the title of the book.

Ramos builds on this last incident for a while, discussing how the President's behavior and commentary has emboldened many to act out, sensing a change in the political climate. He also discusses Civil Rights inequities for Hispanics, his own mostly positive experiences and how the current political climate is disorienting for a man that has lived more than half of his life in America and thought that he knew it well. Personally, I think he was living in a Blue State bubble, working out of Miami and New York City and California, but I live in a Red State that was one of the very first to be called for Mr. Trump on election night.

Ramos also talks about how he lives in two worlds - holding dual American and Mexican citizenship. He frequently covers Mexico for his network and spends entire days speaking only Spanish or only English. Most of his family is in Mexico, but his children were born and raised in the United States. Ramos also includes several essays that he has written for other publications on this theme. For those that think Ramos is only critical of President Trump and nothing else, he is just as critical of the (now) outgoing President of Mexico.

Ramos includes an extensive set of endnotes.

The edition I read was in Spanish. It's been a while since I read a book in Spanish, but Ramos writes in a clear style that I had no problem reading. There is an English translation of this book available as well.

I rate this book 4 stars out of 5 and it can be found on Amazon.com here: STRANGER: EL DESAFÍO de un INMIGRANTE LATINO en la ERA de TRUMP (en español) by Jorge Ramos.

CAMINO ISLAND: A NOVEL (audiobook) by John Grisham

Published by Random House Audio in 2017.
Read by January LaVoy.
Duration: 8 hours, 45 minutes.
Unabridged.

Princeton University in New Jersey owns the original manuscripts of all five of F. Scott Fitzgerald's novels. Camino Island starts out strong with an elaborate heist of these manuscripts and eventually ends up with an elaborate scheme to find the presumed purchaser of these priceless, purloined compositions in Camino Island, Florida.

This audiobook was a great example of great characters but a really loose story that really doesn't hang together too well. It's almost as if John Grisham had no real concept where the book was going so he started moving one way and then changed his mind and just left his plot hanging while he went a new way - again and again and again.

The result is a lot of interesting characters with a plot that goes all over the place and finally ends up with a pretty boring ending followed up by a nice little turn of the plot at the end. To be honest, I think Grisham wanted to write about a little island he vacationed on and have an excuse to write about sea turtles, authors, book tours, booksellers and the publishing industry.

It's a pleasant enough book, but hardly anything exceptional - especially not for someone who has written books that have struck me hard to the core in the past (A Time to Kill, A Painted House, Gray Mountain).

The audiobook was read by January LaVoy who does a great job with some accents but has a disappearing/re-appearing Southern accent with the main character, an author who grew up in Memphis and Florida and lives in North Carolina when the story starts.

I rate this audiobook 3 stars out of 5 and it can be found on Amazon.com here: Camino Island: A Novel by John Grisham.

DEAR BOB and SUE: ONE COUPLE'S JOURNEY THROUGH the NATIONAL PARKS (audiobook) by Matt Smith and Karen Smith

Published by Tantor Audio in 2017.
Read by David Colacci and Susan Ericksen
Duration: 14 hours, 48 minutes
Unabridged

Matt and Karen Smith decided to visit every National Park in the U.S. National Park System. They decided to only visit the 58 sites that are actually named "National Park". This is important because there are over 400 sites in the park system that have titles like National Monument, National Lakeshore and National Recreational Area - so many that it is doubtful that any one person has been to them all. As if to prove this point, just after the Smiths published the first edition to this book, a new National Park was added to the system and they had to go visit it and update their own book just to keep their own record intact. 

The book is written as a series of e-mails back to their sometimes traveling partners Bob and Sue. Bob and Sue never actually accompany them on one of these trips. They alternate back and forth narrating their adventures in the order that they visited them. 

By necessity, the visits to each of these parks is merely a cursory visit and not detailed description of the park. When you do the math, it works out in this audiobook to about 15 minutes per park, minus stories of their travels to and from the parks. Some get more than that - the Grand Canyon and Carlsbad Caverns come to mind. 

Have you ever traveled with another couple? Even if you are best friends, there will be times when you are sick of them and their way of doing things. While I generally found the book to be interesting, there were times that I grew weary of traveling with the Smiths and I put the audiobook on hold for a while, like the time when Karen Smith rinses mud and horse manure off of her hiking boots in the hotel shower and then complains that the shower drain runs slow. Sometimes, their snide comments got a little old but, in the end, I enjoyed this trip through all of the parks. It made me want to get back on the road with the family and start seeing more of the country again.

The audiobook was read by David Colacci and Susan Ericksen. I thought they did a very convincing job as the voices of these two travelers.

I rate this audiobook 4 stars out of 5.

This audiobook can be found on Amazon.com here: DEAR BOB and SUE: ONE COUPLE'S JOURNEY THROUGH the NATIONAL PARKS.

FORT SUMTER 1861 by Albert Castel

Originally published in 1976.
Reprinted and sold by Eastern Acorn Press through the National Park Service.

Something like 24 years ago I went with to Gettysburg with a wife and a friend for a weekend trip. On that trip I bought this little book. It sat on my shelf unread for more than 2 decades. No reason for that - I am an insatiable student of the war. I have reviewed 91 books on the subject before this one. But, it sat there unread until now.

Fort Sumter 1861 is a readable and quite thorough history of the events leading up the famous Firing upon Fort Sumter. The best feature of the small book (fifty 8 1/2 x 11 inch pages) is that it doesn't just tell about Fort Sumter in South Carolina, but also about Fort Pickens in Florida. The book details how Sumter was part of a larger policy. Most histories separate the two of them and that is a mistake.

The book also describes the duplicitous actions of Secretary of State William Seward throughout the affair. Seward seriously doubted the abilities of President Lincoln and tried to conduct his own private negotiations with South Carolina to end the crisis. On top of that, he countermanded some of Lincoln's own directives when it came to relieving Fort Sumter.   

The expected stuff is included as well - who fired the first shot, when the fort was surrendered and so on. This was a $1.25 well-spent 24 years ago. 

I rate this book 5 stars out of 5.

Fort Sumter 1861 can be found on Amazon.com here.

DEAD LIKE ME (Detective Kate Springer #1) (audiobook) by Kelly Miller

A Review of the Audiobook

Audiobook published in February of 2017 by Kelly Miller.

Originally published as a book in 2013.

Read by Angel Clark.

Duration: 7 hours, 34 minutes

Unabridged

Dead Like Me features Detective Kate Springer. Springer is not a perfect cop - and she's not the movie stereotype "rogue cop who doesn't play by the rules." She's a solid detective in Tampa, Florida with her own personal struggles.

She and her partner are assigned a murder case in which a young lady is found strangled to death in the back yard of an abandoned house. Springer is struck by how much this young victim looks like she did at her age. The case triggers a flood of memories of her own difficult childhood in which she was sexually abused for years by an older neighbor who was her babysitter.

As the case unfolds her the similarities between this case and her own experiences seem to get stronger and stronger, but is increasingly unsure if this is because they really are that similar or if she has just lost the proper perspective.

And then she gets the shock of her life...

Too many detective novels end up having the detective taking on a massive conspiracy such as an entire drug cartel, a terrorist organization or a plot to take down the government. This novel does the opposite - the detective takes on a case and ends up confronting the demons within. In the end, I found this to be a much more interesting take.

The audiobook was read by Angel Clark. Clark's choice to read her internal monologue with a much different voice than her speaking voice was jarring. I especially did not care for her internal voice - it sounded like a parody of the stereotypical NPR reading voice. This back and forth between the two voices made up the greater part of the story and I never got used to it.

I rate this audiobook 4 stars out of 5,

This audiobook can be found on Amazon.com here: Dead Like Me by Kelly Miller. 

NOT JUST ANOTHER WAR STORY (audiobook) by Wayne G. MacDowell

Originally published in October of 2014.

Audiobook published in February of 2016
Read by Tom Lennon
Duration: 18 hours, 24 minutes
Unabridged

I have read or listened to a few books about the experiences of fighter and bomber pilots in World War II and those books drew me to this one.

The main character of Not Just Another War Story is Steve Carmichael. Steve grew up on a ranch near Orlando, Florida and was a baseball player at the University of Florida.  The Detroit Tigers are interested in him but, as a kid he learned how to fly a rattletrap biplane that his father purchased for a song and refurbished and Steve decides to join the Army Air Corps as a pilot.

He becomes a B-17 Flying Fortress pilot and is shipped off to England in 1943. The story follows his original crew that all trained together as they try to work their way through their required 30 missions. The descriptions of everything to do with the airplanes and the combat missions in this book are absolutely excellent. I felt like I was riding along with the crew and I was invested in those characters.

But, this book is bogged down by so much pointless detail when they are not in the airplanes that it became a chore to listen to. In a print book you can easily skim over excessive description of breakfast after breakfast after breakfast (the level of detail gets down to the jelly that everyone had on their toast at the table) but you can't skim in an audiobook.

 Uneventful trips are described in detail. Rather than saying something like "and they made it back to the hotel, had a nightcap and went to bed" you get 5 minutes of description of the car, the hotel lobby, the alcohol and a discussion of why everyone is tired. The reader knows why they are tired - we just read about it (or heard about it, in my case).

Rick Steves

It is clear that MacDowell did an extraordinary amount of research for this book and that is nothing but commedable. However, the non-combat scenes tried my patience because it felt like MacDowell was trying to incorporate EVERYTHING he learned about the various locales into the book. Every time a character encounters a new town, a new building or, sometimes, even a new room the reader gets an extensive history lesson (this church/town/castle was built in....burned down in...and re-built in...). It was like Rick Steves from the PBS travel show was trying to tell me a war story and give me a tour of London at the same time.

A decent editor could knock 3 or 4 hours from this story and made it nothing but better. As philosopher Blaise Pascal stated in a 1657 letter, "I have made this longer than usual because I have not had time to make it shorter." 

Tom Lennon read this audiobook. There were a wide variety of accents to be mastered for this book and his Belgian, French, German, southern and Maine accents were excellent. Any complaints I have about the audiobook are not the fault of the reader.

I rate this audiobook 3 stars out of 5.

This audiobook can be found on Amazon.com here: Not Just Another War Story.

Note: I was provided a copy of this audiobook in exchange for an honest review.

JIM BECKWOURTH: NEGRO MOUNTAIN MAN by Harold W. Felton

Originally printed in 1966

As you can tell by the title, Jim Beckwourth: Negro Mountain Man has a hopelessly out-of-date title. When it was written in 1966, the term "negro" was still considered to be acceptable, of course.

Jim Beckwourth (1798-1866) was born in Virginia and moved out to the frontier, roughly in the St. Louis area, before he moved out on his own. He apprenticed as a blacksmith but didn't really pursue that career. Instead, he set off as part of larger expeditions and quickly earned a reputation for being tough, fair and honest. And, perhaps most important, he was considered to be dependable in an environment where almost nothing was dependable.

Beckwourth's skin color did not seem to hurt him any as he trapped beaver, scouted for military expeditions and explored the American West. He even served in the Second Seminole War in Florida. It seems that real talent was valued a lot more than a man's race.

But, the bulk of this book deals with Beckwourth's time with the Crow Indians. He claimed that he became a chief and told many tales of his adventures among the Crow. 

Jim Beckwourth

Felton goes out of his way to be fair to Beckwourth in a time when the idea of racial equality and African-American heroes could be controversial. This makes Felton's running commentary on Native Americans all the more jarring. He calls them "redskins" (p. 36), "squaws" (p. 43), "thieving and murderous Indians" (p.55) and more. Once again, this book is a product of its time and cannot be judged by modern standards of acceptable speech, but it was jarring. Be prepared if you read the book.

This book can be found on Amazon.com here: Jim Beckwourth: Negro Mountain Man.

 I rate this book 4 stars out of 5 while issuing no judgment on the racial commentary for reasons listed above.

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

Published in 2015 by HighBridge, a division of Recorded Books.
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 SUV) only to have it last for about 5 seconds. 0 for 2 so far.

The next four stories were better, the best being a story about tool-using animals, although the story of dolphins recognizing the calls of other dolphins that they hadn't seen for years was certainly heart-warming.

The rest of the collection is mostly like that. A lot of ho-hum stories with the theme of animals with the occasional good story. The story of a Florida sea turtle who was accidentally carried across the Atlantic by a ship was cute and ended well but hardly memorable. A song written for Lonesome George, a last-of-his-kind tortoise was cute at first but I was so glad when it ended.

Really, we got an F?

I have listened to at least seven of the audiobooks in this series and they all suffer from the up-and-down quality but these just seemed to be almost universally so-so. Perhaps the best story was an interview with one of the creators of the humor blog "Animal Review" in which the authors grade animal species from F- to A+. They give Pandas an F for a variety of reasons that make sense once you read them and the octopus gets an A because it's like a "superhero". Unfortunately, the interviewer doesn't go along with the joke very well and drags it down. I felt like she was just getting in the way of a good joke. Surely, NPR must have someone with a sense of humor, right?

So, for a variety of reasons I just have to give this collection 3 stars out of 5.

This collection can be found on Amazon here: 
NPR Driveway Moments: More about Animals: Radio Stories That Won't Let You Go