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CHE: A REVOLUTIONARY LIFE (graphic novel) by Jon Lee Anderson (author) and Jose Hernandez (illustrator)

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Originally published in 2016. English translation published in 2018 by Penguin Press. Before reading this massive 421 page graphic novel, I knew relatively little about Che Guevara (1928-1967.) I knew that he was from South America, he was famous for his part in the Cuban Revolution and that he died trying to lead a revolution in Bolivia. And, of course, I knew him from the famous picture. This graphic novel filled in a lot of blanks for me. It is a friendly biography of Che but doesn't glorify him. When I got to the end I was struck by how much of a failure Che actually was after he left Cuba. He tried to replicate the success of the Cuban Revolution but he could not. It's hard to tell if counter-revolutionary measures from the governments he was trying to overthrow (and the U.S.) were simply more successful than Batista had been in Cuba or if they were missing an additional spark like the Castro brothers had provided. The graphic novel was put together well. It had no confusi...

LIGHT IT UP (Peter Ash #3) (audiobook) by Nick Petrie

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  Published in 2018 by Penguin Audio. Read by Stephen Mendel Duration: 10 hours, 44 minutes. Unabridged Synopsis: The third entry in the Peter Ash series begins with Peter Ash working on a team rebuilding hiking trails in Oregon and writing long heartfelt letters back to his love interest from the second book. He makes friends with an older man named Henry (a Vietnam vet, as opposed to Ash being a vet of Iran and Afghanistan.) Henry gets a call from his daughter in Colorado and asks for Henry's help with her business that provides security for some of the legal marijuana businesses. Turns out that these businesses have to operate completely in cash because marijuana is still illegal so far as the federal government is concerned so banks cannot take credit cards, debit cards or even deposits because it would be considered helping to traffic drugs. This means that there are shipments of pot and shipments of cash coming and going and that can attract bad guys. An entire security crew ...

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...

THE ENIGMA AFFAIR: A NOVEL (audiobook) by Charlie Lovett

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  Published by Blackstone Publishing in September of 2022. Read by Nicole Zanzerella. Duration: 12 hours, 6 minutes. Unabridged. Synopsis: An Enigma Machine from World War II. Patton Harcourt is a very small town librarian in North Carolina. One morning, while cooking in the kitchen, a sniper round comes through her window and nearly hits her. She reacts well (thanks to her previous career in the military) and finds a stranger at her door.  He is not the sniper, but he is an assassin that was hired to kill another person in town. Against her better judgment, she joins with the assassin to elude the sniper team. All of that happens in the first 10 minutes or so of this audiobook. From there, they discover a handmade copy of World War II Enigma machine (the British machine that broke the German secret codes) and are off to confront modern-day Neo-Nazis... My Review: This book was certainly action-packed, extremely fast-paced ,and had some good moments. But, it also had some prac...

THE GREAT GATSBY (audiobook) by F. Scott Fitzgerald

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  Originally published in 1925. This audiobook version was published by HarperAudio in 2004. Read by Tim Robbins. Duration: 5 hours, 3 minutes. Unabridged.   Way back in the 1980s, I read The Great Gatsby . I remembered very little about it except that a rich guy was pining over a woman throughout the book. I also misremembered a few plot points. For example, I remembered Gatsby's car being dumped in a swimming pool or maybe in the bay. I have been reminded of the book on a regular basis because I teach in a high school and the book is read yearly by some English class or another. I usually ask a student if they like the book and tell them that I read it in high school. If they ask them if I liked it, I usually respond that I barely remember the plot except for "rich man - sad." When my daughter read it in her high school English class, I decided that it was time to re-visit the book.  Synopsis: Nick Carraway is newly arrived in New York City. He is a World War I veteran ...

PLAYER PIANO by Kurt Vonnegut

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Originally published in 1952. Synopsis: Paul Proteus is the director of the Ilium Works in New York State in an alternate timeline to our current one. It is roughly the 1950's after yet another World War.  That war taught the engineers to trust mechanization and the government to continue the central planning model that won the war (a more extreme model of the system the real United States used during World War II.) In the Ilium works there are multiple factory buildings full of machines, but there are no people because the whole thing is automated. Proteus and the other engineers replaced all of the people with machines in the name of efficiency. Even the best human workers make mistakes or get an illness and miss work or, eventually, die.  The machines don't have that problem. They work and work and work until the day they are replaced with even faster machines. Kurt Vonnegut (1922-2007) in 1952 This is the source of the title, Player Piano . A player piano plays itself than...

JOURNEY to STAR WARS: THE FORCE AWAKENS: SHATTERED EMPIRE (graphic novel) by Greg Rucka and James Robinson

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  Published in 2016 by Marvel Enterprises. Illustrated by Marco Checchetto, Angel Unzueta, Emilio Laiso, and Tony Harris This is an attempt to bridge some of the space in the Star Wars story line between  Episode VI: Return of the Jedi and Episode VII: The Force Awakens . It starts (oddly, in my mind) at the beginning of the last big battle over the second Death Star in Return of the Jedi and introduces Poe Dameron's parents. His mother is a pilot who flew in the attack on the second Death Star and his father was in the ground forces that fought alongside Han Solo.  There is plenty of action, but I found the art did a "meh" job of conveying the action of a space battle and there were lots and lots of them. The story really depended a lot on space fighting action and was pretty shallow. I did enjoy the last story. It was done by a different artist, written by a different author, and is not connected to the main story line. It features C-3P0 and is actually touching. ...

THE LAST SAXON KING: A JUMP in TIME NOVEL, BOOK ONE (audiobook) by Andrew Varga

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  Published by Imbrifex Books in March of 2023. Read by Mark Sanderlin. Duration: 8 hours, 49 minutes. Unabridged. Synopsis: Dan Renfrew is a self-described homeschooled nerd and his life has been turned upside down. He watched his father get stabbed by a stranger who invaded their house and he has no idea if he is even alive.  Now, thanks to a magical device, Dan is in Medieval England and caught up in an army on the move. He learns that his father is a "time jumper" - men tasked to fix glitches in time and make sure the timeline plays out the way it is supposed to. The year is 1066 - just a few days before King Harold Godwinson meets and defeats one of the last Viking invasions of England at the Battle of Stamford Bridge. Even more importantly, King Harold will be forced to meet the forces of William, the Duke of Normandy in just a few days and will be defeated at the Battle of Hastings. But, something is wrong and even though Dan has almost no idea what to do, he has to ma...

STORM WATCH (Joe Pickett #23) (audiobook) by C.J. Box

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  Published by Recorded Books in February of 2023. Read by David Chandler. Duration: 9 hours, 4 minutes. Unabridged. Synopsis: Game Warden Joe Pickett is out in a snowstorm chasing down an elk with a broken leg. An out of state driver plowed into an elk herd while consulting the GPS app on his phone and an injured elk somehow limped away.  Joe and his dog Daisy are on a big ranch owned by an out of state multi-millionaire trying to track down the elk to put it out of its misery. Joe finds the elk, an SUV from a different part of the state, a metal building that is very out of place in this out of the way valley, and a dead man.  Joe starts to nose around and gets shot at twice by snowmobilers at the top of the valley and that's just the beginning of his troubles... My review: For the past 13 years I have been happily reviewing C.J. Box's novels. I went back and looked at those reviews and bit-time politics has been a part of them since almost the beginning. His early book...

THE ADVENTURES of HUCKLEBERRY FINN (audiobook) by Mark Twain

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Originally published in 1884 (U.K.) and 1885 (U.S.) This audiobook version published in 2008 by Tantor Audio. Read by William Dufris. Duration: 9 hours, 44 minutes. Unabridged. I would feel silly writing a synopsis of this book. This is the book that Ernest Hemingway said is the source of all modern American literature. It is almost universally recognized as not only "a" Great American Novel, but is oftentimes acclaimed as "THE" Great American Novel. So, I will skip all of that discussion and just move on to a review of the audiobook presentation and what I thought of the book. The audiobook reader was William Dufris (1958-2020),  a celebrated voice over actor and the reader of dozens and dozens of audiobooks. He did a fantastic job of creating voice after voice after voice. It was quite impressive. An original illustration by E.W. Kemble from the 1884 printing of this book As for the novel, well that was less impressive than I remembered. I read this book in eleme...

OF BOYS and MEN: WHY the MODERN MALE IS STRUGGLING, WHY IT MATTERS, and WHAT to DO ABOUT IT (audiobook) by Richard V. Reeves

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Published in September of 2022 by Blackstone Publishing. Read by the author, Richard V. Reeves. Duration: 6 hours, 55 minutes. Unabridged. Men, as a group, are struggling in today's economy. The average male's income has falling in inflation-adjusted terms, especially so when you factor out upper class and upper middle class men. Men are more likely to be arrested, be addicts, be homeless, and more likely to succeed at killing themselves. Boys are struggling in today's educational system. They are far more likely to be suspended, expelled or placed in a special education program. They are far less likely to graduate from high school. They far less likely to attempt any sort of post-secondary education (a majority of all college students are female) or training and far less likely to complete that training or degree - even in the rare situations where the post-secondary training and/or education are essentially free. Reeves, an economist with the Brookings Institutions, sees...

SUCKER'S PORTFOLIO (kindle) by Kurt Vonnegut

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Published in 2012 by Amazon Publishing. Amazon collected 6 short stories, 1 essay and 1 unfinished sci-fi story and added yet another collection to the Vonnegut library. Kurt Vonnegut (1922-2007) started writing during the Golden Age of sci-fi, when magazines were filling their pages with short stories. Some of these are sci-fi, some are just little human stories.  Indianapolis native quoting fellow Hoosier author  James Whitcomb Riley's poem "Little Orphan Annie" I particularly enjoyed the first story, called "Between Timid and Timbuktu." It is a "Twilight Zone" type of story that I found satisfying in a gruesome sort of way. I also enjoyed the title story. It actually had a surprise twist that was pretty much out of character for a Vonnegut story.  The seventh entry is an essay from 1992. Vonnegut was a prodigious writer of essays in the latter half of his career. I generally am more of a fan of his caustic and insightful essays than his fiction and ...

SHADOWS REEL (Joe Picket #22) (audiobook) by C.J. Box

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  Published in 2022 by Recorded Books. Read by David Chandler. Duration: 9 hours, 4 minutes. Unabridged. Synopsis: Game Warden Joe Pickett investigates a report of a dead elk. Fearing that it is the victim of a botched attempt at poaching, he investigates. Instead, he finds a burned corpse and falls headlong into another murder investigation. Meanwhile, Joe's wife Marybeth, the director of the local library discovers an odd package left at the library with connections to a prominent Nazi from World War II. And...Nate Romanowski is in Denver hunting down an old enemy during the midst of an Antifa/BLM riot. My review: This is a book series about a game warden. Oftentimes, he is joined by a former special forces guy who is so into nature that he used to stand naked in a stream of water for hours at a time to get the feel of a river and its entire ecosystem - from the slime at the bottom to the fish to the birds that swoop down to the beavers that dam it up. Antifa protest in Denver Th...

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

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Published by Hourly History in January of 2023. Hourly History  publishes histories and biographies that you can read in about an hour. That can be a tough job for big topics in history like "The Industrial Revolution" or "The Roman Empire" but it is just about right for a short biography.  Little Richard (1932-2020) was an early rock and roll singer with a series of top 40 hits from 1956-1958, including songs like "Tutti Frutti", "Lucille," and "Long Tall Sally." His style was raucous and loud compared to most singers, except maybe for Jerry Lee Lewis. He also was one of the first black artists to cross over to white audiences.   Unlike most singers from that era, Little Richard never really disappeared from the public eye. He had a series of comebacks and kept on showing up with comeback tours, songs on movie soundtracks, live greatest hits albums and TV and movie appearances.  Little Richard was known as a flamboyant showman. He wore...

BURNING BRIGHT (Peter Ash #2) (audiobook) by Nick Petrie

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  Published by Penguin Audio in 2017. Read by Stephen Mendel. Duration: 11 hours, 55 minutes. Unabridged. Synopsis: Peter Ash is a veteran of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. He has had trouble settling in to civilian life. Specifically, he has a fear of enclosed places. He is good with his hands and restored an old pickup truck. He drives the truck all over the place and explores America by hiking and camping. The author, Nick Petrie As Burning Bright starts, Ash is hiking in a forest of giant redwoods and stumbles upon a bear, climbs a tree, meets a girl in the trees, finds out she is being hunted by a professional hit team and that's when everything starts to really get interesting... My Review: I like this series, even though it suffers a bit of a sophomore slump in my opinion. This is not to say that it is a bad book - it's not. I am rating this book 4 stars out of 5. I flew through the first half of the book, but the second half of the book was just a bit too ridiculous...

GALLIPOLI CAMPAIGN: A HISTORY from BEGINNING to END (kindle) by Hourly History

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  Published by Hourly History in December of 2022. The short histories produced by  Hourly History  are designed to read in about an hour. In some cases the size limit makes for a very incomplete history. In this case, I thought that topic and the size limit matched up pretty well. The Gallipoli Campaign was an unmitigated disaster during World War I. Winston Churchill (yes, the famous one from World War II) was the head of British navy and thought up a plan to do three things: 1) relieve the pressure on Russia from the Germans and the Ottomans; 2) possibly knock the Ottoman Empire out of the war; 3) encourage the Germans to divert more troops away from the French front to support the Ottoman Empire. The plan Churchill came up with was to land thousands of soldiers from France, Britain, Australia and New Zealand on the Gallipoli Peninsula at the edge of the Aegean Sea in a quick and bold attack. Troops from Australia and New Zealand landing at  Gallipoli - April 25, ...

THE FALSE CAUSE: FRAUD, FABRICATION, and WHITE SUPREMACY in CONFEDERATE MEMORY (audiobook) by Adam H. Domby

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  Published by Blackstone Publishing in 2022. Read by Jack de Golia. Duration: 8 hours, 58 minutes. Unabridged. The cover of the book and the short description offered by my library app gives the impression that this book is pretty much about the "Silent Sam" Confederate memorial that stood at the University of North Carolina from 1913-2018. This book is much more than that, though. It uses Silent Sam as an entry point into a larger discussion of how North Carolina chose to remember how it performed in the Civil War (more than 10% of Civil War soldiers from North Carolina actually fought for the Union.) He also discusses how White men lied about their service to get Confederate pensions and the government turned a blind eye in the name affirming White unity and White Supremacy. Whites that fought for the Union (but couldn't qualify for a Union pension) or actively fought the Confederate draft with violence or by simply going AWOL at every point possible were given pension...

CALIFORNIA GOLD RUSH (kindle) by Hourly History

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  Published in 2022 by Hourly History. The short histories produced by Hourly History are designed to read in about an hour. In some cases the size limit makes for a very incomplete history. In this case, I thought that topic and the size limit matched up pretty well. This e-book details from the beginning (spoiler alert: John Sutter of Sutter's Mill fame was clearly not a good guy) and details the good as well as the bad of the Gold Rush. Turns out there was a lot of bad, such as environmental destruction on an unprecedented level (they used mining techniques that were outlawed just a few years later. How obviously bad were they if people who let children into mines said that these techniques are clearly out of bounds?!??)  The white miners also used genocidal techniques to wipe out the local Native American populations, killed Chinese immigrants that came across the Pacific to find gold and, of course, jumped the claims of other white miners and killed them. All of the gold...

MEXICAN WHITEBOY by Matt de la Peña

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Originally published in 2008. Synopsis: D anny is spending the  summer in San Diego living with his father's family - his grandmother, his uncles, his aunts, and his cousins. He dreams of visiting his father in Mexico and is disdainful of his mother who is spending the summer in San Francisco with her very serious boyfriend. What complicates the matter is that Danny's mom is white and Danny basically speaks no Spanish. He feels out of place when he is with his mom in her neighborhood because of his Mexican heritage. He feels out of place with his father's family because of his white heritage. He also knows there are family secrets that they are hiding from him. What Danny has going for him is baseball. He can do it all, but he is a brilliant young pitcher. He finds another ball player named Uno. Uno is half black and half Mexican and understands how Danny feels out of place everywhere he goes. Together, Danny and Uno come up with a plan to leverage their baseball skills... ...

THE REST I WILL KILL: WILLIAM TILLMAN and the UNFORGETTABLE STORY of HOW a FREE BLACK MAN REFUSED to BECOME a SLAVE (audiobook) by Brian McGinty

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  Published by HighBridge in 2016. Read by Sean Crisden. Duration: 4 hours, 19 minutes. Unabridged. At the beginning of the Civil War, the Confederacy authorized ships to be privateers. Privateers are basically pirates with the explicit backing of a government. The idea was to authorize as many ships as possible to attack Union shipping as part of the Confederate war effort.  William Tillman (c. 1834-?) One of the early victims of these attacks was the S.J. Waring , a ship out of New York City bound for South America. On July 4, 1861 the ship was attacked, captured, and most of the crew was taken off the Waring to the privateer ship but they did leave a few people behind, including the ship's cook - a free black man named William Tillman.  The privateers made it very clear that they were going to sell Tillman in the slave market in Charleston and Tillman was not going to let that happen... Unfortunately, there just isn't a lot of information about William Tillman - eithe...