OZARK DOGS (audiobook) by Eli Cranor

 

Published by Recorded Books in April of 2023.
Read by the author, Eli Cranor.
Duration: 7 hours, 29 minutes.
Unabridged.

I first heard  this book at an indie book store in a very hip part of the city. If you are an avid reader it is not hard to find more books than you should (or can) buy at one time - so I made a list.

This book was on the list and I really wish that it was half as good as I hoped it would be.

Synopsis:

Jeremiah Fitzjurls owns a junkyard at the edge of a dying Arkansas town. His son is in prison and he is raising his granddaughter. He is a grumpy old curmudgeon and she is an all around great kid. She works at an animal shelter. She is a cheerleader. She is smart. 

She is also sneaking away from the high school dance with the starting quarterback after homecoming...

Things don't end so well and she decides to walk back to the school rather than spend another minute with her boyfriend. That's when she is abducted by strangers...

My review:

This brooding book was a collection of regional tropes about the South,

1. Dying small town? Check.
2. The KKK? Check.
3. Meth? Check.

4. A sheriff from a family of sheriffs? Check.

5. A veteran with PTSD? Check.

6. Two families feuding? Check.

7. Family secrets that everyone in town seems to know about? Check.

Throw in an impossible number of over the top plot twists (including two at the end that were really simply TOO much) and you have a formulaic novel that seemed like it was looking for ways to keep the reader interested by including more and more plot twists. I was reminded of an improv group that I follow that said that they would kill scenes if they go too slow and were advised to add a "birth, death, or a major religious experience" to scenes to make them interesting.  That's great advice for an off-the-cuff improv scene but there's not really an excuse for that when it is a planned out book. 

The one real positive of the audiobook experience was that it was read by the author. He is very good at creating voices and putting emotion into his readings.

I rate this audiobook 2 stars out of 5. It can be found on Amazon.com here: OZARK DOGS by Eli Cranor.

YES PLEASE (audiobook) by Amy Poehler

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. 

The section about SNL was fun. The chapter on Parks and Rec was even better.

The section on her divorce from Will Arnett is very depressing and surprisingly fact free. That was fine by me - I am not her friend and I don't need to know any details (I wish she'd have kept this in mind when discussing oral sex!) The next couple of chapters meander around with no energy until she moves on to other topics. I get that - divorce is a depressing topic. 

In the last third of the audiobook there is an extended rant inspired by a fan who drops off a script with her while she is riding on a train (or maybe a plane.) She indignantly goes on and on about how this man is discounting all of the work she did as she climbed the career ladder by simply dropping off a script and leapfrogging his way to the top. Who does this no-talent lazy bum think he think he is? 

It felt so different than the rest of the book - it was unpleasantly jarring. I felt like I had somehow stepped behind the scenes and witnessed Poehler having a bad moment after a very long, very hard day. Then, I remember that this was not a random "bad moment" - it was well considered and thought out since it was written, read by editors before it was printed and read by Poehler for the audiobook.

The book is 9 years old so there are lots of more recent things that a fan would like to hear about that just cannot be there. Also, all of her frequent positive comments about Louis C.K. did not age well based on subsequent revelations about the creepy sexual things he did in front of female comics. Every time Poehler mentioned him I wondered if she was also a victim.

I rate this audiobook 3 stars out of 5. It can be found on Amazon.com here: YES PLEASE (audiobook) by Amy Poehler.

This book was banned in a school district in Florida during the 2023-2024 school year. I assume it was because of the oral sex comments that I have previously mentioned. Here is the link to the article with a pdf of the very extensive list of banned books.

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

 

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 on an article that mentioned it was on a list of books that Moms for Liberty wants to remove from schools. Here is a site that discusses it.

The Moms were concerned about potty language in the book. To be sure, there's a lot of it  For example, the Moms say that the F word is used 94 times (they have a chart). I teach high school in a school that is on the boundary of urban and suburban. The characters in this book speak pretty much the same as real high school students when they don't know that adults can hear them. They curse a lot and veer into inappropriate content because they want to show that they are no longer children and they can talk about adult topics. If you don't want your kid to read this book because you don't want your child introduced to curse words, you are too late.

So, would this teacher want to teach this book in a classroom? No. The focus in class would be the curse words. Would I keep it in a classroom library? Sure. 

Notice that I said, "Sure" and not "Absolutely!" I really enjoyed the first 30 minutes of this audiobook. I would give it 5 stars. I enjoyed it's style and irreverent humor. It was a nice change of pace. But, the book just continued on with the same notes over and over and over again. For this adult in his fifties, it got old. I am okay with this book, but not enthusiastic about it.

I rate this book 3 stars out of 5. It can be found on Amazon.com here: ME and EARL and the DYING GIRL (audiobook) by Jesse Andrews.

MAGNA CARTA: THE BIRTH of LIBERTY (audiobook) by Dan Jones

 

Published in 2015 by Penguin Audio.
Read by the author, Dan Jones.
Duration: 7 hours, 12 minutes.
Unabridged.

The Magna Carta is commonly considered to be the founding document of Western Democracy. Many believe that there is a direct line goes from the Magna Carta to the Enlightenment (17th and 18th centuries) to the Declaration of Independence (1776) to the Bill of Rights in the American Constitution (1791)  to the Declaration of the Rights of Man and the Citizen (1791) to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (1948).

Jones believes that there is a whole lot of truth to this. but he spends a lot time explaining why the "direct line" is not as straight as many think.

King John (1166-1216) signing the Magna 
Carta in 1215. 

Jones does an excellent job of explaining the political situation in England that led to the Magna Carta in 1215 in reasonable, layman terms. Once the reader understands how the system was supposed to work, Jones demonstrates that King John abused the system to raise gobs and gobs of money to fund unpopular wars and, more importantly, to punish political enemies. In some cases, he completely bankrupted well-connected families - and that's when the noble families united to confront the king.

Jones also explains the provisions of the Magna Carta in modern English and how King John started successfully pushing back against its restrictions almost immediately. 

Jones is a believer that the Magna Carta is a predecessor to the documents like the Declaration of Independence and does spend time explaining the Magna Carta's influences on the modern world.

The author read this audiobook and did a good job with it. This was an enjoyable and educational audiobook. I rate it 5 stars out of 5. 

It can be found on Amazon.com here: MAGNA CARTA: THE BIRTH of LIBERTY (audiobook) by Dan Jones.

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

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 confusing arrangements of comic panels (this is more common of a problem than one might think) and the story was told in a straightforward linear manner. 

Well done.

I rate this graphic novel 5 stars out of 5. 

This can be found on Amazon.com here: CHE: A REVOLUTIONARY LIFE (graphic novel) by Jon Lee Anderson (author) and Jose Hernandez (illustrator).

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

 

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 has disappeared with the money. Some assume that the security team was attacked and killed or maybe even captured. Others think they ran off with the money. 

Peter and Henry's crew take the next big run and they find out soon enough what happened to the other crew...

My Review:

The action and the adventure were good in this book, but there was a deeper theme in the book about the kind of men that serve in the military. I thought it added a bit of literary dimension that is, frankly, almost never present in these sort of "shoot 'em up" books.

Ash is a traditional principled good guy - a Clark Kent/Luke Skywalker type. A man who joined the military because he saw a need and wanted to help. He meets up with his opposite in this book - a man who joined the military because he could take advantage of the trust given to him to hurt people and satisfy his urges. In the middle, there is a man who served honorably until an arbitrary rule forced him to sell his honor in order to save his family from shame.

I rate this audiobook 4 stars out of 5. It can be found on Amazon.com here: LIGHT IT UP (Peter Ash #3) (audiobook) by Nick Petrie.

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

 

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 involving a pirate and a little bit of romance in orbit around Uranus and Saturn. I liked the fact that rather than having true space warships, war is waged with tools and work equipment because space is a place for resource extraction, not a place for interstellar fleets to duke it out.

When you listen to an audiobook, sometimes you notice the overuse of a word or a phrase that you might not notice reading. In this case, the author really likes the word "scintillating" when combined with lasers. Turns out that there was a lot of laser shooting in one story and they all seemed to be "scintillating," not brilliant, shimmering, gleaming, dazzling or any other word that means shiny.

I rate this audiobook 3 stars out of 5. It can be found on Amazon.com here: HAYDEN'S WORLD: VOLUME 1 by S.D. Falchetti.

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

 

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 practical issues that just didn't jive with reality. For example, one of the main plot points is that they cannot access the internet because they will be detected and tracked down. This completely ignores the existence of proxy servers. A professional assassin should have been familiar with this technology as a way to hide his location when communicating with clients.

Later, the characters are speaking German and passing off as native speakers (this is a vitally important point more than once). Granted, it is not complicated German, but very few untrained people can pass themselves off as native speakers in a second language. I've been speaking Spanish as a second language for years and I would never be confused for a native speaker.

This is not a bad book. The quick pace was fun, the bad guys are truly bad, and the flashbacks to World War II were well-done. But, the end result was 3 stars out of 5.

This book can be found on Amazon.com here: THE ENIGMA AFFAIR: A NOVEL by Charlie Lovett.

THE GREAT GATSBY (audiobook) by F. Scott Fitzgerald

 

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 and is trying a career as a bond seller. He is renting a small place on Long Island nestled in among mansions of the rich and trendy set.

His neighbor is Jay Gatsby, a mysterious young single millionaire. Everyone knows of him, but no one seems to know much about him. He hosts massive blow-out parties but always hangs out on the edge. He is polite, but does not participate. 

Gatsby takes an interest in Nick and Nick ends up with a front row seat to a deadly drama...

My review:

The book is a lot better than I remembered. Class is a major theme and readers who are high school aged or older can clearly see that one.

Older readers know from experience that timing is as important as anything in relationships and the Gatsby/Daisy relationship is a victim of bad timing as it is a victim of class prejudice. We've all met people that we know we could be good friends with - but events and prior commitments pull us apart. The timing is just bad.

The audiobook was read by Tim Robbins. I am not a big Tim Robbins fan, but I am a big audiobook listener and I have never heard of Tim Robbins read any audiobook. I figured that if he is reading this audiobook, he must have some sort of special affinity for it and he will pull out all of the stops. 

Turns out, I was right. After a slow monotone start, Robbins lets loose with a variety of voices that are so good that you can listen to the conversations without paying attention to all of the "he saids" and "she saids."

I rate this audiobook 4 stars out of 5. It can be found on Amazon.com here: The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald.

Note: The Great Gatsby was part of a group of 56 books that a school board in Alaska wanted to ban in 2023. They listed Great Gatsby as a problem due to sexual content. A group of parents and the ACLU went to court to fight it and the school board lost - story here.

PLAYER PIANO by Kurt Vonnegut

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 thanks to a roll that is inserted. In the town across the river from Ilium Works, there is a player piano in the bar where all of the unemployed factory workers drink their days away.

The major theme of the book is that it is not good for humans to have no work, no skills to master and no sense that they have put in a good day's work, even if it is more efficient for machines to do it all.

And...Paul Proteus is starting to come around to that way of thinking.

My Review:

This is Vonnegut's first novel. It follows a more normal narrative form than his later, more famous novels. It's too long. It has too many characters. I has too many side plots that don't really go anywhere.

But, it is amazingly prophetic. Vonnegut was working in the public relations department of General Electric when he wrote this novel. He was constantly being exposed to miraculous "labor-saving" devices and his imagination took him to a world where so much labor has been saved with labor-saving devices that there is practically nothing for anyone to do anymore because a person with nothing to do has no reason to be here at all.

Just look at all of the jobs that have been replaced by technology - Line workers in factories, print setters, cashiers, most farm labor and on and on and on. Everyone thinks all of the jobs have gone oversees, but 85% of them have actually been lost to technology. So it goes.

The book gets better as it goes along and has a bittersweet ending.  

I rate this book 4 stars out of 5. It can be found on Amazon.com here: Player Piano by Kurt Vonnegut.

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

 

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. 

I rate this collection 3 stars out of 5. It can be found on Amazon.com here: JOURNEY to STAR WARS: THE FORCE AWAKENS: SHATTERED EMPIRE by Greg Rucka and James Robinson.

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

 

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 make sure that history isn't manipulated by sinister forces that can also travel in time...

My review:

Harold Godwinson from the Bayeux Tapestry

I liked this book quite a bit. The history is gritty and full of gore thanks to Dan being plunked in the middle of (arguably) the two most important battles of the  English medieval era. Limbs get hacked off, blood sprays in people's faces and intestines spill out onto the ground. None of this glorified in the book - in fact, Dan is horrified over and over again at the brutality of it all. 

The addition of the evil "time jumpers" adds a level of danger and intensity to the experience, especially when the reader finds out more about them in the last part of the book. And, it turns out that Dan is not the only good "time jumper" back in 1066, which lets the reader learn more about what is going on bit by bit as Dan learns.

The epilogue at the end of the story fleshes out the history that Dan just went through a bit more to give the reader some additional context. 

Since this book is the start of a series, the most important questions is "Would you read book 2 in the series?"

The answer is yes, I think this series looks like it could be quite strong. 

I rate this audiobook 4 stars out of 5. It can be found on Amazon.com here: THE LAST SAXON KING: A JUMP in TIME NOVEL, BOOK ONE by Andrew Varga.

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

 

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 books featured eco-terrorists, an EPA ruling about water rights, wind turbines, and more. 

Warning: ***spoilers***

But lately, the books are just getting more and more over the top. There is a running commentary by the lazy sheriff in the last few books that Joe Pickett keeps finding trouble. In the last two books Joe found a man who had been burned to death by Hungarian Nazis. He found his old lady neighbor was killed by the same Nazis. In this book, he discovered a Chinese communist spy who had been killed by meth-heads (actually he discovered it twice because the body was moved). He discovered a dead meth addict, and was nearly assassinated (don't worry - the bad guy was killed.) Joe's friend and self-appointed body guard Nate Romanowski along with Geronimo Jones (Geronimo is Nate Romanowski's Nate Romanowski) kill 6 more men. That's a body count of over a dozen in a county in America's least populated state (576,000 people) in just a few months. In the book before that 5 or 6 people died as well! 18 people dead in this one county in less than a year!

It seems to me that this lazy sheriff has a really good point. In 2020, Wyoming only had 25 murders and that was up quite a bit from previous years. 

I love the Joe Pickett game warden stories with Joe being out in the wild doing game warden stuff. He has fought terrorists with a missile, Nazis, dirty FBI agents, Mexican drug cartel hit teams, uncovered a Chinese Communist plot, fought Antifa extremists (extreme even for Antifa), and found body after body after body. There's a point where it gets to be too much. Who else can you take down after you have taken down Nazis, Communists, and the FBI?

***End Spoilers***

All of the griping being said, the book does move along quite well and, if you have read all of the books, is full of a lot of satisfying moments. 

This book wraps up so many loose ends that it may very well be close to the end of the Joe Pickett series. There are hints of another set of adventures with his daughter or Geronimo Jones or even with a Wyoming state trooper. 

I rate this book 3 stars out of 5. It can be found on Amazon.com here: STORM WATCH (Joe Pickett #23) by C.J. Box.

THE ADVENTURES of HUCKLEBERRY FINN (audiobook) by Mark Twain

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 elementary school and almost all of the satire and character growth went right over my head. I re-read it in high school for an AP Literature class. We had to write a lengthy paper that we literally worked months on. We even took a trip to a university library to dig through the stacks to find literary criticisms and cite them. It was, by far, more complicated and longer than any other paper I wrote in my college career.

All of that work writing about the same book soured me on re-reading the book until now, 38 years later. 

So, what did I think?

I was surprised at how many of the plot points I had forgotten. For example, Tom Sawyer is in this book a lot more than I remembered and he is really annoying. I know that is intentionally built in as a part of the book for thematic reasons - Huck is on his way to being a man and Tom is still a boy in many ways - but I still felt that it was tough going when Tom is in the story.

It took me quite a while to get through this audiobook. I could only go for 20 minutes or so at a time and then I had to leave it for a while. In comparison, I listened to a different audiobook today for more than 4 hours. Maybe it was because it was told in first person, I am not sure. 

Despite the importance of this novel, I honestly can't rate it any more than 3 stars out of 5.

This book can be found on Amazon.com here: THE ADVENTURES of HUCKLEBERRY FINN by Mark Twain.

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

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 these trends as part of a larger problem and does not see it as a problem caused by women being part of the workplace, going to college or participating in advanced training. That is a reality and he has literally no interest in changing it. He makes this point several times. 

I highly recommend this book. It offers an honest assessment of where we are as a country and that assessment is often depressing. But, Reeves  doesn't just list a bunch of problems. He offers practical solutions that are based on policies that have already proven successful in other ways.

The audiobook is read by the author. He does an excellent job, which is not always the case when authors decide to read their own audiobooks.
 
I rate this book 5 stars out of 5. It can be found on Amazon.com here: OF BOYS and MEN: WHY the MODERN MALE IS STRUGGLING, WHY IT MATTERS, and WHAT to DO ABOUT IT by Richard V. Reeves.

SUCKER'S PORTFOLIO (kindle) by Kurt Vonnegut

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 this one did not disappoint. 

But, for me, the eighth entry was the surprise. It was an unfinished dystopian future story set in a small town after a human-robot war. It had a lot of zip to it and I was really intrigued right up to the moment it ended in mid-sentence.

I rate this e-book 4 stars out of 5. It can be found on Amazon.com here: SUCKER'S PORTFOLIO (kindle) by Kurt Vonnegut.

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

 

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

There was almost no "game wardening" in this book and the man who is derisively called "nature boy" in this book spends 99% of this book navigating the urban world of Black Lives Matter and Antifa.

I have complained in my review of the 20th book in this series, Long Range, that Joe Pickett was getting involved in so many other types of police cases that it is easy to forget that the first books in the series - the books that made me start and keep reading a series - were mostly about game warden activities. Lots of searching for poachers. There was a book about eco-terrorists, one with survivalist weirdos and even a big forest fire.

This book seemed to be careening from one political commentary after another - BLM, Antifa, even Hungary. What does the author say? Antifa - irredeemably stupid. BLM - understandable, but over the top. Hungary, despite the popularity of its President in ultra-conservative circles, is linked in this book with violent reaction over careful consideration.

Is this what the author intended? I have no idea. He seems to be making a lot of political comments in his books lately in the Joe Pickett and the Cassie Dewell series. Some are subtle, some are not. I assume that is what he's pulling his characters out of the Wyoming countryside and placing them in cities all over the West, but maybe not. Maybe I am reading too much into it. Either way, I want Joe Pickett to get his butt back into the woods!

I rate this audiobook 2 stars out of 5. It can be found on Amazon.com here: SHADOWS REEL (Joe Picket #22) by C.J. Box.

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

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 a lot of makeup when that was an unknown thing and pulled off a combination being macho and feminine at the same time. It's pretty easy to think of him as the prototype for performers like Prince.

This short biography was pretty solid. I thought it did a particularly good job of catching Little Richard's struggles with drugs. It was interesting and more than a little sad to read about how poorly he dealt with a conflict between his seriously-held conservative Christian religious beliefs, his sexual orientation and other sexual interests. He spent a lot of his with deeply conflicted feelings.

I rate this short e-book 4 stars out of 5. It can be found on Amazon.com here: LITTLE RICHARD: A LIFE from BEGINNING to END (kindle) by Hourly History.

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

 

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 in my opinion. That being said, I am going to happily continue with this series.

I think you have to start the series at the beginning (click here for my review of the first book in the series) so do not start with this book. 

I rate this book 4 stars out of 5. It can be found on Amazon.com here: BURNING BRIGHT (Peter Ash #2) (audiobook) by Nick Petrie.