WINGS of HONOR (Forgotten Fleet Book 1) (audiobook) by Craig Andrews

The premise of this book is not particularly original, but it still enjoyable.

Originally published in book form in 2021 by My Story Productions.

Audiobook published in March of 2024 by My Story Productions.
Read by Shamaan Casey.
Duration: 9 hours, 16 minutes.
Unabridged.

Synopsis:

In Wings of Honor, humanity is at war with an alien insectoid species, much like in the book Ender's Game, the movie version of Starship Troopers, and the 1990's Fox Tv show Space Above and Beyond. In this novel, the bad guys (the bugs) are called the Baranyk. 

The fight ebbs and flows - sometimes humanity is winning, but currently humanity is losing. Humans used to use a fighter/carrier system in which fighter space ships launch from carrier space ships to engage the enemy - much like another classic show and its reboot, Battlestar Galactica. The death rate for fighter pilots were atrocious so the fleet developed a sophisticated fleet of drone fighter ships. If the drone ship gets destroyed the pilot just loads up another drone and rejoins the fight.

That system worked out great and was used to push back against the Baranyk - literally turning the tide of the war in favor of the humanity. That is until the the Baranyk developed a jamming system to block out the signals to the drones, leaving the space fleet without its first and best line of defense. 

This book is about the plan to convert the best drone pilots into fighter pilots and all that it entails. There are lots of clashes between pilots with big egos, a demanding commanding officer, and the difficulty of moving from a video game type of system to really being out in the flight vehicle.

My Review:

As I stated in the title, the premise of this book is not a unique science fiction concept. That being said, the author took it and decided to really delve into the characters of the trainees and the nature of the training. I found the book to be interesting and engaging if not always riveting.

The audio reader was Shamaan Casey. His voice was perfect for the commander of the "Forgotten Fleet" - the new squadron of manned space fighters. He did a very good job and helped to make this an enjoyable audiobook. I would be interested in continuing on with this series.

I rate this audiobook 4 stars out of 5. It can be found on Amazon.com here: WINGS of HONOR (Forgotten Fleet Book 1) by Craig Andrews.

My review of the second book in this trilogy can be found here: Wings of Mourning.

Note: A copy of this audiobook was provided to me by the publisher in exchange for an honest review.

LIFE AFTER POWER: SEVEN PRESIDENTS and THEIR SEARCH for PURPOSE BEYOND the WHITE HOUSE (audiobook) by Jared Cohen

Published by Simon and Schuster Audio in 2024.
Read by Kevin R. Free.
Duration: 14 hours, 4 minutes.
Unabridged.

In Life After Power Presidential historian Jared Cohen looks into the post-Presidential lives of seven Presidents and their quests for some sort of meaning after having one of the most important jobs you can have.

Some Presidents fade away due to health reasons, like Reagan. Others are eager to resume their former lives, like Washington. But, others still feel like they have something more to offer or have unfulfilled goals.

The seven Presidents he looked at are: Thomas Jefferson, John Quincy Adams, Grover Cleveland, William Howard Taft, Herbert Hoover, Jimmy Carter, and George W. Bush.

I have enjoyed hearing about John Quincy Adams' post-Presidential life ever since I first read John F. Kennedy's Profiles in Courage 30+ years ago. I've read more than one book about him and this re-telling is quite good. 

A photo of John Quincy Adams 
taken in 1844.

Jimmy Carter's lengthy post-Presidency is remarkable for how amazingly hard-headed he has been. Carter follows his conscience and lets the political consequences be damned. Cohen notes that Carter did not actually found Habitat for Humanity - he just joined it early on and is easily its most famous and perhaps longest term volunteer.

George W. Bush has done almost the opposite. He lived a very public life for years and has since retreated into more solitary pursuits such as painting. He has said almost nothing about politics in the almost 16 years since he left office.

Each of these men had a different reaction to leaving office. Some left after 2 successful terms, some after experiencing disappointment and 4 of them were defeated after just one term (this is what inspired Cleveland's determination to run again - and win.) I found some to be more interesting than others but, taken a whole, this is a solid set of mini-biographies.

I rate this book 4 stars out of 5. It can be found on Amazon.com here: LIFE AFTER POWER: SEVEN PRESIDENTS and THEIR SEARCH for PURPOSE BEYOND the WHITE HOUSE by Jared Cohen.

PRINCESS DIANA: A LIFE from BEGINNING to END(BIOGRAPHIES of BRITISH ROYALTY) (kindle) by Hourly History

 

Published in 2022 by Hourly History

This was a very odd choice for me to read for a couple of reasons:

1) I don't normally enjoy the gossip magazine type of stories.
2) I don't follow the modern English royal family - I find them to be annoying.
3) I don't really follow the English royal family in the history books, either.

Here's how we got here. Hourly History offers several free e-books every weekend and I picked up the book on Princess Diana for some unknown reason. And, six months later I accidentally picked the Princess Diana book with my fat thumb while using my e-reader app on my phone. I could have removed the download, but I decided to just go with it. Turns out, this was a happy accident.

I am not going to go over Diana's life story in this review. I will just say that this rather short biography (the publisher intends that its books take about an hour to read) was interesting and pleasant to read. A lot of it was information I remember just from being alive when all of this story was going on, but it was well-written.

I rate this e-book 4 stars out of 5. It can be found on Amazon.com here: PRINCESS DIANA: A LIFE from BEGINNING to END(BIOGRAPHIES of BRITISH ROYALTY) by Hourly History.

WONDER CITY (graphic novel) Written by Victor Fusté. Illustrated by Jared Cullum

Published by Insight Kids in 2022.

Synopsis:

Teenager Alex Riley and her older sister Elizabeth are very different kinds of people. They are the daughters of a adventurous married couple who turned their adventures as archaeologists into a TV action adventure cartoon. Think of them as the archaeologist versions of Steve Irwin (the Crocodile Hunter) and his wife.

Their mother passed away a while back and their father recently died in mysterious circumstances working on a secret project in the subway tunnels under New York City. Now they are having to depend on each other.

The good guys sneaking into the network of tunnels
and sewers under New York City

When Mafia-type thugs show up to their place and try to steal notes their father had written while working on his secret project in the subway they know someone has been lying to them about their father's project...

My review:

I liked Wonder City well enough, especially at first. There are strong characters, interesting art, and There is an ongoing issue with the speech balloons. There were smushed together words, misspellings, and strangely divided words that made me wonder if they were electronically inserted and no one bothered to check on the results. 

The final climactic scene was a bit too much for me. It didn't quite make sense and there were times when the art didn't quite make it clear what was happening - kind of blurry with weird magic tossed in to make it all work out in the end even if it makes no sense. 

Final verdict:

Pretty good (if not super original) story marred by unclear art and writing at the end. The weird typos in the speech balloons made it seem like no one cared at the publishing house.

I rate this graphic novel 3 stars out of 5. It can be found at Amazon.com here: WONDER CITY. Written by Victor Fusté. Illustrated by Jared Cullum.

THE BREAKER (Peter Ash #6)(audiobook) by Nick Petrie

Published by Penguin Audio in 2021.
Read by Stephen Mendel.
Duration: 12 hours, 10 minutes.
Unabridged.

Synopsis

Fugitive good guy Peter Ash is hiding out in the open in the city where his adventures began in book number one of the series - Milwaukee. In The Breaker Peter Ash has an assumed identity with very good fake papers. His girlfriend June has joined him, resuming her career as a reporter with the local Milwaukee big city paper. Of course, his friend Lewis is around as well.

In the previous books Peter Ash is dealing with untreated PTSD from his time as a soldier in Iraq and Afghanistan. Too many searches in too many small confined areas has left him with severe claustrophobia.

Peter is working on the claustrophobia, though. Peter, Lewis, and June are at the Milwaukee Public Market for lunch. It is indoors, but it is very open concept with a lot of open space above. He's been eating there to get used to being inside. 

The Milwaukee Public Market

Lewis and Peter notice a figure carrying a hidden weapon entering the crowded Market. That's bad enough - but there's also a bus full of elementary school children unloading for a lunch field trip. 

Lewis and Peter leap into action and things get very complicated very quickly...

My Review

This book was the weakest in the series so far. There was plenty of action - almost non-stop action.

*****Spoilers******

June became a much less nuanced character in The Breaker. Most of her lines consist of her yelling, "Marine!" at Peter and then ranting about how much she loved him and how he needed to take care of himself and how he needed to neutralize the threats facing them without creating any fuss that would bring unwanted attention to him. That was cute at first but it got old.

It also makes zero sense for June, a woman who owns a tech research company and owns an entire mountain valley to put Peter Ash (and herself) at legal risk by letting him wander around Milwaukee all day. Hide that man away until you can figure out how to get Peter out of his predicament.

There is a police stop early on in the book for a burned out tail light that seemed needlessly petty. It was designed to introduce a grizzled old cop character who might see through Peter Ash's elaborate paperwork disguise. But, instead of giving the impression of an experienced cop who has hunches that pay off, I got the impression of a petty man who likes to push people around and make them search for electrical shorts in their tail lights by making them crawl around their vehicles in the rain and get soaking wet and dirty first thing in the morning. 

The book almost approaches sci-fi, with giant hydraulic-powered machines adapted to a wheelchair-bound man, scientifically talented orphans seeking revenge, hundreds of armed robots powered by revolutionary long-lasting batteries, and self-driving vehicles that can travel anywhere on any road.

Throw in a secret government agency and its seemingly all-knowing mysterious representative and it was just too much.

*****end spoilers*****

If this had been the first book in this series, it would have been my last. Hopefully, the next one is much, much better.

I rate this audiobook 2 stars out of 5. It can be found on Amazon.com here: THE BREAKER (Peter Ash #6) by Nick Petrie.

THE BALLOT and the BIBLE: HOW SCRIPTURE HAS BEEN USED and ABUSED in AMERICAN POLITICS and WHERE WE GO from HERE (audiobook) by Kaitlyn Schiess

Published in 2023 by ChristianAudio.com.
Read by the author, Kaitlyn Schiess.
Duration: 6 hours, 27 minutes.
Unabridged.

I first heard about Kaitlyn Schiess on one of my favorite podcasts: The Holy Post. She is one of the three regular hosts of the show and often serves as their in-house theologian. She is well-suited for this role because she offers well-considered answers and she thinks them through before she answers, rather than just shooting her mouth off - all the more impressive when one considers that she is by far the youngest member of the podcast.

I was drawn to The Ballot and the Bible because: 1) I am concerned the rise of Christian Nationalism in America and the damage it does to the Christian witness; 2) I knew that Schiess would give thoughtful answers.

The intermingling of Christianity and politics is not a new phenomenon in the United States (or in the rest of the world - but that is not the focus of this book.) Schiess looks at the intermingling of faith and politics in the Revolutionary Era, the pre-Civil War and Civil War eras and in our modern times (1970s to now.)

Schiess spends special attention on how Romans 13:1-7 has applied in these situations. Attorney General Jeff Sessions brought this verse to the forefront in June of 2018 when he defended the policy of separating children from their illegal immigrant parents.

If you remember that controversy, you realize how much bad will could be created by this book if it were written by a less talented writer. 

Worth your time.

I rate this book 4 out of 5 stars. It can be found on Amazon.com here: THE BALLOT and the BIBLE: HOW SCRIPTURE HAS BEEN USED and ABUSED in AMERICAN POLITICS and WHERE WE GO from HERE by Kaitlyn Schiess.

ILLEGAL (graphic novel) Written by Eoin Colfer and Andrew Donkin. Illustrated by Giovanni Rigano.

 

Published in 2018 by Sourcebooks Young Readers.

Illegal is the fictional story of two young brothers from Ghana: Ebo and Kwame. While it is fictional, it is based on lots and lots of true stories.

Most Americans are very aware that immigrants/refugees are fleeing from their native countries and arriving at the border of the United States and are not aware that a similar thing is happening in Europe. 

Europe has a similar refugee/immigrant situation. People are fleeing from the wars in Syria, Sudan, and Yemen. There are also refugees fleeing the brutal poverty and political situations in sub-Saharan Africa. Like in the United States, these immigrants/refugees depend on very shady people to move them closer to their goals.

In this story, two young brothers named Ebo and Kwame live in a village in Ghana. They are orphaned and living with a useless, drunken uncle. They have an older sister that has already crossed the Sahara Desert and the Mediterranean Sea to look for work but they don't know anything about where she ended up or how it is going. 

Kwame is the older brother and he has decided to sneak away and try to get to Europe. He doesn't want to bring along his little brother because he is concerned about his safety, it will cost twice as much if they both go, and there is a superstition that says only one family member should make the trip at a time because it is so dangerous that it just seems all the more likely that there will be a loss in the family.

Ebo will have none of this. He immediately sets off to find his brother at his first stop - Agadez, Niger. Agadez is a city of a little more than 100,000 and serves as the launch point to try to cross the Sahara Desert.

The Sahara is too big to cross on foot so migrants trying to cross it have to have money to pay unscrupulous smugglers (much like Mexico's infamous coyotes.) This is not cheap.

If a migrant is lucky enough not to be robbed and dumped in the desert they arrive in Libya and pay smugglers for a boat ride across the Mediterranean Sea and try to land in Italy or Sicily. This is also not cheap.

Ebo and Kwame work various menial, under the table manual labor jobs while living on the streets and avoiding the police. Life is cheap, hard, brutal, and dirty - yet no one talks about turning back.

My review:

This is an excellent graphic novel. The parallels with the American refugee crisis are striking and equally heartbreaking. I learned a lot and I enjoyed the easy to follow art work as well.

I rate this graphic novel 5 stars out of 5. It can be found on Amazon.com here: ILLEGAL - Written by Eoin Colfer and Andrew Donkin. Illustrated by Giovanni Rigano.

INCREDIBLE HULK: PLANET HULK written by Greg Pak, illustrated by Carlo Pagulayan, Aaron Lopresti, Juan Santacruz, Gary Frank, and Takeshi Miyazawa.

Originally published by Marvel Comics from 199-2007.

Synopsis:

Hulk is banished from Earth after helping The Avengers, The Fantastic Four, and others defeat a common enemy by using Hulk's brute strength. Hulk has been rendered unconscious and placed on a spaceship. Reed Richards (Mr. Fantastic) leaves a video message for Hulk to find on the spaceship when he arrives at his destination - a planet with no intelligent life. Reed knows that it is a wish of both Dr. Banner and Hulk to be someplace where Hulk cannot hurt anyone and no one can hurt Hulk. 

But, a wormhole opens up and sucks Hulk's spaceship to a different destination - the planet Sakaar.

Sakaar is ruled by a despotic, deranged emperor. He rules a planet with multiple species - all of them hate each other because he pits them against them against one another. He has discs attached to their bodies to control their impulses and allow him to deliver pain at will. He wears a suit of armor that Iron Man would envy and he runs a giant gladiator contest to punish anyone who dares stands up to his regime.

That is, until Hulk arrives...

My Review:

Planet Hulk has a reputation of being THE ultimate Hulk story arc. This story is also part of the inspiration for the Marvel movie Thor: Ragnarok. 

*********Spoiler alert*********

While this graphic novel has a great reputation, I found it to be very repetitive. Hulk meets a danger, he nearly dies but he wins by just brute forcing everything. Every new confrontation makes him stronger until it just gets to the point of ridiculousness. Every time Hulk turns around there is a new species with new traditions, new prophecies, and new attacks on the Hulk that make him stronger. Eventually, he gets so strong that he can literally tear apart the planet from the inside - it just became tedious for me. The whole plot is something attacks, Hulk mad, Hulk smash, Hulk get stronger, Hulk finds peace of mind, something new attacks, Hulk mad again, and on and on and on.

*********End Spoilers*********

The art is very beautiful, though.

I rate this graphic novel 2 stars out of 5. I had to force myself to finish it, even if it is a classic. 

This graphic novel can be found on Amazon.com here: INCREDIBLE HULK: PLANET HULK written by Greg Pak, illustrated by Carlo Pagulayan, Aaron Lopresti, Juan Santacruz, Gary Frank, and Takeshi Miyazawa.

VANISHING EDGE (National Parks Mysteries #1) (audiobook) by Claire Kells

Published by Dreamscape Media, LLC in 2021.
Read by Natalie Naudus.
Duration: 9 hours, 13 minutes.
Unabridged.

Synopsis:

Felicity Harland is a former FBI agent just turned investigator for the Investigative Services Branch (ISB.) ISB is the criminal investigation unit for the National Park Services. They investigate serious crimes that happen in National Parks. 

Harland has been called to Sequoia National Park because 2 customers of an ultra-glamping camping service has disappeared in a remote mountainous location called Emerald Lake. No one knows if they are dead, have intentionally gone missing, or have simply wandered off into the wilderness. No one will say anything about who the supposed victims are because this service is ultra-exclusive and treats the names of its customers like its a national secret.

Harland, along with an old crusty park ranger, and an ex-Navy SEAL who has just joined the park service search for the missing pair. What they discover next leads them to one suspect after another and no real obvious answers...

My Review:

Emerald lake in Sequoia National Park

I really liked this first entry in a new series. Felicity Harland is far from perfect and she has her own personal demons that the reader learns about as the book progresses. She's flawed, but trying to rebuild her life and learn a new job at the same time. Setting her cases in the National Parks means that she can literally travel the country investigating different cases and the reader gets to see a lot of different parks along the way. For example, at the end of this book she was off to Gates of the Arctic National Park in Alaska.

I rate this audiobook 4 stars out of 5. I will be moving on to the next book in the series.

This book can be found on Amazon.com here: VANISHING EDGE (National Parks Mysteries #1) by Claire Kells.

YEARS THAT CHANGED HISTORY: 1215 (The Great Courses)(audiobook) by Dorsey Armstrong

Published in 2019 by The Great Courses.
Lectures by Dorsey Armstrong.
Duration: 12 hours, 29 minutes.
Unabridged.

The Great Courses offers a lecture series by college professors that the average person can listen to on their own time. 

In this case, Purdue University history professor Dorsey Armstrong is focusing on the year 1215 as a pivotal year. 

1215 is well-known to Americans as the year of the Magna Carta, but it is also the year of the Fourth Lateran Council of the Catholic Church. The rest of the lecture series is about general things that were going on around 1215. These include the crusades, a brief look at the Americas, a look at the Islamic world, Japan, and an extended look at Genghis Khan and the Mongol Empire.

This is a lecture series that could have used a bit of editing. If two hours were removed, that would have been good. Three hours would have been great. This was especially true in the section about Genghis Khan. Armstrong admitted that she was excited about this topic and she really just laid on the details - way too many details for even this history teacher. It just got bogged down in the early details of his life and scooted through the height of the Mongol Empire and its eventual collapse.

I rate this audiobook 3 stars out of 5. I don't really blame Armstrong for this - this series tends to like 20+ half hour lectures and I don't think this was a rich enough vein of information for her to mine.

This audiobook can be found on Amazon.com here: YEARS THAT CHANGED HISTORY: 1215 (The Great Courses) by Dorsey Armstrong.

DIFFER WE MUST: HOW LINCOLN SUCCEEDED in a DIVIDED AMERICA (audiobook) by Steve Inskeep

Published by Penguin Audio in 2023.
Read by the author, Steve Inskeep.
Duration: 8 hours, 57 minutes.
Unabridged.

It's been said that no American has been the subject of more biographies than Abraham Lincoln. I don't know if that it is true, but I do know that it is pretty tough to come up with a new angle on the 16th President. In Differ We Must, NPR reporter/host Steve Inskeep has managed to do just that.

Inskeep follows through Lincoln's life and sees how he dealt with people that he had disagreements with. Some of them were major, some were minor. Sometimes, Lincoln responded to these disagreements by befriending the people he disagreed with, sometimes by patiently arguing his point of view, sometimes by appearing to accommodate them only to slowly change their minds, and sometimes by arguing fiercely against his opponent.

And, sometimes, as in the case of Frederick Douglass, Lincoln realized he was wrong and changed his mind as was the case with Frederick Douglass (and other black dignitaries) and black men serving as soldiers and him dropping his insistence on sending freed slaves to Africa.

One is left to wonder, as always how Lincoln would have reacted to the end of the Civil War and Reconstruction - the ultimate test of his ability to work with people that he disagreed with. We know that his successor, Andrew Johnson, failed that test in a spectacular way, but we will always have to wonder how Lincoln would have done.

While this was a unique entry into the collection of Lincoln biographies, I found it to be merely an "okay" biography. I listened to the audiobook and Inskeep's pleasant reading voice didn't hold my attention particularly well. I rate this biography 3 stars out of 5. It can be found on Amazon.com here: DIFFER WE MUST: HOW LINCOLN SUCCEEDED in a DIVIDED AMERICA by Steve Inskeep.

THE JOURNEY in BETWEEN: THRU-HIKING EL CAMINO de SANTIAGO (Thru-Hiking Adventures book 1) (kindle) by Keith Foskett

E-book Published by Amazon Digital Services in 2010.

I have a real soft spot for books about travel - especially travel in odd ways. I have read a book about a guy who backpacked across Europe, a man who hiked across Afghanistan in 2002, a man who biked from England to India, two women who biked from Turkey to China, a man who hiked from Mexico to the Darien Gap in Panama, the same man hiked the length of the Nile River, a man who found a little dog while in a hiking competition in the Gobi Desert, a man who hiked all 48 mountains in New Hampshire with his little schnauzer dog, and more.

One of these travel stories was by this author, Keith Foskett. Last year, I read the story of his trip up the Pacific Crest Trail - from Mexico to Canada and almost all in the mountains.

This hike was much more sedate and featured less extremes in the weather. The Camino de Santiago is a well-established route. It has been an pilgrimage route for more than 1,000 years and in the last 30 years or so France and Spain have really promoted this trail for tourists.

Foskett was determined to do this event properly so he began it at a traditional place to begin in France. That surprised me because I have always heard of this pilgrimage as being entirely in Spain but at least 25% of this book takes place in France.

Foskett is not taking this pilgrimage as a religious endeavor. Instead, he is looking for adventure and an escape from the workaday grind and this hike fits the bill perfectly.

As I noted, this is the 2nd hike I've done with Foskett (in spirit.) I enjoyed the book about the Pacific Crest Trail more, but this one was interesting. I learned a lot about the Camino de Santiago and Foskett makes for an unusual but lively travel companion. 

I rate this e-book 4 stars out of 5. It can be found on Amazon.com here: THE JOURNEY in BETWEEN: THRU-HIKING EL CAMINO de SANTIAGO (Thru-Hiking Adventures book 1) by Keith Foskett.

FAHRENHEIT 451 (audiobook) by Ray Bradbury

 

Originally published in 1953.

I listened to the Tantor Media audio version published in 2010.

Read by Stephen Hoye

Duration: Approximately 5.5 hours

Unabridged

Synopsis: 

Guy Montag is a fireman in a future United States. Firemen in the future do not fight fires. Instead, they burn books, newspapers, magazines that people have hidden away. If you hide forbidden media in your home your home will be burned to make sure all of the books are gone and to serve as a warning to rest of the neighborhood. 

Montag is great at his job, but he has his doubts. Every once in a while he takes a book home. He hides them in the ventilation system of the house. No one knows, not even his wife. Those doubts are accelerated when his team witness a woman die in the fire with her books rather than live without them...

My review: 

This book has an interesting history. Bradbury started building the world that this book is set in with some short stories of a dystopian future where everyone is absorbed by personalized television screens. His publisher urged him to expand the ideas into a book. Bradbury knocked out Fahrenheit 451 in just 9 days on a rented typewriter that cost him 10 cents per half hour.

The book itself has action but it oftentimes felt like essays attached by plot points. It seems to me that the speed in which the book was written probably led to this sort of construction. The essays took the form of extended trains of thought by Montag or long speeches/rants from Montag's boss, Captain Beatty. These "essays" make all of the arguments of the story such as the justifications for mass censorship, the arguments against it, and the lack of human contact in a mass media world.

Bradbury accurately predicted a lot of the modern world in this book. When it comes to technology, he predicted the ATM, giant screen televisions, and earbuds. Culturally, he predicted the rise of sports TV, the inane reality TV shows like The Real Housewives, and the addiction to pop culture and electronic media that may be a factor in the high rates of depression among young people nowadays.

This has to be considered Bradbury's masterpiece. It is such a powerful manifesto against censorship. 

NOTE: If you appreciate irony, please read this bit about how THE anti-censorship novel of the 20th century was edited to remove or change controversial and offensive words and scenes without the knowledge of the author - FOR TWELVE YEARS!

NOTE: Also on the "if you appreciate irony" category - Fahrenheit 451 was put on a book ban list in Tennessee. The article has a searchable database because the list has more than 1,100 unique titles.

I rate this book 5 stars out of 5. It can be found on Amazon.com here: FAHRENHEIT 451 by Ray Bradbury.

MARCH: BOOK ONE (graphic novel) by John Lewis and Andrew Aydin

Published in 2013 by Top Shelf Productions.
Written by John Lewis and Andrew Aydin.
Illustrated by Nate Powell.

Winner: National Book Award

Winner: Will Eisner Comic Industry Award

Winner: Coretta Scott King Book Award

Winner: ALA Notable Books

Winner: Reader's Digest Graphic Novels Every Grown-Up Should Read

Congressman John Lewis (1940-2020) tells his life story in this graphic novel, focusing on his struggles in the Civil Rights Movement. This is the first book in a trilogy, covering the first 20 years of his life.

Lewis is interested in three things as a young man - education, preaching, and the Civil Rights movement. Lewis listens to the traditional African American leaders and he hears talk of moderation (or, even worse, nothing at all about Civil Rights.) He doesn't know what to do, but he knows this is not the way forward. 

Lewis's growing frustration and the moment when Lewis hears MLK.

One day, he hears Martin Luther King, Jr. speak over the radio and he knows the way to go: non-violent resistance.

The last half of the book goes into the effort to integrate lunch counters in several department stores in Nashville, Tennessee. He details the training, the cat and mouse tactics and the way the movement grew and grew to the point that it simply overwhelmed the legal system. 

So, the legal system withdrew and let vigilantes try to deter them. Anyone who has studied the time period knows about the violence and how it ended up in the end, but that doesn't stop the reader from being drawn in. 

This graphic novel can be found on Amazon here: MARCH: BOOK ONE (graphic novel) by John Lewis and Andrew Aydin.

Click here for my review of March: Book Two. 

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

 

Published by Penguin Audio in 2007.
Read by Eric Conger.
Duration: 6 hours, 5 minutes.
Abridged.

Synopsis:

Virgil Flowers works for the Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension (BCA) and has been brought in to the small town of Bluestem, Minnesota to investigate a double murder. Flowers was picked for this job because he is a great investigator and he grew up in Bluestem.

On his way into town, he comes across a gigantic house fire. He recognizes it as the mansion of the richest man in town. The next morning, they discover that it is also the scene of a homicide.

As Flowers starts his investigation there is yet another murder and the list of suspects keeps getting longer and longer...

My Review:

This series was highly recommended to me. It's a spinoff from the much larger (30+ books) "Prey" series featuring Lucas Davenport. Davenport appears in this series as Flowers' supervisor. 

The author, John Sandford

This book is abridged and I do believe that the abridgment hurt the story. About 40% of the book has been removed and it leaves minor plot holes all over the book. Normally, I don't listen to or read abridgments, but my library only had the abridged version. I am rating this book 3 stars out of 5. Normally, I wouldn't bother to continue with a series that has a 3 star rating to start it off, but I am willing to listen to the 2nd book in this series if I can find an unabridged version. I figure the author included all of that extra stuff to make the story better. 

This (abridged) version of the audiobook can be found on Amazon.com here: DARK of the MOON (Virgil Flowers #1) by John Sandford.

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

 Published by Fulcrum Publishing in 2014.

Artist and author Joel Christian Gill is writing and illustrating a series of graphic novels that look into the lives of lesser known, exceptional African Americans. His inspiration is this quote from W.E.B. DuBois: "The Talented Tenth rises and pulls all that are worth saving up to their vantage ground." In other words, some will rise up and inspire/lead the rest. This is Gill's way of providing inspiration.

Bass Reeves was a legendary lawman in the Old West. He was a Deputy U.S. Marshal that chased down bad guys who would flee into Indian Territory (Oklahoma and Kansas) to hide from law enforcement in the neighboring states. If you've seen either of the two versions of the movie True Grit, that is the exact situation. The character Rooster Cogburn would have been real-life Bass Reeves' co-worker if Cogburn were a real person.

The graphic novel tells about Reeves' childhood as a slave in Arkansas, how he escaped during the Civil War (he was brought along to work as a body servant for a Confederate officer) and eventually lived for a while with Indians in the Oklahoma and Kansas Territories. He was hired to help deal Marshals deal with Indians and eventually he was deemed to be so helpful and so good at his job that the local federal judge went against all of the normal conventions and made Bass Reeves a marshal.

It turns out that Marshal Bass Reeves was very, very good at his job - maybe the best.

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 Reeves is confronted by racists, they are partially or completely illustrated as crows with angry red eyes. There are crows fleeing the law, crows in court, etc.

The problem with this story is that although Reeves lived an interesting and amazing life, the book is kind of flat. 

I rate this graphic novel 3 stars out of 5. It can be found on Amazon.com here: BASS REEVES: TALES of the TALENTED TENTH, no. 1 by Joel Christian Gill.

See my review for a different book in this series HERE.

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

Published by Simon and Schuster Audio in January of 2024.
Read by the author, Tina Nguyen.
Duration: 7 hours, 23 minutes.
Unabridged.

Tina Nguyen is a mainstream reporter now, but she started out in the world of conservative media. How conservative? How about working for Tucker Carlson before he joined Fox News?

Nguyen had a boyfriend that connected her to the feeder system of conservative politics and media. Go through these high school programs and you get invited to college programs like the Salvatori Center for the Study of Individual Freedom at Claremont McKenna College and then on to think tanks, conservative media, or a staff position with a politician.

Nguyen broke up with the boyfriend and went into conservative media...until she realized it was all very small, very inter-related and, in the end, unsatisfying and unable to pay the bills. Also, she discovered that one of her mentors was a racist creep and so was the boyfriend that brought her into the movement. 

The author, Tina Nguyen

What this book does very well is show how the right wing side of American politics is pretty interconnected, and according to Nguyen, much more so than the left wing.

The pacing of this book is kind of hit and miss. Sometimes it drags, sometimes it skips ahead quickly. Mostly, I was bothered by the timing of the book. She calls the book MAGA Diaries, but really she was part of the Tea Party Movement. I consider the Tea Party to be the precursor of the MAGA Movement, but they are not the same.

Anyway, it's a mixed bag. Not without value, but not great. I rate it 3 stars out of 5. It can be found on Amazon.com here: THE MAGA DIARIES: MY SURREAL ADVENTURES INSIDE THE RIGHT-WING (and HOW I GOT OUT) by Tina Nguyen.

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.