Lone Survivor: The Eyewitness Account of Operation Redwing and the Lost Heroes of SEAL Team 10 (abridged audiobook) by Marcus Luttrell with Patrick Robinson

Abridged Audiobook
5 CDs
Approximately 6 hours.
Read by Kevin T. Collins

I first heard the incredible story of Marcus Luttrell  on Glenn Beck's radio show. I'm not a frequent listener of Glenn's show but this interview was so compelling I had to hear the whole thing.

Lone Survivor is a much longer version of that story. It includes a long, detailed description of how Navy SEALs train and their "Hell Week" that washes out those who are not truly dedicated to being a SEAL. Luttrell also tells us about his childhood and how he aspired to be a member of a special forces unit as a young man in high school.

The bulk of the book is about "Operation Redwing" - an attempt to kill or capture a Taliban leader that remains unnamed in the book (he uses a false name for this man throughout the book). The operation consists of inserting 4 SEALs in open mountain territory in Afghanistan to observe a remote village where this leader may or may not be staying.

Operation Redwing has difficulties from the beginning, including a lack of cover to hide behind while observing the village and extremely steep terrain. Not long into the operation 3 Afghan goatherders stumple upon the 4 SEALs and nearly 100 Taliban soldiers start to hunt the 4 SEALs.

Luttrell's tale of how his comrades died one by one in an intense running firefight is gripping and awe-inspiring. Eventually, Luttrell is the last one alive, although he is also shot in the leg and suffers from any number of cuts, bruises and a broken nose. He uses every trick he learned in survival training and a few that he learned as avid hunter back in Texas and is eventually rescued by an anti-Taliban village that risks the lives of the entire village by daring to take him in.

The insignia of the Navy SEALs

Unlike another autobiographical tale of our current wars that I've recently read, Joker One, the strength of this book is not its writing. It is co-written by Patrick Robinson who lets Luttrell's voice come through loud and clear. If you are easily offended by liberal use of swear words as adjectives, this will not be the book for you. However, having known a few soldiers over the years I found it lent a good deal of authenticity to let Luttrell describe the battle as he normally would.

No, the strength of the book is the power of the story itself. The decision to spare the lives of the goatherders (who presumably left the SEALs and immediately informed the Taliban), the vicious firefight, the loss of Luttrell's companions, the story of the village that rescued him, the pain his family went through when they believed he had also been killed... The story is so strong that it demands and deserves to be heard, even if its prose is not Pulitzer Prize material.

Highly recommended.

I rate this audiobook 5 stars out of 5.

This book can be found on Amazon.com here: Lone Survivor

Reviewed August 21, 2010.

Look Again (audiobook) by Lisa Scottoline

Interesting premise but it often ends up being a glorified romance novel

Published by MacMillan Audio in 2009
Read by Mary Stuart Masterson
Duration: 9 hours, 27 minutes
Unabridged

In a planned departure from her normal books featuring female attorneys, Lisa Scottoline brings us the story of a single mother reporter (Ellen) and her adopted son. At the beginning of Look Again Ellen glances at one of those "Have you seen this child?" cards that come in the mail and she notes that the child looks just like her adopted son, Will.

A little digging by Ellen uncovers several clues that her son may indeed be a missing child, which leads us to the key point of tension in the book: If it turned out your adopted child was actually someone else's abducted child, would you tell and lose the child or would you stay quiet and leave another parent in pain?

Narrator Mary Stuart Masterson

I have been a big fan of Scottoline's work since I discovered Everywhere That Mary Went when I worked at a book store nearly 15 years ago. However, for me there was too much romance novel stuff that padded the book and slowed down and diluted the tension. Couple that with a plot hole at the end that is big enough to drive a truck through and I ended up a bit disappointed. It's pretty good but not as good as her others.

The audiobook is read by veteran Hollywood actress Mary Stuart Masterson. Masterson does a great job with the accents and voices, especially the voice of 3 year old Will. 

I rate this book 3 stars out of 5.

This audiobook can be found on Amazon.com here: Look Again by Lisa Scottoline.

Reviewed on September 17, 2009.

The Tenth Justice by Brad Meltzer

I thoroughly enjoyed this audiobook

Originally published in 1997.

The Tenth Justice is an interesting little morality play set at the Supreme Court. What do you do if you accidentally leak information about a supreme court case and someone uses that inside information to make a fortune? What do you do if they come back and threaten to expose your slip-up unless you provide more information?

In my opinion, Meltzer's character does the wrong thing but that is what makes the story so interesting.

Meltzer's dialogue works so well with Thomas Gibson's performance that it sounds as if they were in the room copying down the natural flow of the characters' conversations as they were spoken. Truly, they were very fun to listen to.

I rate this audiobook 5 stars out of 5. It can be found on Amazon.com here: The Tenth Justice by Brad Meltzer. 

Reviewed on October 15, 2004.

Star Witness (abridged audiobook) by Lia Matera

Good, simple story about a law case (in which the defendant says he didn't do it because he was being abducted and probed by aliens at the time).

Published in 1997.

Read by Alexa Bauer
Approximately 3 hours.

Abridged,

I'm reviewing Star Witness as an audiobook - more on that below.

Part of my positive reaction to this book, I am sure is a negative reaction I've recently had to several books on tape that I've listened to lately. Some have tried too hard to be overly-complicated. Some have injected way too much romance, so much that you forget it was supposed to be a legal thriller with a bit of romance, not a romance with a bit of legal thriller. However, this story is a no-frills, just-the-facts-ma'am legal story - thank goodness!

Now, this is not to say that it is not entertaining and the facts are not truly bizarre.

Lia Matera's book is set in California and involves a man who is arrested for vehicular manslaughter, but he claims he can't have done it since he was being probed by aliens in their spaceship at the time. Matera neither ridicules nor endorses the concept of alien abduction, much to her credit.

The audiobook version was performed by Alexa Bauer and she did an absolutely wonderful job. Kudos all around!

I rate this audiobook 5 stars out of 5. It can be found on Amazon.com here: Star Witness by Lia Matera. 

Reviewed on October 15, 2004.

The Last Lecture by Randy Pausch

I was not expecting much, but it got to me in a big way. I laughed, I cried, I told my wife she should read it.

Published in 2008.

Everyone said The Last Lecture was fantastic. There were news programs about Randy Pausch and his Last Lecture. There's a billboard sponsored by the Foundation for a Better Life near my local library that extols his positive virtues ("Wrote a book on living while he was dying").

But, I refused to read the book. Why? I guess I am just stubborn. A friend of mine had the book on her table and I asked her if it was any good. Yes - she plowed through it in no time and she's really not a reader. She lent it to me and I was off.

Even then, I let it sit for a couple of weeks. But, once I got into it I was absorbed into it. It is a well-written, laugh-out-loud funny, big-tears-rolling-down-your-face sad, happy, poignant and sweet book. I called my friend when I was done and told her she should have told me that I was going to cry at the end of this book. She said, "I told you!" "Yeah, but I didn't know you meant it!"

Randy Pausch delivering his
last lecture on September 18, 2007

In case you are curious, the title of the book comes from a tradition at Carnegie Mellon University in which professors give a simulated last lecture - a lecture that would try to impart the wisdom they have gleaned to others if this were the last lecture they were to give in their life. For Pausch, this happened to be true. He makes the most of it.

I cannot recommend this book enough.

You can see his actual last lecture here on youtube: the last lecture.

I rate this book 5 stars out of 5. It can be found on Amazon.com here: The Last Lecture by Randy Pausch. 

Reviewed on August 15, 2010.

Amberville by Tim Davys

The hardest thing about this book is describing it to other people.

Published in 2009 by Harper.

I was telling my wife about Amberville. I told her I was reading a book about stuffed animals (her face softened) and I said but it's not a "nice" book. One of the animals used to be a gofer for the mafia, one's a thug enforcer, one's a backstabber and one is a pill-popping male prostitute that specializes in S&M sex-for-hire.

She got a confused look on her face and asked why the author used stuffed animals? Well, he had to because these stuffed animals are all delivered by way of truck and when they die they are all hauled out of the city by truck as well and the big bad mobster dove has found out he's on a fabled list of stuffed animals that are to be hauled away and he wants four stuffed animals to reunite to find the list and save his life - or else.

At that point she waved me off and changed the subject.

Throw in a bit of insanity on the part of one character, some bribery, jealousy, lots of lies, a rat Queen who lives in a garbage dump and a church called the Sagrada Bastante (Spanish for sacred enough) and you have a mix that creates a powerful new world - I found myself reading as much to explore this world as to find out what was going to happen next in the plot.

How do you classify this book? Is it sci-fi? Fantasy? Noir? Thriller? Mystery? Yes to all of those.

Davys (a pseudonym) has written another book called Lanceheim: A Novel about another neighborhood in the city of stuffed animals, Mollisan Town. There are four neighborhoods so I can imagine he (or she) will write four book in total. Good. This is an interesting addition to anyone's library.

I rate this book 5 stars out of 5. It can be found on Amazon.com here: Amberville by Tim Davys.

Reviewed on August 15, 2010.

Bad Business by Robert B. Parker

Published in 2004.

This is a typical Spenser book. I happen to like a typical Spenser book quite a bit. I think I've read them all and usually I am pleased. Bad Business was a keeper.

Robert B. Parker

Oh, to be sure, there's the required comments about Spenser and Susan's relationship and why they don't want to get married. There's the required comments about Spenser and Hawk's relationship and how they'd die for each other, etc. There's the required comments about Spenser's checkered career in law enforcement. It's a formula to be sure, but I like the formula.

Spenser's comments and observations are pure gold and the case was interesting because it (sort of) explains what happened to Enron.

I guess I'm over the fact that Spenser never ages. Parker must have been hearing comments because he includes a NY Times review that excuses this fact inside the dust cover at the beginning of the synopsis. It doesn't bother me with James Bond, why should it bother me with Spenser?

I rate this book 4 stars out of 5.

You can find a copy of this book on Amazon.com here: Bad Business.

Reviewed on October 15, 2004.