The Roar by Emma Clayton

There's a lot of meat to this "tween" novel. Quite enjoyable and discussion-provoking

Published in 2009.

The Roar is a more "kiddie" book than I normally read. This one is aimed at the tween crowd (the book says down to grade 3 but I can't really imagine anyone under the age of 10 getting into it) and I found it to be quite compelling despite being aimed at the younger set and the occasional clunky simile and/or phrase. The Roar has a sequel called The Whisper.

The book is set in a dismal future in which religion is gone (not really mentioned but people say, "My odd!" rather than "My God!") and the environment has been destroyed by mankind in order to kill of the animals. 45 years before the story an animal "plague" caused all of the animals to attack people in a crazed frenzy. So, people retreated to just a few countries (UK, Canada and a few others), became part of a highly stratified society with lots of urban poor forced to live in nasty, poisonous slums and the government wiped out all of the animals by laying waste to the environment and making it a giant desert.

Emma Clayton

Well, that's the official story anyway.

Potential spoiler alert****************************

What we have here is an excellent book for a classroom discussion of the need to investigate for oneself, the dangers of totalitarian government and the dangers of oligarchy.

You also get some Adam and Eve religious themes and a few jabs at the modern environmental movement. Some may read it otherwise but I couldn't help but notice that the main bad guy is a government minister named Mal Goreman (Al Gore?) who helps to manipulate the media to convince everyone that the animals were dangerous and uses the TV and schools to push his agenda. 

Everyone lives in slums in poverty rather than touch nature, which has to be protected for the enjoyment and use of the enlightened elite.

I rate this book 5 stars out of 5.

This book can be found on Amazon here: The Roar

Reviewed on March 22, 2009.

Hitler Youth: Growing Up In Hitler's Shadow by Susan Campbell Bartoletti

"What can happen to a people whose youth sacrifices everything in order to serve its great ideals?" - Adolph Hitler, October 1932

Published by Listening Library in 2006.
Read by Kathrin Kana.
4 hours, 26 minutes
Unabridged

Susan Campbell  Bartoletti's Hitler Youth demonstrates how the Nazis separated children from the parents, their churches and their senses in an effort to make them loyal to the German state and Adolph Hitler.

Starting with the story of a member of the Hitler Youth who was killed in a bloody street fight with Communist youths, Bartoletti shows the chaos in the streets that enabled Hitler to take over Germany. She also details every step that the Hitler Youth took to monopolize the lives and the attention of its young people in order to completely dominate their lives and their loyalties. The reader is introduced to a number of former members of the Hitler Youth and we are told generalities of how the Hitler Youth operated and the specifics of how these actions affected these young people.

Step by step, the schools, churches and families are infiltrated in order to allow the German state to control these young people through seemingly benign activities such as school, weekend outings, rallies and a sense of belonging to a larger purpose.  Did it work? We hear the disturbing story of a young woman who turned her parents over to the police for being critical of the Fuhrer. Another former member notes: "I was carried away by it all."

As World War II progresses and Germany starts to lose, thousands of Hitler Youth became air raid wardens. Some operated air raid bunkers and others were taught to operate Anti-aircraft guns. Others operated giant searchlights and still more were involved in body recovery efforts after air raids. Later, others were brought directly to the front lines, given rudimentary training and put into the fight. Some were so young that they were not given the cigarette ration given to regular soldiers - instead they were given candy!

This book offers a dramatically different take on the Nazi movement and World War II. Listening to this audiobook gave me a whole new reason to loathe the Fuhrer, the Nazis, and too much concentration of power in the hands of the state. This is a disturbing, difficult and important book.

I rate this audiobook 5 stars out of 5.

This audiobook can be found on Amazon.com here:  Hitler Youth

Reviewed on April 9, 2011.

Note: This book was put on a book ban list in Tennessee in 2025. The article has a searchable database because the list has more than 1,100 unique titles. I don't know what it says about a person that wants to ban a book about how the government can brainwash a whole generation of young people into hating certain groups of their fellow countrymen.

A Painted House by John Grisham

The unabridged audiobook is excellent

Published by Bantam Doubleday Audio in 2001
Duration: 12 hours, 7 minutes
Read by David Lansbury
Unabridged

I am not a giant fan of Grisham's latest legal thrillers but I am becoming a fan of his non-lawyer books, such as Bleachers and A Painted House. Grisham's non-legal novels are wonderful "slice of life" views of rural/small town America.

A Painted House is a rite of passage novel about a 7 year old boy (Luke Chandler) growing up on an Arkansas cotton farm in 1952 with his parents and grandparents. His uncle is off fighting the war in Korea.

It is the beginning of the two month long picking season and his family hires some hired hands to help pick the cotton. They hire a combination of "hill people" (poor whites from up in the Arkansas hills) and Mexicans who are literally trucked into Arkansas in the trailer of a semi as if they were cattle.

Luke learns a lot during this season, including about love, baseball, violence, cruelty, sacrifice, bravery, family pride, television, hard work, floods and failure. If you have worked on a family farm at any time this book will bring back a flood of memories. I was reminded of my grandparents, the massive Sunday meals, putting up hay, shoveling soybeans, riding on the tractor and plenty more. I doubt Mr. Grisham will ever read this, but I'd still like to thank him for refreshing those memories.

The author, John Grisham

The audiobook is about 12 hours in length and is read very well by David Lansbury who gives distinct and realistic voices to everyone. I especially enjoyed the grandmother's voice - it reminded me of plenty of the older ladies' voices at my church as I was growing up.

Kudos all around.

I rate this audiobook 5 stars out of 5.

This book can be found on Amazon.com here: A Painted House by John Grisham.

Reviewed March 27, 2009.

1942: A Novel by Robert Conroy

Some really good parts but...

Published in 2009 by Ballantine Books

 1942: A Novel follows up on a simple "What if?" from history. What if the Japanese actually invaded and conquered Hawaii rather than simply attacked it on December 7, 1941?

Conroy's book is very strong up until the point where the Japanese invade. The premise of the book is historically strong, the strategies seem logical, the personalities of the real historical figures are consistent with what we know of them nowadays.

But..

Once the invasion happens, Conroy indulges in exploring the depravities of the Japanese secret police with too much vigor. Yes, I know that the Japanese were brutal, cruel, heartless conquerors that literally raped cities like Nanking, China. He shows a similar brutality in the invasion of Hawaii, which is fine and appropriate - there is no reason to assume the Japanese would have acted any better in Hawaii than they did in China, Korea and the Philippines. But, Conroy insists on showing one brutal act after another - multiple rapes, guttings, hands chopped off, heads chopped off, genitalia mutilated and so on.

It becomes a parade of atrocities and, in my opinion, the story starts to drown in it all, which is too bad because it started so well.

I rate this book 3 stars out of 5.

This book can be found on Amazon.com here: 1942: A Novel.

Reviewed on March 27, 2009.

The Babysitter's Code (kindle) by Laura Lippman

Published in 2009 by William Murrow.

I think it was Stephen King who once commented that his short stories (or novellas) were books that just never took enough shape and form to become a book. He tried to tease out more out of the story but there was just nothing more to pull out of the story.

The Babysitter's Code is not that. There is plenty more to add to this story. It just builds up to the point where the reader is getting in to the story and then it just...ends.

Why?

Don't know.

Frustrating?

Very.

I rate this book 2 stars out of 5.

You can find this short story on Amazon.com here: The Babysitter's Code.

Reviewed on March 21, 2009.

To Make Men Free: A Novel of the Battle of Antietam by Richard Croker

This Civil War buff thoroughly enjoyed it

Originally Published in 2004 by William Morrow

To Make Men Free, like an epic feature from the 1950s, features a cast of thousands which is both its strength and weakness.

A lot of reviewers complain about the lack of depth in the characters, which is fair to say about the book. Unlike Shaara's The Killer Angels, the gold standard of Civil War fiction, there is not much character development. But, to be fair, Shaara focuses on precious few personalities of the War while Croker includes Lincoln, many cabinet members, Lee, McClellan and at least a dozen of the generals, not to mention colonels, sergeants and even a couple of privates.

George B. McClellan
 (1826-1885)

The inclusion of so many characters does contribute to a lack of character exploration but it also contributes to a wide view of the mayhem of the battlefield. Croker also delves into political intrigues that went hand in hand with this bloodiest day in American history.

Croker's writing style is quite enjoyable - he flows effortlessly from one character to another while moving the story along at a quick pace. There's enough detail to give the Civil War novice a good grounding in the basics and enough focus on small parts of the battle to keep a serious student of the war like me interested. Humor and tragedy often go hand in hand in this book - none illustrates this more than page 301 of my paperback version. I chuckled out loud at a neat turn of phrase and then felt as though I'd been kicked in the gut four paragraphs later. I was so moved that I had to close the book and do something else.

Croker noted that he researched this book for three years. He includes many antecdotes that are left out of most histories. As a born and bred Hoosier I was proud of determination demonstrated by the story of the Hoosier soldier who was shot in the belly early in the battle - a fatal injury in those days. He was ordered back to the medics but he refused, saying, "Well, I guess I'm hurt about as bad as I can be. I believe I'll go back and give 'em some more." (p. 267)

Robert E. Lee (1807-1870)

Croker has another novel about the Civil War entitled No Greater Courage: A Novel of the Battle of Fredericksburg. They are stand alone novels (I read them out of order) but they would probably be more enjoyable in the order that they actually happened. I hope that Croker is working on a Chancellorsville novel. Croker's command of the Union political situation is very strong and these three battles are, in reality, intricately related to each other. Chancellorsville's bold maneuvers are a response to the mindless forward attacks of Fredericksburg which were a response to the hesitancy of Antietam. I would love to see Croker get into the head of Hooker at Chancellorsville.

Highly recommended.

Pet Peeve note: On page 136 of my paperback edition Croker refers to "Indianians." There have never been and never will be Indianians. We are Hoosiers. Always have been, always will be.

I rate this book 5 stars out of 5.

This book can be found on Amazon.com here: To Make Men Free: A Novel of the Battle of Antietam.

Reviewed on April 6, 2009.

The X-Files: Ground Zero (abridged audiobook) by Kevin J. Anderson

Published in 1995 by HarperAudio.

Duration: approximately 3 hours
Read by Gillian Anderson

Abridged.

 I am going to say this succinctly and clearly.

The abridged audiobook of The X-Files: Ground Zero is not good. It is bad. It is not well read. It has few of the best qualities of the TV show.

Read by Gillian Anderson, the abridged audiobook clocks in at about 3 hours and read unenthusiastically by Gillian Anderson. One of the reasons I picked this one up is that I figured she'd read it well. It says it was recorded in Vancouver in 1995 (where the show was filmed) and it sounds like she read it between takes. She sounds tired and completely uninterested in the text.

Then again, when you look at what she was reading, I cannot blame her for being uninterested. This book has none of the zip of the show. Mulder's lines are almost non-existent. No smart-alack lines or observation. No wry sense of humor that makes even the weakest of the TV shows watchable (I love the X-Files but let's face it - every episode is not being shipped to the TV Hall of Fame...). This book is a tired and pale imitation of what the show was. You can see the ending coming and you wish it would just hurry up and get here. Perhaps the abridgment gutted the book but I was glad it was abridged.

Gillian Anderson

The science behind this audiobook is laughable. Not the supernatural stuff - that's what the X-Files is all about. I mean the atomic science. Does the author really think that anyone can explode an atomic bomb without radiation detectors picking up on it? Remember Chernobyl? The West knew it had gone wrong long before the Soviets admitted to it because it was detected by Western atomic sensors. Atomic blasts show up on seismographs. That's how we knew India and Pakistan had them. But, let's ignore facts like that and roll right along with a silly premise.

I rate this audiobook 1 star out of 5.

This audiobook can be found on Amazon.com here: The X-Files: Ground Zero.

Reviewed on April 8, 2009.