Lonely Planet Not For Parents: The Travel Book by Michael DuBois, Katri Hilden and Jane Price

Have a little fun, learn a little something

Published by Lonely Planet in 2011.
208 pages.

The cover of this book perfectly describes it: "Cool stuff to know about every country in the world." Inside, every country, from Afghanistan to Zimbabwe has one page in this book. Every page includes some basic facts, including the flag, the population, the language spoken, the currency and its area in square miles and kilometers. But, that is not the strength of this book.

The best feature of this book is the rest of each page - the random facts that make each country unique. For example, on the United Arab Emirates page we learn that they have the world's tallest building (about twice as tall as the Empire State Building), see a design created out of man-made islands, and learn that they make snow on an indoor ski slope in a shopping mall there.

Everything is laid out with beautiful color pictures, always has information about people and animals in the country, and is very easy book to flip through and lose yourself in for a while. I recommend this for kids (and adults) 4th grade and higher.

I rate this book 5 stars out of 5.

This book can be found on Amazon.com here: Lonely Planet Not For Parents: The Travel Book.

Reviewed on February 4, 2012.

The Thin Man & The Maltese Falcon (audiobook) by Dashiell Hammett

Two Classics in One Package


Published in 2011 by AudioGO.
Narrated by William Dufris
Duration: approximately 13 hours.

I am reluctant to admit this but although I was very aware of these classic detective tales, I had never read either of these two books nor seen any of their many movie adaptations (however, I have seen many clips from the Bogart version of The Maltese Falcon over the years). So, when I found the unabridged audio versions of both of them I just had to get them - if for no other reason than to just end my ignorance.

The Thin Man was originally written in 1934 (although it is set in the late 1920s) and is Dashiell Hammett's fifth and last novel. It features a wealthy husband and wife crime-fighting duo. They are in New York City to renew some friendships, paint the town red and have an all around good time. Nick Charles is a former private detective who has quit the business to help his wife manage her extensive business holdings.  A mystery involving a former client and former acquaintances comes up and Nick and Nora are drug into the affair and are soon on the case.  To be fair, Nora is enthused about solving a mystery. Nick tries to back out of it at every turn, loudly denying that he has any interest in the case but ignored by the police, his wife, his would be client and everyone else.

Dashiell Hammett (1894-1961)

"And when you're slapped you'll take it and like it." - Sam Spade

The Maltese Falcon, first published in 1930, is the classic hardboiled detective story that will forever be linked with Humphrey Bogart and the 1941 movie. Sam Spade and his partner Miles Archer are two San Francisco detectives hired by a young lady to follow a man that is supposed to have run off with her sister.  Later that same night Miles Archer and the man he was following are found dead and Sam Spade is the number one suspect. Spade sniffs around the case and soon enough finds out that the young lady that hired Miles Archer has not been telling the truth and her secrets may lead to untold riches, if he can survive.

The mystery in The Thin Man is the better of the two, but the mood and the story in The Maltese Falcon is so much more powerful that it ends up being the better of the two stories by far. So many of the characters in The Thin Man are rich, vapid drunken twits (Including Nick and Nora Charles throughout most of the story) that for the first half of the book, I just had a hard time really caring who killed one of the them and sometimes wished that the criminal would come back and knock off a few more. I suppose that was by design, given Hammett's fraternization with communism in the 1930s. But, by the end of the book, the mystery itself turns out to be a pretty good one. The clues were all laid out to the reader, I just missed them as they passed by.

William Dufris really shines as the narrator in The Maltese Falcon. His voice characterizations of Joel Cairo (the Peter Lorre character in the Bogart movie) and appropriately named fat thug named Casper Gutman are so strong that they made the story leap out of the speakers and drag me in. Dufris avoided the obvious temptation to read his Sam Spade like Bogart, but his characterization of Joel Cairo sounds almost exactly like Peter Lorre (I know I said I had not seen the movies, but those clips are everywhere). In the final scenes, Dufris' skills as an actor shine as he seamlessly moves from one strong character to another as they scream at, fight with and ultimately betray one another.

I rate this collection 4 stars out of 5.

This book can be found on Amazon.com here: The Thin Man & The Maltese Falcon (audiobook) by Dashiell Hammett.

Reviewed on February 3, 2012.

Crimson Empire (Star Wars) by Mike Richardson and Randy Stradley

Published by HighBridge in March of 1999.
Performed by an ensemble cast.
Duration: 2 hours.
Abridged

I have not read the graphic novel so the audiobook is my only experience with this story about a member of the Emperor Palpatine's elite Imperial Guard. I think this is important to note since it has to be difficult to convert a graphic novel, with its emphasis on visuals to move the storyline, to a completely audio format. Audiobooks from regular novels don't have this issue.

This point is important - the audiobook depends rather heavily on sound effects to cover up for this visual to audio conversion. Sometimes it works quite well while at other times it becomes a jumbled mess of various punching sound effects that the listener has to wade through until the story picks up again.

In general though the sound effects, the use of multiple actors (like an old-fashioned radio play) and the inclusion of snippets of Star Wars music from the movie soundtracks is a great help. But, it fails to make up for the often adolescent level of dialogue and mind-bogglingly stupid battle tactics used by the remnants of the Imperial fleet at the end of the tape. These combine to make a potentially great work merely average.

I rate this audiobook 3 stars out of 5.

This audiobook can be found on Amazon.com here:  Star Wars: Crimson Empire (Dramatized)

Reviewed on December 21, 2007.

With These Hands (audiobook) by Louis L'Amour

Published in 2002 by Random House Audio
Read by Keith Carradine
Duration: Approximately 3 hours.
Abridged.

There are 11 stories in the original printed book version of With These Hands - but this audio version contains only three unabridged stories from the book: "With These Hands", "Dream Fighter" and "Voyage to Tobalai".

These re-reprinted short stories (originally they appeared in pulp fiction magazines) are read by veteran actor Keith Carradine who does a great job, especially with "Dream Fighter" - the best in this collection and also the introductory story for Kip Morgan who L'amour uses in other boxing and later detective stories. Carradine creates a unique old-style boxing trainer voice that perfectly fits the 1940s-style slang used in the text.

Louis L'Amour (1908-1988)

"With These Hands" is the story of an oil company executive that survives a plane crash in Alaska in the winter and his efforts to survive. "Dream Fighter" is the best of the bunch - it is about an up and coming fighter who dreams how he will win his fights will take place and simply does what his dreams tell him to do. "Voyage to Tobalai" features another recurring L'Amour character, Ponga Jim Mayo, in a World War II adventure.

I rate this audiobook 4 stars out of 5.

This audiobook can be found on Amazon.com here: With These Hands by Louis L'Amour. 

Reviewed on December 23, 2007.

Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting By in America by Barbara Ehrenreich

Note: this review was slightly edited on June 21, 2025

First Edition published May of 2001 by Metropolitan Books

I've had Nickel and Dimed read for nearly a month now and I just haven't had the faintest idea about what I should say about it. It is remarkably good and remarkably bad all at the same time.

The idea behind the book is simple - in 1998 a reporter goes "undercover" to explore the world of the $5 - $7 job market. She becomes a waitress, a house cleaner and an employee at Wal-Mart.

So, let's start with the positives:

-This is a well-written and entertaining book.

-The workload at her different jobs is accurately described, especially the work at Wal-Mart (I know since I worked at one of their national competitors stocking shelves, unloading trucks, and working the 'back room' for 5 years as a second job when my wife lost her white-collar job and the bills started to pile up).

-I give Ms. Ehrenreich credit for going out there and trying the jobs rather than studying them like a sociology experiment.

Negatives:

-Ms. Ehrenreich keeps on mentioning that she is "middle class" but her unfamiliarity with the rigors of the $5-7/hour job market shows me that she's had a pretty pampered work life. She claims on page 201 that she writes off more than $20,000 a year in mortgage deductions alone on her taxes - this is not the middle class that I know and understand (Note from the year 2025 - remember that this book was written in 2001 so the numbers are much higher nowadays). She did little research about where to buy her clothes, find her cheapest rents or buy the cheapest food. $40 for a pair of work pants? No visits to Goodwill or yard sales? She rents by the week and picks two super-touristy spots (with their very high rents) to start her experiment? All of these things add up to invalidate big chunks of her experiment in my mind.

-She spends an inordinate amount of time discussing Wal-Mart's policy of having employees take a drug test (at least 25 pages). She even claims it might violate her 4th Amendment rights on p. 209 even though those Constitutional restrictions only apply to government, not private employers. She does not grasp the concept that those drug screens don't catch many drug users because they don't even bother to apply. She also fails to grasp that some employees need to be drug free when at work - I worked with a forklift every day at my $7.25/hour 2nd job at a competitor of Wal-Mart that also had a drug screen - it was dangerous enough without throwing drugs into the mix. Many employees are cross-trained and may cashier, use a forklift, collect carts and stock shelves in a single shift.

-I'm truly surprised that she was able to get 40 hours/week at Wal-Mart - their reputation is to work people 25-30 hours/week to avoid overtime and having to offer insurance at any cost. That rang very false to me.

So, to sum up: well-written but flawed because the author had not done a lot of her simple research ahead of time. In my mind, she showed disrespect to the very people she was supposed to be learning about. So, these strong positives and strong negatives add up to a 3 star average.

This book can be found on Amazon.com here: Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting By in America.

Reviewed on December 29, 2007.

This book has been challenged and banned multiple times for drug references and "profanity, offensive references to Christianity, and biased portrayal of capitalism." See this site for more information.

A King's Ransom by James Grippando

Originally Published in 2001.

Is A King's Ransom great literature?

No.

Is it a great piece of thriller escapism?

Absolutely! Yes!

Grippando is on my short list of authors to keep an eye out for. Almost always he delivers some legal thrills, a bit of injustice that drags the reader in and some twists and turns to make the ride interesting.

In this book, a young up-and-coming lawyer's father is kidnapped in Colombia. As Nick Rey tries to free his father (Matthew Rey) his professional life, his personal life and his family's secrets all get shaken up.

In a nice play on words, "rey" is Spanish for "king" - the book is about getting the ransom for Matthew Rey's release.

I give this one 5 stars out of 5.

This book can be found on Amazon.com here: A King's Ransom by James Grippando.

Reviewed on December 29, 2007.

Batman: Dead White (audiobook) by John Shirley

A harder edge to Batman tales than most are used to

Published 2009 by GraphicAudio
Performed by a cast of 30+ actors
Duration: Approximately 6 hours

Set early in Batman's career, Batman: Dead White features Batman versus a group of militia-based racists who are planning an Al-Qaeda inspired terror campaign designed to start a race war. The plan is reminiscent of Charles Manson's Helter Skelter race war except that the lunatic in charge of this group is much more organized and has hundreds and hundreds of followers.

The Bavarian Brotherhood are led by White Eyes, a gigantic white man who speaks the standard lines of racial purity, Aryan superiority and various plots by different Jewish groups to control everything. The difference is that he has  a workable plan to de-stabilize the United States government, lots of money and access to a whole series of new and dangerous weapons that even impress Batman.

Bruce Wayne has been "Batman" for about 18 months so he is still working out all of the details of his personae. Lingering doubts plague him throughout the book and he is still a novelty to the police and the military who see the BatPlane for the first time in this adventure.
GraphicAudio's tag line is "A Movie In Your Mind" and once again they deliver. The cast features more than 30 performers and includes sound effects and music. More than once I had to turn down the radio to make sure that the sirens in a chase scene were not real sirens as I listened to this audioboook during my daily commute.

Listeners may be surprised at the graphic language used throughout (somehow most comic book bad guys do not curse much, have you noticed? They'll steal national treasures, poison your water supplies, blow up buildings and kill lots of people but never utter a curse word.). There is a lot of cursing and racial slurs (drug dealers and race-baiters curse and use racial slurs? Shocking!). There are also open discussions of rape and slurs against homosexuals. None of these seem inappropriate in their context and there is a warning on the package and at the beginning of the first disc.

I rate this audiobook 5 stars out of 5.

This audiobook can be found on Amazon.com here: Batman: Dead White (audiobook) by John Shirley.

Reviewed on January 21, 2012.