Roadwork (audiobook) by Stephen King (writing as Richard Bachman)

A story of a man whose world has fallen apart

Published in 2010 by Penguin Audio
Read by: G. Valmont Thomas
Duration: 9 hours, 40 minutes.

Unabridged

Way back in 1981 Stephen King released Roadwork under the pseudonym Richard Bachman. Bachman was the name King used to sell pulp fiction type stories so that he could afford to pay his bills and not hurt his reputation as he waited for his work he submitted under his name to take off. King opens this book with an interesting introduction that explains his rather complex relationship with his pseudonym.

Roadwork, on the surface, is simple enough. A man in this forties is losing his house, his job and the memories that he holds dearest to the expansion of a highway through his neighborhood. Due to imminent domain, Barton George Dawes will lose his last connections to his son who has died three years earlier due to a brain tumor. He will lose the house that he and his wife scraped and scrimped to buy. He will lose his career at the local laundry and the memories of the brothers who loaned him the money to go to college so that he could help them with their family business. His son is gone, the laundry has been swallowed up by a large corporation (he manages it for them and they show little interest in the business), his wife has become less of a friend and lover and more of a roommate.

Basically, Dawes' life has fallen apart and he is angry about it. Very angry.

Stephen King

Dawes refuses to look for a new place to live, even though the rest of his neighbors have sold out and moved on. He refuses to search for a new location for the laundry. Instead, he quietly goes behind everyone's backs and purchases weapons and contacts a local mobster about buying explosives so he can blow up the highway.

As a forty-something myself, I found myself sympathizing with Dawes to a point. Dawes has invested everything in a life that has come to nothing - no family, no job, not even the house he has worked for all of these years.

G. Valmont Thomas did a remarkable job of voicing Dawes, his internal alter-ego (Dawes often talks to another person in his mind) and the supporting characters in this tragedy. There is no great moral in this book,  no happy ending. It is a tragedy in the original sense of the word - everyone can see it coming from a mile away but what can a man do when he has nothing left to lose?

I rate this audiobook 4 stars out of 5.

This audiobook can be found on Amazon.com here: Roadwork

Reviewed on April 6, 2012.

The (Honest) Truth About Dishonesty: How We Lie to Everyone - Especially Ourselves by Dan Ariely

Published in June of 2012

Note: DWD's Reviews received an uncorrected proof advance copy from the publisher (Harper) in exchange for an honest review.

Dan Ariely's The (Honest) Truth About Dishonesty is a fun look at a serious topic - lying. Ariely, a professor of behavioral economics at Duke University, describes his simple experiments and details his results in a light, easy to understand way. His results are often surprising and counter-intuitive.

For example, it is often considered that people are dishonest because they have calculated the risk of being caught and the reward if they get away with the dishonesty and act accordingly. Ariely demonstrates that this is incorrect and spends the rest of the book showing what conditions are more likely to cause dishonest behavior and what conditions decrease dishonesty.

This could have been a stupefyingly dull book, but Ariely has a deft touch and makes it a very fun and very quick read.

I rate this book 5 stars out of 5.

This book can be found on Amazon.com here: The (Honest) Truth About Dishonesty: How We Lie to Everyone---Especially Ourselves

Reviewed on April 3, 2012.

Imperfect: An Improbable Life by Jim Abbott and Tim Brown

Entertaining Sports Autobiography

Published by Ballantine Books in April of 2012

Jim Abbott will always be known as "that one-handed pitcher" and in Imperfect he discusses the fact that his life has always been defined by his birth defect. Or, has it? As I read this book I found myself wondering if his missing hand limited him, propelled him or if he would have gone just as far if he had had both hands?

Abbott and Brown work together to create a very readable, entertaining book. I found the descriptions of 1970s and 1980s era Flint, Michigan and his life growing up just as compelling as his stories of how he overcame the difficulties he encountered by having just one hand.

I was aware of Jim Abbott as he played but as his career waned I lost track of him. Also, I had no memory of his playing in the 1987 Pan-American games in Indianapolis even though I have always lived in Indiana and those games were a very big deal when Indianapolis hosted them.

Abbott tells the story as a series of flashbacks told as he describes his no-hitter he pitched on September 4, 1993 against the Cleveland Indians. It is an interesting way to build the book - the book ends with his success in the game as he describes a frustrating erosion of his skills as a pitcher that caused him to retire in 1999. We hear precious little about his post-baseball life. If the assumption was that the average reader would not care, that is a disservice. I would have enjoyed reading more about his transition to the non-baseball world.

I was especially touched by his tales of parents bringing kids to meet him when he was a major leaguer. He grew weary of them because they could be emotionally draining, but he ended up appreciating the fact that he was a living example of overcoming a problem that certainly would have stopped most people. It is a testament to Abbott that he grasped his value of his celebrity and used it in such a personal way.

I rate this book 4 out of 5 stars.

This book can be found on Amazon.com here: Imperfect: An Improbable Life

Reviewed on April 3, 2012.

Where the Action Was: Women War Correspondents in World War II by Penny Colman

Published in 2002 by Crown Publishers (Random House)

This book is aimed at students from grades 5-12, although I found it interesting and learned a lot.

World War II histories abound. Histories of the complete war, various theaters, biographies of units and single officers fill the bookshelves. I have seen books that look at the role of women in the war - the home front, as pilots, intelligence officers and so on. But, I have never seen anything about female war correspondents. I did not even know that there were female war correspondents in World War II - I simply assumed that the sexist attitudes of the day would have not allowed them to work.

Happily, I have been enlightened by Penny Colman and her book Where the Action Was. She tells the story of the war through the eyes of several female war correspondents - sometimes through direct quotes, sometimes through reproductions of the headlines of their articles that are placed throughout like in a scrapbook. The history of the war and the story of these war correspondents was woven together seamlessly and very well done. The pictures are either pictures of the women correspondents or pictures taken by them (or both).

Female correspondents were everywhere - at the taking of the Sudetenland by Germany, scooping the rest of the world on the Nazi-Soviet Pact of 1939, among the refugees fleeing Paris, in Moscow when Germany attacked the USSR, in Europe, on Iwo Jima, there when concentration camps were liberated, in Italy and on and on and on.

I rate this book 5 stars out of 5. It can be found on Amazon.com here: Where the Action Was.

Reviewed on April 2, 2012.

Car Talk: The Greatest Stories Ever Told: Once Upon a Car Fire (audiobook) by Tom Magliozzi and Ray Magliozzi

Published in 2006 by HighBridge
Duration: 1 hour

Usually Ray and Tom Magliozzi's "Car Talk" show on NPR is a mixture of humor, stories and lots of advice on car repair and maintenance. This collection, though, is all funny stories (only the barest amount of car advice is given).  There are sixteen stories in all, with topics ranging from the dangers of carrying plywood on the roof of your car to what to do if a customer brings in a really smelly car to how one of the brother's did during his stint in the army as a young man (hint: not well). Some are really funny, some are merely amusing but if you are a fan of the show you will enjoy this collection.

Get this audiobook from Amazon.com here: Car Talk: The Greatest Stories Ever Told: Once Upon a Car Fire.

I rate this audiobook 4 stars out of 5.

Reviewed on April 1, 2012.

Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home (abridged audiobook) by Vonda N. McIntyre, Leonard Nimoy, and Harve Bennett

Published in 1986 by Simon and Schuster
Read by Leonard Nimoy and George Takei
Duration: 90 minutes

Abridged.

I picked up this audiobook of Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home on cassette at a clearance book sale in the "who's going to want this stuff?" section. Mostly, it was serious junk. Educational software that only operates on Apple IIe,  VHS copies of movies that I've never heard of starring some guy that was on some TV show that I barely remember and DVDs of some pastor's sermons on any number of topics (still in the plastic!). And, suddenly, I find a memory from my high school and college years - a genuine Star Trek audiobook from 1986!...on audiocassette! And...narrated by George Takei and Leonard Nimoy! So, I scuttle out of there like I've found a gold bar and pop it in car's cassette player - one of the advantages of having an old car is that it has a multimedia (CD and cassette) stereo system.

Back in the day, audiobooks were almost always abridged, sometimes criminally. This 274 page book is abridged to a mere 90 minutes. To be honest, if it weren't for my faded memories of the movie, I don't even know if there is enough plot here to tell the story.

George Takei from a scene in the
movie Star Trek IV

But, I enjoyed it immensely - I am a fan . Takei reads the story except for the internal musings of Spock, which are, of course, handled by Nimoy. It turns out that George Takei is a very strong audiobook narrator. His Scottish accent for Scotty is very strong, his southern accent for McCoy is smooth and understated and his Kirk is interesting. Several times Takei sneaks in his take on Shatner's stilted....way...of...pausing....when...he...speaks. I loved it.


So, in a sentence, the book is way too abridged but the fact that it was narrated by Takei and Nimoy made it a joy to listen to anyway.

Get this book as a audio download from Audible on Amazon.com here: Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home (Adapted) .

I rate this audiobook 4 stars out of 5.

Reviewed on April 1, 2012.

The Good Fight: How World War II Was Won by Stephen E. Ambrose

Great book for school age kids

Published in 2001 by Atheneum Books for Young Readers

Stephen E. Ambrose is perhaps best known as the author of Band of Brothers, the book that inspired the HBO mini-series of the same name. His passion for World War II continues in this book aimed at upper elementary through high school students.

A Kamikaze plane about to hit an American ship
(In the book on page 78)

While there is nothing new in The Good Fight, it is a fantastic introduction to the war. All of the major theaters are covered and, perhaps best of all, there is a full page 10" x 10"  picture from the war that show everything from the home front to kamikaze planes to Hitler in a elaborate Nazi rally to Holocaust victims and even more. Those pictures and the little ones scattered on the other pages make the book much more vivid. There are also plenty of pictures of the young men and women that were involved - pictures that make the war seem more real. Throw in Ambrose's mastery of the details and great writing and this is a must have book for any library or grades 5-12 history classroom.

I rate this book 5 out of 5 stars.

This book can be found on Amazon.com here: The Good Fight : How World War II Was Won.

Reviewed on March 29, 2012.