CAR TALK: MATERNAL COMBUSTION: CALLS ABOUT MOMS and CARS (audiobook) by Tom and Ray Magliozzi

Published by HighBridge Audio in 2005
Duration: 1 hour, 11 minutes

The hosts of NPR's Car Talk, Tom and Ray Magliozzi, offer highlights from their radio show with the theme
of motherhood. If you are not familiar with the show, well it is unique. Two brothers who aren't really mechanics (but do have a lot of experience fixing cars) take calls about cars and car repair. They laugh and mercilessly kid one another and sometimes actually get around to offering advice on how to fix a car.

Some of the highlights feature their own mother as an in-studio guest, the rest are from callers. Topics include a mom who does not want to break down and buy a mini-van, a mom who wants her sixteen-year-old to buy a sports car and my favorite - the older mom who plans to drive her 1977 Datsun 510 station wagon from Houston to Massachusetts that prompts a hilarious side bet between the brothers.

I rate this audiobook 4 stars out of 5. It can be found on Amazon.com here: Car Talk: Maternal Combustion: Calls About Moms and Cars.
Reviewed on August 15, 2013.

DON'T GO (audiobook) by Lisa Scottoline

Published by MacMillan Audio in 2013

Read by Jeremy Davidson
Duration: 11 hours, 25 minutes

Unabridged

Lisa Scottoline breaks new ground in Don't Go. For years, she has written courtroom dramas and legal thrillers. This time, Scottoline tries to tie together two distinct stories featuring Dr. Mike Scanlon, a podiatrist from Philadelphia.

One is the story of an Army doctor doctor serving in Afghanistan and the other is a murder mystery.

 Scanlon is a member of the National Guard and when the story starts he has been called up and is serving in Afghanistan. Podiatric surgeons are in high demand because of the common use of IEDs (Improvised Explosive Devices) that explode under military vehicles and damage the feet of the passengers.

Mike has left a wife and an infant child back in Philadelphia. His wife dies from a household accident and his wife's sister and her husband care for the child as he rushes back home to make funeral arrangements. They agree to care for her for the duration of his tour in Afghanistan and when he decides to serve another year because they are in such desperate need of doctors with his special skills.

Lisa Scottoline

The problem with Don't Go is that these two stories do not mesh particularly well. The smaller, but much stronger story is the one in Afghanistan. Scottoline has done some research here and she tells it in a compelling and moving way. The characters have real zing.

On the other hand, the Philadelphia characters are very two dimensional and Scanlon's sister-in-law has an obsessive need to keep the baby on its nap schedule (and the never-ending conversations about the nap schedule) that borders on mental illness. When a father returns home from more than a year in Afghanistan with a horrible injury and wants to see the baby you immediately let him see the baby and throw the @$&%! nap schedule out the window for the day!

Scottoline throws in a murder mystery that just does not fit, but it does little to liven up the home front part of the story. However, the investigation by Scanlon is so haphazard and so full of gut feelings that it felt contrived - like a separate story was grafted to the main story just to add length and a little punch. Major family confrontations flare up and are solved so quickly that it seemed clear that Scottoline was trying to pad the story or really had no sense of how she wanted to end it. For what it's worth, I would have been very happy to have had the entire book just about the adventures of  Dr. Scanlon in Afghanistan.

Jeremy Davidson read the book and he did a solid, if not exciting job. He did a good job with the French accents of Scanlon's wife and his sister-in-law. Oddly, it is never really explained how Scanlon meets and marries this French lady (or, if it is mentioned, it was glossed over quickly and I missed it). One of the characters is mentioned as having a North Philly accent. I am admittedly no expert on Philadelphia, but to me it sounded like a combination of California surfer dude and Australian.

Note: I received a download copy of this audiobook from the publisher in exchange for an honest review.

I rate this audiobook 3 out of 5 stars. This book can be found on Amazon.com here: DON'T GO by Lisa Scottoline.

Reviewed on August 14, 2103.

THE DOG WHO KNEW TOO MUCH (Chet and Bernie #4) by Spencer Quinn

Published in 2011 by Atria Books

Chet and Bernie are private detectives. Well, Bernie is a private detective. Chet is his dog - a police dog (almost!) that failed to make it all of the way through his training. The story is told completely told from the perspective of Chet, the dog who pretty much understands human society, at least enough to tell the story. What he does know for sure is that he and Bernie are inseparable partners and they always have each others' back.

In The Dog Who Knew Too Much Bernie is hard up for money again (Bernie can generate income but he likes to speculate in questionable investments) and he accepts what should be a simple job - pretend to be a woman's boyfriend while she goes to pick up her son at a summer camp in the mountains so that her ex-husband will finally understand that their romantic relationship is over. He quickly determines that this ex-husband has a violent past and is involved in shady business involving lots of money and makes a mental note that this case may be more than his client has described.

Spencer Quinn

It turns out that there is more to this case, but it is not what he expected. When they arrive his client's son has gone missing - he disappeared during the night on an overnight hike with his bunk mates and his counselor. Bernie and Chet begin the search for the boy but he immediately finds an abandoned gold mine, rumors of meth labs and plenty of corrupt local officials. That's when things start to get interesting...

For those of us who live with a dog, this series rings true. Spencer Quinn should be commended for capturing a dog's take on human society, his go-go-go enthusiasm (including the many times Chet hears a dog barking and suddenly realizes that he is the one doing the barking) and his good and loyal nature. I liked the story, not so much for the mystery but, instead, for the characters. Chet and Bernie are like old friends to me and it was good to catch up a little bit.

I rate this book 4 stars out of 5. It can be found on Amazon.com here: The Dog Who Knew Too Much.

Reviewed on July 25, 2013

TEST of FIRE (audiobook) by Ben Bova

Read by Dean Sluyter

Duration: 10 hours, 46 minutes

Published by Blackstone Audio in 2013

Unabridged

Sci-fi legend Ben Bova’s 1982 book Test of Fire is a look at a near-future Earth struck by a giant solar flare that literally destroys all life in Europe, Asia and Africa because that half of the planet that was facing the sun at the time. North America is partially devastated by a limited strike of nuclear missiles from Soviet Union. Central America and South America do not figure in the story.

The near future Earth has a lunar base (for mining) and a fleet of space shuttles that regularly take off and land on earth from very long runways. The lunar base survived the solar flare unscathed but faces the difficult challenge of how to provide for all of its needs with little or no support from Earth.

The lunar base is led by a council and that council is led by Daniel Morgan and his scheming wife. Morgan leads an expedition to Cape Canaveral for supplies and to look for survivors. He returns with both but is struck by the pitiful condition of the people he left behind. Civilization has all but ended for them and he wants to make sure that thousands of years of art, philosophy and science are not lost. He wants to work with the people on Earth but is overruled by the council due to the behind the scenes machinations of his wife. They want to write off the Earth and focus on keeping the lunar base alive.

While Morgan’s wife schemes and sleeps with powerful members of the council to get her way and betray her husband, Morgan decides to return to Earth on a mission to retrieve fissionable fuel to power the base’s nuclear plants (the moon lacks those elements). Morgan retrieves the fuel and refuses to return to the moon, even though his wife is pregnant. He is considered a traitor and for twenty years his son, Alec, is taught that his father betrayed the base.

Photo by Gregory H. Revera

Alec is trained to lead a mission to Earth to retrieve the fuel and to get even with his father who is believed to have set up a kingdom among the “barbarians,” as the survivors are called.  Alec brings superior technology, including laser cannons, but far inferior numbers, including a member of the council who may want to kill him and marry his mother. Even though the earth soldiers are at a disadvantage when it comes to weapons, they have the advantage when it comes earth’s gravity, heat, humidity and viruses.

While this book is based on a tremendous premise and is filled with characters that feel as though they belong in a Greek or even a Shakespearean tragedy, it never lives up to its promise, which is odd considering that the book is basically a revision of a book he wrote in the early 1970s called When the Sky Burned, making this the second draft of the same story. Despite the revision, too many characters, such as Alec’s mother (who dominates the first half of the book), just disappear from the story as it goes along. Also, very few of the characters are even likable. Daniel Morgan is presumed honorable, but he is inscrutable. His wife is plain evil. At first Alec is a sympathetic character, but early on in the book he rapes a female doctor while on a dinner date in her apartment. Personally, I found it hard to root for rapists. In the end, I just listened to see how Bova was going to end the book all the while wondering what David Weber would have done with it.

Dean Sluyter’s reading of Test of Fire certainly did not help my enjoyment of the book. It is not that Sluyter has a poor reading voice – to the contrary, he has excellent diction and a nice deep tone. But, he reads slowly and tends to get a little William Shatner-esque in long passages with odd pauses and breaks. There was not much differentiation between the male and female characters and most of the male characters sounded very similar. It may be that his reading style is better suited for non-fiction rather than fiction where listeners (at least this one listener) place a premium on a more dramatic reading performance.

Note: I received a download copy of this audiobook from the publisher in exchange for an honest review.

I rate this audiobook 2 stars out of 5. It can be found on Amazon.com here: TEST of FIRE by Ben Bova.

Reviewed on July 24, 2013.

HISTORY of ROCK and ROLL 101: The TextVook by Dr. Vook, Ph.D and the Charles River Editors

Really Skimpy

Published in 2011 by Vook

This tiny e-book comes in at 28 regular book pages according to Amazon. Let's face it, that is too small to really cover the history of rock and roll. The facts that are here are good and the book is written in a fairly interesting manner. I read the whole thing on my smart phone using my kindle app while waiting in line for a rental car. It's good for that sort of reading, but if you need anything comprehensive about the history of rock and roll this book is not what you need. In my opinion, it serves as little more than a general introduction with some broad concepts outlined and a few sentences about examples of each of these concepts.

I would recommend skipping this book and just cruising Wikipedia and taking advantage of their hyperlinks and perusing topics that interest you about rock and roll.

I rate this book 2 stars out of 5.

This e-book can be found on Amazon.com here: History of Rock and Roll.

Reviewed on July 22, 2013.

The Force is Middling in this One: And Other Ruminations from the Outskirts of the Empire by Robert Kroese

Published by CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform in 2010.

Entirely composed of a "best of" compilation of blog posts from the author's blog and tied together with quotes and thoughts from the Star Wars movies, The Force is Middling In This One is a fun bit of reading designed to be read exactly as it was written: in small doses. This book is perfectly constructed for reading while standing in line (which I did with my smart phone and my kindle app) or any other time when you just have about 5 minutes to read.

The topics are all over the place, covering topics such as Star Wars, motorcycle riding on the freeway, the author's brain and its lack of focus, the construction of an addition to his house, his life in the least livable city in the United States (Modesto, CA - and yes, it was named that by a survey), Home Improvement Store employees, why gophers are literally evil and a whole lot more. Nearly every posting is interrupted by a totally different very short thought called "From the Sock Drawer." 

Very few postings are political - he explains early on that he used to have a political blog but he literally alienated almost of his readers to the point that he stopped posting them. An exception to that is a posting called "Burn, Baby Burn!" about the folly of some environmentalists that was so on the point and explains why some programs will never work in a logical economics-based manner that I was ashamed that I hadn't thought of explaining things in this way before - i am a licensed econ teacher, after all.

I rate this collection 4 stars out of 5. 

This book can be found on Amazon.com here: 
The Force is Middling in this One: And Other Ruminations from the Outskirts of the Empire


Reviewed on July 22, 2013. 

A Portrait of Jesus by Joseph F. Girzone

First published in 1999.

Retired Catholic priest Joseph F. Girzone is most famous for his 1983 book Joshua (which also became a movie) which features Jesus coming to a modern-day American small town and the influence he has just be being himself - no great announcements, just Jesus being Jesus.

A Portrait of Jesus builds on that same idea but it looks at what the New Testament records about the life of Jesus and how he related to everyone around him. Girzone writes movingly about how Jesus preached compassion above all and he demonstrates it again and again in this book. His description of Jesus and his emphasis on relationships over law and the descriptions of how that worked then and how it can work now were profound when I first read them 10 years ago. I re-read the book after doing a deep cleaning of the book shelves. I was considering selling it to a used book store but I decided that the book was so powerful that I would keep it on the shelf and re-read it again in 10 years or so.

I rate this book 5 stars out of 5. It can be found on Amazon.com here: A Portrait of Jesus by Joseph F. Girzone.