HARRY POTTER and the GOBLET of FIRE (Harry Potter #4) (audiobook) by J.K. Rowling

 

Originally published in 2000.

Read by Jim Dale.
Duration: 20 hours, 37 minutes.
Unabridged.


I am continuing my first time read (technically a listen) of the Harry Potter series 20 years after the fact. Rather than go through the plot of the book, I am going to skip to my review.

The fourth installment of this book is best so far. A slow start builds up to a tremendous ending. I have been pretty critical of Jim Dale's performance in this series up until now. In Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire Jim Dale nails it. As it goes along he gets better and better. His reading of the scene where Harry looks into Dumbledore's pensieve is absolutely riveting. This is the book where the Harry Potter series makes a turn from being a bunch of cute kid's books. For example, grown-up topics like racism are dealt with. Racism is actually dealt with in 3 different ways - with the House Elves, Giants and the topic of pure blood wizards.

Jim Dale

I rate this audiobook 5 stars out of 5. It can be be found on Amazon.com here: HARRY POTTER and the GOBLET of FIRE by J.K. Rowling.

Note: this entire book series has been on banned book lists multiple times since it was originally published due to complaints from religious conservatives. Check out this website for more info.

TIN BADGES (Tank Rizzo #1) (audiobook) by Lorenzo Carcaterra

Published in 2019 by Random House Audio.

Read by Pete Simonelli

Duration: 7 hours, 44 minutes.
Unabridged.

Tank Rizzo is a retired police officer. He retired early because his partner suffered a career-ending injury in a botched raid on a drug dealer's apartment. 

Tank's retirement consists of hanging out at the neighborhood restaurant, dating the owner of the restaurant, helping his partner with his rehab and catching a few hockey games with the father of his girlfriend (a retired mob boss).

The author, Lorenzo Carcaterra

But, Tank has a hobby that is sort of an open secret. He has built his own team of crime solvers and he solves cold cases for his old boss. His former partner helps by working remotely. They are paid from sort of slush fund or a secret budget line. It's not really clear, but money is not an issue.

Tank's estranged brother and wife die in a car crash in a snowstorm and Tank's mystery-loving nephew moves in and joins the team and they have just caught a hot new case...

This book was full of so many cliches that it was amusing just to watch them build up:

*Rogue superstar cops? Check.

*Restaurant owned by a mobster? Check.

*The mobster is actually a decent guy? Check.

*Black cop/white cop partners who are so close that they are like brothers? Check.

*Brilliant teenager with amazing skills? Check.

*Amazing team that works together perfectly even though they have no reason to even know each other let alone work together? Check.
*Off the books special deal with the police? Check.

The best thing about this book was the audiobook reader, Pete Simonelli. He has a fantastic voice. The story was not very good. The reading was great.

I rate this audiobook 2 stars out of 5. It can be found on Amazon here: TIN BADGES (Tank Rizzo #1) by Lorenzo Carcaterra.

WHEN to ROB a BANK...and 131 MORE WARPED SUGGESTIONS and WELL-INTENDED RANTS (audiobook) by Steven D. Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner

 

Published in 2015 by HarperAudio.
Duration: 8 hours, 13 minutes.
Read by Steven D. Levitt, Stephen J. Dubner and Erik Bergmann.
Unabridged.

Levitt and Dubner are the authors the co-creators of the Freakonomics franchise. They have published several books, have a radio show, have a website and have had a long-running column in the New York Times. All of them have featured odd takes on economic theories (as the title of this book suggests). They also have a blog that they used as a place to put their odd thoughts - not complete articles or chapters.

This book consists of 132 entries from their blog. And, that, in short, is the weakness of this audiobook. Their other works are much more thought out and this one just feels like the results of a preliminary brainstorming session. There were some interesting entries and there were some real clunkers. Also, there were way too many entries about gambling. I have absolutely no interest in gambling but the authors are really into it. 

Bottom line: the quality of this book does not live up to the quality of their other books.

I rate this audiobook 3 stars out of 5. It can be found on Amazon.com here: WHEN to ROB a BANK...and 131 MORE WARPED SUGGESTIONS and WELL-INTENDED RANTS by Steven D. Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner.

MY VANISHING COUNTRY: A MEMOIR (audiobook) by Bakari Sellers

Published in 2020 by HarperAudio.
Read by the author, Bakari Sellers
Duration: 5 hours, 9 minutes.
Unabridged

I came to My Vanishing Country not knowing a thing about Bakari Sellers. I don't know where I heard about his book, but I had placed a hold on the audiobook at my library. I assume I heard him in an interview on NPR or found his name on a list of prominent books to be released in 2020.

Bakari Sellers in 2018. Photo by Luke Harold.

Sellers has the distinction of being one of the youngest state legislators ever and the youngest African American ever elected to a post in American history. He is from South Carolina, was a member of its legislature for 8 years, is an attorney and is now a commentator for CNN. I am not from South Carolina and I don't have cable or satellite so I had never seen his work on CNN, either. 

My complete unfamiliarity with Sellers made the book a little tedious at times. But, the last quarter of the book is very strong. It was so strong, due to more generalized commentary, that it pulled my score for this book up to 4 stars. 

Sellers read the audiobook himself. I understand the temptation for him to read his own audiobook. After all, his entire career on CNN is based on his ability to speak. He was okay as a reader - neither good nor bad. 

This audiobook can be found on Amazon here: MY VANISHING COUNTRY: A MEMOIR by Bakari Sellers.

RITA HAYWORTH and SHAWSHANK REDEMPTION (audiobook) by Stephen King

Originally published in 1982 as a novella in the collection Different Seasons.

Read by Frank Muller.
Duration: 3 hours, 57 minutes.
Unabridged.

I originally read this novella when it was published as a part of the collection called Different Seasons more than 35 years ago. This is the third time I have read this story, but the first time in the last 20 years.  I have never seen the beloved movie.

Stephen King

Rita Hayworth and Shawshank Redemption tells the story of two prisoners in Shawshank Prison in Maine, starting in the late 1940's. One is the main supplier of things smuggled into the prison (but not hard core drugs) and the other is a banker that has been falsely convicted of murdering his wife and her lover. They are not exactly friends, but they are friendly and they certainly respect one another.

The banker has an odd habit of collecting rocks he finds in the prison yard and carving them into little sculptures - but could it be a sign of something more?

I have never seen the movie because I was always sort of indifferent to the novella. Strange considering that I've read it three times now. I gave it a try this time to see if my opinion had changed. Turns out it hasn't. Frank Muller did a fine job reading this story, but I still have to rate it 3 stars out of 5.

This story can be found on Amazon.com here: RITA HAYWORTH and SHAWSHANK REDEMPTION (audiobook) by Stephen King.

In November of 2023 it was announced that the group Moms for Liberty had challenged more than 300 books in Florida. This is one of the short stories in one of the books that the Moms challenged. Read more about the books here.

THE FIXER (audiobook) by Joseph Finder

 

Published in 2015 by Penguin Audio.

Read by Steven Kearney.
Duration: 9 hours, 33 minutes.
Unabridged.

The Fixer features Rick Hoffman, who used to be one of the biggest journalists in Boston. But, the magazine he worked for downsized and he lost his job. He also lost his girlfriend (undoubtedly related) and he had to move out. He is forced to move into his father's abandoned house. His father had a stroke years ago and Hoffman let his house fall into disrepair. It's been vandalized and it's pretty obvious that squatters have lived in it in the past. Basically, Hoffman is camping in the house.

His neighbor is a childhood acquaintance. The neighbor heads up a construction crew and offers to work with Hoffman to rehab the house with a sweat equity investment. As they are looking through the house Hoffman climbs into a secret attic room and finds a giant pile of cash - millions of dollars. He realizes two things: 1) this house is not a secure place and 2) he really doesn't know his neighbor that well and he's not sure how much of the money he saw and if can even trust him. 

Hoffman now has to use the skills he honed as a reporter to figure out where the money came from and what his incapacitated father was doing to amass a pile of cash. Soon enough, he discovers that someone with friends in powerful places wants their money back...

The premise of this audiobook is strong. The follow-through was not. There is a long scene at a very upscale men's store that goes into excessive detail when Hoffman uses some of the found money to buy a fancy set of clothes. It goes on and on and on and does very little to add to the story. It could have been handled in a single paragraph. It made me wonder if this was a real-life store in Boston and Finder was giving a friend some free advertising. The same thing happens just a few minutes later in the audiobook with a fancy restaurant. Editing these scenes could have cut at least a half an hour from the book and would have only helped it.

But, there were bigger issues. There are plot lines that dramatically start and then drop without explanation - specifically the interactions between Hoffman and the construction crew. It felt like someone suggested edits to Finder and he made them very sloppily, leaving plot threads everywhere.

This book could have been cleaned up, tightened up and perhaps clocked in at 7 hours and been a very good thriller. Instead, I am rating this audiobook 2 stars out of 5. This book can be found on Amazon.com here: THE FIXER by Joseph Finder. 

JESUS and JOHN WAYNE: HOW WHITE EVANGELICALS CORRUPTED a FAITH and FRACTURED a NATION (audiobook) by Kristen Kobes du Mez

 

Published on July 14, 2020 by Kalorama.

Read by Suzie Althens.
Duration: 12 hours, 3 minutes.

Unabridged.

Kristen Kobes du Mez comes to Jesus and John Wayne from the perspective of a person of faith. This is important because this book is highly critical of a certain strand of Christianity.

This strand of Christianity has replaced the values of Jesus with the values personified by John Wayne. Don't get me wrong - I have watched my fair share of John Wayne movies. I always stop to watch "The Cowboys" and the big muddy fistfight scene in "McClintock!" "Rooster Cogburn and the Lady" is one of my favorite westerns, even if it isn't a favorite of most John Wayne fans.

But, the lessons taught in most John Wayne movies are not the lessons taught by Christ. His movies rarely model turning the other cheek and often endorse revenge. They are escapist entertainment, but hardly the basis of a religious movement.

Or, are they? There is a movement in evangelical Christianity that endorses the idea that Jesus was a lot more like John Wayne than the traditionally thought. John Wayne becomes the model for the true Christian man - a man of action who acts the way a man ought to act - a man who is the "protector, provider and patriarch" as another book with both Jesus and John Wayne in the title concludes is embodied in the screen personae of John Wayne.

How did the come to pass? The author takes us back to the days of radio evangelists and finds that there has always been a manly man strain in the evangelical movement, even if those impulses contradict the teachings of Christ. The author follows that line of thinking as it matures a bit under Billy Graham and continues to grow until it comes into full flower with organizations like Focus on the Family and preachers that re-interpret (or outright make up) history just to prove their dubious theological points, like Douglas Wilson. 

At first I thought this book was dreadfully slow and not really making any points. I considered quitting the book. But, starting about 1/3 of the way in, it became obvious that she had been slowly building her argument by laying down a strong foundation for the rest of the book. I rate this audiobook 5 stars out of 5. 

Highly recommended.

This book can be found on Amazon.com here: JESUS and JOHN WAYNE: HOW WHITE EVANGELICALS CORRUPTED a FAITH and FRACTURED a NATION.