THE GOOD KILLER (audiobook) by Harry Dolan

 

Published in 2020 by Highbridge, a division of Recorded Books.

Read by James Patrick Cronin.
Duration: 9 hours, 15 minutes.
Unabridged.

In The Good Killer, Sean Tennant and Molly Winter are living under assumed names around Houston, Texas. They are in hiding (the story eventually lets the reader know why) and live off of the grid as much as possible. 

Tennant is a retired soldier who served a very rough tour in Iraq. He still has the skills that helped him survive: he is hyper-vigilant and always carries a weapon and tourniquet. On a trip to the mall to buy a new pair of boots a man attracts his attention. When he moves away, Tennant is relieved. When the man opens fire in a clothing store, Tennant leaps into action. He kills the shooter and saves a mother's life with his tourniquet. 

And he runs because he knows he will be on the news and the people who desperately want to find Sean and Molly will be coming...

I am a big fan of what I call "the chase book." That is a book where the hero (protagonist) is being chased by evil forces or police who will stop them from achieving some important goal to stop the evil forces.

A critical component of this formula (for me) has to be a likable set of protagonists. In this book, I found Sean and Molly to be nowhere near the most likable characters. I even found one of the bad guys to be more likable than them.

The reader, James Patrick Cronin, has an excellent reading voice even though he struggled with the pronunciation Midwestern place names. That wasn't necessarily his fault - his producers should have caught it and corrected it.

I rate this audiobook 3 stars out of 5. It can be found on Amazon.com here: The Good Killer by Harry Dolan.

GREENLIGHTS (audiobook) by Matthew McConaughey

Published in October of 2020 by Random House Audio.
Read by the author, Matthew McConaughey.
Duration: 6 hours, 42 minutes.
Unabridged,

Oscar-winning actor Matthew McConaughey's memoirs are a unique blend of life lessons, reminiscing and bumper stickers that he admired. The title, Greenlights, refers to life giving you opportunities to move forward that you need to take.

The life lessons and bumper stickers are laid out as he tells his life story. He decided to acknowledge his 50th birthday by going through his diaries and notebooks full of observations that he has kept for decades. It is not a true biography, but it is not a true philosophical discussion. What he ends up with is a rambling, yet endearing story.

Some observations:

-His childhood was more than a little concerning.

-I loved his decision to go on the road for a year. 

-John Mellencamp. He's a fan - he quotes his songs several times. I get it. 

I rate this audiobook 4 stars out of 5. It can be found on Amazon.com here: Greenlights by Matthew McConaughey.

THE STORY of HUMAN LANGUAGE (audiobook) by John McWhorter

 

Published in 2004 by The Great Courses.

Lectures delivered by the author, John McWhorter.
Duration: 18 hours, 15 minutes.
Unabridged. 

The idea behind The Great Courses is a simple one - take a college lecture course given by an expert that knows how to give an interesting lecture and package it up as an audiobook that anyone can listen to.

John McWhorter is probably the most famous linguist in America after Noam Chomsky. He takes the listeners on a very thorough introduction to the topic of human language. We learn about proto-languages, language families, tonal languages, sounds that are likely to disappear over time, and how English became the interesting mess that it is and why it's actually easier to learn than most English speakers think.

I come at this being sort of a language nerd - I teach Spanish. McWhorter's lectures were usually informative and entertaining. But, editing out or consolidating 5 or 6 lectures out of this 35+ lecture series would have improved it. 

Nonetheless, it is still a worthwhile listen.

I rate this audiobook 4 stars out of 5. It can be found on Amazon.com here: THE STORY of HUMAN LANGUAGE by John McWhorter.

OUR LINCOLN: NEW PERSPECTIVES on LINCOLN and HIS WORLD edited by Eric Foner

 

Published in 2008 by W.W. Norton and Company.

This series of essays was most likely compiled to be the text for college-level classes by Eric Foner, a historian well-known for his expertise on the Civil War, the Underground Railroad, American Slavery and Reconstruction. Lincoln, of course, sits astride all of these issues.

There are 11 essays covering four broad topics: 

-Lincoln as "The President", looking at such things as how he acted as commander-in-chief and how Lincoln protected (and failed to protect) civil rights during the war.

Abraham Lincoln (1809-1865)

-Lincoln as "The Emancipator", focusing on his view of slavery, citizenship for African Americans, his zeal for colonizing freed slaves and his hot and cold relationship with abolitionists. 

-Lincoln "The Man" with essays about his writing style (and how it changed as the war went on), his views on religion (and how it also may have changed as the war went on) and his family life (his birth family and his married life).

-Lincoln in "Politics and Memory". This is the shortest section and the most politically charged. The author's comments on the Bush administration only make me wonder what he would have said about the Trump administration.

On the whole, this was a solid collection, but like all collections, not all of the items in the collection are equal. One essay was about Lincoln's control of how his physical image was shared through paintings, sculpture and photographs and I found it to be so tedious that I started skimming it and finally just skipped to the next essay. The three essays on the Lincoln as The Emancipator were all excellent, but they also had a lot of overlap. 

I rate this collection 4 stars out of 5. It can be found on Amazon.com here: OUR LINCOLN: NEW PERSPECTIVES on LINCOLN and HIS WORLD edited by Eric Foner.

THE LAW of INNOCENCE (audiobook)(Mickey Haller #6) by Michael Connelly

Published in November of 2020 by Little, Brown and Company.

Read by Peter Giles.
Duration: 12 hours, 27 minutes.
Unabridged.

I am an enthusiastic fan of Michael Connelly's books, but to me the Mickey Haller/Lincoln Lawyer series has always been a lesser series than the related Harry Bosch series. It is never bad - just not quite as good.

I am pleased to say that The Law of Innocence is much better than the typical offering in this series. In fact, this is one of the best fiction audiobooks I have listened to in quite a while.

Mickey Haller is known to many as The Lincoln Lawyer. He has that nickname because he works out of the back of his car (always a Lincoln) rather than have an actual office in traffic-plagued Los Angeles. He has wi-fi, a printer and access to his digital files. His office manager works from her home office and sort of acts as his "air traffic controller" by setting up his schedule and arranging places to meet his next appointment. His drivers are typically former clients, some of whom are driving to work off their attorney's fees. 

The book begins with Mickey Haller hosting a party at a downtown bar celebrating a not guilty verdict. Haller is not partaking because he has been clean and sober for the past several years. This is an important point as he drives home and gets pulled over. Certain that this is a bad stop for drunk driving, Haller is surprised to see that he has a missing license plate. He is even more surprised to see a liquid dripping from the back of his car. The officer is sure it is blood, cuffs Haller and opens the trunk to find the body of a former client.

Haller is, of course, innocent. Haller goes from being a defense attorney to being the defendant in a murder trial and the case against him is very strong...

Note: The Law of Innocence has a lot of ties to the fourth novel in the series, The Fifth Witness. 

I rate this audiobook 5 stars out of 5. It can be found on Amazon.com here: THE LAW of INNOCENCE (audiobook)(Mickey Haller #6) by Michael Connelly.

THE ORIGINAL (audiobook) by Brandon Sanderson and Mary Robinette Kowal

 

Published in September of 2020 by Recorded Books.

Read by Julia Whelan.
Duration: 3 hours, 30 minutes.
Unabridged.

Brandon Sanderson is one of the go-to names in science fiction and fantasy in the 21st Century. He has been nominated for or has won just about all of the major awards. Mary Robinette Kowal has similar credentials. Together, they created this audiobook-exclusive novella.

This audiobook clocks in at 3 hours and 30 minutes, but it is an action-packed 3 hours and 30 minutes that takes the listener into an all-too-plausible (mostly) and creepy world.

Mary Robinette Kowal

The Original begins with Holly Winseed waking up in a hospital. She has no idea why she is there and gets very confusing answers from the staff. Soon, she realizes that she is a cloned copy of herself.

Winseed lives in a future filled with nano-technology, including in the human bloodstream. The tiny robots keep people healthy and young. 

It also allows the government to access your mind. Then, they can clone the body and, if things go well, unite the new body with the old mind. This is rarely done, though. The government reserves the right to do this when the original person has committed a heinous crime and needs to be tracked down. The idea is simple - who knows how you think better than you? 

The plot is interesting, but for me the setting was even better. This imagined world takes CGI to another level - enabled by the nano-technology in their bloodstreams. It is well worth your time to listen to this audiobook just for that - the story within their created universe is a bonus.

I rate this audiobook 5 stars out of 5. It can be found on Amazon.com here: THE ORIGINAL (audiobook) by Brandon Sanderson and Mary Robinette Kowal.

HOW to THINK: A SURVIVAL GUIDE for a WORLD at ODDS by Alan Jacobs

 

Published in 2017 by Random House Audio.

Read by P.J. Ochlan.

Duration: 4 hours, 21 minutes.
Unabridged.

Alan Jacobs is a professor and expert on the human mind. This short work is essentially a treatise on how to keep an open mind and not get stuck in a mental rut - meaning not simply rejecting new ideas out of hand. He also addresses the concept of how to reach out to people to make new ideas more appealing to them.

Alan Jacobs

Jacobs fills the book with a lot of anecdotes - they were usually interesting in and of themselves, but not particularly enlightening. For me the last part of that sentence pretty much describes the book. It was pleasant enough but it really didn't teach me anything and a lot of the time I was wondering where the author was going with yet another story.

I rate this audiobook 3 stars out of 5. It can be found on Amazon.com here: HOW to THINK: A SURVIVAL GUIDE for a WORLD at ODDS by Alan Jacobs.