STARMAN JONES (audiobook) by Robert A. Heinlein

 

Originally published in 1953.

Digital Audiobook version published in 2008 by Blackstone Audio, Inc.

Read by Paul Michael Garcia.

Duration: 8 hours, 29 minutes.

Unabridged.

Legendary science fiction author Robert A. Heinlein (1907-1988) wrote a set of novels for the Scribner's publishing house early in his career as a novelist starting in 1947. Scribner's published 12 of them. One of his most famous works, Starship Troopers, was rejected as a volume in this series, but it was fully intended to be a part of it.  A 14th and final book featuring a female lead character was also rejected.  They all share a theme of space exploration moving roughly from humanity's first steps away from Earth to contact with massive alien empires in far and distant places.

Robert A. Heinlein (1907-1988)

Starman Jones falls right in the middle. It is the seventh novel in the series and humanity can travel to far and distant places and has met alien species, but it is exceedingly tricky. 

Max Jones is a teenager in the Ozarks on a future Earth. Times are tough and people with pull, connections or money are moving off-planet. Max has no pull, maybe has a connection and certainly has no money. When his widowed step-mother marries the neighborhood bully and lets him sell the family farm without warning Max runs away from home to find his own way.

As you can tell by the title, Max eventually makes it to space. The problem is that Heinlein spends a lot of time explaining the bureaucracy of the various space guilds (every profession has its own guild and its own obscure rules) and then goes on to explain in excruciating detail the formal and informal rules of a ship - how the galley works, how discipline is maintained, how to run an illegal still on board, how the crew relates to the passengers, how the crew relates to the officers, how the officers relate to the passengers, how the bridge officers relate to the other officers, how the bridge officers relate to each other and how the captain can help or hinder the ship's morale. It reminded me quite a bit of the extended descriptions of military life in Starship Troopers. 

If all of the "explaining" were edited out, or at least cut back, this book would probably come in 3 hours shorter and be all the better. 

I rate this audiobook 3 stars out of 5. It can be found on Amazon.com here: Starman Jones by Robert A. Heinlein. 

HARRY POTTER and the HALF-BLOOD PRINCE (Harry Potter #6) by J.K. Rowling

 

Originally published in 2009.
Published by Pottermore Publishing in 2015.
Read by Jim Dale.
Duration: 18 hours, 32 minutes.
Unabridged.

The Half-Blood Prince is the book that one of my daughters complained about several years ago when she read it. She said it was too much talking and not enough action. Certainly when compared to the previous two books, there is a lot less action and a whole lot more talking. Rowling changed up the narrative and tells the back story of the villain of the series, Lord Voldemort, by way of an investigation by Dumbledore and Harry.

The pace is certainly slower, but the information was valuable. Perhaps it might have been delivered differently, but I was glad to have it. 

The last two hours of the audiobook were full of nothing but action and consequential moments. 

Jim Dale continued to do a great job with the book, with the exception of the voice of Hermione. 


This is my favorite cover of the entire series. Once you get done with the book you can see that it covers the major points of the story in one picture. Well done.

I rate this audiobook 4 stars out of 5 and I look forward to the last book of the series.

This audiobook can be found on Amazon.com here: HARRY POTTER and the HALF-BLOOD PRINCE (Harry Potter #6) 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.

LINCOLN and the FIRST SHOT (Critical Periods of History Series) by Richard N. Current

Originally published in 1963.

27 years ago I took a night class about the Civil War offered by Ball State University in a middle school off campus. It was a great class and Lincoln and the First Shot was the first book that we discussed. The book covers the two month period from the day that Lincoln arrived in D.C. after he was elected President and the day that P.G.T. Beauregard opened fire on Fort Sumter at Charleston, South Carolina.

When the Confederate states seceded they took over all Federal property, including forts and military bases. Two forts were not surrendered - Fort Pickens in Pensacola and Fort Sumter. Fort Sumter was always the most argued over because of the symbolism of being smack in the middle of the main port of the first state to secede. 

Lincoln refused to give up the fort because he refused to give up any of the seceded states. South Carolina demanded the fort because they insisted they were part of a new country and they did not want a foreign power to have a fort blocking a port in their new country.

South Carolina was ready to fire on the fort but did not want to look like they were provoking a fight. A peaceful separation might still be possible. Lincoln was preparing to reinforce the fort if he could - but without provoking a fight. After all, the country might be peacefully reunited. 

Fort Sumter immediately after its surrender
to South Carolina troops in April, 1861.

Neither side wanted to fire the first shot, but both sides could foresee the rush of patriotism that follow if their side were fired upon.

Historian Richard N. Current's description of the situation faced by both the North and the South at the beginning of the crisis was excellent and well done. But, his description of all of the plotting, fake peace proposals and sometimes outright confusion felt like he was stretching out the story to fill the pages of this book - like there was a minimum number of words he had to reach to fulfill his book contract.

So, I rate this book 3 stars out of 5. It can be found here on Amazon.com:  LINCOLN and the FIRST SHOT (Critical Periods of History Series) by Richard N. Current.

SOLDIER BOY by Michael Shaara

 

Published in 1982 by Pocket Books (a Timescape book)

Back in the 1980's Simon and Schuster had a division called Pocket Books that specialized in paperback books. Pocket Books had an even smaller division called Timescape. Timescape published sci-fi books, including some of the earliest of the Star Trek novels so they were quite a successful line. Soldier Boy is part of that Timescape line.

Michael Shaara (1928-1988)

Michael Shaara won the Pulitzer Prize for his 1974 novel about the Battle of Gettysburg, The Killer Angels. Shaara had knocked out a few novels before then, but none were about the Civil War. Instead, a great deal of his writing was sci-fi. He started out selling stories to magazines in 1951. This book is a collection of 14 of those short stories.

If you read this book, I recommend reading the Author's Afterword first. He wrote commentary on every story and I used those notes as an introduction to each one.  Like all short story collections, they vary in quality. The book is named after the first story in the collection. Shaara really likes the story, but I found it so-so. But, I enjoyed most of them. There were a lot of them with a Twilight Zone gotcha moment at the end. I really enjoyed those.

This collection was an enjoyable read. I rate it 4 stars out of 5. It can be found on Amazon.com here: Soldier Boy by Michael Shaara.

Note: Amazon is selling all of these short stories as individual Kindle stories. Be careful if you buy the one named "Soldier Boy" - it is not this book, it is just the first story. 

THE BITTERROOTS (Cassie Dewell #4) (audiobook) by C.J. Box

 

Published in 2019 by Macmillan Audio.

Read by Christian Delaine.

Duration: 9 hours, 49 minutes.
Unabridged.

In The Bitterroots, Cassie Dewell has left her career in law enforcement and is now a private investigator in Montana. This is perhaps the first series featuring a private investigator in Montana because there can't be that many private investigators in Montana. Box notes that she is actually doing quite well for herself because there are so few private investigators in Montana.

A lawyer who is also the daughter of a man she owed a favor to contacted her to do some investigating work. The attorney had been hired to defend a man who was accused of raping his niece. His case had been moved away from his home county due to pre-trial publicity and Cassie Dewell soon discovers that his home country. That county, despite being physically large, feels like small because everyone knows everyone else and one family runs everything through a combination of physical and financial intimidation.

The problem is that Dewell's client is a member of this family - the oldest son. He is the black sheep that moved away and made it big and came back home with a plan to sell the family ranch since the family patriarch is close to death. The will states that the oldest will inherit the whole ranch so long as he has never committed an act of moral turpitude - which is why the client says he was set up.

Dewell goes off to investigate expecting to find trouble and she finds even more than she expects...

I listened to The Bitterroots as an audiobook. Christian Delaine did a fantastic job of actually performing the book rather than simply reading it. She made the story better than it would have been if I had simply read it.

I rate this audiobook 4 stars out of 5. It can be found on Amazon.com here: The Bitterroots (Cassie Dewell #4) by C.J. Box.

TRUST: AMERICA'S BEST CHANCE (audiobook) by Pete Buttigeig

 

Published by Simon and Schuster Audio in October of 2020.

Read by the author, Pete Buttigeig.
Duration: 4 hours, 46 minutes.
Unabridged. 

Pete Buttigeig was, for me, the most interesting Democrat that sought the 2020 nomination. The first I ever heard of was a lengthy interview he gave on NPR when no one on the national level had ever heard of him. I found him to be thoughtful and serious and open to new ideas and discussion. 

This book is a short discussion on how politics (and life in general) depends on a certain level of trust to proceed. There is nothing really new here, but it is a worthwhile discussion and it is good to hear it reiterated in a time when trust is so short. To his credit, Pete Buttigeig doesn't feel the need just to stretch out a book just to pad the number of pages.

At the end of the audiobook is a recording of Mayor Pete's speech where he announces that he is ending his Presidential campaign.

I rate this audiobook 4 stars out of 5. It can be found on Amazon.com here: TRUST: AMERICA'S BEST CHANCE  by Pete Buttigeig.

THE RED PONY by John Steinbeck

 

Originally published in 1945.

John Steinbeck
(1902-1968)

The Red Pony is a standard novel to be read at the middle school level across the country. I remember I read the first third of the book as a part of my 7th grade literature class textbook, but the rest of the book was new to me.

As I mentioned, The Red Pony is split into sections - three of them. In actuality, they are 3 coming-of-age short stories about Jody, a boy growing up on a northern California ranch. 

Being Steinbeck stories, they are well-written, brutally realistic and every one has a sad twist.  I like Steinbeck, but it has to come in small doses.

I rate this book 4 stars out of 5. It can be found on Amazon.com here: The Red Pony by John Steinbeck.