SPACE COWBOY by Justin Stanchfield

 

Published in 2008 by Usborne Publishing, Ltd.

In Space Cowboy, Travis McClure is a teenaged cowboy with a horse named Deuce. He's good at his job and starting to work more and more on his own and he really enjoys being trusted with more responsibility, even if the work is hard and mostly boring. If they make enough money his family can finally return to their own ranch on Earth and make a go of it.

You see, Travis and his family are part of a terraforming operation in a future where human beings are starting to move out into the galaxy. They are on Aletha Three, a planet with a climate and atmosphere similar to Earth's. Terraformers bring a few animals, a few planets and try to jump start a biosphere by spreading grass the old-fashioned way - by having animals eat the seeds and spread them in their manure. Or, as the book more delicately describes it: "On Earth, animals like wild bison and wild horses had once covered the grasslands, their hoofs churning the barren soil like a million tiny plows, spreading seed as they moved. Here, the scattered herds of hardy, more manageable cattle served the same purpose."

The planet was supposed to be confirmed lifeless before they started, but Travis has a feeling that there is something very dangerous out there. It's bigger than the coyotes that were brought along and it sometimes screeches in the canyonlands when Travis is alone moving the cows along.

When he finally sees it, everything will change...

This was an enjoyable YA novel. There is nothing here but a lot of adventure and the promise of a bit of romance, but it was still a fun read. Don't think too hard, just go along for the ride.

I rate this novel 4 stars out of 5. It can be found as a kindle e-book on Amazon.com here: SPACE COWBOY by Justin Stanchfield.

TULAROSA (audiobook) (Kevin Kerney #1) by Michael McGarrity

 

Published by Recorded Books in 2012.
Read by George Guidall.
Duration: 8 hours, 16 minutes.
Unabridged.

Tularosa features Kevin Kerney, a retired police detective living in New Mexico.

His former partner has come to him with a plea for help. His former partner's son (Kerney's godson) has gone AWOL from White Sands Missle Range in New Mexico. He had been a model soldier up to the time of his disappearance with clear plans to attend art school once he left Army career. 

Here's the difficulty. It wasn't Kerney's choice to retire - he was at the top of his game when he was shot twice in the line of duty in his gut and his knee. This happened because his partner and best friend was out of place -- drinking. 

It has been three years. It took Kerney a long time to physically and mentally rehabilitate and he never forgave his former partner for letting him get hurt.

Kerney is not asked to forgive his former partner, but to put aside his dislike to go and find his godson.

Kerney agrees and finds a whole lot more than he expected...

I really enjoyed veteran audiobook reader George Guidall's reading of the book - he is a classic narrator who set a high standard for all that followed. He has read more tham 1,200 audiobooks and did a good job with this one.

Well, he did as good job as one could with this book. The first half of the book was very good, but somewhere near the halfway point McGarrity started splitting the point of view that the story was told from more and more often (it had primarily been told from Kerney's point of view in the first part of the book) and it takes a lot of the steam out of the story. The mystery is removed from a story and then the book simply becomes a question of HOW the bad guy gets caught by the good guy and not IF the good guys can work out the mystery. It's too bad because McGarrity has one very good surprise twist in the middle that I did not see coming but he doesn't keep up with it.

I rate this audiobook 3 stars out of 5. It can be found on Amazon.com here: TULAROSA by Michael McGarrity.

DIVIDED WE FALL: AMERICA'S SECESSION THREAT and HOW to RESTORE OUR NATION (audiobook) by David French

 

Published in September of 2020 by Macmillan Audio.

Read by Sean Patrick Hopkins and David French.

Duration; 7 hours, 18 minutes.

Unabridged.

David French is, like me, a Never Trump Republican, which means he is a man without a party right now. French starts Divided We Fall with some observations that rang very true to me. For example, he noted that while he was still a part of the two party system, he didn't really think about the automatic intensely negative reaction both sides have to the other side's proposals. The other side isn't just misinformed, they are evil. They are not just mistaken, they are trying to overthrow America and all of its institutions. They want to murder us in our sleep by taking away our rights. They HATE us.

The author

It doesn't matter which side is the "they" and which side is the "us" - it is the same argument, it is a dangerous pattern and it threatens to tear the country apart as we self-segregate into communities that tend to think alike and sometimes literally don't know someone from the other party. 

The middle part of the book consists of possible scenarios that could cause a secession crisis. They are not meant to be literal predictions. Rather, they are possible futures in which one region becomes so disenchanted that it attempts to secede and what that means for national politics, the national . This section was valuable but it was stretched out way too long.

His answer to the problem (a renewed commitment to federalism and states' rights combined with an ironclad guarantee of the rights of minorities in every state) is probably the only real solution to the problem, but it will not be easy.  

This book is well worth reading, but the section with multiple secession scenarios was simply too long and almost felt like French was padding the book to achieve a pre-specified length. Also, what does it say about our the state of American politics right now when a book published in September of 2020 already felt a little dated because of the election of in November, the refusal to accept the result of the election throughout December and the January 6 attack on the Capitol Building?

I rate this audiobook 4 stars out of 5. It can be found on Amazon.com here: DIVIDED WE FALL: AMERICA'S SECESSION THREAT and HOW to RESTORE OUR NATION by David French.

EVERYWHERE that MARY WENT (audiobook)(Rosato and Associates #1) by Lisa Scottoline

 

Originally published in 1994.

Audiobook version published in 2016 by HarperAudio.
Read by Teri Schnaubelt.
Duration: 9 hours, 5 minutes.
Unabridged.

Back in the 1990's, I worked at a used book store. A copy of Everywhere That Mary Went came in. I was intrigued so I read it.  After that, whenever a fan of legal thrillers would come in and ask if we had anything new or a little different I'd hand them that book. Soon enough, we were sold out and we kept on selling them whenever they came in. I even talked a group of ladies to use it for their book discussion group and they loved it. I sort of feel like I had a part in promoting Lisa Scottoline when she was starting out.

Eventually, this one book grew into a series of eleven books and I read most of them (maybe all of them - it's been a while). 

While I was scrolling through my possible choices of my next audiobook, I decided to go back and revisit this series. 

Mary DiNunzio is a lawyer from a working class background about to make partner in a fancy Philadelphia law firm. Things seem to be going well for her, except for the strange typewritten letters and the hang up phone calls at home and at the office. Also, there's the car that seems to be following her. Is it her imagination? Is it related to one of her cases? Is it from one of the other lawyers trying to make partner? Is it the creepy judge? Her supervisor?

I liked the audiobook, but I remember absolutely loving this book 25 years ago. It had funny scenes and endearing characters and it had been so long that I really didn't remember the plot at all. 

I rate it 4 stars out of 5. 

This book can be found on Amazon.com here: EVERYWHERE that MARY WENT (audiobook)(Rosato and Associates #1) by Lisa Scottoline.

NEWS of the WORLD (audiobook) by Paulette Jiles

 

Book originally published in 2016.

Audiobook published by Harper Audio.
Read by Grover Gardner.
Duration: 6 hours, 17 minutes.
Unabridged.

News of the World is a pretty simple book - on the surface. Set in 1870 Texas, a 70+ year-old veteran of the War of 1812 and the Mexican War is asked to travel more than 300 miles to deliver a 10-year old girl to her extended family near San Antonio, Texas. When she was 6, she was adopted by the Kiowa after they killed immediate family in a frontier attack. Their journey starts in Wichita Falls (near the Oklahoma-Texas border) and faces a lot of difficulties. 

The author

Jefferson Kyle Kidd goes by the name Captain Kidd because that was his rank in the Mexican War, where he served as a messenger. That is appropriate since his true love is bringing news to others. He worked on newspapers, he owned newspapers, he edited newspapers and now he is out of the newspaper business completely due to post-Civil War Reconstruction rules. 

Kidd can't stay out of the game, though. Since he can't be a publisher or a writer of the news, he becomes a newscaster of sorts. He buys all of the current newspapers, finds articles that would be of interest to local communities and then charges a dime per person for a reading of the news. He avoids local news (Reconstruction era politics were every bit as divisive as our modern politics) and instead prefers to read articles about faraway places and modern discoveries. He prefers to expose his audiences to news of the wider world to local news. 

The girl, Johanna,  has very few memories of life before the Kiowa and a great deal of the book deals with Kidd and Johanna, how they work out a way of communicating and the bond that forms between them. There are various adventures and outrages along the way, but the heart of the book is these two strangers traveling on a very long trip together in a wagon.

And, it is a fantastic book.

Grover Gardner read this audiobook. Gardner is a prolific narrator of audiobooks. He has read well over 1,000 audiobooks and I tend to think of his voice as more of a folksy style and it works perfectly with this book.

I rate this audiobook 5 stars out of 5. Highly recommended.

This book can be found on Amazon.com here:  NEWS of the WORLD (audiobook) by Paulette Jiles.

THE UNDOCUMENTED AMERICANS (audiobook) by Karla Cornejo Villavicencio

 

Published in 2020 by Random House Audio.

Read by the author, Karla Cornejo Villavicencio.

Duration: 4 hours, 53 minutes.

Unabridged.

Villavicencio is a "Dreamer", also known as a DACA kid. DACA is the program started by President Obama to deal with immigrants who came to the United States illegally as children. Generally speaking, the only country they've ever known is the United States and they had no say in immigrating to the United States. Congress refused to deal with this situation so President Obama created a program through executive orders. This meant that when President Trump came to office he was able to undo a lot of this plan with another executive order. 

Villavicencio's very personal look at the DACA program and the general mess of our immigration policy in The Undocumented Americans was inspired by the election of Donald Trump, but it was not what I was hoping for when I started listening to this audiobook. I was really hoping for policy analysis with a healthy bit of personal stories and interviews tossed in. 

Instead, this book is very much the reverse of the book that I was looking for. It was more of an extended highly personal rant about several immigration-related topics. Many of the (somewhat fictionalized, according to the author) stories she tells have compelling features, but I found the author's style to be too personal, as though the entire screwed-up immigration system was designed just to make her miserable, like most things in life. 

The author

Villavicencio is such a large part of this book that you literally cannot separate the author from the message or the stories she tells. I found her to be so annoying and almost intentionally unhappy that I was forcing myself to read the book, like it was some sort of assigned text. This was especially annoying because I really did agree with her at least 80-90% of the time. 

I rate this audiobook 2 stars out of 5.

It can be found on Amazon.com here: THE UNDOCUMENTED AMERICANS (audiobook) by Karla Cornejo Villavicencio.

HARRY POTTER and the DEATHLY HALLOWS (audiobook) by J.K. Rowling

Originally published in 2007.

Audiobook re-mastered and re-published in 2015 by Pottermore Publishing.

Read by Jim Dale.

Duration 21 hours, 37 minutes.

Unabridged.

Ten months ago I started to listen to the Harry Potter books. I had never read them before and only watched the first movie so I came to the party quite late.

But, with Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, I have finished the series.

What did I think?

The series is quite good. There are plenty of great themes and memorable themes throughout. It is well worth the time to read (or listen, like I did).

The last book is an up and down affair. It certainly drags in the middle of the book. This was the part I heard my oldest daughter complaining about years ago when she said it was just three people sitting in the middle of a field talking for way too long. I agree.

But, the book does bring the series to a satisfying conclusion with plenty of surprises (that I will not reveal). 

So, in the interest of not providing any spoilers, I will just say that I rate this book 4 stars out of 5. It can be found on Amazon.com here: HARRY POTTER and the DEATHLY HALLOWS (audiobook) 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.