BLUEBEARD by Kurt Vonnegut

Originally published in October of 1987.

The premise of Bluebeard is that it is the autobiography of a has been artist named Rabo Karabekian. Karabekian also appears in an earlier Vonnegut book (Breakfast of Champions).

Karabekian is an abstract expressionist, like the real-life famed artist Jackson Pollock, who is in this novel as a friend of Karabekian. Karabekian's paintings are basically canvases covered with a coat of house paint and then some strips of tape. They were popular for a while.

Karabekian's paintings are really a way for him to deal with his PTSD from World War II. He doesn't want to deal with the details so he basically paints pictures of nothing.

A self portrait of Kurt Vonnegut.

Karabkeian tells about how he got started in the art business, kind of hints around at his World War II experience and intersperses the whole thing with talk about what is going on in his life as he is writing. 

I read the book with Karabekian and his author friend Paul Slazinger as sort of a stand-ins for Vonnegut himself. Both have loads of sarcastic comments and a lot of dark humor. 

This is a bit different for a Vonnegut book. There are a lot of absurd scenes and situations and there are references to the Battle of the Bulge. But, unlike most of his books, there is a relatively happy ending.

I rate this book 5 stars out of 5. It can be found on Amazon.com here: Bluebeard by Kurt Vonnegut. 

OUT of SEASON (Posadas County Mysteries #7) (audiobook) by Steven F. Havill

 

Published in 2008 by Books In Motion.

Originally published in 1999.
Read by Rusty Nelson.
Duration: 8 hours, 56 minutes.
Unabridged.

In Out of Season things are not going well for Undersheriff Bill Gastner, the second in command of the Posadas County Sheriff Department in southern New Mexico. He is planning to retire in a few months and the person he had hoped he would take over for him is moving out of state. He found out another officer has applied to a much larger department where there are more opportunities. 

Things get even worse, though. A woman that most would consider more than a little mentally off balance calls the department and says that she has seen a struggling small plane disappear behind a mesa near her home. She says that it must have crashed. When a deputy checks it out, he spots wreckage. When they finally get close they find two bodies - and one of them is the Sheriff, a man who notoriously hates to ride in planes.

When Gastner and the department start to dig into what happened, they find more than they ever bargained for...

Rusty Nelson has read most if not all of the audiobooks in this series. I have read or listened to most of them. His folksy tone of voice goes well with Bill Gastner. Since the book is told from Gastner's point of view, that works out well.

Gastner continues to be a lovable grump. His age-related physical limitations encourage him use his head rather than charge blindly into a situation. He continues his insomniac ways while he guzzles coffee and takes any chance to sit down at the Don Juan Restaurant and eat a plateful of spicy burritos.

My only problem with the book is the character of Estelle Reyes-Guzman. She is always perfect. She is pretty, married to a fantastic guy, has a great family, figures out the case before anyone else, drives better than anyone else and is unfailingly polite. Don't get me wrong - I'd love it if she were a cop in my town, but she is a boring character.

I rate this audiobook 4 stars out of 5. It can be found on Amazon.com here: OUT of SEASON (Posadas County Mysteries #7) (audiobook) by Steven F. Havill.

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A VOYAGE LONG and STRANGE: REDISCOVERING the NEW WORLD (audiobook) by Tony Horwitz

 

Published in 2008 by Random House Audio.
Read by John H. Mayer.
Duration: 17 hours, 16 minutes.
Unabridged.

In A Voyage Long and Strange Tony Horwitz set out to fill in a big gap in his understanding of American history. He vaguely knew that the Vikings arrived in the New World and did something or other and he knew about Columbus' voyage in 1492 and he knew about the Pilgrims and Plymouth Rock and the First Thanksgiving in 1621, but what happened in between? Also, what about the people that were already here?

Horwitz decided to find out what he didn't know and this book is a combined travelogue and history lesson. He starts with the small failed Viking settlement in Newfoundland, Canada, moves on to the Dominican Republic to learn about Columbus and comes to the United States to look at the first Spanish explorers and settlements in New Mexico and Florida. He also looks at the epic and eventually tragic expeditions of exploration that the Spanish sent out. Finally, he turns toward the early English attempts to explore and build colonies. 

A reconstruction of what a Viking longhouse in
Newfoundland may have looked like.

Typically, Horwitz starts out a section of his book by looking at the geographical area he is visiting as it is nowadays. He finds a variety of different locals to interview and lets them supplement the history he presents. Many times those local experts get very philosophical about how the past has influenced their homes.

Horwitz's roundabout way of discussing the history is almost always interesting - usually extremely interesting. However, the section on the Dominican Republic and a museum he visited there was too long and too repetitive. But, he bounces back from that and does a splendid job from that point forward.

I rate this audiobook 5 stars out of 5. It can be found on Amazon.com here: 

A VOYAGE LONG and STRANGE: REDISCOVERING the NEW WORLD by Tony Horwitz.

UNOFFENDABLE: HOW JUST ONE CHANGE CAN MAKE ALL of LIFE BETTER (audiobook) by Brant Hansen

Published in August of 2015 by Tantor Audio.
Read by the author, Brant Hansen.
Duration: 4 hours, 21 minutes.
Unabridged.

Brant Hansen came to a realization that righteous anger, an emotion that a lot of my fellow Christians seem to adore should not actually be a tool in the Christian toolbox. It's on display all over social media and at public events like the current spate of contentious school board meetings. For example, recently a former member of 2 Contemporary Christian bands was seen at the forefront of a mob that was menacing people in the parking lot after a school board meeting. He yelling, "You can live freely, but we will find you!" at medical personnel who testified in favor of masks. He became the story and all Christians got a black eye as Taliban-type extremists. 

The author, Brant Hansen

Instead, Hansen is trying his best to take the words of God seriously when he says  to avoid anger. Here are 20 verses that give that counsel. He describes the change in mindset that is required - a move away from selfishness towards others. 

He does not claim to have perfected it or even to have come close to perfecting it, but the change in perspective has made a tremendous difference in his faith walk. He gives examples of others being unoffendable, including people reacting to things he did to offend them. The difference is that Christians are not perceived as the world's judges - a big point since God has made it clear that he is the world's judge.

I rate this audiobook 4 stars out of 5. I liked the points it had to make, but it felt like the book was repetitive in an attempt to make it bigger. 

This book can be found on Amazon.com here:  UNOFFENDABLE:  HOW JUST ONE CHANGE CAN MAKE ALL of LIFE BETTER by Brant Hansen.

10 DAYS (Dee Rommel Mystery #1) by Jule Selbo

 

Published by Pandamoon Publishing in August of 2021.

Waterfront in Portland, Maine

Synopsis:

Dee Rommel is at a crossroads of her life. She is on leave from the police department of Portland, Maine because she lost half of one of her legs on duty. After months of diligent physical therapy (and less then diligent psychiatric therapy) she is being pushed to decide if she is coming back to work or not.

She has been helping her godfather Gordy, her deceased father's best friend. He is a private detective and she feels very comfortable with the paperwork and the billing. When Gordy takes some time off to donate a kidney in Florida, a situation arises. One of Gordy's lifelong friends urgently needs help now and Dee is asked to step in and do some investigating while Gordy is down and out from the surgery.

The friend is a famous billionaire named Claren - Maine's version of Bill Gates. A local boy who made it big in the tech business. Claren's twenty-something daughter is also a tech whiz and a genius who graduated early from college and runs her own independent division of Claren's company.  She has gone missing.

Dee takes the job but there are other things demanding her attention as well. A local bully has been released from prison and is menacing all of the people who testified against him. Also, Dee continues to look into the case that cost her her leg. Plus, the new guy in the town is surprisingly sophisticated and intriguing considering that he cultivates a biker persona...

My thoughts:

The first book of any series is always tough to gauge because so much world-building has to be done. This book builds a pretty credible world with a lot of potential characters to use in future books. For me, that slowed the book down quite a bit - there were so many characters to process. I am assuming that future books won't go out of there way to include everybody like this one did.

The main mystery with the missing heiress was simply okay for me. I was much more intrigued by the secondary mystery with the local bully.

I rate this book 4 stars out of 5. It can be found on Amazon.com here: 10 Days (Dee Rommel Mystery #1) by Jule Selbo.

Note: I received an ARC copy of this book in exchange for a unfiltered review. 

DOOKU: JEDI LOST (audiobook) by Cavan Scott

 

Published in 2019 by Random House Audio.

Performed by multiple readers.
Duration: 6 hours, 21 minutes.
Unabridged.

Part of the new Disney "canon" books, Dooku: Jedi Lost is a look at the origins of one of the characters of the Star Wars prequels - Count Dooku. It is part of a series of "stand alone" books. For me, Dooku just shows up in the movies with a minimum of explanation - not nearly enough.  We learn a lot more about him in the Star Wars: Clone Wars cartoon show but not enough for me. Dooku is interesting as the original model for Anakin Skywalker - the talented Jedi who often argues with the Jedi Council and eventually falls to the Dark Side.

This book tells little about Dooku's activities during the Clone Wars. Even though it is set in the first half of the Clone Wars cartoon series, that is mostly a frame that is used to lead the reader through a series of flashbacks that tell about Dooku's early life. The use of all of the flashbacks was annoying in my mind, though. I think it would have been better to have just told the story of young Dooku without all of the flashbacks.

The audiobook was performed like an old fashioned radio play with different actors playing each of the characters. That part was well done, but I was irritated that a book called "Jedi Lost" really didn't give much detail about how Dooku became a lost Jedi. 

I rate this audiobook 3 stars out of 5. It can be found on Amazon.com here:  DOOKU: JEDI LOST by Cavan Scott.

NOTHING to LOSE (Jack Reacher #12) (audiobook) by Lee Child

 

Published by Random House Audio in 2008.

Read by Dick Hill.
Duration: 14 hours, 25 minutes.
Unabridged.

I think that I have worked my way through all of the Jack Reacher novels and short stories over the last 5 years. Nothing to Lose is the last one (I think). I read them all out of order, but fans know that that is okay since they were never written in order in the first place.

Sadly, this was one of the weakest of the entire very large collection. 

Reacher is travelling from Maine to San Diego just to see the country. He notes that Colorado has two towns with interesting names very close to one another: Hope and Despair.

The author, Lee Child.

Hope is a pleasant enough place with a hardware store and a hotel and diner. Reacher decides to hike to nearby despair and is immediately arrested for being a vagrant. Technically, he is a vagrant. He has no job, no fixed address and no plans to acquire either. 

Despair locks him up (after a bit of a fight) and runs him through a kangaroo court, finds him guilty and expels him from the town limits, which is about halfway to the town of Hope. Reacher meets up with the police chief of Hope, discusses the weird behavior of Hope's town government. And...he heads back for more.

He also finds a lot more than ever imagined he would...

This book felt disconnected from reality a lot more than the average Jack Reacher book. I don't mean that as an insult to the series, but let's face it - a giant ex-soldier beating the crap out of groups of big men in the middle of the street in every book is just nor normal behavior. 

Anyway, the whole book seemed sort of half-baked all the way through and Reacher's choice on how to end things seemed completely out of character considering the long-term implications (decades, maybe even centuries) of his choice. 

Dick Hill read the audiobook and he is my all-time favorite audiobook reader. He "gets" Jack Reacher.

Despite Dick Hill's reading, I rate this audiobook 3 stars out of 5. It can be found on Amazon.com here: NOTHING to LOSE by Lee Child.