ABRAHAM LINCOLN: A LIFE from BEGINNING to END (Biographies of U.S. Presidents)(kindle) by Hourly History

Published in 2016.

This little biography is part of an extensive series of short histories produced by Hourly History. The idea is to be a history or a biography that you can read in an hour. Amazon says that his particular biography is the equivalent to 48 pages long. 

Some historians have asserted that there are more biographies written about Lincoln than anyone else in history, with the exception of Jesus. This is the 73rd book that I've reviewed that with the #tag of "Abraham Lincoln." What does this book have to offer that literally thousands of biographies and histories haven't already covered?

To be honest - nothing.

But, it is exactly the sort of biography that someone who hates history might pick to read because it is not an intimidating length and it is not written in highfalutin language. 

There is nothing in this biography that is inaccurate, just a matter of what the Hourly History people decided to highlight and emphasize.

I rate this kindle book 3 stars out of 5. Not bad, for what it is. Nowhere near a complete biography, but a solid place to start.

This book can be found on Amazon.com here: ABRAHAM LINCOLN: A LIFE from BEGINNING to END (Biographies of U.S. Presidents)(kindle) by Hourly History.

MESSY GRACE: HOW a PASTOR with GAY PARENTS LEARNED to LOVE OTHERS WITHOUT SACRIFICING CONVICTION (audiobook) by Caleb Kaltenbach

Be Warned - it changes tone quite abruptly

Published in 2015 by ChristianAudio.com

Read by the author, Caleb Kaltenbach.
Duration: 6 hours, 3 minutes.
Unabridged.

I checked out the audiobook version of Messy Grace from my local library using the Overdrive app. I highly recommend this app, but it does have a small failing - it does not include any sort of reviews of the digital ebooks or audiobooks. It only includes the publisher's description and the publisher's description of this audiobook only tells part of the story. 

As the title says, Kaltenbach did indeed grow up with gay parents. They married young and divorced after a few years. His mother lived life as a married couple with another woman (this was pre-gay marriage) and his father lived as a closeted gay man. His mother hated Christians because of Westboro Baptist Church-type protesters, but to be fair to his mother, there are plenty of people that express in private the same thoughts that the Westboro folks publicly proclaim. Kaltenbach does not deny this - in fact he decries it throughout the book.

Kaltenbach spends the first 60% of the book or so telling the story of his life and about his parents. He is very much against the Pharisee-type behavior you see in plenty of churches - the behavior that automatically rejects anyone that doesn't seem church-y enough. Kaltenbach argues you can't reach the "lost" if you don't actually engage with them - something that Jesus said and did over and over again.

As Kaltenbach discusses this point, he begins to sound less like he is making projects out of people rather than reaching out to people because they are friends and family. I didn't have a way to describe this inkling in the back of my mind until Kaltenbach did - he said churches have to be careful of this very thing and he called it "project vs. people". It ends up sounding like, "We're going to save a gay man" instead of "I think my friend Bob would really like to check out my church and my church would really like my friend Bob." 

The problem with turning people into projects is that once the project is done (the project joins the church) you move onto to a new project and drop the old project. But, people aren't projects so you are just dropping this person that you made big investment in because you weren't friends with them - you were busy fixing them.

The author and narrator,
Caleb Kaltenbach

But, the part that really bothered me above all else was the fact that the book pitches itself as a pro-gay inclusion book right up until the moment that it is not. Once it switches gears it hurts every other argument the book made before. It becomes a turn people into projects book. It becomes a "pray the gay away" book of sorts. The celibacy passage was completely horrible. 

My suggestion: read the first half of the book and then stop.

I rate this book 2 stars out of 5. I took away 3 stars because of the contradictory message and the deceptive description from the publisher.

This audiobook can be found on Amazon.com here: MESSY GRACE: HOW a PASTOR with GAY PARENTS LEARNED to LOVE OTHERS WITHOUT SACRIFICING CONVICTION by Caleb Kaltenbach.

1914 by Jean Echenoz (translated by LInda Coverdale)

 

Published in 2014 by The New Press

Synopsis:

It is 1914 and World War I is starting. This story is about 5 young men who live in a small town in France leave together to join the fight. 

If you have studied this war, you know that this war was a meat grinder from one end of it to the other, but the beginning of any war is especially rough. The technologies have changed but the techniques have not kept up. Men die and get maimed out of ignorance. This war is no different.

My Review:

I have no problem with the depiction of anything in this book. But, I do have a problem with the book's lack of passion. No one is particularly excited about life before the war, during the war and definitely not after the war. Everything is stated matter of factly. I lnow it's a style thing but it served to push me away from the story rather than draw me in. If the characters can't muster enough interest to care, why should I?

I rate this book 2 stars out of 5. It can be found on Amazon.com here: 1914 by Jean Echenoz (translated by LInda Coverdale).

WE ARE WHAT WE PRETEND to BE: THE FIRST and LAST WORKS by Kurt Vonnegut

Published in 2012 by Vanguard Press.

Kurt Vonnegut (1922-2007) is from Indianapolis, the city I have lived in since 1998. He was always proud to be FROM Indianapolis but never moved back once he and his family moved away right after World War II. His sense of humor and cynical/sarcastic of view has often been compared to Mark Twain, but I am reminded of the humor of another Indianapolis boy a few years later who also went off to the big city and made it big - David Letterman. 

We Are What We Pretend to Be contains the first real story written by Vonnegut and the beginning of the novel he was working on when he passed away. These are the bookends of his literary career. 

The first story is called Basic Training. It was written when he was about age 30 and was never published. His daughter describes stacks of rejection letters and one can assume that this story helped create that stack.  

The giant mural honoring Vonnegut in
downtown Indianapolis. 

The story is about a recently orphaned teenaged boy who goes to live on a relatives farm. He already has a college scholarship to learn music but it all is at risk because he can't seem to get the hang of how to get along with his relative that runs the farm - an old guy nicknamed "The General".

The second story is called If God Were Alive Today.  This story is actually the beginning of an unfinished book about a George Carlin-type stand-up comic. The comic has several mental issues, including drug, alcohol and sexual problems.

Of the two stories, I think Vonnegut's first one is clearly superior. It doesn't sound like a Vonnegut story and feels much more like a John Steinbeck story but it is pretty good. I would rate it 4 out of 5 stars.

The second story suffers from the fact that it is not a complete story - it is simply the opening pages of a larger work that we'll never be able to read. That being said, I found the main character interesting but very unlikable. Even worse, even though he was a stand-up comic the main character was not funny. He said outrageous things, but not funny things. That struck me as odd because Vonnegut was well-known for his very dark but very real sense of humor. I rate it 2 out of 5 stars.

So, a 2 star story and a 4 star story make a 3 star average.

I rate this book 3 stars out of 5. It can be found on Amazon.com here:  WE ARE WHAT WE PRETEND to BE: THE FIRST and LAST WORKS by Kurt Vonnegut.

FALLING FREE (Vorkosigan Saga #4) (audiobook) by Lois McMaster Bujold

Audiobook published in 2009 by Blackstone Audio.. 

Originally published in book form in 1988.
Read by Grover Gardner.
Duration: 8 hours, 44 minutes.
Unabridged.

Synopsis:

Falling Free is entry #4 in a long series of published books and short stories.

Leo Graf is an engineer. Actually, he's more than an engineer. He's a space engineer - he builds habitats, space stations, space ships and more. And - he's really good at it.

He has been brought by his company to a space station in orbit around an out of the way space colony to teach outer space welding. But, his students are not what he expects.

He finds the station has nearly 1,000 genetically modified residents that are named quaddies. They are designed to work in no gravity environments - they have no legs. Instead of legs there is a second set of arms. They can grip onto something and still have two or three hands to work with - especially welding together new space stations and expansions to current space stations. 

Graf finds out that the quaddies are not considered to be people. Instead, they are company property. They are an experiment and when experiments run their course, they can be trashed. 

So, when Graf finds out that the quaddie experiment has been made outdated by a new technology he has to decide if he lets the company destroy 1,000 genetically modified people or if he intervenes...

What I thought:

I really appreciated the old school sci-fi feel to the book. It just felt like a book from the 1950s or 1960s. 

The premise of the book was compelling, but as the book went along, more and more obstacles had to be surmounted that seemed to be put in place just to make the book longer rather than spur on character growth. There was a long part of the book that reminded me of the scene in the Marvel Cinematic Universe movie The Infinity War where Thor builds his battle axe to fight Thanos. Actually, looking at the publication dates, the scene with Thor is reminiscent of the scene from the book... except that the scene with Thor did not drag on, was not boring (it had very funny parts) and it moved the plot forward with character growth. The scene from the book just drug things out for about an hour. 

I rate this book 3 stars out of 5. Not a bad book, not a great book. It can be found on Amazon.com here:   FALLING FREE (audiobook) by Lois McMaster Bujold.

ENGLISH in AMERICA: A LINGUISTIC HISTORY (audiobook) by Natalie Schilling

 

Published in 2016 by The Great Courses.

Read by Natalie Schilling.

Duration: 5 hours, 55 minutes.

Unabridged.

If you are not aware of The Great Courses, they are basically college-level lectures (undergrad) on a topic. Most of them clock in at around 20 hours in length, but this one came in at just under 6 hours. 

When I saw that the subtitle of English in America was "A Linguistic History", I thought the audiobook would be a more formal history. Rather than present it in a typical history format, the book was presented in a scattergun type style. Everything she covered was perfectly fine to put in her presentations and sounded perfectly good to me - I've listened to and read a few books on this topic (not enough to make me any sort of an expert).

She discusses such topics as how English may have sounded when the first English colonies were established, how American English developed new words, influences on American English from immigrants groups, African American dialects, regional dialects and more.

But, the scattered presentation style made for repeated presentation of facts and prevented a smooth flow. 

There is nothing wrong with this presentation, but I think it should have gone deeper and been gone from topic to topic in a more cohesive manner.

I rate this audiobook 3 stars out of 5. It can be found on Amazon.com here: ENGLISH in AMERICA:  A LINGUISTIC HISTORY (audiobook) by Natalie Schilling.

THE LAST BATTLE: WHEN U.S. and GERMAN SOLDIERS JOINED FORCES in the WANING HOURS of WORLD WAR II in EUROPE (audiobook) by Stephen Harding

 

Published in 2013 by Blackstone Audio.
Read by Joe Barrett.
Duration: 7 hours, 11 minutes.
Unabridged.

At the very end of World War II there was an extraordinary pairing of German soldiers and American soldiers to protect French dignitaries and celebrities being held in an Austrian castle prison.

How late was it in the war? Hitler was already dead. The Allies were well into Germany and Americans had pushed all of the way into Austria. 

But, that does not mean that the German military was without power. They had fantastic equipment and there were still plenty of "true believer" SS troops insisting that the war wasn't over - or it it was over, the Allies should pay for every inch of territory until the last German soldier fell.

The unlikely alliance happens when a Austrian-born German officer comes to an agreement with the leaders of the local anti-Nazi resistance movement in Austria. Technically, Austria was a part of Germany but it had only been a part of Germany for 7 years when Germany absorbed independent Austria. It seemed like a popular move at the time, but World War II started about a year and a half later and it had brought disaster and ruin to Austria.

Germany had converted a castle in the Austrian Alps into a prison under the supervision of the Dachau concentration camp. Multiple VIPs from France ended up at Dachau and the German supervisors realized that they couldn't just keep those VIPs in the middle of a death camp. So, they moved them to the castle. 

And, some members of the German military thought that killing off these VIPs would be a fantastic way to deliver one more bit of cruelty in an obviously lost cause. 

****

This audiobook has some issues. 

The production is fine, although I am not a big fan of the reader, Joe Barrett.

The biggest thing is the very slow pacing of the book. The title of the book is "The Last Battle" and the actual fighting is really just a few minutes of a 7 hour audiobook. I did not measure it, but my impression is that the author spent more time describing the history of the castle and various facelifts, upgrades remodels and repurposing that had been done over the years than the time he spent describing the actual fighting.

It felt like he was packing the book with filler to make it longer, like a freshman college student might do to make sure his essay is exactly a certain number of pages in length. My favorite example of this filler is the fact that the author actually took the time to note that handrails were installed on a certain staircase during a remodel in the early 1900s. That struck me as odd when I heard it (because who actually cares?) so I listened carefully for a time when the handrails might become a part of the story. I had imagined that the VIPs might have removed the handrails and used them to barricade a door or something. No luck. It was just filler.

There were long biographies of each of the French VIPs. There was no particular reason to do this. They could have been edited down because they were not important to the story except that they were the people to be rescued. Saying that they were former members of the French government and various other celebrities, including a world famous tennis star would have been enough. I guarantee that the American officers that decided to save them had less information than the author gives and those officers decided to go join forces with a German unit and go out of their way to save them.

So, I rate this audiobook 2 stars out of 5 because it really should have been nothing more than a very long article in a history magazine or a chapter in a book called "Improbable Stories of World War II". 

This book can be found on Amazon.com here: THE LAST BATTLE: WHEN U.S. and GERMAN SOLDIERS JOINED FORCES in the WANING HOURS of WORLD WAR II in EUROPE (audiobook) by Stephen Harding.