SHADOWS REEL (Joe Picket #22) (audiobook) by C.J. Box

 

Published in 2022 by Recorded Books.

Read by David Chandler.
Duration: 9 hours, 4 minutes.
Unabridged.

Synopsis:

Game Warden Joe Pickett investigates a report of a dead elk. Fearing that it is the victim of a botched attempt at poaching, he investigates. Instead, he finds a burned corpse and falls headlong into another murder investigation.

Meanwhile, Joe's wife Marybeth, the director of the local library discovers an odd package left at the library with connections to a prominent Nazi from World War II.

And...Nate Romanowski is in Denver hunting down an old enemy during the midst of an Antifa/BLM riot.

My review:

This is a book series about a game warden. Oftentimes, he is joined by a former special forces guy who is so into nature that he used to stand naked in a stream of water for hours at a time to get the feel of a river and its entire ecosystem - from the slime at the bottom to the fish to the birds that swoop down to the beavers that dam it up.

Antifa protest in Denver

There was almost no "game wardening" in this book and the man who is derisively called "nature boy" in this book spends 99% of this book navigating the urban world of Black Lives Matter and Antifa.

I have complained in my review of the 20th book in this series, Long Range, that Joe Pickett was getting involved in so many other types of police cases that it is easy to forget that the first books in the series - the books that made me start and keep reading a series - were mostly about game warden activities. Lots of searching for poachers. There was a book about eco-terrorists, one with survivalist weirdos and even a big forest fire.

This book seemed to be careening from one political commentary after another - BLM, Antifa, even Hungary. What does the author say? Antifa - irredeemably stupid. BLM - understandable, but over the top. Hungary, despite the popularity of its President in ultra-conservative circles, is linked in this book with violent reaction over careful consideration.

Is this what the author intended? I have no idea. He seems to be making a lot of political comments in his books lately in the Joe Pickett and the Cassie Dewell series. Some are subtle, some are not. I assume that is what he's pulling his characters out of the Wyoming countryside and placing them in cities all over the West, but maybe not. Maybe I am reading too much into it. Either way, I want Joe Pickett to get his butt back into the woods!

I rate this audiobook 2 stars out of 5. It can be found on Amazon.com here: SHADOWS REEL (Joe Picket #22) by C.J. Box.

LITTLE RICHARD: A LIFE from BEGINNING to END (kindle) by Hourly History

Published by Hourly History in January of 2023.

Hourly History publishes histories and biographies that you can read in about an hour. That can be a tough job for big topics in history like "The Industrial Revolution" or "The Roman Empire" but it is just about right for a short biography. 

Little Richard (1932-2020) was an early rock and roll singer with a series of top 40 hits from 1956-1958, including songs like "Tutti Frutti", "Lucille," and "Long Tall Sally." His style was raucous and loud compared to most singers, except maybe for Jerry Lee Lewis. He also was one of the first black artists to cross over to white audiences.  

Unlike most singers from that era, Little Richard never really disappeared from the public eye. He had a series of comebacks and kept on showing up with comeback tours, songs on movie soundtracks, live greatest hits albums and TV and movie appearances. 

Little Richard was known as a flamboyant showman. He wore a lot of makeup when that was an unknown thing and pulled off a combination being macho and feminine at the same time. It's pretty easy to think of him as the prototype for performers like Prince.

This short biography was pretty solid. I thought it did a particularly good job of catching Little Richard's struggles with drugs. It was interesting and more than a little sad to read about how poorly he dealt with a conflict between his seriously-held conservative Christian religious beliefs, his sexual orientation and other sexual interests. He spent a lot of his with deeply conflicted feelings.

I rate this short e-book 4 stars out of 5. It can be found on Amazon.com here: LITTLE RICHARD: A LIFE from BEGINNING to END (kindle) by Hourly History.

BURNING BRIGHT (Peter Ash #2) (audiobook) by Nick Petrie

 

Published by Penguin Audio in 2017.

Read by Stephen Mendel.
Duration: 11 hours, 55 minutes.
Unabridged.

Synopsis:

Peter Ash is a veteran of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. He has had trouble settling in to civilian life. Specifically, he has a fear of enclosed places. He is good with his hands and restored an old pickup truck. He drives the truck all over the place and explores America by hiking and camping.

The author, Nick Petrie

As Burning Bright starts, Ash is hiking in a forest of giant redwoods and stumbles upon a bear, climbs a tree, meets a girl in the trees, finds out she is being hunted by a professional hit team and that's when everything starts to really get interesting...

My Review:

I like this series, even though it suffers a bit of a sophomore slump in my opinion. This is not to say that it is a bad book - it's not. I am rating this book 4 stars out of 5. I flew through the first half of the book, but the second half of the book was just a bit too ridiculous in my opinion. That being said, I am going to happily continue with this series.

I think you have to start the series at the beginning (click here for my review of the first book in the series) so do not start with this book. 

I rate this book 4 stars out of 5. It can be found on Amazon.com here: BURNING BRIGHT (Peter Ash #2) (audiobook) by Nick Petrie.

GALLIPOLI CAMPAIGN: A HISTORY from BEGINNING to END (kindle) by Hourly History

 

Published by Hourly History in December of 2022.

The short histories produced by Hourly History are designed to read in about an hour. In some cases the size limit makes for a very incomplete history. In this case, I thought that topic and the size limit matched up pretty well.

The Gallipoli Campaign was an unmitigated disaster during World War I. Winston Churchill (yes, the famous one from World War II) was the head of British navy and thought up a plan to do three things:

1) relieve the pressure on Russia from the Germans and the Ottomans;

2) possibly knock the Ottoman Empire out of the war;
3) encourage the Germans to divert more troops away from the French front to support the Ottoman Empire.

The plan Churchill came up with was to land thousands of soldiers from France, Britain, Australia and New Zealand on the Gallipoli Peninsula at the edge of the Aegean Sea in a quick and bold attack.

Troops from Australia and New Zealand landing at 
Gallipoli - April 25, 1915.

What actually happened was bold, but certainly not quick. The attack was disjointed and so poorly planned that the Ottomans were entirely prepared for the invasion...

Normally, I really don't care much for studying up on World War I - it was started for rather silly reasons in my opinion and the United States had little reason to get involved (Yes, I know that the Gallipoli campaign was before the U.S. got involved.) 

That being said, I was glad to learn more about the campaign that is always referred to in the histories I have read, but never explored in any sort of depth. This book gave me enough information to fill in this gap in my knowledge to my satisfaction.

I rate this book 4 stars out of 5. It can be found on Amazon.com here: GALLIPOLI CAMPAIGN: A HISTORY from BEGINNING to END (kindle) by Hourly History.

THE FALSE CAUSE: FRAUD, FABRICATION, and WHITE SUPREMACY in CONFEDERATE MEMORY (audiobook) by Adam H. Domby

 

Published by Blackstone Publishing in 2022.

Read by Jack de Golia.
Duration: 8 hours, 58 minutes.

Unabridged.

The cover of the book and the short description offered by my library app gives the impression that this book is pretty much about the "Silent Sam" Confederate memorial that stood at the University of North Carolina from 1913-2018.

This book is much more than that, though. It uses Silent Sam as an entry point into a larger discussion of how North Carolina chose to remember how it performed in the Civil War (more than 10% of Civil War soldiers from North Carolina actually fought for the Union.)

He also discusses how White men lied about their service to get Confederate pensions and the government turned a blind eye in the name affirming White unity and White Supremacy. Whites that fought for the Union (but couldn't qualify for a Union pension) or actively fought the Confederate draft with violence or by simply going AWOL at every point possible were given pensions. The idea is that by the late 1800s and early 1900s the idea was to deny that any Whites had ever disagreed with the Confederacy in the first place. If a little graft and fraud had to be tolerated to achieve the illusion of White Unity than that was a reasonable price to pay.

A billboard during the height of the 
Silent Sam controversy

A large chunk of the book is devoted to making the point of the previous paragraph. It is convincing and a little tedious. Much more profound is the text of the speech that was given by a Confederate veteran and political bigwig at the 1913 dedication. Julian Carr was a political moderate when it came to African Americans in North Carolina, but he makes it abundantly clear that the Silent Sam statue is there as a visible reminder to everyone of the "good old days" when all Whites stood together against the North and all Blacks knew their place. 

Interestingly, that is exactly what the modern day anti-monument protesters claimed and exactly what the Neo-Confederates denied. 

The book patiently lays out all of its arguments (there are a lot more than I have laid out here) and proves its points - just not always in the most compelling manner. 

I rate this audiobook 4 stars out of 5. It can be found on Amazon.com here: THE FALSE CAUSE: FRAUD, FABRICATION, and WHITE SUPREMACY in CONFEDERATE MEMORY by Adam H. Domby.

CALIFORNIA GOLD RUSH (kindle) by Hourly History

 

Published in 2022 by Hourly History.

The short histories produced by Hourly History are designed to read in about an hour. In some cases the size limit makes for a very incomplete history. In this case, I thought that topic and the size limit matched up pretty well.

This e-book details from the beginning (spoiler alert: John Sutter of Sutter's Mill fame was clearly not a good guy) and details the good as well as the bad of the Gold Rush.

Turns out there was a lot of bad, such as environmental destruction on an unprecedented level (they used mining techniques that were outlawed just a few years later. How obviously bad were they if people who let children into mines said that these techniques are clearly out of bounds?!??) 

The white miners also used genocidal techniques to wipe out the local Native American populations, killed Chinese immigrants that came across the Pacific to find gold and, of course, jumped the claims of other white miners and killed them. All of the gold and the lure of the possibility of getting rich quick just brought out the worst in almost everybody.

It also brought poor hygiene and possibly even worse building standards and this led to tragedy. Disease outbreaks were common and when there were earthquakes a lot of people were killed. But...a lot of gold was discovered and a lot of people got rich selling to the other gold seekers.

I thought this was a solid re-telling of the history of the California Gold Rush - warts and all. I rate this short history 5 stars out of 5. It can be found on Amazon.com here:  CALIFORNIA GOLD RUSH (kindle) by Hourly History.

MEXICAN WHITEBOY by Matt de la Peña

Originally published in 2008.

Synopsis:

Danny is spending the summer in San Diego living with his father's family - his grandmother, his uncles, his aunts, and his cousins. He dreams of visiting his father in Mexico and is disdainful of his mother who is spending the summer in San Francisco with her very serious boyfriend.

What complicates the matter is that Danny's mom is white and Danny basically speaks no Spanish. He feels out of place when he is with his mom in her neighborhood because of his Mexican heritage. He feels out of place with his father's family because of his white heritage. He also knows there are family secrets that they are hiding from him.

What Danny has going for him is baseball. He can do it all, but he is a brilliant young pitcher. He finds another ball player named Uno. Uno is half black and half Mexican and understands how Danny feels out of place everywhere he goes.

Together, Danny and Uno come up with a plan to leverage their baseball skills...

My review: 

I was excited to read this novel after having read the author's coming of age novel about Superman. That was a great novel with an action-driven plot. Mexican WhiteBoy is more of a novel about relationships and family secrets. The middle 1/3 of the book meanders around until the plan to use their baseball skills come to fruition. 

Not a bad novel. Not a great novel. I rate this novel 3 stars out of 5. It can be found on Amazon.com here: MEXICAN WHITEBOY by Matt de la Peña.

In November of 2023 it was announced that the group Moms for Liberty had challenged more than 300 books in Florida. This is one of the books that the Moms challenged. Read more about the books here.