WHEN WE'RE HOME in AFRICA (audiobook) by Themba Umbalisi

Published in 2021 by Next Chapter Audio LTD.
Read by Crawford B. Bunkley III.
Duration: 4 hours, 34 minutes.
Unabridged.

I have no idea where I found this book. I think it was a freebie on Audible through Amazon's Prime Reading program. I know that I got it because I am a big reader of Civil War histories and fiction and this sounded like it was right up my alley.

Synopsis:

The description of this book is accurate, to a point. It is about a freed slave who joins the Union Army and then goes from job to job and place to place with a goal of settling in Africa.

My Review:

This book is basically a Forrest Gump type of story - one man goes on an epic journey and ends up going through a lot of the historical movements of the era.

Warning: Lots of *********SPOILERS********all the way to the end of this review.

This audiobook comes in at almost exactly 50% of the run time for FORREST GUMP and covers maybe even more territory. Our hero (his name changes multiple times) begins as a slave in Georgia who is freed by the Union Army. He goes on to:

1. Join the Union Army as an infantry soldier.

2. Participate in the Battle of the Crater.
3. Muster out of the Army.
4. Meet a woman and live with her for a while.
5. Join the Cavalry.

U.S. Army "Buffalo Soldiers"

6. Serve on Indian patrol as a Buffalo Soldier. Fight a number of battles.
7. Serve on the U.S./Mexican border as a Buffalo soldier. Fight a number of battles.

8. Go on trial as a horse thief simply for doing his job.
9. Almost get lynched.
10. Flee into the wilderness to escape the lynching mob.
11. Meet another woman and live with her for a while.

12. Eventually arrive in San Francisco.

13. Get shanghaied onto a ship.

14. Go around the tip of South America to the Atlantic Ocean.

15. Get involved in a mutiny somewhere near the Falkland Islands.

16. Escape the ship with a friend on a little boat with a sail just before the mutineers turn on each other.

17. Sail/Row the boat around the tip of Africa and land on the Indian Ocean side of South Africa.

18. Meet native Africans.
19. Join the British Army in South Africa as a scout. Fight a number of battles.

20. Leave the British Army and join the Zulus.
21. Get married.
22. Become the royal firearms specialist for the Zulu.
23. Watch the Zulu loose to the British and flee to the mountains.
24. Find a group of refugees.

25. Become king of these refugees and make a people out of them.
26. Start a family.

Those are 26 big steps in a 4 hour and 34 minute audiobook. This could have been epic if it were slowed down and each of these steps were explored. I actually skipped things (lots of women end up sleeping with this man) and there were actually steps that were explored in detail, which means that the others got even more of the short shrift treatment.

For example, the women always end up being a side story and the hike from Texas to San Francisco is an epic trip going through multiple Indian territories and crossing the Rocky Mountains and it gets just a few minutes.

This book is really more of a serious treatment of a book series rather than a single book. It is too busy and not filled in with enough detail to make a story. It could have been a decent series.

About the narration. Crawford B. Bunkley III has a great voice, but he read this book too fast. Commas are ignored. Periods are ignored. Just this wonderful voice pushing forward as fast it can while reading a story that just wants to push on as fast as it can.

The only reason that I am giving it 2 stars is because I actually finished it.

This book can be found on Amazon.com here: WHEN WE'RE HOME in AFRICA by Themba Umbalisi.

WHITE EVANGELICAL RACISM: THE POLITICS of MORALITY in AMERICA (audiobook) by Anthea Butler

 

Published by Tantor Audio in 2021.
Read by Allyson Johnson.
Duration: 3 hours, 44 minutes.
Unabridged.

This book takes a short look at how the people that refer to themselves as Evangelicals and their forebears have dealt with race over time.

An interracial marriage protest. The signs
claim that interracial marriage is Communist
and a sign of the anti-Christ.

The book starts with the justifications that religious leaders used to defend slavery. After the Civil War, they modified those justifications slightly to defend the Jim Crow system. Butler contends that the Evangelical movements in the 1900's were worried about things like Communism, but it usually had a racial overtone to it - like when Martin Luther King was accused of spreading Communism to Black communities all over the country when he was just asking for the rights that White Americans already had.

The heart of her book is about Billy Graham and what she calls out as a wishy-washy approach to racism. I am a bit more forgiving of Billy Graham because there was no model in American history for true racial equality, including (and sadly) in the church. Graham probably felt like he was taking giant steps, but nowadays he was clearly taking baby steps. What if he had taken bigger steps? Would he have lost his place as America's Evangelist or would he have moved the country forward?

I have no qualms with her look at Trump Era White Evangelicals. She calls out the hypocrisy correctly (including well-deserved criticism of Billy Graham's son Franklin Graham.)

However, I am only going to give this book 3 stars out of 5. Not because it is incorrect and not because it is not well-written. It is simply too short and does not include a wide enough net in its discussion. For example, women's rights are not discussed in any meaningful way.

The reason I am giving it 3 stars is because this topic has already been dealt with better and more extensively in the book JESUS and JOHN WAYNE: HOW WHITE EVANGELICALS CORRUPTED a FAITH and FRACTURED a NATION by Kristen Kobes du Mez.

This book can be found on Amazon.com here WHITE EVANGELICAL RACISM: THE POLITICS of MORALITY in AMERICA by Anthea Butler.

TEN CAESARS: ROMAN EMPERORS from AUGUSTUS to CONSTANTINE (audiobook) by Barry Strauss

 

Published by Simon and Schuster Audio in 2019.
Read by Arthur Morey.
Duration: 12 hours, 52 minutes.
Unabridged.

Barry Strauss is a professor of the history of Ancient Greece and Ancient Rome. As the title clearly says, Strauss tells his reader/listeners about what he judges to be the ten most important Roman emperors and ends up telling a decent political history of the Roman Empire along the way.

Bronze statue erected c.175 AD of 
Marcus Aurelius (121-180 AD), one of
the Roman Emperors featured in 
this book.

When I say he chose the ten most important emperors, that doesn't mean he chose the ten best emperors. He has more than one emperor that demonstrates how a bad leader can abuse the political consensus, damage the political system, and leave a lot of confusion in his/her wake. But, change is not necessarily a bad thing - especially when handled by talented leaders like Augustus and Constantine. 

This was an interesting listen and well-read by Arthur Morey. I did enjoy how the book was not merely about the interactions of a few well-connected families at the top (although there are a few emperors that were hyper-connected to past and future emperors) but it was also about how emperors reacted to outside movements like rebellions in Judea, the rise of Christianity and foreign wars.

I rate this audiobook 5 stars out of 5. It can be found on Amazon.com here: TEN CAESARS: ROMAN EMPERORS from AUGUSTUS to CONSTANTINE by Barry Strauss.

THE LAST ENGLISHMAN: THRU-HIKING the PACIFIC CREST TRAIL (Thru-Hiking Adventures #2) (kindle) by Keith Foskett

 

Published in 2014.

I have a real weakness for oddball travel books. I have read a memoir about a man that hitchhiked throughout Europe and North Africa, a book about a man's bicycle trip from the UK to India, a book about a man who walked across Afghanistan, a book about a man who rode a motorcycle around the edges of Afghanistan, a book about two women who biked from Turkey to China, a book about a man who walked the length of the Nile, a man who walked the Appalachian Trail with his deeply irresponsible friend from high school...and more. And more. And more.

This book fits in best with my book about the 2,190 mile Appalachian Trail because it is set on the American West's counterpart to that trail: The 2,650 mile Pacific Crest Trail. This trail runs from Mexico to Canada through California, Oregon, and Washington State. 

Foskett is an experienced long-distance hiker but this hike is a challenge for any hiker to complete in a single attempt. The threat of snow in the mountain passes doesn't let hikers start very early up north so hikers start down south and hope to catch a break with the weather. They hike north and try to keep up a good pace so they don't get caught by snow up in the mountains in Washington State as winter comes on.

A great pace is 30 miles per day and even if a hiker can keep that pace up through the worst of the passes, that still makes a 3 month hike. But, hikers don't keep up that pace. They have to take time off of the trail to resupply, pick up pre-mailed packages, rest, and tend to injuries or illness. One can't discount the need to pop off of the trail to literally eat thousands and thousands of calories or simply take a break.

A major theme of the book is Foskett's constant push to make enough miles but this reader was dismayed at how many times he turned a day off of the trail into two or three days in a hiker friendly hotel. I kept on saying, "Go! You're going to get caught in the snow!" Turns out, that's where the title comes from - he ends up so late on the trail that he calls himself "The Last Englishman."

But, my worry about his wasting time and not making it is really a sign that I was invested in this story. It was good enough that I went ahead and bought another  book by Foskett that tells the tale of another long-distance hike. Plus, I am a sucker for oddball travel books. 

I rate this e-book 4 stars out of 5. It can be found on Amazon.com here: THE LAST ENGLISHMAN: THRU-HIKING the PACIFIC CREST TRAIL by Keith Foskett.

Follow this link to see my review of another book by this author. In that book, he hikes the Camino de Santiago in Spain and France.

OZARK DOGS (audiobook) by Eli Cranor

 

Published by Recorded Books in April of 2023.
Read by the author, Eli Cranor.
Duration: 7 hours, 29 minutes.
Unabridged.

I first heard  this book at an indie book store in a very hip part of the city. If you are an avid reader it is not hard to find more books than you should (or can) buy at one time - so I made a list.

This book was on the list and I really wish that it was half as good as I hoped it would be.

Synopsis:

Jeremiah Fitzjurls owns a junkyard at the edge of a dying Arkansas town. His son is in prison and he is raising his granddaughter. He is a grumpy old curmudgeon and she is an all around great kid. She works at an animal shelter. She is a cheerleader. She is smart. 

She is also sneaking away from the high school dance with the starting quarterback after homecoming...

Things don't end so well and she decides to walk back to the school rather than spend another minute with her boyfriend. That's when she is abducted by strangers...

My review:

This brooding book was a collection of regional tropes about the South,

1. Dying small town? Check.
2. The KKK? Check.
3. Meth? Check.

4. A sheriff from a family of sheriffs? Check.

5. A veteran with PTSD? Check.

6. Two families feuding? Check.

7. Family secrets that everyone in town seems to know about? Check.

Throw in an impossible number of over the top plot twists (including two at the end that were really simply TOO much) and you have a formulaic novel that seemed like it was looking for ways to keep the reader interested by including more and more plot twists. I was reminded of an improv group that I follow that said that they would kill scenes if they go too slow and were advised to add a "birth, death, or a major religious experience" to scenes to make them interesting.  That's great advice for an off-the-cuff improv scene but there's not really an excuse for that when it is a planned out book. 

The one real positive of the audiobook experience was that it was read by the author. He is very good at creating voices and putting emotion into his readings.

I rate this audiobook 2 stars out of 5. It can be found on Amazon.com here: OZARK DOGS by Eli Cranor.

YES PLEASE (audiobook) by Amy Poehler

Published in 2014 by HarperAudio.
Read by the author, Amy Poehler.
Duration: 7 hours, 31 minutes.
Unabridged.

Amy Poehler tells about her life in this memoir. She is best known for her work on Saturday Night Live and her starring role in the NBC series Parks and Recreation. I love Parks and Rec so I decided to give her memoir a listen.

She starts with her early life, her first jobs, college and finally discusses her pre-SNL career. From time to time she has guest readers come along and contribute audiobook-only material. Seth Meyers was no surprise, but Kathleen Turner, Patrick Stewart and Carol Burnett were. Her parents each read their own short chapters. It gave the audiobook a bit of a podcast feel.

Most of the book was quite enjoyable, but there were too many instances of TMI (too much information.) For example, I now know Amy Poehler's feelings about men performing oral sex on her. I didn't need to know that. 

The section about SNL was fun. The chapter on Parks and Rec was even better.

The section on her divorce from Will Arnett is very depressing and surprisingly fact free. That was fine by me - I am not her friend and I don't need to know any details (I wish she'd have kept this in mind when discussing oral sex!) The next couple of chapters meander around with no energy until she moves on to other topics. I get that - divorce is a depressing topic. 

In the last third of the audiobook there is an extended rant inspired by a fan who drops off a script with her while she is riding on a train (or maybe a plane.) She indignantly goes on and on about how this man is discounting all of the work she did as she climbed the career ladder by simply dropping off a script and leapfrogging his way to the top. Who does this no-talent lazy bum think he think he is? 

It felt so different than the rest of the book - it was unpleasantly jarring. I felt like I had somehow stepped behind the scenes and witnessed Poehler having a bad moment after a very long, very hard day. Then, I remember that this was not a random "bad moment" - it was well considered and thought out since it was written, read by editors before it was printed and read by Poehler for the audiobook.

The book is 9 years old so there are lots of more recent things that a fan would like to hear about that just cannot be there. Also, all of her frequent positive comments about Louis C.K. did not age well based on subsequent revelations about the creepy sexual things he did in front of female comics. Every time Poehler mentioned him I wondered if she was also a victim.

I rate this audiobook 3 stars out of 5. It can be found on Amazon.com here: YES PLEASE (audiobook) by Amy Poehler.

This book was banned in a school district in Florida during the 2023-2024 school year. I assume it was because of the oral sex comments that I have previously mentioned. Here is the link to the article with a pdf of the very extensive list of banned books.

ME and EARL and the DYING GIRL (audiobook) by Jesse Andrews

 

Published in 2015 by Listening Library.
Read by multiple actors from the 2022 movie adaption of this book.
Duration: 6 hours, 9 minutes.
Unabridged.

Synopsis:

Greg is a senior in high school. His plan has been to get along with everyone, be welcomed by every group but avoid being a part of any of them. So far, that has worked out. 

His only friend is a kid named Earl. Earl is a rough sort of guy. Greg and Earl don't have a lot in common - they don't even hang out together in school. But, they do share a love of moviemaking. They watch movies, dissect them and even make their own movies. 

One day, Greg's mom comes and tells him about a girl he knew in middle school. She had developed leukemia. It's a particularly tough form of leukemia and she is unlikely to live more than a few months. She wants him to befriend Rachel (without really realizing how big of an "ask" this is) and Earl comes along...

My review:

The author, Jesse Andrews

I picked this book based on an article that mentioned it was on a list of books that Moms for Liberty wants to remove from schools. Here is a site that discusses it.

The Moms were concerned about potty language in the book. To be sure, there's a lot of it  For example, the Moms say that the F word is used 94 times (they have a chart). I teach high school in a school that is on the boundary of urban and suburban. The characters in this book speak pretty much the same as real high school students when they don't know that adults can hear them. They curse a lot and veer into inappropriate content because they want to show that they are no longer children and they can talk about adult topics. If you don't want your kid to read this book because you don't want your child introduced to curse words, you are too late.

So, would this teacher want to teach this book in a classroom? No. The focus in class would be the curse words. Would I keep it in a classroom library? Sure. 

Notice that I said, "Sure" and not "Absolutely!" I really enjoyed the first 30 minutes of this audiobook. I would give it 5 stars. I enjoyed it's style and irreverent humor. It was a nice change of pace. But, the book just continued on with the same notes over and over and over again. For this adult in his fifties, it got old. I am okay with this book, but not enthusiastic about it.

I rate this book 3 stars out of 5. It can be found on Amazon.com here: ME and EARL and the DYING GIRL (audiobook) by Jesse Andrews.