VANISHING EDGE (National Parks Mysteries #1) (audiobook) by Claire Kells

Published by Dreamscape Media, LLC in 2021.
Read by Natalie Naudus.
Duration: 9 hours, 13 minutes.
Unabridged.

Synopsis:

Felicity Harland is a former FBI agent just turned investigator for the Investigative Services Branch (ISB.) ISB is the criminal investigation unit for the National Park Services. They investigate serious crimes that happen in National Parks. 

Harland has been called to Sequoia National Park because 2 customers of an ultra-glamping camping service has disappeared in a remote mountainous location called Emerald Lake. No one knows if they are dead, have intentionally gone missing, or have simply wandered off into the wilderness. No one will say anything about who the supposed victims are because this service is ultra-exclusive and treats the names of its customers like its a national secret.

Harland, along with an old crusty park ranger, and an ex-Navy SEAL who has just joined the park service search for the missing pair. What they discover next leads them to one suspect after another and no real obvious answers...

My Review:

Emerald lake in Sequoia National Park

I really liked this first entry in a new series. Felicity Harland is far from perfect and she has her own personal demons that the reader learns about as the book progresses. She's flawed, but trying to rebuild her life and learn a new job at the same time. Setting her cases in the National Parks means that she can literally travel the country investigating different cases and the reader gets to see a lot of different parks along the way. For example, at the end of this book she was off to Gates of the Arctic National Park in Alaska.

I rate this audiobook 4 stars out of 5. I will be moving on to the next book in the series.

This book can be found on Amazon.com here: VANISHING EDGE (National Parks Mysteries #1) by Claire Kells.

YEARS THAT CHANGED HISTORY: 1215 (The Great Courses)(audiobook) by Dorsey Armstrong

Published in 2019 by The Great Courses.
Lectures by Dorsey Armstrong.
Duration: 12 hours, 29 minutes.
Unabridged.

The Great Courses offers a lecture series by college professors that the average person can listen to on their own time. 

In this case, Purdue University history professor Dorsey Armstrong is focusing on the year 1215 as a pivotal year. 

1215 is well-known to Americans as the year of the Magna Carta, but it is also the year of the Fourth Lateran Council of the Catholic Church. The rest of the lecture series is about general things that were going on around 1215. These include the crusades, a brief look at the Americas, a look at the Islamic world, Japan, and an extended look at Genghis Khan and the Mongol Empire.

This is a lecture series that could have used a bit of editing. If two hours were removed, that would have been good. Three hours would have been great. This was especially true in the section about Genghis Khan. Armstrong admitted that she was excited about this topic and she really just laid on the details - way too many details for even this history teacher. It just got bogged down in the early details of his life and scooted through the height of the Mongol Empire and its eventual collapse.

I rate this audiobook 3 stars out of 5. I don't really blame Armstrong for this - this series tends to like 20+ half hour lectures and I don't think this was a rich enough vein of information for her to mine.

This audiobook can be found on Amazon.com here: YEARS THAT CHANGED HISTORY: 1215 (The Great Courses) by Dorsey Armstrong.

DIFFER WE MUST: HOW LINCOLN SUCCEEDED in a DIVIDED AMERICA (audiobook) by Steve Inskeep

Published by Penguin Audio in 2023.
Read by the author, Steve Inskeep.
Duration: 8 hours, 57 minutes.
Unabridged.

It's been said that no American has been the subject of more biographies than Abraham Lincoln. I don't know if that it is true, but I do know that it is pretty tough to come up with a new angle on the 16th President. In Differ We Must, NPR reporter/host Steve Inskeep has managed to do just that.

Inskeep follows through Lincoln's life and sees how he dealt with people that he had disagreements with. Some of them were major, some were minor. Sometimes, Lincoln responded to these disagreements by befriending the people he disagreed with, sometimes by patiently arguing his point of view, sometimes by appearing to accommodate them only to slowly change their minds, and sometimes by arguing fiercely against his opponent.

And, sometimes, as in the case of Frederick Douglass, Lincoln realized he was wrong and changed his mind as was the case with Frederick Douglass (and other black dignitaries) and black men serving as soldiers and him dropping his insistence on sending freed slaves to Africa.

One is left to wonder, as always how Lincoln would have reacted to the end of the Civil War and Reconstruction - the ultimate test of his ability to work with people that he disagreed with. We know that his successor, Andrew Johnson, failed that test in a spectacular way, but we will always have to wonder how Lincoln would have done.

While this was a unique entry into the collection of Lincoln biographies, I found it to be merely an "okay" biography. I listened to the audiobook and Inskeep's pleasant reading voice didn't hold my attention particularly well. I rate this biography 3 stars out of 5. It can be found on Amazon.com here: DIFFER WE MUST: HOW LINCOLN SUCCEEDED in a DIVIDED AMERICA by Steve Inskeep.

THE JOURNEY in BETWEEN: THRU-HIKING EL CAMINO de SANTIAGO (Thru-Hiking Adventures book 1) (kindle) by Keith Foskett

E-book Published by Amazon Digital Services in 2010.

I have a real soft spot for books about travel - especially travel in odd ways. I have read a book about a guy who backpacked across Europe, a man who hiked across Afghanistan in 2002, a man who biked from England to India, two women who biked from Turkey to China, a man who hiked from Mexico to the Darien Gap in Panama, the same man hiked the length of the Nile River, a man who found a little dog while in a hiking competition in the Gobi Desert, a man who hiked all 48 mountains in New Hampshire with his little schnauzer dog, and more.

One of these travel stories was by this author, Keith Foskett. Last year, I read the story of his trip up the Pacific Crest Trail - from Mexico to Canada and almost all in the mountains.

This hike was much more sedate and featured less extremes in the weather. The Camino de Santiago is a well-established route. It has been an pilgrimage route for more than 1,000 years and in the last 30 years or so France and Spain have really promoted this trail for tourists.

Foskett was determined to do this event properly so he began it at a traditional place to begin in France. That surprised me because I have always heard of this pilgrimage as being entirely in Spain but at least 25% of this book takes place in France.

Foskett is not taking this pilgrimage as a religious endeavor. Instead, he is looking for adventure and an escape from the workaday grind and this hike fits the bill perfectly.

As I noted, this is the 2nd hike I've done with Foskett (in spirit.) I enjoyed the book about the Pacific Crest Trail more, but this one was interesting. I learned a lot about the Camino de Santiago and Foskett makes for an unusual but lively travel companion. 

I rate this e-book 4 stars out of 5. It can be found on Amazon.com here: THE JOURNEY in BETWEEN: THRU-HIKING EL CAMINO de SANTIAGO (Thru-Hiking Adventures book 1) by Keith Foskett.

FAHRENHEIT 451 (audiobook) by Ray Bradbury

 

Originally published in 1953.

I listened to the Tantor Media audio version published in 2010.

Read by Stephen Hoye

Duration: Approximately 5.5 hours

Unabridged

Synopsis: 

Guy Montag is a fireman in a future United States. Firemen in the future do not fight fires. Instead, they burn books, newspapers, magazines that people have hidden away. If you hide forbidden media in your home your home will be burned to make sure all of the books are gone and to serve as a warning to rest of the neighborhood. 

Montag is great at his job, but he has his doubts. Every once in a while he takes a book home. He hides them in the ventilation system of the house. No one knows, not even his wife. Those doubts are accelerated when his team witness a woman die in the fire with her books rather than live without them...

My review: 

This book has an interesting history. Bradbury started building the world that this book is set in with some short stories of a dystopian future where everyone is absorbed by personalized television screens. His publisher urged him to expand the ideas into a book. Bradbury knocked out Fahrenheit 451 in just 9 days on a rented typewriter that cost him 10 cents per half hour.

The book itself has action but it oftentimes felt like essays attached by plot points. It seems to me that the speed in which the book was written probably led to this sort of construction. The essays took the form of extended trains of thought by Montag or long speeches/rants from Montag's boss, Captain Beatty. These "essays" make all of the arguments of the story such as the justifications for mass censorship, the arguments against it, and the lack of human contact in a mass media world.

Bradbury accurately predicted a lot of the modern world in this book. When it comes to technology, he predicted the ATM, giant screen televisions, and earbuds. Culturally, he predicted the rise of sports TV, the inane reality TV shows like The Real Housewives, and the addiction to pop culture and electronic media that may be a factor in the high rates of depression among young people nowadays.

This has to be considered Bradbury's masterpiece. It is such a powerful manifesto against censorship. 

NOTE: If you appreciate irony, please read this bit about how THE anti-censorship novel of the 20th century was edited to remove or change controversial and offensive words and scenes without the knowledge of the author - FOR TWELVE YEARS!

NOTE: Also on the "if you appreciate irony" category - Fahrenheit 451 was put on a book ban list in Tennessee. The article has a searchable database because the list has more than 1,100 unique titles.

I rate this book 5 stars out of 5. It can be found on Amazon.com here: FAHRENHEIT 451 by Ray Bradbury.

MARCH: BOOK ONE (graphic novel) by John Lewis and Andrew Aydin

Published in 2013 by Top Shelf Productions.
Written by John Lewis and Andrew Aydin.
Illustrated by Nate Powell.

Winner: National Book Award

Winner: Will Eisner Comic Industry Award

Winner: Coretta Scott King Book Award

Winner: ALA Notable Books

Winner: Reader's Digest Graphic Novels Every Grown-Up Should Read

Congressman John Lewis (1940-2020) tells his life story in this graphic novel, focusing on his struggles in the Civil Rights Movement. This is the first book in a trilogy, covering the first 20 years of his life.

Lewis is interested in three things as a young man - education, preaching, and the Civil Rights movement. Lewis listens to the traditional African American leaders and he hears talk of moderation (or, even worse, nothing at all about Civil Rights.) He doesn't know what to do, but he knows this is not the way forward. 

Lewis's growing frustration and the moment when Lewis hears MLK.

One day, he hears Martin Luther King, Jr. speak over the radio and he knows the way to go: non-violent resistance.

The last half of the book goes into the effort to integrate lunch counters in several department stores in Nashville, Tennessee. He details the training, the cat and mouse tactics and the way the movement grew and grew to the point that it simply overwhelmed the legal system. 

So, the legal system withdrew and let vigilantes try to deter them. Anyone who has studied the time period knows about the violence and how it ended up in the end, but that doesn't stop the reader from being drawn in. 

This graphic novel can be found on Amazon here: MARCH: BOOK ONE (graphic novel) by John Lewis and Andrew Aydin.

Click here for my review of March: Book Two. 

DARK of the MOON (Virgil Flowers #1)(audiobook)(abridged) by John Sandford

 

Published by Penguin Audio in 2007.
Read by Eric Conger.
Duration: 6 hours, 5 minutes.
Abridged.

Synopsis:

Virgil Flowers works for the Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension (BCA) and has been brought in to the small town of Bluestem, Minnesota to investigate a double murder. Flowers was picked for this job because he is a great investigator and he grew up in Bluestem.

On his way into town, he comes across a gigantic house fire. He recognizes it as the mansion of the richest man in town. The next morning, they discover that it is also the scene of a homicide.

As Flowers starts his investigation there is yet another murder and the list of suspects keeps getting longer and longer...

My Review:

This series was highly recommended to me. It's a spinoff from the much larger (30+ books) "Prey" series featuring Lucas Davenport. Davenport appears in this series as Flowers' supervisor. 

The author, John Sandford

This book is abridged and I do believe that the abridgment hurt the story. About 40% of the book has been removed and it leaves minor plot holes all over the book. Normally, I don't listen to or read abridgments, but my library only had the abridged version. I am rating this book 3 stars out of 5. Normally, I wouldn't bother to continue with a series that has a 3 star rating to start it off, but I am willing to listen to the 2nd book in this series if I can find an unabridged version. I figure the author included all of that extra stuff to make the story better. 

This (abridged) version of the audiobook can be found on Amazon.com here: DARK of the MOON (Virgil Flowers #1) by John Sandford.