THE OUTSIDERS (audiobook) by S. E. Hinton

Originally published in 1967.
Audiobook published in 2004 by Listening Library.
Read by Jim Fyfe,
Duration: 5 hours, 9 minutes.
Unabridged.

Listed on BBC's list of 100 Most Inspiring Novels in 2019.
Author is the winner of the inaugural Margaret A. Edwards Award for YA 

Synopsis:

This is a true YA classic. Some consider this to be the book that invented the YA genre. Written by a high school student in the 1960's, The Outsiders is the story of a group of "greasers" in Tulsa, Oklahoma. 

Greasers are poor teens who grow up on the tough side of town. Adult supervision is pretty lax and they spend their days smoking, flirting with girls, and working. They join loose gangs and fight among themselves, but they all unite when their biggest enemies come around. Their biggest enemies are the rich kids who cruise the poor side of town looking for a fight.

The main character is the oddly-named Ponyboy. Ponyboy's deceased parents liked to give their children odd names. Ponyboy and his two older brothers live together in their childhood home and somehow scrape by.

One very late night, Ponyboy and his oldest brother have an argument. Ponyboy runs from the house, finds one of his friends, and they wander the neighborhood. They are sitting in a park when a car full of the rich kids finds them and decides to make an example of them...

My review:

It's been a long time since I read this book, but I read it several times when I was in upper elementary. I came back to this book thinking it was going to be would be lightweight and that I had overestimated its quality when I was a young adult reader.

Turns out that I was pleasantly surprised. While the writing style is pretty simple, this is not a simple book. It has layers and complexity and was an astoundingly good novel, especially when you consider that it was written by a high school student.

I am glad I re-read it as an audiobook. Jim Fyfe did a good job with voice characterizations.

I rate this book 5 stars out of 5. It can be found on Amazon.com here: The Outsiders by S. E. Hinton.

Note: This book has often been placed on banned book lists over the years, especially in the 1970s and 1980s. I have tagged it with the MAGA Censorship List tag because, more recently, it was challenged in Williamsburg, Iowa  and was put on a book ban list in Tennessee. The last linked article has a searchable database because the list has more than 1,100 unique titles.

HAWKEYE: THE SAGA of BARTON and BISHOP (graphic novel) by Matt Fraction, David Aja, and more

Published by Marvel Universe in 2021.

Hawkeye: The Saga of Barton and Bishop is actually two collections in one. The first half of the collection is the text from Hawkeye Volume 1: My Life as a Weapon.

To be honest, the first collection is much better than the newer second half. 

In the second volume, Hawkeye and Bishop are working separately. At the end of Volume 1 she left for California to be an independent Avenger. That's not really a thing, but she's young and hadn't really thought it through.

I found the art and storyline to be convoluted, especially with the main storyline - the Bishop storyline. The shorter Barton storyline is a simple continuation of the actions in Volume 1. Even though it is the shorter part of the story, it feels like it is stretched out and padded while the much longer Bishop story arc feels rushed and poorly explained.

I gave a rating of 4 stars for Volume 1. I give a rating of 2 stars for Volume 2. That makes for a total score of 3 stars. 

This graphic novel can be found on Amazon.com here: Hawkeye: The Saga of Barton and Bishop.

An Unforgiving Place: A National Parks Mystery, Book 2 (audiobook) by Claire Kells

Published by Dreamscape Media in 2022.
Read by Cady Zuckerman.
Duration: 9 hours, 18 minutes.
Unabridged.

Edgar Award nominee.

Synopsis:

An Unforgiving Place is the second book featuring Felicity Harland of the Investigative Services Branch. If you are not familiar with the ISB, join the club - I had no idea that it was the "FBI" of the National Parks Service. If the local park can't deal with it, they call in the ISB. That always include murders.

Harland is partners with a park ranger nicknamed Hux. He is a big, strong guy. Harland is a short (but very tough and determined) lady. There is always of undercurrent of romantic attraction between the two, but it is never acted upon for fear of messing up their friendship and working relationship. Her dog rounds out the trio.

In this series, the ISB moves the agents around from park to park. I have no idea if that is what happens in real life but it does let the reader get a feel for a new park in every book.

An Unforgiving Place is set in Alaska at Gates of the Arctic National Park - a park that is literally in the middle of nowhere. You have to fly in on a bush plane or a float plane to visit big chunks of the park. Harland and Hux get called on because two missing hikers have shown up dead along a river in an isolated place.

After some detailed internet research, it is determined that the two hikers are a couple from New Jersey who came to Alaska in search of a man who offered to cure their infertility troubles with native cures.

They are flown in and almost immediately encounter a group camping nearby. Things get tense when they decide to pass themselves as a adventure hiking couple and join the campers for a few nights...

My Review:

In my mind, the author makes a mistake by letting the readers in on who the victims are and why they are going to Alaska. The reader doesn't experience the mystery likes the investigators and I think that takes some of the steam out of the story.

I gave the first book in this series a rating of 4 out of 5 stars. I liked it well enough that I bought this audiobook (usually I am an avid library patron but they didn't have this audiobook.) However, I am rating this book 3 stars out of 5. It's not a bad book at all, but the mystery was diluted by the issue noted in the previous paragraph. I will continue on the the third book.

This book is available on Amazon.com here: An Unforgiving Place: A National Parks Mystery, Book 2 by Claire Kells.

THE BLACK ROCK COFFIN MAKERS (audiobook) by Louis L'Amour

Published by Blackstone Audio in 2007.
Read by Stefan Rudnicki.
Duration: 54 minutes.
Unabridged.

Louis L'Amour (1908-1988) was an amazingly prolific writer with a career that lasted 50 years. He wrote up to 200 books, both novels and non-fiction works, depending on how you count them up, but he began writing short stories for magazines. I assume The Black Rock Coffin Makers is one of those stories.

Synopsis:

A cowboy rides into a strange town hundreds of miles away from home. He is immediately mistaken for a local man who was driven out of town and possibly killed by ruthless competitors so that he couldn't make a claim on a ranch. He looks so much like the other man that armed man try to kill him within minutes of arriving in town.

Luckily, he runs into a local woman who is also involved in this mess and that's when the real adventure starts...

My Review:

This story starts out very strong. I was immediately drawn in. But, as it went along it just lost some of its steam. Not a bad story, but not a great one. Good enough.

I rate this audiobook 3 stars out of 5. It can be found on Amazon.com here: The Black Rock Coffin Makers by Louis L'Amour. 

THE AGE of GRIEVANCE (audiobook) by Frank Bruni

Published by Simon and Schuster Audio in 2024.
Read by the author, Frank Bruni.
Duration: 9 hours, 46 minutes.
Unabridged.

Frank Bruni, as the title The Age of Grievance implies, looks at how people of all political stripes act as though they are aggrieved at so many things. Sometimes, it's kind of funny and harmless, sometimes it's deadly serious to our values (forcing speakers off campus because they are too conservative) and sometimes people's lives (January 6th.)

If you follow the news, especially political news, not much is new here except grouping them all together and adding analysis. 

He is not saying grievance is always wrong. For example, the Civil Rights movement was a grievance movement. But, he is saying that it has to be informed grievance. For example, he discusses the fact that most people that are convinced that China's economy is larger than America's economy (China's economy is about 2/3 of the size of the U.S. economy with 3 times the population.) How can there be an actual consideration of America's policy towards China when we don't even know the facts of our relative strengths?

This book can actually be quite entertaining, but the serious side always comes back. 

I rate this audiobook 4 stars out of 5. It can be found on Amazon.com here: The Age of Grievance by Frank Bruni.

BROKEN BAYOU (audiobook) by Jennifer Moorhead

Published by Brilliance Audio in July of 2024.
Read by Sophie Amoss
Duration: 10 hours, 18 minutes.
Unabridged.

My Synopsis

Broken Bayou features Dr. Willa Waters, a child psychologist with a very popular podcast who lives in Texas. After a disastrous local television interview goes viral, Waters runs to Broken Bayou, Louisiana. This is where her two great aunts lived in a mansion on the edge of town.

When she arrives in town, there is an uproar because a body has been found in the bayou and then a young schoolteacher and her car went missing. But, some of the locals still remember her because Waters spent most of her childhood summers in Broken Bayou with her great aunts. Waters and her little sister would be brought to town by her mother. All three of them would move in and her mother would spend the summer having a good time with the locals. 

In many ways, her great aunts were the closest thing to proper parents that Waters and her sister had. Her great aunts passed away within hours of one another and they have given the house to the local historical society. Waters says that she is in town to go through some things, but really she is looking for one thing - one very specific thing from a horrible night - the last night they ever stayed in Broken Bayou... 

My Review

This book is steeped in Southern Gothic vibes. There is a brooding mood from one end to the other. The murder mystery aspect was quite good, but I found Dr. Waters' behavior to be amazingly, frustratingly, and all too conveniently self-sabotaging. This very educated woman couldn't seem to grasp the concept of taking the stuff she wanted and going to some other town (any other town) with it until it becomes too late.

I rate this audiobook 4 stars out of 5. It can be found on Amazon.com here: Broken Bayou by Jennifer Moorhead. 

Note: The publisher of this book sent me a free copy of this audiobook in exchange for an honest review.

COMRADES in ARMS (kindle)(short story) by Kevin J. Anderson

Published in 2014 by WordFire Press

My Synopsis:

Veteran (and prolific) author Kevin J. Anderson delivers a compelling short story/novella in the tradition of the golden age of sci-fi with Comrades in Arms. 

Humanity is at war with an insectoid race that uses psychic energy to create weapons and even peer into the future.  The story is set in an asteroid belt way out in the middle of nowhere. Some of the asteroids have breathable atmospheres, but they're not comfortable for either race to live on for long. 

Even though the asteroids have limited value, there is no way either side will give them up so the war has ground itself into a stalemate of sorts. 

However, humanity has developed a new weapon that is starting to turn the tide. Mortally wounded humans are brought back to the base and given the Robocop treatment. Their bodies are refitted with armored limbs, organs are replaced, and a "werewolf trigger" is installed deep in the brain. The werewolf trigger sets the cyborg soldier into an out-of-control killing frenzy. These killing machines tear across the battlefield and civilian outposts, leaving behind nothing by death and destruction until the cyborg is destroyed or its system breaks down.

But, what happens if a cyborg learns to control its computerized impulses? What if it starts to question the war itself? What if it refuses?

My Review:

I enjoyed this novella from beginning to end. The story has an ironic twist at the end, but not the way that you would think. In its own way, it makes a strong anti-war statement. 

I rate this novella 5 stars out of 5. It can be found on Amazon.com here: Comrades in Arms by Kevin J. Anderson.