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BIG HERO 6: THE JUNIOR NOVELIZATION by Irene Trimble

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Published by Disney and Blackstone Audio in October of 2014 Read by MacLeod Andrews Duration: 2 hours, 18 minutes Unabridged Big Hero 6 is, in my mind, one of the best superhero movies that has been made in this time of the renaissance of the superhero movie. It is fun and colorful, but it also has loss and shows the power of friendship and love. It also demonstrates how love can be twisted into something evil. Hiro Hamada is a teenaged robot-building prodigy who competes in robot fighting contests. His brother attends the local university in the future city of San Fransokyo and also builds robots in a high-tech lab in the school with several other talented young engineers. When his brother dies in a horrible explosion at the lab, Hiro is thrown into a profound depression. He re-discovers Baymax, a health care robot built by his brother, and he and Baymax discover clues that his brother wasn't killed in an accident, but was murdered instead. Baymax, Hiro and his brother&

A DISEASE in the PUBLIC MIND: A NEW UNDERSTANDING of WHY WE FOUGHT the CIVIL WAR (audiobook) by Thomas Fleming

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Published in 2013 by Blackstone Audio. Read by William Hughes Duration: 11 hours, 42 minutes. Unabridged Thomas Fleming readily admits that he mostly writes about the era of the American Revolution (such as his excellent book Liberty! The American Revolution ) but he felt compelled to make a long commentary on the origins of the Civil War by writing this book - a lengthy commentary that is interesting Fleming's take on the causes of the war are based on a comment from James Buchanan's that the furor over slavery was a "disease in the public mind." Fleming is quite confident that this disease was mostly caused by the North. Shelby Foote alludes to this, in a way, in the Ken Burns Civil War documentary when he notes that there was a war "because we failed to do the thing we really have a genius for, which is compromise...our whole government's founded on it and it failed." An exhibit at the Lincoln Museum in Springfield, Illinois. Photo by DWD

MARVEL'S GUARDIANS of the GALAXY: THE JUNIOR NOVEL by Chris Wyatt

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Published in 2014 by Disney. Read by Chris Patton. Duration: 1 hour, 39 minutes. Rocket Raccoon Unabridged (sort of). This is the sanitized, unabridged version of the abridged book of the movie. That means that not all the movie is in this book, but the audiobook version that I listened to does have everything that the abridged book has in it. We picked this up to listen to on a short family trip. We are all fans of the movie but we were interested in a version with no cursing and less sexual references when we were listening in the car. Some scenes are edited and lots of great dialogue has been added that was not in the movie. It makes me wonder if the author was working from an early script. The reader, Chris Patton, does a good job of voicing each of the Guardians, especially Rocket and Drax. But....despite all of these good things the book ends at just past the halfway point - the point where the Guardians just lost the Infinity Stone to Rona the Accuser. The story just

NEVER GO BACK (Jack Reacher #18) by Lee Child

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Published in 2013 by Random House Audio. Read by Dick Hill. Duration: 13 hours, 43 minutes. Unabridged. Lee Child Admittedly, I bounce around as a I read the Jack Reacher (so far I have read #8, #11, #14 and #18) but I was very pleased to note that #14 and #18 are tied together so that I had sort of a seamless experience while still skipping around. In #14 Jack Reacher meets, via telephone, Susan Turner. Susan Turner has Reacher's old job in the military police and they make a connection. Reacher decides to hitchhike across the country to meet her only to find out that she has been arrested and he is not allowed to see her. To top it off, he has been recalled into the army so they can file charges against him - a person he investigated for selling stolen military weaponry in Los Angeles more than 15 years before has passed away from injuries that he claims Reacher inflicted during an interrogation. Of course, Reacher won't stand for this kind of silliness and he sta

OFF the GRID (Joe Pickett #16) by C. J. Box

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Published in 2016 by G.P. Putnam's Sons This installment in the saga of Joe Pickett starts out with a bear encounter in the mountains and ends up in a violent confrontation in Wyoming's Red Desert. Adobe Town - a part of the Red Desert. Photo by Randy C. Bunney; Great Circle Photographics. Joe Pickett's special relationship with the Governor is coming to an end because the Governor's term is coming to an end. But, that doesn't stop him from going on one last special mission to the Red Desert area of Wyoming. Meanwhile, Nate Romanowski has been approached by men from a secret group of government agents who are worried about national security issues. They know all about Nate and his delicate legal situation and promise to clear all of that up if he goes on a special assignment for them in the Red Desert area of Wyoming. Also, Joe's daughter Sheridan goes for a weekend camping trip to volunteer to help an unknown activist group in (you guessed it) the Red

GOOD TALK, DAD: THE BIRDS and the BEES and OTHER CONVERSATIONS WE FORGOT to HAVE by Bill Geist and Willie Geist

Published in 2014 by Grand Central Publishing. Bill Geist has been a favorite of mine for years on CBS's Sunday morning show. His son, Willie is a relative unknown to me because I don't have cable or satellite television. They team up in this book to talk about the topics they, perhaps, should have spoken about while Willie was younger with a lot of humorous insights and commentary.  They talk about "the birds and the bees" as the title suggests and they also discuss such topics as "what really happened at summer camp", how Willie lost a lawn mower while working on a mowing crew, Bill's love of Elvis, weird extended family, Bill's experiences in Vietnam, teenagers and alcohol and Bill's announcement that he has Parkinson's. Full of cute stories, this book is fun if not particularly profound.  This book can be found on Amazon.com here: Good Talk, Dad: The Birds and the Bees and Other Conversations We Forgot to Have . I rate this book 4