Anonymous

Good Bio that Covers a Complex Man

Reviewed: 08-13-23

Blumenthal gives a really good in-depth look at how John Mack was shaped, from his early life and on into his investigations which veered outside the established academia in which he worked.

It does get a little boggy when Blumenthal delves into Mack's writing a Pulitzer Prize winning tome on the life of T.E. Lawrence, but it is necessary to understanding Mack.

The narration is good and of course it's well-written.

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Memoir as Screenplay

Reviewed: 07-14-23

Carol Schlanger has a story to tell. She wrote a memoir about her life.

But she really wants to write a screenplay. And judging from the many references to her former college pal, Henry Winkler, she seems to want him to produce it.

The memoir seems like Schlanger has described events in a way that would play well on a screen.... some slapstick, some overly dramatic. It makes you think that she had a preconceived formula in mind and then staged it, in memoir form. (Her lover, then husband, Clint, is portrayed as a monosyllabic Paul Bunyun, and he may well be. But she reduces him to a cut-out character with few foibles. And very predictable. I don't think most humans fit that profile but who am I to say she limned him as she wanted, rather than as he is, to give contrast to her city-girl upbringing and his cinematically better description as a rough-country guy. I feel like he was described this way to add some eye-candy to a movie.)

If you are interested in what it may have been like to be a hippie back in the day, at least Schlanger seems to have actually lived the life instead of just dressing up on the weekends in tie-dye and playing at the role while also studying for your SATs in order to get a good job in the real world, like many of my fellow Boomers did.

Her narration is okay. And if you don't mind listening to a memoir that seems like it included requisite, fabricated (or at least overly dramatized) cinema-type scenes, then you might enjoy Schlanger's book.

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A Snapshot of a Sideways Life

Reviewed: 05-30-23

Musicians always have a million stories. John Lurie doesn't miss on that level. He gives an illuminating view into the world of jazz and the machinations of the music production world.

He tells his histories with a truthful aroma and doesn't cut himself any slack for any of his own past transgressions.

I listened to it while I painted the walls on two bathrooms and never got bored.

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A Detailed View of the Elite in Mid-Century Americ

Reviewed: 05-30-23

This book gives an excellent and detailed biography of Bunny Mellon and the people related to her on every level. For most Americans, the wealth and influence she commanded is only to be imagined.

This book gives you all the info on what it was like to be born into a legacy of money and also endless responsibility as to how that money should be put to use. I think a lot of Americans want to dream they might achieve this stratospheric wealth. It's the Mellons and Lamberts that actually did that. They also contributed to some of the most revered institutions in the United States that all Americans can enjoy today.

The writing is always engaging and the narrator is superb.

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A Good Beach Listen

Reviewed: 11-13-22

Bitter Orange has above average character development and the plot line is twisty enough to keep you involved.

It's basically about a triangulated friendship that keeps you guessing which way it's heading. A married couple and a single, spinsterish woman find themselves hired to document an old estate's furnishings and architecture. They meet there and develop a friendship. What happens next is part psychological drama and part romantic-attractions intrigue.

Overall, pretty good, with an ending that ties things up nicely.

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1 person found this helpful

A Musical Love Story

Reviewed: 10-31-22

The Music Shop was written very cinematically, so I can see a movie being made from this. And it's a nice story about lost and found loves, which ranges in time from the 1980s to the present.

The narration is very good with Steven Hartley paying special attention to the different British accents that range throughout the UK and also doing a great job on the German character, Ilse, when she speaks English.

All in all, a good listen while you're driving somewhere.... or taking your constitutional.

The main thrust of the plot, of course, is the lead character's, (Frank) love of music and his commitment to vinyl records during the transition to a digital age in just about everything, including the recording of music. Those of a certain age and a wide range of musical tastes will appreciate the many references to a lot of musical sources, all the way from The Clash to Bach.

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Hail to the (First) Chief

Reviewed: 08-07-22

This was a big commitment; at 41 hours, it's a long listen. But there is no flimsy filler in Chernow's writing. And it's well worth the time.

Ron Chernow draws upon many documented letters and writings to back up the conjectures he forms about the first President's personal, military and emotional life.

It was engaging to hear Chernow as he delved into Washington's emotional make-up; from how he saw himself in offering services in the political arena to how much he liked the ladies -- and the ladies liked him. It was a time where practicing reserve in one's personal life was seen as a noble attribute. That puts having a candid amount of that type of material available to historians in the scarcity zone. But Chernow does an admirable job of piecing together what we do have extant in that field into a cohesive narrative about Washington.

Today, when the very foundations of the beginnings of America are being questioned, this book gives an unbiased reader a full unflinching account of Washington's station in a culture which espoused equality but did not practice it on many levels. Chernow also tackles Washington's attitudes about the enslavement of people and the many failings we can rightfully attach to his actions, or inactions.

At the same time, it does not attach falsely advocated current narratives to his legacy which would diminish the noble aspects of his character and the vital and integral role he played in the foundation of a country, that while imperfect, also embedded a route by which it could see itself out of those imperfections when the citizenry matured enough to enact the justice a democracy will always guarantee its people.

George Washington, like our country, was not perfect. But the important aspect is that a kernel of self-correction existed and exists in both. The book explicated this notion superbly.

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Oh bruuutherrr.

Reviewed: 08-07-22

Anyone who has followed Strieber's odyssey of Alien Abduction(s) might be interested in The Super Natural. I am one of those people.

I always considered his tales of his personal alien encounters as part fiction, maybe part experience... maybe he had a weird, unexplainable thing happen to him and embellished it a bit for his writing portfolio. No harm, no foul. It's a book, right? And whose gonna prove him wrong?

So. I start listening to The Super Natural. It takes me about six hours of listening to realize I CANNOT wade through the final seven or so hours of claptrap.

The book takes a dual narrative line: One voice is Strieber's, the other Jeffery Kripal, a religious(?) theological(?) scholar(?) who interjects thoughts about the possible metaphysical and religious frameworks within which Strieber's encounters may have taken place. (And speaking of speaking, I found the narrator's voice grating. Not quite the proverbial nails on a chalkboard but maybe like drilling though sheet metal.)

While I can go with that integration and critical analysis, I can't say that the analysis is anything but a "woke" take on the old narrative that Strieber has presented for over 30 years.

Kripal taps into the severely over-investigated feminist literature from the 1960s and 1970s... the ditching of the feminine aspects of the "godhood" by mainstream religions... the bonding of men in ancient warrior constructs and yadda, yadda, yadda. I guess the authors were hoping to tap into a whole new generation of readers that aren't familiar with the now old presentations of the mythos of the "feminine."

That, and it also appears at some point that Strieber wishes to re-present his once satirized and mocked "anal probes" as a newly discovered form of alien communication, which at one point includes being "beaten into submission" by an alien lover. Gimme a break. Now Strieber seems to want to portray his alien sex life as a newly identified form of sexual awakening, apparently with no limits and which include now more acceptable forms of various novel sexual foreplay.

I have no problem with any consensual sex between adults. Nor consensual sex between adults an aliens, for that matter.

I do have a problem with a book which attempts to cash in on one established narrative theme, such as Aliens abducting someone in a truly unexplainable fashion (except perhaps in a semi-fictional retelling) and a book cloaked in how Whitley Strieber was going to explain his alien sexual encounters coated in 1970s feminism. Booorrrriiiinnnngggg.

This is just a grab at the current correct take on everything under the Sun and the Aliens' Suns. It's not about the "super natural." It's about trying to reinvent a theme to get your cash... and it just doesn't work.

Believe me. I found it tedious and boring.

And regrettably, the anal probes were not the least of the boring-est parts.

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Keeps Your Interest

Reviewed: 10-14-21

It was a pretty good "listen" while I went on my walks. It held my interest and there's good character development.

I did find the time-jumps in the story line a little hard to follow but overall, it wasn't a deal breaker.

The narration is good.

If you like coming-of-age thrillers/suspense tales, you'll probably like it.

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3 Stars All Around

Reviewed: 10-14-21

I didn't finish listening to Coming Undone because it was just too depressing.

The book does warn about explicit depictions of horrible abusive incidents.

Since I was in the mood for something less shocking, I stopped listening.

If you have suffered abuse, it might help you by hearing about another person's trials at the hand of an "caretaker."

I'm assuming Terri White is a resilient and talented person, since she got her memoir written. I just couldn't absorb all the graphic details right now. Maybe dealing with the pandemic made me less able to process the bad stuff she went through.

So the book is not badly written. It's not about a subject that should be ignored.

It was just too grim for me.

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