AUDIOBOOK read by George Guidall

There’s a lot going on in this book.  At it’s core, American Gods is a road-trip story that follows Shadow, a man recently released from prison whose wife died the day before he got out.  Shadow meets Mr. Wednesday on his way home and accepts a job as Mr. Wednesday’s driver and bodyguard.  In the adventures that follow, Shadow learns that Mr. Wednesday and a cast of others that they meet are all gods who came to America in the minds of immigrants and are now eking out an existence without the worship and sacrifices that they used to receive.  The story itself is quite good, but combined with the themes of religion, culture change, and sacrifice, it winds up being a great novel.  I enjoyed this book and the audiobook is expertly read by Guidall.

ACTUAL BOOK

Number 9 Dream was the last remaining David Mitchell book left for me to read, and unfortunately, I may have enjoyed this one the least of all of his novels.  I thought that this novel started slow and I had a really difficult time getting into the story.  I  will admit that once it got moving, the story kept me engaged and by the time I finished I was conflicted about how I’d review it.  Mitchell remains one of my favorite authors, but I’d rate this one in the same class with Ghostwritten; enjoyable, but not on the level of Cloud Atlas, Black Swan Green, or The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet.

AUDIOBOOK read by Carolyn McCormick AND ACTUAL BOOK

Wow.  I will start by saying that I was wrong.  Sometimes books get so much hype that I instinctively assume that they are not as good as people are claiming.  When the books are designated as “Young Adult”, my apprehension is even greater.  This trilogy was recommended to me some time ago and I’ve had the audiobooks on my iPod for what seems like forever.  My wife read The Hunger Games a few months ago and demanded that I read it, so I finally gave in and started the first book.  A week later, I had finished all three via a combination of audiobooks and the hard copies that we have at home.  I started all three on audiobook via my usual listening method (in the car during my commute), but found myself ditching the audiobook for each of them with about 100 pages remaining and just reading the rest in one sitting at home.  This is by no means a critique on the audiobooks, which were expertly read by McCormick, but a function of the quality and intensity of the story which I couldn’t wait on or drag out.  By now, I expect everyone has a pretty good idea of what these books are about, so I’ll skip the synopsis and just tell you to read them now and enjoy.

AUDIOBOOK read by Roxana Ortega

I probably waiting a little too long to write my review of this book as it’s been a few weeks and I honestly am having a hard time remembering the details of all of the stories.  This book is a series of stories jumping through time with a different main character.  The hook is that each main character is a minor character in one of the previous stories, so the entire narrative becomes one large story.  As is usually the case, some of the stories were better than others, but I enjoyed it overall.  I suppose it’s telling that none of the stories have stuck with me deeply in the past few weeks, but that may also have something to do with the books I have been reading since then (stay tuned).  Anyway, worth a read or listen, but not the best I’ve read this year.

AUDIOBOOK read by Stephen Dubner

I love books like this.  I get hooked on any sort of book that tells multiple “stories” where the authors dive into a subject or question and provide facts and data that contradict the mainstream “knowledge” of the subject.  I read Freakonomics years ago and have enjoyed all of Malcolm Gladwell’s books in the last couple of years, so I was thrilled that Levitt and Dubner released a followup to their huge first hit.  Once again, the authors use economic principles to dive into topics like global warming, child safety seats, and prostitution.  While these topics could easily bog down and get boring, the authors work humor and human interest stories into the narrative and keep things fresh.  The audiobook was well read by Dubner and I was sorry when it was over.  Here’s hoping that ExtraSuperFreakonomics is in the works.

ACTUAL BOOK

Go read this book.  For his first novel, Riggs gathered a number of old photographs, most of which have some sort of photography trick or other oddness.  He then built a story around the collection of photographs.  I don’t want to give anything away about the story as it is too much fun to discover the whole thing yourself.  It’s a quick read (it took me 3 or 4 hours), but I found myself quickly picking it back up anytime I put it down for something else.  Highly enjoyable and I hope we get more books like this out of Riggs.

AUDIOBOOK read by a full cast

The Screwtape Letters was a series of articles written by C.S. Lewis in 1941.  The articles were written as a series of letters from a demon named Screwtape to his nephew Wormwood, a “tempter” demon who is trying to secure the damnation of a human.  The letters focus on human weakness, and ways in which Wormwood’s taget could be pulled away from his faith.  The basic idea of these letters is an interesting one and hearing the viewpoint of the evil side makes one think about temptation in their own life.  The audiobook is well produced and performed by a number of voice actors with sound effects and music.  While it is well done, I found it hard to keep focused on.  I think this series is probably best as an actual book where you can read a section, think about it, and move on when you’re ready.  

AUDIOBOOK Read by Stefan Rudniki

Wow, this book is scary.  A history of the CIA from it’s inception through the post-9/11 agency, Legacy of Ashes is a narrative pulled from thousands of declassified documents.  Tim Weiner does a remarkable job of telling a cohesive story from the formation, to the clandestine operations in Central America, Asia, and beyond, to the complete inability of the CIA to gather much useful intelligence on the Soviets.  The major theme of the book is that the real CIA is not the CIA of the movies.  It describes an agency that spends much of it’s time trying to get out of it’s own way and shifting on the whims of presidents and directors.  It appears that the CIA has spent most of it’s history guessing and little of it actually gathering intelligence.  The book drags in places, which is sometimes troublesome for an audiobook as you can’t skim ahead, but that happens with most non-fiction audiobooks.  Rudniki does a decent job narrating and the book has enough action to keep the listener’s attention despite the length. 

ACTUAL BOOK

This book was required reading as part of my Emerging Leaders program at work as we prepare for our “stretch” projects.  The basis of the book is an online strengths assessment called StrenghtsFinder 2.0.  With the purchase of the book, you get a code to take the online assessment, which returns five strength areas based on your answers.  The book has a reference section where it discusses each strength and what they really mean.  The crux of the whole book is that you should play to your strengths and surround yourself with people with contrasting strengths instead of trying to improve your weaknesses.  Overall, I think the assessment and strength descriptions are informative and could be of good use.  The rest of the book seemed to be more filler and rah-rah stories of how various leaders have played to their strengths.  If you’re interested in the assessment, I recommend just picking up the StrengthsFinder 2.0 book as you can do without the additional stories in this expanded edition.

AUDIOBOOK read by Eric Ruben

Well, I think this wraps up my binge on Jonathan Tropper books.  I’ve listened to all of them except one as it’s not available at my library on audiobook.  I’ll just have to wait until I have some time to read an actual book to pick that one up.  Like the other Tropper books I’ve read, How to Talk to a Widower is well written with plenty of funny passages, but a deeper storyline that explores the main character’s growth.  Given the book’s context, a man trying to get over his wife’s death, this story is darker than the other Tropper books, but not overly so.  I’ve enjoyed all of these books and look forward to future books by this very talented writer.