An Old Hippie Chick

Not even in Follett's top 20.

Revisado: 09-13-20

Generally, I find Ken Follett's work superb. This, on the other hand, sounds like it was phoned in on a slow Tuesday. His female protagonists are almost always strong characters driven by strong inner motivation. I don't consider romance to be a strong inner motivation, which is why I don't read romance novels.

This started out reasonably promising, but something happened in the middle when suddenly the lead character, a female ex-cop and current security specialist, seemed to stop caring about anything but whether her crush, who happened to be her boss, loved her or not. What?

One of Follett's strengths, IMHO, is his ability to write solid female characters who are able to be tough and capable while simultaneously feminine. This one suddenly turned from a strong capable character to a lovestruck whiney girl in the distance of a page. I finally had to give it up after about 3/4 of the way through.

The narrator did a reasonably good job with most of the Scots accents, but a couple were pretty jarringly bad, which made me drop her score. Part of the problem, again just my opinion, was that when the character really turned whiney and "ooh-does-he-really-love-me?" the narrator also began using a whiney voice for her as well.

If that was her intent, perhaps I should have scored her up and the author down even further. I've never given a Follett novel lower than 4 stars, and most 5. I'm not sure what happened here. It's a beef I have with any author when their female characters lose their strength and become love-struck, simpering little girls. I probably should have just read Jackdaws or Eye of the Needle again instead of this.

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Couldn't Stop Listening!

Revisado: 07-23-20

One caveat with this sequel. If you haven't read book #1, Lock In, you might want to read it first. There are things that will be easier to understand if you already understand Hayden's Disease (Lock In) and some of the political ins and outs of the economic war over the patients' lives and money.

That said, this is a great sequel, tight plot, great character development, violence but not graphic. The action moves pretty fast throughout most of the book and stays pretty consistent. I started listening around dinner time last night and was still going at it late into the night, as I didn't want to quit without knowing the ending.

The first book was published in two versions, one with this narrator and one with a woman. I listened to the one with Wil Wheaton, who also narrated this one, and was pleased. He's quite articulate, and though not really challenged in any of the other voices, he did a nice job with all of them. I wasn't sure whether to give this 4 stars or 5. How do you give half-stars? I've never been able to figure it out, and I hate giving everything I read or listen to 5 stars, All in all, worthy of all of them anyway.
Sherry

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Bob Woodward--What Can You Say?

Revisado: 01-12-20

Bob Woodward is one of the finest investigative journalists this era has ever seen. In fact, his zeal to be accurate and have all his facts straight make his book a bit slower than some of the others written about the Time of tRump, like Omarosa's, and Anonymous' and blah blah blah. In fact, there are few others writing about this time when our empire is failing who I trust as much. Chris Hedges and perhaps Matt Taibbi, right offhand. But Woodward has the history behind him, and the gravitas, to really lay out the facts.

Unfortunately, the facts are so bleak that it was hard to read, especially to read what has occurred and see how prophetic his words have been. It shows little real hope for an America going forward that will even resemble the nation that those of us from our 40s and up. I'm 66 and was raised in a career Army family, so the horror show that is our military structures' kowtowing to the orange maniac and obeying patently illegal, immoral orders grates on me in a way it may not others.

The narrator did a nice job, but not memorable, so it's 5 stars for Woodward, 4 for the narrator, and if someone would tell me how to give half-stars, I'd do so, but I haven't figured it out. See you on the other side, fellow sane Americans.

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esto le resultó útil a 31 personas

Very Interesting. Page-Turner.

Revisado: 12-26-19

This was unusual, as I haven't read many books with a protagonist who was a criminal and reasonably happy with her choice in life. Especially a female. I found all the tips and tricks of burgling--I guess that's a word?--pretty interesting, and if I were younger and in better physical health, could almost consider this work as is a DIY guide for the modern burglar. ( I was a petty criminal in my youth, 40 years ago, and could tell you how to burgle, shoplift, etc., in an age before cameras, electronic alarms, and such, but it wouldn't be very useful nowadays.)

It kept my attention, and I listened to it in just a couple of settings. If a sequel comes out, I'd probably read it, as I quite liked the main character. The narration was fine--I don't remember much about it, which is actually a good thing. When I remember the narration, it usually means it took over the book, which for me is not a good thing. I wish someone would tell me how to give something 4 1/2 stars, as I don't seem to be able to. So I gave it 5.

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A Worthy Sequel to the Handmaid's Tale

Revisado: 09-16-19

I don't usually like the several narrator approach, but it worked quite well in this. I especially enjoyed Ann Dowd performing Aunt Lydia's role after having heard her through the series on Hulu. This did answer most of the questions left at the end of the original book. One thing I had to keep in mind, however, was that all but the first season of the Hulu series goes beyond the book, so there's a bit of disconnection between the end of the TV series and the beginning of the book. I did have to remind myself now and then that this book didn't begin at the end of the series, but basically at the end of Season 1 of the series. That said, my only other tiny complaint is the speed with which the action took place at the end of the book. The climax seemed a little rushed--I would have liked perhaps a little more detail, especially with Aunt Lydia. A minor complaint, however, compared to the rest of the book. I love the epilogs to both the new version of the Handmaid's Tale and this book as well. Life does go on, despite the things we humans do to wipe ourselves out.

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Good book, but not The Dry

Revisado: 09-15-19

First, I did like the narrator. I'm a sucker for an accent and his Australian one helped to pull me into the setting. That said, I believe I'd prefer to read this book. Since it's a whodunit with foreshadowing, there were several points where I wanted to go back and check something out again. That's difficult to do in an audiobook. Although I gave the original book The Dry a review here, I did read it as a book and did quite a bit of that, checking back to see what had already been written about this or that character.

In general, I was drawn to the characters, even the unlikable ones. I felt that I understood what drove them and why they made the decisions they did. As in The Dry, the geographical setting served as a character itself. Because most of us in the West are more familiar with the dry portions of the country, it was interesting but a little jarring to discover there are places where it rains all the time. It definitely set the mood of the book! I followed the back-and-forth in time pretty well also, another issue I have with the audio format. Altogether it was an enjoyable couple of days listening, with a pretty satisfying ending. If more books are written about Aaron Falk, I will check them out, though likely as paperbacks or Kindle books first.

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esto le resultó útil a 2 personas

Lots of good info but should have read it.

Revisado: 08-30-19

My bad for picking this as an audiobook. With the amount of information, I should have read it instead. Audio isn't the best format when you're taking in huge amounts of sort of dry information. That said, I've read, listened to, and watched a number of Chernobyl documentaries, and this one was one of the most informative, especially as it concerned the Soviet state's reactions to the disaster.

Especially interesting right now, as we've just had yet another nuclear accident inside Russia, and though it's no longer the USSR, the evasions and lies are exactly the same. I'd never realized until I began studying Chernobyl what a large part it played in the breakup of the Soviet Union. And it's startling to see, now that Communism is dead and they have some sort of capitalist-authoritarian state that is interfering with our own country (allegedly) how little anything has changed. I wonder how many years it will take before we know the truth of last week's radioactive emissions.

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esto le resultó útil a 1 persona

Good but not for the faint of heart.

Revisado: 08-30-19

I've read many of these memoirs, and this was hard to take in places but not the author's fault. Had it been fiction, I'd of been asking a lot of "why?" questions, like "Why did the mother do that?" but assuming it's true, there often isn't a sensible answer to questions like that. I didn't always understand her motivations but it sounded like she didn't always, either. While I wasn't sexually abused as a child, I endured mild physical but intense verbal and emotional abuse, as well as adult domestic abuse and violent crime victimization, so I get the author's dilemma. SPOILER ALERT The part that sickened me but that I do get was the mother's obvious knowledge or at least suspicion of the abuse but her desire for the money to keep coming in, so essentially putting her children in situations to be abused for her own selfish monetary gain. Addicts of all sorts are selfish creatures who don't really care how badly they hurt those around them as long as they can keep their addiction going, and I could really see that in this mother. I say that as a recovering addict, BTW. Kudos to the author or whoever went through this. It's amazing you turned out as well as you did.

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esto le resultó útil a 18 personas

I'm a stickler for the little details...

Revisado: 08-27-19

Couldn't finish. Got about halfway, and the rest of the story had become boringly obvious, first, and that this guy was still an FBI agent at the time I left (I'm betting not for long...) despite his obsession with "the confession" second, but here was the dealbreaker for me. I'm really, really a stickler for details. Drug use is supposed to be a big part of the story. In one scene, the protagonist describes another character as high on heroin, with dilated pupils. Heroin, in fact all opiates and no other type of drug causes the pupils to contract. Cocaine and crystal meth dilate them, but anyone high on heroin is going to have teeny, tiny pupils. Back in the day, we used to call them "pinned" and it was the signature mark of the heroin user. I just hate it when details indicate a lack of due diligence to details like that. So, I quit at that point. However, I did like the narrator.

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esto le resultó útil a 1 persona

Another page-turner from author Eisler!

Revisado: 08-09-19

I've found most of Eisler's books engrossing enough that I listen to them and/or read them in a couple of sittings. His characters are engaging and I develop a liking for most of the 'good guys' and a dislike for the villains. The 'bad guys' in this world are all very bad characters who you really want to see get their comeuppances--and they always do. The narration I didn't expect to like so well, as usually when authors read their own work, it's often not as good as when professional actors read them. Eisler, however, has very specific ideas for the dialect of most of his characters, and does a great job of separating them by voice. All in all a worthy effort. Whenever I don't care about the state of the current world and just want to get lost in a story Eisler doesn't disappoint. These are the sort of stories that, IMHO, are best listened to. Some books are better read, but these are the kind that are enjoyable to be listened to .

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esto le resultó útil a 5 personas