Jack B. Rochester

Engaging hard-boiled fiction

Revisado: 03-25-25

I've now read the first three Sin City novels and each one is a five-star listen. Jim Beam's past comes into play with the third book, handled well and authentic, revealing how each character has a past to contend with - some do so better than others. It's so good I may re-listen to the first three and then go on to the fourth. This is good stuff like the majority of the earlier Reacher novels. A minor criticism - may not need to keep mentioning how he's Jim BEAM so often. Picky picky picky! :)

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Not Your Everyday Shipwreck Story

Revisado: 03-10-24

Grann continuing his quest for fascinating stories. I won't spoil, but this story is gonna give you quite a kick in the pants at the end. I'm a huge David Grann reader - this is the first book of his I've listened to instead of read and it was made absolutely wonderful by Dion Graham's outstanding narration. You can tell he did his homework, reading the book carefully for tone and emphasis. What a pro! I'd give him 11 stars if I could. My only question was his pronunciation of Don Juan as "Jou-an," not the more familiar "whan" - love to know what that was about.

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Sounds like a drunkologue

Revisado: 02-29-24

I stopped with 3:37 remaining. Couldn't take any more. Herron's surely got an eye for detail, whether it matters or not. What a mangy dog story. I suppose there are some folks who like this sort of thing and I'm simply not one of them. Glad I only spent $3.99 for this one.

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Jack and Rachel Ride Again

Revisado: 11-10-23

It seems that Michael Connelly cannot write a boring work and I can’t listen to orread enough for them to be satiated. Excellent narration as well.

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Enticing Dark Tale of the Roaring 1920s in London

Revisado: 10-13-23

One of the best stories and narrations I've heard recently - made special by its portrayal of Brit-Fem-Lib in the Roaring 20s. Hannah Curtis is an absolutely 5-star narrator, her voice capturing the Cockney [I think] accent yet rendering it intelligible. While it's all well and good that The 40 Elephants was a real London girl-gang, and while their thefts were notoriously haute couture, what was more gripping for me were the incidents of male abuse. My one critical comment: I didn't really get a time-and-place sense - the only thing that came close to portraying the times was the cars and maybe the clothing they stole. Otherwise it could be happening today. So I hope the female retribution was just as much a part of their crimes. It was satisfying to "hear" the wife-beater get his due.

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Overflowing with cellulose prose

Revisado: 09-04-23

Perry is off his game with this one. Harry Duncan in the first person is a dullard and the plot plods through arcane descriptions of miniscule things and scenes that are irrelevant to the story. The book only begins to be interesting plot-wise in the last hour. I've read/listened to 3-4 of his books and enjoyed the heck out of them. At first I thought this might be an early effort but it's not, so it likely means his publisher was putting the screws to him to get a new book out.

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Everyman speaks and we can listen

Revisado: 07-15-23 El oyente recibió este título gratis

I found this book revelatory on a very personal level. I think we can all learn from each other and books. Whether print or audio, books are the finest medium to learn and grow from learning about life, love, and another human human being. Such as is the case with Thrivation.

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A Clever idea, but nothing happens

Revisado: 06-25-22

Fesperman has attempted to write a prequel to the Al-Queda terrorists who organized in order to destroy New York's World Trade Center buidlings, but he misses the mark, pun intended, by a mile. At one point I thought, because of the number of them, there might be a hint of a relationship between this novel and the true event, but it passed by, like nearly every other event in the story, into insignifcance. (the biggest hint fell at the tail end of the book when a Boeing aircraft manual is mentioned and then, like all other potential clues, simply forgotten about.) The professor aspect is nearly a red herring, again full of sound and fury, yet signifying nothing. Ditto Claire, who like all the other agency types - Bridger, Donlon, etal - never seems to figure anything out except to rescue Mahmoud, although she isn't even certain about his undercover role. Yes, Al-Queda did pull it off and beguiled every American intelligence agency. We seem to get caught flat-footed over and over (think Uvalde), like it's some kind of iconic thing Americans should do: wait for the bad guys to pull their six-shooters first. So, Dan Festerman, where's the story? You churn and churn and churn some more with pre-moribund daily details - food, streets, cars, etc. - all signifying nothing, just filling the pages with words. Blah, blah. I returned this book.

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esto le resultó útil a 1 persona

Shakespeare would have loved this

Revisado: 02-09-20

I listened to this Audible version of Layne Fargo’s debut novel, Temper, and it was a one hundred percent thrill-ride. The story revolves around a stage play, which proved to be an excellent plot setting not only for the action but for revealing the characters’ innermost selves.

Drama and film probably top the other arts in attracting or creating egotists. Fargo balances the ego-driven characters with several who are passive-aggressive, a personality trait equally as insidious. This is a story of full-fledged knives out and sharpened by all the main characters, each in their relentless and self-absorbed drive to get what they want: artistic recognition and sex, sex, sex.

This is one of the most forthrightly erotic novels I can recall since reading Scott Spencer’s Endless Love many years ago. Although many novels attempt to portray sex, few do so in an erotic way; it’s all too often either more biological or animalistic that sexy. (Movies too.) Rarely in a human, needful, way. Fargo does.

There are two stories, one of Kira, a struggling actor, the other Joanna, assistant to Malcolm, the director and third lead character. (A menage a trois??) Kira is aggressively sexual and frank about her desires; Joanna is utterly repressed, longing for Mal in a major case of unrequited desire. Their first-person narratives unfold an alternating chapter at a time, masterfully accomplished by the author.

Adding a certain chaos to everything, many of these people are not exclusively heterosexual. We begin to see the complexity of actors who live to portray fictional people, acting in and out of character on a live stage.

I’ve no doubt this is a great read, but it was also a great listen. The two female leads were played by two accomplished, convincing voice actors, Jayme Mattler (as Kira?) and Hillary Huber (as Joanna?) (there must be a source to learn who did which, but I couldn’t find it). In any event, both were utterly in character and convincing in their roles.

I find it interesting that listening to a good novel draws me into the story in ways reading does not: I scowl, I growl, I sigh, I laugh, I cry. For me, it’s not right for every work, but it has added a dimension to my literary experiences nonetheless. And it makes me all the more committed to—and excited about—hearing my own novels produced in Audible versions.

I eagerly look forward to Layne Fargo's next novel, due out in October 2020.

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An exciting, character-driven UFO story

Revisado: 08-24-19

There's something particularly appealing to me about reading a novel by a female: great characterization. It's sadly lacking in a lot of science fiction, where the male author is much more interested in technology, or space exploration, or things having to do with warp and weft of time and space. All the above are interesting, but the latter are made even more interesting when we have fully dimensional characters, as we have in Kristina Rienzi's novel.

This is a UFO story, which I love because I firmly believe there are, and have been, earthly visitations from outer spacelings for a long time. How else can we explain the unexplainable, whether in reality or in our preconscious imaginations? [Note: if you like this genre, the recent movie "UFO," brilliantly written and directed by Ryan Eslinger, is a must-see - it's streaming on Netflix.] [You might also want to follow Matty “Storm Area 51, They Can’t Stop All of Us" Roberts, a musical-festival-cum-raid scheduled for Sept. 20]

At its core, Rienzi's is a don't-mess-with-the-government story. Marci Simon, a rather unconventional woman, finds her world slamming doors of all kinds in her face after she blogs about seeing an other-world alien spacecraft which she and many others, including a retired Air Force officer her neighbor across the street, can verify. The good old government begins taking any and all means necessary to quash the sighting and the people who know of it.

The story is like a vortex that gets deeper, wider, wound up tighter and tighter, as it unfolds. We are cast into Marci's world where we empathize deeply with the tribulations and confusion she experiences, while simultaneously having every last one of our worst fears about our corrupt, secretive, people-hating government confirmed.

As I removed my EarPods, I recall thinking, "Boy, it's good thing Edward Snowden split for Russia!"

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