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More of Jack Reacher's backstory

Revisado: 02-10-16

This book does not fall in chronological order. It is a sort of prequel - going back to when he was still in the army. Now, this may annoy readers who need to have everything in order. But for me, it was great. In this story, Jack and his brother visit their mother in Paris, and they learn more about their family that they ever imagined. Reacher's character is is much more developed as a result. I hope and expect that this will carry forward in subsequent books.

I don't know why so many reviews are critical of the narrator, Dick Hill. He brings Jack Reacher completely to life. His inflections and speech affects are spot on for a grizzled, cynical loner like Reacher. I cannot imagine a better narrator.

The story is pretty good. The investigation is a bit slow at points, but it was an interesting story nonetheless, and it shows insights into military life.

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This book has no point

Revisado: 07-05-15

This book violates at least 15 of Mark Twain's 18 rules for writing. It is an interesting concept and could have been an engaging story, but the author complicates the tale in every way imaginable (and a few that were quite beyond my capacity for imagining).

Among the primary problems:

1. We don't really know who many of the characters in the tale are until very near the end; and some of those characters serve no purpose whatsoever.

2. Most of the activity in the tale does not contribute in any meaningful way to the progress of the tale.

3. Most of the dialog is meaningless dribble that doesn't serve to develop characters or the story.

4. The story jumps around in time, in location, between the real and spirit world so much that I got dizzy while reading it.

5. Some of the important things are withheld from the reader for so long that the reader must go back to recall why the thing was important in the first place. Some (such as Jane's objective in the story) are withheld forever.

6. I never could have imagined a story that could successfully violate Rule #3, but the author manages to do it in spades. (Mark Twain Rule #3 - The personages in a tale shall be alive, except in the case of corpses, and that always the reader shall be able to tell the corpses from the others.)

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Not as much as expected

Revisado: 07-05-15

I feel badly not giving the book a more positive review. Unlike many of McCullough's other biographies, I was disappointed in the lack of depth in this book as well as the vast parts of the Wright Brothers' lives that were given minimal treatment, if any.

The positives:
This book focuses on the incredibly strong personal character of the Wright brothers and their family, and highlights the interesting Victorian times that formed their characters.

Much detail is paid to the airplane and they flying, as should be. I also appreciated the strong emphasis on the Wright's family relationships as exhibited through their letters.

I enjoyed much of the anecdotal background material. The examples of the difficulties in getting to Kitty Hawk and in communicating from there, for example.

The negatives:
I was quite surprised at the degree of positive spin that is represented in this book. The Wrights could be much more small and vindictive (for example in their patent fights) than this book relates.

Not much attention is paid to the business side of their aviation business: How they made their money, their arrangements for licensing their designs and how they made money in the licensing, their patent fights and the poor relationship with Glenn Curtiss. For example, McCullough spends a reasonable amount of effort discussing the context of JP Langley's failed exploits on the Potomac. But as an equally important matter of context, the author barely touches Alexander Bell's Aerial Experiment Association (AEA), Curtiss' experiments and innovations in aviation, or the ensuing patent wars which consumed the Wright Company and Curtiss for many years. In omitting these important factors in the Wright's lives, the opportunity to relate motivations and the way they handled these issues are also lost.

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A mixed bag

Revisado: 05-04-15

I saw this book on a recommended reading list on NPR. I like a good intrigue / mystery book and had high hopes for this one.

I can summarized my review easily: It's a tribute to the basic story that I listened to the book twice straight through. It's a shame that because the reading and the crafting of the story were both so poor that I needed to listen to it twice straight through.

First - the performance. Rachel Atkins used a number of, um, techniques that I found difficult to cope with. The worst thing was when (as often happened) her voice would raise in pitch and volume during the tensest passages. This was helpful as far as projecting the anxiety of the situation. But often after a particularly loud sentence, her voice would drop to an unintelligible whisper. I drive an electric car - it's quiet, but I needed to use the skip-back button so many times I nearly wore it out trying to catch the name or word that might have helped me make sense of the story if I could have caught it the first time around. And the accents wore me out. Scottish, Cockney, Welch, London, Newcastle, American. Sheesh - it was hard enough keeping track of the characters (more on that in a sec.), but decoding these accents was nearly impossible to me. Maybe there were just too many characters to represent, but I don't know. It just didn't make for an easy listen.

The story skips willy nilly through the various times / characters / aliases / situations so quickly that I simply missed many important connections, I found myself befuddled a good bit of the time. Who beat whom to a pulp this time? Why was that again? Was there a reason for the beating this time or was it just to prove again and again and again who pathological someone can be? Wait! Now who is this speaking? I was just listing to a conversation to these two people, and suddenly it jumped like a packet of quantum story-telling to a different time, place, and set of characters. But was the last conversation over? I don't remember (and I had such a hard time just hearing it....). Better back up and listen to that again. And again.

The thing is - I actually liked the story and I like the main character Charlotte Alton / Karla. The fundamental story, if one cuts through all the needless convolutions, is really quite good. But MY GOD, it takes a difficult path to get from point A to point B.

I'd like to say that it's me, that I am a bit hard of hearing and I have a touch of tinnitus that affects my hearing sometimes (which I do). But no. I have a 2 hour daily commute in my car and I listen to audiobooks almost exclusively. I listen to a lot of non-fiction on technology and science, a lot of history, and also many novels. I just don't normally have this kind of trouble following a story line or a dialog at all, except for this book. Around the same time I listened to this book I also listened to the complete Tom Clancy Jack Ryan Jr. series, read by Lou Diamond Phillips. I didn't have any of the same difficulties with hearing or with the continuity of the story, and I don't think those books suffered do to their relative continuity. Actually, it was just the opposite.

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Life, Love, Tragedy

Revisado: 05-04-15

I will keep this short - I'm afraid I'll spoil it for someone. If you like a great story, then this is a great story. It's not completely happy, but it feels as real as a novel can feel.

The performance is impeccable. The tone & tenor and the pace are just about perfect, in my opinion. I've never heard a book by Zach Appelman before, but I will keep an eye out for his name. Not that the book needed it. The story is compelling.

The story line of Werner Pfennig in his adolescent days possibly borrows from Richard Feynman's tales of his early life as a boy. And likely it appealed to me, because when I was a boy, I'd ask for things like broken radios for Christmas so I could take them apart. Just as Werner might have.

I think that all the characters in this book have that sense of reality. They are mirrors of us. That's half of a great book right there. The other half is the crafting of the story. This path story takes is a teeny bit predictable, but not completely. You know what will happen early on, but are left in anticipation as to when and how and where. The character's paths weave and twist. They face some of the inevitabilities of wartime Europe, but they are true to themselves throughout. And that is the story. and it is great.

Read it!

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Not Beowulf

Revisado: 05-04-15

I would much prefer to write a positive review, but I've very little....
to sayhhhh

Because this is howww,
The book is read hhhh.
Dear readerhhhh.

It doesn't seem to be
Written in open verse,,,,
But that is how,,,,
It's read.

It gets oldhhhh
to hear each phrase kind of,,,,
tail off,,,,,,
into a kind of nothingness,,,,,
It's depressing - sigh - - - - - -

But that is how the book is , , , ,
all the way through....

Written in prose, , , , ,
but read as. h h h h h
Open
Verse.

And literally his voice, , , ,
just tapers to a poor sad sigh h h h h
at the the end , , , , ,
of each little phrase...
Losing tone and volume....

Please Colson....
Get some Zoloft, , , ,
Before you read,h h h h h
your next {sigh},
Book.

I forgot,,,,
part way through h h h h h h
what it was , , , ,
About.

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Too much exposition

Revisado: 08-11-13

This is a novel and interesting story. The problem with it is this: An extremely successful writer like Stephen King does not have his work edited as much as a less successful author. Mark Twain suggests that one element of good writing is an economy of words. This book has eaten entire encyclopedias of words, and then sent out for more. I wonder how many keyboards he wore out. . . At the end, King speaks about the book, and mentions that he edited it down a lot. But not enough!

It is much too long, and far too much effort is is put into exposition of various elements that are not germane to the story lines. For example, when someone dies, we are treated to about ten minutes or more of their last thoughts, their regrets, and random historical facts about the character - who is about to exit the story and won't be heard from again! If I had been reading this on a paper book, I could have turned pages to skip this drivel, but in an audio book we're stuck listening as not to miss the next section. I love the premise and the story, but it could have been made shorter by half and not lost a single important element.

The reader did a pretty great job, considering the immense cast of characters. He struggled a bit with the female characters, but it must have been a difficult task. I wish the producers of audio books like this would recognize that when there is a very large cast of characters, perhaps there should be 2 or 3 readers - a male reader for the male characters, a female reader, and maybe even a 3rd reader with a distinct voice for the narrative.

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Not too bad

Revisado: 02-22-12

What didn’t you like about the narrators’s performance?

Scott Brick didn't suck as bad as he did on Michael Pollan's books.

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An incredibly well-told story

Revisado: 04-06-11

I found this book to be compelling and full of the very real drama on the Deepwater Horizon. The author is knowledgeable and knew many of the people on the Horizon personally. The story is rich with first-person accounts of the history of the rig from its construction right through the disaster

What I appreciate most about the book is that the authors kept emotion, conjecture, and conclusions out of it, and simply told the story of what happened. There is plenty of drama, however, and the book is anything but dry. In fact, it is so compelling I can hardly put it up. I appreciate hearing the human story and the technology of the deep water drilling rigs with the dramatic story of the blowout and the abandonment of the rig.

Well Done! And also well read by Sean Pratt! An excellent book.

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Great book, but it made me weary

Revisado: 02-07-11

I give this book 4 stars because I think the content is very important. If you care about the environment, your children, or your health; you should pay close attention.

It didn't get five stars from me for two reasons. One is that certain passages (such as on the pathos of hunting) were simply too long without adding any significant amount of substance relative to the theme of the book.

The other reason is the narration. It's the first book I've listened to to that was narrated by Scott Brick. I found people either like him very much or dislike him very much. I'm somewhat sorry to say that I fall in with the latter group. I found his voice edgy and preachy and I had to go away from it for a couple of weeks to take a break. I think what several people in both positive and negative comments have described as the 'dramatic' element of his voice is what I found unduly annoying. This is a tough subject, and perhaps the text can be a bit preachy itself at times. Adding a preachy tone for the reader was over the top to me. I would have very much enjoyed a calmer, fireside chat kind of read. I will think twice before listening to another book read by him, but with all the praise for him, I will consider it.

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