KyberHeart

Decent overview but lacking detail

Revisado: 08-28-24

This book is great for those who were born after 9/11 or who have no familiarity with the topic. It does a good job of going over the basics while ensuring that individual stories get told, humanizing the victims of the attack. However, if you're looking for a deep dive into anything specific regarding the attack, this is not the book for you (although you probably guessed that due to the length of the audio).

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I had to give up

Revisado: 05-02-23

I wanted to love this book. I was hoping to learn something new that I didn't already know from documentaries and other books on the subject. But the introduction of the book gives you a solid warning: this was written by an engineer. As such, it is just as overly detailed and exhaustive and frankly tedious as you can imagine. There's also a weird tendency to "quote" people with ridiculously long bits of speech way too formal to have actually been uttered to another human being. I'm sure there's a good story here, but after 9 hours, I quit digging for it.

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Boring

Revisado: 01-15-23

I wanted to love this book. The concept is really cool. But instead of telling sharp, interesting stories, this just drones on and on. It’s extremely rare that I give up on a book before I finish it, but I only suffered to the halfway point before I gave up. Really interesting idea that desperately needed a much more brutal editor.

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Interesting read with caveats

Revisado: 03-21-22

The good:

This is a unique story that you won't find anywhere else. This is not only an individual from the first post-9/11 training class, but he was a little older than most folks tend to be when he was accepted. You get to hear not only about how the program operates, but how someone who wasn't fresh out of college or the military might struggle with some aspects.

This particular class also became close to each other in a way previous classes had not, and that camaraderie not only lead to great social bonding, but also plenty of diversity and creative thinking in how to handle situations. They were dedicated, passionate, and eager to do something to help their country, and you definitely feel that energy throughout.

The caveats:

Author thinks he is way more hilarious than he actually is and passages about his "great jokes" get real old by about halfway through the book.

Author also seems to have some blinders on about how Others are not like Us. For example, sends an article to his wife about the sexual assault of a teenage girl in Afghanistan, with the inference being that this kind of awful stuff doesn't happen in the United States. It does.

There's also some complaining about political correctness that was definitely more prevalent immediately after 9/11 but should still be questioned to this day. Those who lean right politically probably won't be bothered by this, but those who lean left might cringe occasionally.

Overall, definitely recommend reading this to hear a unique point of view on a process very few are permitted to attempt. Just not sure I'd read it again.

PS: I see there are several complaints about the narrator, but I think he did fine with the material provided. It's not his fault that the author was self-aggrandizing.

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Interesting but preachy

Revisado: 11-04-21

If you’re into true crime and you’ve been curious about the case, this book will provide plenty of detail you won’t generally find from other sources. It also ensures that Skylar remains a focus throughout as the victim. No one is portrayed as a saint or a devil, which is as it should be.

However: this narrator got on my nerves. She’s trying way too hard to put inflection in her voice and it comes off as fake in a few spots. Also puts waaaay to much emphasis on the term “lesbian lovers” as if it’s an inherently salacious thing. Totally unnecessary.

Not much consideration given to teenagers exploring sexuality or identifying as bisexual. There’s a token attempt to acknowledge these issues, but it’s way too little too late. One girl is repeatedly labeled as a lesbian despite having relationships with boys as well. It’s just lazy.

The end of this book also left a bad taste in my mouth. A list of “red flags” are provided, many of which cover normal teenage behavior, and the solution to one of them is snooping through your child’s phone. The red flags and advice feel like they come from a well meaning but outdated 90s child psychologist. Which is wild considering this crime took place in 2012.

This is kind of harsh criticism for a book I enjoyed 90% of the time. Again, the last few minutes left a bad taste in my mouth. But in all fairness, I tore through this in two days because the structure and wording is pretty good overall.

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Couldn't get past the tedious beginning

Revisado: 10-12-20

I wanted to enjoy this, but the first few hours is so excruciatingly tedious and boring that I gave up. Knowing the broad strokes of this story, it still sounds like something I'd like to read about. Just not by this person who can't get to the point or present historical context in an engaging way.

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Fluff and fraud

Revisado: 02-26-20

If you don't like listening to text messages being read to you, don't get this book. Ditto if you're annoyed by general extravagance. Anna's scams become entirely predictable after she pulls them the first few times, and you'll be hearing her do it dozens more.

I'm a fan of true crime and was really hoping for something a little more complex than this, but alas, sometimes all you need to do is keep it simple - because the simple strategies can still work. I want to be clear that I do empathize with the author; she went through hell trying to get this fixed, and she had the best of intentions in how she approached this friendship. But there were still times when I debated turning it off partway through. As someone who suffers from anxiety, it was sometimes difficult to get through passages where the author was describing her own; she's extremely eloquent in her descriptions to the point where I had my shoulders up around my neck for the last third of the book.

If you're a fan of The Devil Wears Prada, I think you'd love this. Same goes for Mean Girls, Real Housewives, that sort of thing. It wasn't super up my alley but I am glad I stuck with it until the end.

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Distracting elements, but still worthwhile

Revisado: 01-19-20

My biggest reason for dinging the performance is that chapters begin and end with music and it's terribly distracting. It almost felt like I was listening to the audio of television episodes rather than chapters, with the music indicating the opening and closing credits. Otherwise, the performance spans the narrator as well as agents involved in the case and family members of victims - all these voices are well worth hearing.

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Difficult to hear, but still worthwhile

Revisado: 01-16-20

Because of the nature of the recordings, it can be extremely difficult to parse what someone is saying at any given time. This becomes more apparent after each tower falls, when the debris cloud and sirens and other environmental factors make human speech even more incomprehensible.

However, this is still worthwhile listening. I've scoured through 9/11 documentaries and realtime footage, and I finally heard a few things I'd never heard before on this recording. You'll be impressed at the dispatcher's ability to get the information he needs, trying to free up the channel for the most urgent messages. There's a solid chunk of time after the second tower falls when you'll hear firefighters start trying to coordinate rescue and recovery efforts.

If, like me, you want to know everything you can about this day, I'd recommend this as part of your research. But if you're less interested in the minutiae of the day, or if listening to radio static bothers you, I'd skip this.

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Essential for true crime fans

Revisado: 01-15-20

Jensen's work and insights on cold cases and unsolved crimes is absolutely essential to those of us who enjoy true crime as a genre. He points out that a lot of us like true crime for the endings - the people brought to justice, the victims avenged. But a lot of time, that doesn't happen - and those stories are no less important.

One of my two favorite things about this book was hearing about Jensen's friendship with Michelle McNamara and the dedication he had to ensuring her words about the Golden State Killer would be published for the world to see. My other favorite thing is his guidance on how to be a responsible citizen sleuth yourself, or volunteer your time, or otherwise assist in those unsolved crimes in a way that truly helps the legal system without re-traumatizing victims and families.

Please read this, especially if you can manage to snag it in a sale. It's so very worth it.

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