Short
reviews of audio books
|
I
started listening to audio books regularly in 1997. After a few years, I’d
listened to so many that I thought I should start keeping track. So, in about
May of 2001, I started writing one-line reviews of each one as I went.
Starting from that date is pretty complete. But, before that its pretty
sketchy. I’m sure I left out a bunch; I forgot a lot of the authors, and some
of what I thought; and the order is uncertain. Not that anyone should care
what order I read them. Actually, I don’t see any reason why anybody else
would what to read this, but as long as I have it, I thought I’d post it just
in case. |
Audio
books appeal to me because I’m a poor reader, and I have to do a lot of
reading for my academic work. I don’t have much time to do any general
reading. One book will take me several months to read But I find with audio
books, if you listen wherever you go, and whenever you’re doing something
that leaves your mind free, you can read a lot of books in a short time. Gone
with the Wind took only 10 days. War and Peace took a month. The Bible
took four months; that was on and off listening. I love audio books. I feel
literate for the first time in my life. People make literary references, and
I get them. |
1 Sort by
|
2 Sort by |
3 Sort by |
Thoughts |
|
|
667 |
8/07 |
Star Trek: Spok vs. Q: The
Sequel |
Fannon, Cecelia |
There are some of us who
will listen to anything Star Trek puts out. This was OK. |
|
666 |
8/07 |
Star Trek: Spok vs. Q |
Fannon, Cecelia |
See above. |
|
665 |
8/07 |
Little Earthquakes |
Weiner, Jennifer |
I was almost ready to give
up on chicklit after listening to so many bad ones, but this one was actually
good. Maybe there was some too-easy wrap-ups at the end, but still it was
good. |
|
664 |
8/07 |
The Last Town on Earth |
Mullen, Thomas |
At times it readers like a
very literary novel with a lot to say, but it has some problems. It’s the story
of a town in Washington that cuts itself off from the world to avoid the
Swine Flu Epidemic in 1918. It has problems of the big unasked question. This
happens a lot in novels, when there is an obvious question that the reader
will ask herself, but that the book doesn’t explain for many chapters. Once
the flu hits town, why don’t they lift the quarantine. Many chapters go by
before they begin to examine that question. Then when they lift the
quarantine, does that help? Chapters go by before they begin to examine that
question. Finally the end is implausible and unnecessary. So, despite it’s
good points, it was a disappointment. |
|
663 |
8/07 |
The One Percent Doctrine |
Suskind, Ron |
Good. |
|
662 |
8/07 |
Finn |
Clinch, Jon |
I didn’t enjoy this as much
as I thought I would. |
|
661 |
8/07 |
Storm from the East |
Voirst, Milton |
A very basic history, and
not very sympathetic to Moslems. I don’t feel like I learned much that I
didn’t already know. |
|
660 |
8/07 |
Collapse |
Diamond, Jared |
It was worth a second
listening, but I only listened to the parts about the past. His modern-day
solutions aren’t radical enough for me. |
|
659 |
8/07 |
The Weather Makers |
Flannery, Tim |
Good. Really documents
what’s happening. |
|
658 |
8/07 |
Live at Carnegie Hall |
Sedaris, David |
Good, but too short. |
|
657 |
8/07 |
Match |
Phillips, Susan Elizabeth |
Hated it. |
|
656 |
7/07 |
Red Mutiny |
Bascomb, Neal |
Good story and well told. I
was sad that the leader decided to go back to Russia voluntarily after he’d
escaped. |
|
654 |
7/07 |
The Bounty: The True Story
of the Mutiny on the Bounty |
Alexander, Carline |
Takes an inherently
interesting story and makes it dull by giving you too many irrelevant
details. There are three or four very good stories in the Bounty story. The
mutiny itself, Bly’s boat ride, the fate of the mutineers on Pitcairn Island,
and how the mutiny affected the other survivors and the accused. Some
interesting information about each of those stories is in the book, but it
also answers questions you don’t want to ask. For example, the ship that
brought accused sailors back from Haiti, which ports did it stop in? Which
foreign dignitaries visited the ship? How many gun salutes did they receive?
Who were the character witnesses for the accused sailors? How much did the
government pay to dispose of the bodies of the executed? |
|
653 |
7/07 |
The Road |
McCarthy, Cormac |
It was a post apocalyptic story
of a father and sun. It tried to have a hopeful ending, but it didn’t give
any basis for hope. It made it look instead like the whole human race should
have died out already. |
|
652 |
7/07 |
Founding Brothers |
Ellis, Joseph |
This was very good. It started
where most books about the revolution end, covering the period of roughly
1789-1804. |
|
651 |
7/07 |
Puppetmaster: The Secret
Life of J. Edgar Hoover |
Hack, Richard |
I didn’t like this as much
as I thought I would. I don’t think the author was critical enough of Hoover.
He barely mentions Hoover’s lack of interest in organized crime, and doesn’t
explain why Hoover had that disinterest. He doesn’t explain why Truman and
Kennedy couldn’t fire Hoover even though they feuded with him. |
|
650 |
7/07 |
Uncensored |
Bukowski, Charles |
I liked this better than I
expected to. It’s just two hours of a couple people talking to Bukowski and
getting him to read his stuff. If you edited it down to just the readings, it
would be very short, but the whole conversation with false starts and
everything was kind of interesting. |
|
649 |
6/07 |
Things Fall Apart |
Achebe, Chinua |
It couldn’t hold my
attending and I gave up after about 3 CDs. |
|
648 |
6/07 |
The Age of Napoleon |
Horne, Alistair |
It wasn’t really about the
age of Napoleon. It was about Napoleon. It was OK. |
|
647 |
6/07 |
Coal Run |
O’Dell, Tawni |
Very good. |
|
646 |
6/07 |
The Constant Princess |
Gregory, Philippa |
A good story, but it skips
some of the most interesting parts of Catherine of Argon’s life. It ends with
the birth of her daughter and doesn’t do the part where Henry throws her over
for Anne Bolin. |
|
645 |
6/07 |
Magic Street |
Card, Orson Scott |
I listened to the whole
thing, and I was very disappointed by it. |
|
644 |
6/07 |
The History of Ancient
Rome, Part II |
Fagan, Garrett G. |
I only got the chance to
listen to one or two cassettes of this before I left New Orleans and had to
return it to the library. Didn’t get to parts II or IV at all. But what I
managed to get through was great. |
|
643 |
6/07 |
The History of Ancient
Egypt, Part IV |
Brier, Bob |
Excellent series.
Unfortunately, Part III was missing from the library collection. |
|
642 |
6/07 |
The History of Ancient
Egypt, Part II |
Brier, Bob |
This series is one of the
best sets of lectures I’ve listened. Very interesting, detailed,
well-delivered history of Egypt. |
|
641 |
5/07 |
Thomas Jefferson: American
Visionary |
Staloff, Darren |
Good review of Jefferson’s
life. I didn’t realized how bad he was on the slavery issue. He was nominally
for phasing it out, but actually supported it more than he opposed it. And of
course, he enslaved his own children. |
|
640 |
5/07 |
The Strange Orchid |
Wells, H.G. |
Very short, but the
stories were OK. |
|
639 |
5/07 |
Genesis: A living
Conversation |
Moyers, Bill |
I only listened to bits
and pieces of this mostly while I was going to sleep. |
|
638 |
5/07 |
General George Washington,
A Military Life |
Lengel, Edward G. |
I had to skip a lot of the
early CDs because they somehow got screwed up, but it was good. It was a
little too detailed about battlefield chronology for my tastes, but the overall
picture was good. Washington was very lucky. |
|
637 |
5/07 |
The History of Ancient
Rome, Part I |
Fagan, Garrett G. |
Very good. |
|
636 |
5/07 |
Is Anyone Really Normal?
Perspectives on Abnormal Psychology |
Westen, Drew |
Deceptive title. It’s just
an introduction to abnormal psychology. He never even poses the question of
what it means to be normal and whether anyone is normal. It also had a large
overlap with the Great Ideas of
Psychology, which I listened to recently. Turns me off on listening to
any more introductory psychology soon. |
|
635 |
5/07 |
The History of Ancient
Egypt, Part 1 |
Brier, Bob |
Very good, I would like to
listen to the rest of the set but some of them are missing from the Jefferson
Parish library. |
|
634 |
5/07 |
The Wisdom of Crowds |
Surowieck, James |
It had some good
information about the conditions under which a group can make a better
decision than any of its members, but he also digresses. I would have liked at
least a chapter on how we can use this knowledge to build better
decision-making institutions. |
|
633 |
5/07 |
Portrait of a Killer: Jack
the Ripper Case Closed |
Cornwell, Patricia |
The 10th
cassette was missing, and so I didn’t get to hear the ending. She’s got some
evidence, but she just assumes it’s convincing rather than presenting for
your consideration. |
|
632 |
5/07 |
The Great Principles of
Science, Part 5 |
Hazen, Robert M. |
It’s largely a review of every
science class you’ve ever taken, but I enjoyed it and learned stuff. |
|
631 |
5/07 |
The Great Principles of
Science, Part 4 |
Hazen, Robert M. |
See above. |
|
630 |
5/07 |
The Great Principles of
Science, Part 3 |
Hazen, Robert M. |
See above. |
|
629 |
5/07 |
The Great Principles of
Science, Part 2 |
Hazen, Robert M. |
See above. |
|
628 |
5/07 |
The Great Principles of
Science, Part 1 |
Hazen, Robert M. |
See above. |
|
627 |
5/07 |
The Mirror |
Millhiser, Marlys |
This was a good listen, but
it seemed like a missed opportunity to deal with a lot of issues. The reader
did the worst Cornish accent imaginable in a profession production. This
almost made me quit listening. |
|
626 |
5/07 |
Dao De Jing, “Making Life Significant:”
A Philosophical Translation |
Ames, Robert T. and Hall,
David L. (translators) |
It was difficult to get
through, but I got through it. I got through it, but it didn’t change my
life. It didn’t change my life, but it occupied several hours of my life. It
occupied several hours of my life, but not exclusively even during those
hours. |
|
625 |
5/07 |
The philosophy of
religion, Part 3 |
Hall, James |
Good. He goes much more
deeply into philosophy than I expected. He makes a good case that the existence
of God cannot be ruled in or out logically, but he doesn’t give reason to
believe it either. |
|
624 |
4/07 |
The philosophy of
religion, Part 2 |
Hall, James |
See above. |
|
623 |
4/07 |
The Art of Mending |
Berg, Elizabeth |
This was a very good book
about a woman who finds out that her sister was abused by her mother. |
|
622 |
4/07 |
Scandalmonger |
Safire, William |
This one started to lose
me before it started. The preface included biographical information about the
author saying he was a former Nixon speech writer. Why would I want his take
on scandal “mongering?” Then when it got dull, I gave up very quickly, maybe
too quickly, but I don’t want to go back to it, and you can’t make me. |
|
621 |
4/07 |
Invasion of the Body
Snatchers |
Finney, Jack |
Completely different than
the movie I saw. Good story, but I thought the ending was too easy. |
|
620 |
4/07 |
Reviving Ophelia |
Pipher, Mary |
It’s very good but it’s got
one big omission. It mentions how girls are pressured into sex by both
boyfriends and by peer pressure from other girls, but it never mentions that
girls might have their own awakening sexual desires. |
|
619 |
4/07 |
Nicholas Nickleby |
Dickens, Charles |
I couldn’t stay
interested, and quit after four cassettes. I felt guilty for quitting on
Dickens. Maybe I’ll try again |
|
618 |
4/07 |
Victorian Britain, Part
III |
Allitt, Patrick |
This was very good
history. I learned a lot. |
|
617 |
4/07 |
Victorian Britain, Part II |
Allitt, Patrick |
See above. |
|
616 |
4/07 |
Victorian Britain, Part I |
Allitt, Patrick |
See above. |
|
615 |
4/07 |
Stark Trek: Probe |
Bonanno, Margaret Wander |
Although I did finish it, it
didn’t capture my attention very well. |
|
614 |
4/07 |
Nine Minutes, Twenty
Seconds |
Pomerantz, Gary M. |
This was a true story of
the crash of a small plan. In the style of the Perfect Storm. It wasn’t as good as that, but it was good. |
|
613 |
4/07 |
Six Armies at Normandy |
Keegan, John |
I listened to about half
of it, but I quit. I felt I was getting some vignettes, but not a full
picture. |
|
612 |
4/07 |
Chalktown |
Haynes, Melinda |
I gave up on this one after
a cassette and a half. It hadn’t got going by then, and I was really annoyed
by the reader’s cartoonish southern accents. |
|
611 |
4/07 |
Philosophy of Religion,
Part I |
Hall, James |
I kept putting off starting
this one, but I really liked it. I’m looking forward to parts II and III. |
|
610 |
4/07 |
The Tailisman |
Scott, Sir Walter |
I gave up on this in less
than two cassettes. I could have given it more of a chance, but it didn’t
capture my interest. |
|
609 |
4/07 |
Blue Light |
Mosley, Walter |
I hated this book, but I
stuck with it until the end. Actually the ending was pretty good, but I found
it disjointed and hard to get into. |
|
608 |
3/07 |
Massachusetts, California,
Timbuktu |
Rosenfeld, Stephanie |
Very good. Really drew me
in. The ending leaves you hanging a bit. I know that’s where it’s supposed to
end but I still have that kid’s reaction—but then what happened. |
|
607 |
3/07 |
That Hideous Strength |
Lewis, C. S. |
This is the third
installment of a trilogy. I only liked the first one. |
|
606 |
3/07 |
The Tortilla Curtain |
Boyle, T. Coraghessan |
Great. I listened to this
during a 15-hour drive across northeastern Mexico. It is a story of a yuppie California
family and an illegal immigrant couple, and it shows you that very often it’s
not the people but the situation that makes things go wrong. But people blame
each other. I was a little disappointed by the happy ending. |
|
605 |
3/07 |
The Gunslinger |
King, Stephen |
I had a hard time paying
attention to it, but this could be because I mostly listened to it while I
was going to sleep. |
|
604 |
3/07 |
Stuart Little |
White, E. B. |
OK, but he opens up a lot of
stories and doesn’t carry them through. I chose this book because I’d heard
about the ending and it seemed really appealing to me. But it wasn’t the
ending that was the problem, it just opened up a bunch of plot lines and
didn’t resolve them. |
|
603 |
3/07 |
The History Man |
Bradbury, Malcolm |
OK. |
|
602 |
3/07 |
Erewhon |
Butler, Samuel |
Not as good as I’d hoped
for a utopian classic. I found these Erewhon people to be annoying and totalitarian.
I don’t think it was meant as a utopia or a dystopian but more as a
mirror-topia. I think he was trying to say that they were bad in the way we
were good and good in the way we were bad, but I’m not sure. |
|
601 |
3/07 |
Start Trek: Yesterday’s
Son |
Crispin, A. C. |
Not the best Star Trek
novel. Turns out it’s abridged. |
|
600 |
3/07 |
History of Science:
Antiquity to 1700, Part III |
Principe, Lawrence M. |
Good but a little western-centric.
He spends a lot of time on Medieval science in the Islamic word, but Ancient
Egypt and Ancient Mesopotamia get 1/3 of a lecture each, grouped in with the
pre-Socratic Greeks. The world outside Europe and the Middle East is not
mentioned. But he handled what he presented very well, and I liked the amount
of time he devoted to the Middle Ages. |
|
599 |
3/07 |
History of Science:
Antiquity to 1700, Part II |
Principe, Lawrence M. |
See Above |
|
598 |
3/07 |
History of Science: Antiquity
to 1700, Part I |
Principe, Lawrence M. |
See above |
|
597 |
3/07 |
As Nature Man Him |
Colapinto, John |
Great. The true story of a
boy who was raised as a biological female. A botched circumcision destroyed his
penis, and they believed that they could just turn him into a girl and use
conditioning to make him believe he was a girl. At the age of 14 he refused
to live as a girl anymore. The story is compelling and well told. |
|
596 |
3/07 |
The Runes of the Earth |
Donadson, Stephen R. |
I gave up on this one. Bad
fantasy, with a character named Lord Foul the Despiser. Think he’s the
villain? I listened to something like 6 of 20 cassettes. |
|
595 |
3/07 |
Ethics and Public Policy |
Beiser, Edward |
Good, but introductory. |
|
594 |
3/07 |
Prelandra |
Lewis, C. S. |
Not as good as the first
story in this trilogy. A guy goes to Venus and meets the Venusian Adam and
Eve. They manage to avoid the fall. |
|
593 |
3/07 |
From the Dust Returned |
Bradbury, Ray |
Couldn’t hold my
attention. I gave up after one cassette. |
|
592 |
3/07 |
Star Trek: Faces of Fire |
Friedman, Michael Jan |
I think I listened to this
before in the pre-2001 period. Not the best Star Trek Novel. |
|
591 |
3/07 |
Poe’s Heart and the
Mountain Climber |
Restack, Richard |
It’s a nonfiction book
about anxiety, but I didn’t find it very valuable. |
|
590 |
3/07 |
Crazy Horse |
McMurtry, Larry |
Very good, but very sad. |
|
589 |
3/07 |
A Song for the Asking |
Gannon, Steve |
An eventful story, but I
didn’t get much of a point to it. The father is a somewhat abusive. Four
children and in one summer one gets raped, one shoots a man, one dies in a
climbing accident, and one wins a prestigious piano competition. |
|
588 |
3/07 |
The Natural History of
Love |
Ackerman, Diane |
OK |
|
587 |
2/07 |
The Innocents Abroad |
Twain, Mark |
It was good, but I didn’t
feel like listening to the whole thing. I got maybe halfway through |
|
586 |
2/07 |
The Great Ideas of Psychology
IV |
Robinson, Daniel N. |
The guy is a great
lecturer notwithstanding his bad habit of often saying, “do you see?” It’s a
very interesting history, but it leaves out some of the things lay people are
most interested in. Such as what is schizophrenia, what is psychosis, etc. |
|
585 |
2/07 |
The Great Ideas of
Psychology III |
Robinson, Daniel N. |
See
above. |
|
584 |
2/07 |
The Great Ideas of
Psychology II |
Robinson, Daniel N. |
See
above. |
|
583 |
2/07 |
The Great Ideas of
Psychology I |
Robinson, Daniel N. |
See
above. |
|
582 |
2/07 |
The Ethics of Aristotle |
Koterski, Joseph (The
Teaching Company) |
It’s a series of lectures
on Aristotle’s Ethics. It’s good, but it’s not substitute for actually listening
to Ethics, which I haven’t done yet. |
|
581 |
2/07 |
The Battle of New Orleans |
Remini, Robert V. |
This is the first audio
book I’ve listened to almost exclusively while drifting off to sleep at night,
and so I’m sure it’s not nearly as disjointed as it seems, but I can say a
few things about it. It’s rather nationalistic. Makes a hero out of Jackson
and says thins like even the slaves united in celebration of the U.S. victory
(when a loss might have freed them). |
|
580 |
2/07 |
Fox Evil |
Walters, Minette |
This just sucked. |
|
579 |
1/07 |
The Family |
Kelly, Kitty |
It brings out the dirt of
the Bush family, which is a topic of interest to me. But I’m not sure how much
I can trust it. Some of it was substantive, but some of it was who was
sleeping with whom. |
|
578 |
1/07 |
Mr. Timothy |
Bayard, Louis |
Boy did this book suck. If
a book sucks right from the start you can just put it down, but if it doesn’t
really suck until the end, you waste a lot of time on it. That’s what
happened with this one. It asks the somewhat interesting question of what
happens to Dickens’s Tiny Tim when he grows up after having uncle Scrooge
pour so much money into doctors and education for him. How will he seek to
fulfill that promise? Well, turns out he’ll have a thrilling adventure
breaking up a child prostitution ring in London. |
|
577 |
1/07 |
Slaughterhouse Five |
Vonnegut, Kurt |
It’s excellent. He works in
a lot of ideas. I like the stuff about war and the American view of wealth.
I’m not as interested in his fatalistic ideas. |
|
576 |
1/07 |
The Presence |
Saul, John |
I gave up on this one real
quick. Maybe I didn’t give it a fair shot. |
|
575 |
1/07 |
The Hours |
Cunningham, Michael |
Confusingly told. I should
maybe listen again. But I liked what I got. |
|
574 |
1/07 |
Typee |
Melville, Herman |
It’s written in a 19th
Century Style with a lot of description and not much dialogue or action. But It
was still very good. For a mid-18th-Century Westerner, he’s got a
lot of sympathy for the Polynesians. |
|
573 |
1/07 |
Finding God in the
Questions (abridged) |
Johnson, Dr. Timothy |
I’m not that interested in
theses kinds of religious questions, but I might have found it more
compelling if it wasn’t abridged. |
|
572 |
1/07 |
Shock |
Cook, Robin |
Hated it. Rather surprised
I finished it. |
|
571 |
12/06 |
Founding Mothers |
Roberts, Cokie |
It wasn’t really so much
about founding mothers, but about the women who were near the founding
fathers. Some had impact; others were included because they were involved
with a scandal that also involved a founding father. Large parts of the book
focused on the men. It would probably be better if it didn’t try also to
recount the story of the revolution. |
|
570 |
12/06 |
Against All Enemies |
Clarke, Richard A. |
Very good. The Bush
administration is worse than I thought. |
|
569 |
12/06 |
Ragged Dick |
Alger, Horatio |
There are so many
available opportunities that if you don’t have a place to sleep and enough
food to eat, it’s your fault, even if you’re a child. |
|
568 |
12/06 |
The Borgias |
Johnson, Marion |
I couldn’t finish this
before I had to take it back to the library. |
|
567 |
12/06 |
Theodore Roosevelt: A
Strenuous Life |
Dalton, Kathleen |
It was a good narrative,
but it’s clear that the author is a fan. She mentions his racism and some bad
things, but--I’m not sure--I think she played down his war mongering. |
|
566 |
12/06 |
The Know-It-All |
Jacobs, A.J. |
This is the story of a guy
who decides to read the entire encyclopedia and the year of his life while
he’s trying to do it. It’s a book with a lot of fun facts, but interesting
some of the novel facts he learns in the encyclopedia are some of the same
novel facts you’ve already heard like the coincidental deaths of Thomas
Jefferson and John Adams. The author becomes a little bit too competitive
about is quest for knowledge. He even competes against school children. |
|
565 |
12/06 |
Voltaire and the Triumph
of the Enlightenment |
Kors, Alan |
He was an amazing guy, but
according to this book he never said his most famous quote, “I disagree with
what you say but I will defend to the death your right to say it.” That was
actually made up 100 years later by a biographer. |
|
564 |
12/06 |
Eva’s Cousin |
Sibylle, Knauss |
A good listen |
|
563 |
11/06 |
A History of the Middle
East |
Mansfield, Peter |
It was like medicine. You
finish it because it’s good for you, not because it’s enjoyable going down. Most
histories that make it as far as the audio book don’t have this problem. |
|
562 |
11/06 |
The Stranger Beside Me |
Rule, Ann |
This is a very interesting
true story involving the coincidence of crime report who accepted a book
contract to write about a serial killer in Washington State not knowing that
it had anything to do with her friend, Ted Bundy. |
|
561 |
11/06 |
Losing America |
Byrd, Senator Robert C. |
He’s got a lot of hard facts,
and he tells the truth about Bush’s America, but he can get bogged down on
tedious points. |
|
560 |
11/06 |
The Man Who Fell to Earth |
Tevis, Walter S. |
Good story. |
|
559 |
11/06 |
The Plot Against America |
Roth, Philip |
It really kept me listening,
but I thought the ending was too easy. |
|
558 |
11/06 |
The Unknown Soldier |
Seymour, Gerald |
Some good parts, but this
was a thriller that bored me. |
|
557 |
11/06 |
Ridley, John |
The Drift |
The setting among homeless
railroad hobos was great, but the plot was just a boring thriller. |
|
556 |
11/06 |
Collapse |
Diamond, Jared |
Very good connection
between the collapse of past civilization and the current environmental
problems. His solutions didn’t interest me as much |
|
555 |
11/06 |
The Ha Ha |
King, Dave |
Good listen, but easily
forgettable. |
|
554 |
10/06 |
Plan of Attack |
Woodward, Bob |
Some insights into the
Bush administration, but I didn’t think it was critical enough. |
|
553 |
10/06 |
Small Town |
Block, Lawrence |
It has some good parts but
it becomes a very predictable thriller. |
|
552 |
10/06 |
Confessions of a Dangerous
Mind |
Barris, Chuck |
Good. |
|
551 |
10/06 |
The Hobbit |
Tolkien, J. R. R. |
Not as good as I
remembered it, and harder to concentrate on than I expected, but still work
listening. |
|
550 |
10/06 |
The Mysterious flame of
Queen Loana |
Eco, Umberto |
Worth listening. |
|
549 |
10/06 |
Small Wonder |
Kingsolver, Barbara |
A book of essays, not as
good as her earlier one. A lot of it I agree with, but some of it is banality
that she seems to think she’s saying in a new way. She has the audacity to
say in the same essay both “Strangely, I like fiction for the truth it
contains,” and “I won’t read an author who nothing new to tell me.”
(paraphrased, I can’t remember the exact quotes.) |
|
548 |
10/06 |
Leonardo’s Mountain of
Claims and the Diet of Worms |
Gould, Steven Jay |
Good, but not that
memorable. It wasn’t until I got to the last cassette that I realized I’d
listened to this before. But it had to have been before 2001 when I started
keeping track. |
|
|
9-10/06 |
(several books missing) |
|
|
|
547 |
9/06 |
The Island at the Center
of the World: The Epic Story of Dutch Manhattan |
Shorto, Russell |
A very good history of a
period I knew little about. |
|
546 |
9/06 |
From a Buick 8 |
King, Steven |
I liked it. There really wasn’t
that much too it, but when it was over, I missed the characters. He should
have called it “curiosity.” |
|
545 |
9/06 |
Modern Hebrew |
Pimsleur Language Program |
These programs are great. I
got through less than half of it in five weeks, but I learned a lot. |
|
544 |
9/06 |
Bushwhacked |
Ivins, Molly and Lou
Dubose |
Good info, and funny, but
sometimes her attempts to make tragic situations funny are almost travesties.
|
|
543 |
9/06 |
Middlesex |
Eugenides, Jeffrey |
Couldn’t stick with it. |
|
542 |
9/06 |
The Nature of Alexander |
Renault, Mary |
Interesting, but a little
too much on his side. A lot of generous interpretations of the available
information. |
|
541 |
9/06 |
I know this much is true |
Lamb, Wally |
A very good listen, but I
was disappointed by the ending. He gets back together with his wife, returns
to his old profession, adopts his dead ex-girlfriend’s baby, discovers he’s
an Indian and becomes a casino millionaire. |
|
540 |
9/06 |
A Slow Burning |
Pottinger, Stanley |
He’s trying to discuss
some interesting issues, but the thriller premise of this book just got
dumber and dumber, so I finally gave up after about 6 cassettes. |
|
539 |
9/06 |
The Personal Memoirs of
U.S. Grant, Part Three |
Grant, U.S. |
Much of it was boring when
he gets bogged down in the dullest parts of inherently interesting
situations, but some tidbits are very interesting. He talks about the
political situation more insightfully than I would have expected. |
|
538 |
8/06 |
The Personal Memoirs of
U.S. Grant, Part II |
Grant, U.S. |
See review of Part Three. |
|
537 |
8/06 |
The Year of Jubilo |
Bahr, Howard |
Uninteresting, I gave up
about half way. |
|
536 |
8/06 |
No-time French |
Audio-Forum, Jeffrey
Norton Publishers |
This was awful, and I gave
up almost immediately. |
|
535 |
8/06 |
Nazism and War |
Bessel, Richard |
It was more of a history of
Nazism than an examination of its ideology as it claimed to be, but it had
some interesting takes on its ideology, such as making the case that war was
central to the Nazi plan. |
|
534 |
8/06 |
Last Citadel |
Robbins, David L. |
Can one person write three
interesting novels about the eastern front in World War II? Apparently not, I
gave up halfway through. |
|
533 |
8/06 |
They Marched Into Sunlight |
Maraniss, David |
A nonfiction account of a Vietnam
war protest and a battle in Vietnam during the same three-days period in
1967. It was good, but it went into too much personal detail that was too far
removed from what the book was really about. The best thing about it was its
description of how poor the “search and destroy” strategy was. Basically,
they went out and walked around until they got ambushed. It left the
Vietnamese able to choose all of their battles. |
|
532 |
8/06 |
Arrowsmith |
Lewis, Sinclair |
It began very slowly, and stayed
slow for a long time, but eventually I loved this book. |
|
531 |
8/06 |
A Treasury of Deception |
Farquhar, Michael |
I gave up almost
immediately. |
|
530 |
8/06 |
Whose Bible Is It? |
Pelikan, Jaroslav |
Focuses on the less interesting
bible controversies. |
|
529 |
8/06 |
The Secret Diary of Adrian
Mole, Age 13 3/4 |
Townsend, Sue |
Didn’t like it. But it
explains the naivety of the character Adrian Mole from the Weapons of Mass
destruction comes from. He’s just as naïve there as he is in this book in
which he’s only 13. She never lets the character grow up. |
|
528 |
8/06 |
Rubicon |
Holland, Tom |
It was more about the
day-to-day events that brought an end to the Roman Republic. It didn’t instill
me with a feeling that I should care whether Rome was a republic or an
empire. |
|
527 |
7/06 |
Before the Fallout: From
Marie Curie to Hiroshima |
Preston, Diana |
Interesting, but with a
lot of dull bits. |
|
526 |
7/06 |
The Anatomy Lesson |
Roth, Philip |
I didn’t get it. Maybe I
didn’t pay enough attention, but he was trying to tell me something, and I
didn’t get it. |
|
525 |
7/06 |
The Society of Others |
Nicholson, William |
Not what I expected. It’s
a Surrealistic story of a western man in a totalitarian eastern European
state. I would guess that he’s been influenced by Kazuo Ishiguro. |
|
524 |
7/06 |
A Big Boy Did it and Ran
Away |
Brookmyre, Christopher |
Some of his observations are
interesting, but it turns out to be an extremely formulaic action story. |
|
523 |
7/06 |
Persian Fire: The First
World Empire and the Battle for the West |
Holland, Tom |
This is the most Euro-centric
history of the Persian Empire imaginable. 90% of it is about Greece. |
|
522 |
7/06 |
Something Rotten |
Fforde, Jasper |
I couldn’t get into it and
gave up after few cassettes. I just thought it was an uninteresting premise. |
|
521 |
7/06 |
Narrow Dog to Carcassonne |
Darlington, Terry |
I skipped a few cassettes,
but got through it. His observations can be interesting and funny, but he
seems to that succeeding at a foolhardy venture means that the venture wasn’t
foolhardy. |
|
520 |
7/06 |
Tolkien, A Biography |
White, Michael |
Interesting. I was
surprised to hear that he had a falling out with C. S. Lewis. |
|
519 |
7/06 |
The Night of the Triffids |
Clark, Simon |
I enjoyed listening too
it, but it didn’t have much of a message. |
|
518 |
6/06 |
Carry on, Jeeves |
Woodhouse, P. G. |
I couldn’t get through it. |
|
517 |
6/06 |
I’m Sorry, I’ll read that
again |
Brooke-Taylor et al |
One out of the two tapes
malfunctioned, but what I heard was funny. |
|
516 |
6/06 |
General Ike: A Personal Reminiscence |
Eisenhower, John S. |
Strangely organized. A
book about Eisenhower in which every chapter is a mini-biography of someone
that Ike interacted with. But I enjoyed it. |
|
515 |
6/06 |
Adrian Mole & the
Weapons of Mass Destruction |
Townsend, Sue |
It was OK. The main
character and some of the others are surrealistically naïve. She uses that to
make some points, but most of it seems just to be easy. |
|
514 |
6/06 |
Califia’s Daughters |
Richards, Leigh |
I thought it was a missed opportunity.
It created the post-apocalyptic setting, but didn’t make much of a point. |
|
513 |
6/06 |
The Other Side of the
Story |
Keyes, Marian |
It kept me interested, but
I felt like it petered out at the end. |
|
512 |
6/06 |
Those Who Save Us |
Blum, Jenna |
This was very good. |
|
511 |
6/06 |
Freakonomics |
Levitt, Steven D with
Stephen J. Dubner |
Ayelet and I listened to
this over breakfast at various times throughout the last two months. Sometimes
it was spurious, but it was mostly good and worth listening to. |
|
510 |
6/06 |
My Friend Leonard |
Frey, James |
A very unusual story.
Nonfiction about a man’s friendship with a mobster. I liked it a lot. |
|
509 |
6/06 |
At Paradise Gate |
Smiley, Jane |
Didn’t like it. Gave up
after two cassettes |
|
508 |
6/06 |
Of Human Bondage |
Maugham, W. Somerset |
A very captivating story,
but I was a little disappointed by the end. So that’s all it’s about. |
|
507 |
5/06 |
The Confessions of Max Tivoli |
Greer, Andrew Sean |
I can suspend my disbelief
about scientific matters, but not about human motivation. This is the story
of a person who looks 70-years-old when he is born and gradually looks
younger throughout his life. I can accept that as make belief, but the entire
plot is driven by this guys unexplained desire to keep his condition a secret
and be what people think he is. There’s no reason for him to do it, and it
causes most of the problems in his life. Yet, I enjoyed the world he created. |
|
506 |
5/06 |
Out of the Silent Planet |
Lewis, C. S. |
Very good. It’s an
anti-colonial novel. It’s very funny when the main character tries to
translate the colonialist’s justification into language the natives
understand and it comes out completely hollow. He says they should rule
because they are able to make big huts. |
|
505 |
5/06 |
A Short History of
Byzantium |
Norwich, John Julius |
This was a second
listening, and I can’t say that I got much more out of it the second time. |
|
504 |
5/06 |
Hester’s Story |
Geras, Adele |
It is interesting enough,
but it didn’t do much for me. |
|
503 |
5/06 |
(un)arranged marriage |
Rai, Bali |
Good. |
|
502 |
5/06 |
The Reading Group |
Noble, Elizabeth |
It wasn’t meaningful to
me. |
|
501 |
5/06 |
Badger Boy |
Masters, Anthony |
Didn’t like it. |
|
500 |
5/06 |
Fear and Loathing in Las
Vegas |
Thompson, Hunter S. |
Interesting and fun. |
|
499 |
5/06 |
Another Part of the Wood |
Bainbridge, Beryl |
Didn’t hold my attention and
I gave up before the end of the second cassette. |
|
498 |
5/06 |
Big Fish |
Wallace, Daniel |
Very good. |
|
497 |
5/06 |
The Portable Door |
Holt, Tom |
Like Harry Potter only
with adult characters who say fuck. |
|
496 |
4/06 |
Baudolino |
Umberto, Eco |
Good. |
|
495 |
4/06 |
The Rule of Four |
Caldwell, Ian and Dustin
Thomason |
It was entertaining, but
not well told. Students get killed and then the focus goes back to normal
college life. |
|
494 |
4/06 |
Truth and Fiction in the Da
Vinci Code |
Ehrman, Bart D. |
Interesting. |
|
493 |
4/06 |
Elizabeth I CEO: Strategic
lessons from the Leader Who Built an Empire |
Axelrod, Alan |
Not very memorable. |
|
492 |
4/06 |
Scott of the Antarctic: A
Concise Biography |
De-la-Noy, Michael |
Two cassettes, the first
cassettes was dull but the second was interesting. |
|
491 |
4/06 |
The Six Wives of Henry
VIII |
Fraser, Antonia |
It was probably better
written than other stuff I’ve listened too, but I’m getting really bored with
books about the private lives of the Tudors. |
|
490 |
3/06 |
Francie |
Robinson, Joe |
I was afraid it was be
similar to Rory and Ita, but it was very good. Well told, interesting. This nonfiction
book reads more like a novel than just about any I’ve read. I expect maybe
it’s a little embellished. I got a little annoyed at this woman’s extreme
naivety. She lets a lot of people walk all over her, but I expect that part
was true. |
|
489 |
3/06 |
Rory & Ita |
Doyle, Roddy |
It was boring and I gave
up after 3 cassettes. |
|
488 |
3/06 |
Tigers in the Snow |
Matthiessen, Peter |
Worth a listen. It really
shows what bad shape the environment is. We hardly have an territory remote enough
that tigers have a good chance of survival. Butut it had too many small facts
about widely dispersed tiger populations. |
|
487 |
3/06 |
The Pope in Winter |
Cornwell, John |
It was a little too much of
an internal Catholic critique for my interests, but it was well written and
interesting. I didn’t realize how much of the centralization of the Catholic
Church under the infallible authority of the Pope happened in recent times.
The big dates he gives are 1870, 1917, and under JP II. If people in the Dark
Ages weren’t dumb enough to believe some guy could be infallible, how can
modern people believe it? |
|
486 |
3/06 |
The Hummingbird Saint |
MacDonald, Hector |
I wouldn’t say it was a masterpiece,
but it hit a lot of big issues and made me think about them. Also, I like
stories where the villain is sincerely convinced he’s doing the right thing. |
|
485 |
3/06 |
The Wreck at Sharpouse
Point |
Seal, Jeremy |
It was boring and I gave
up after a few cassettes. |
|
484 |
3/06 |
How Will I know? |
O’Flanagan, Sheila |
OK. Listenable. But it hit
a lot of big issues without making me think deeply about any of them. |
|
483 |
3/06 |
The Simarillion: Of Elves
and Men in Middle Earth |
Tolkien, J. R. R. |
Too dry. I gave up
quickly. |
|
482 |
3/06 |
Mourning Ruby |
Dunmore, Helen |
Hard to follow |
|
481 |
3/06 |
The Siege |
Dunmore, Helen |
Good |
|
480 |
3/06 |
Open Secrets |
Munro, Alice |
Boring. I gave up after
three cassettes. |
|
479 |
3/06 |
My Sister’s Keeper |
Picoult, Jodi |
Not perfect, but very
good. It was captivating, and it had something to say. I listen through a lot
of bad books looking for a good one like this. |
|
478 |
2/06 |
A Journey to the Center of
the Earth |
Verne, Jules |
Why is this a classic? Not
well done at all. For example, the leader is a reckless pompous jerk, but the
narrator praises him without any hint of irony. |
|
477 |
2/06 |
Don’t Let’s Go to the Dogs
Tonight |
Fuller, Alexandra |
Good, but very much from
the white person’s point of view. |
|
476 |
2/06 |
The Six Shooter Rides
Again (2) |
Charles Michaelson, Inc. |
I chose not to finish the
first cassette. |
|
475 |
2/06 |
Extremely Loud and
Incredibly Close |
Foer, Jonathan Safran |
Very good. |
|
474 |
2/06 |
Bringing down the House |
Mezrich, Ben |
Very good. |
|
473 |
2/06 |
A Lesser Evil |
Pearce, Lesley |
After a cassette and a
half nothing had happened that was not a cliché, so I gave up. |
|
472 |
2/06 |
The Iron Man |
Watson, John |
Implausible at every turn. |
|
471 |
2/06 |
A Plague of Angels |
Finny, Patricia writing as
P. F. Chisholm |
Couldn’t get into it and
gave up. |
|
470 |
2/06 |
The Food of Love |
Capella, Anthony |
Cyrano as a modern chef. I
couldn’t be bothered so I gave up. |
|
469 |
2/06 |
The Witch of Exmoor |
Drabble, Margaret |
People won’t give up their
privileges for anything we can put behind Rawls’s vale of ignorance, but
that’s hardly his original position. |
|
468 |
2/06 |
The Beautiful and the
Damned |
Fitzgerald, Scott F. |
Great. Like a review I
read about Crime and Punishment, I was glad to finish. It was like having an
illness. But he completely made me sympathize with these vacuous people as
their lives deteriorate, and then brought it all toward an interesting
assessment of class at the end. |
|
467 |
1/06 |
Oh, Play that Thing |
Doyle, Roddy |
Sequel to “A Star Called
Henry.” Didn’t like it as much. He’s amoral about some things and very moral about
others, and I don’t know why, or what exactly it’s supposed to mean. He does
a good job of making you like this completely selfish man. |
|
466 |
1/06 |
The Africa House |
Lamb, Christina |
Makes the story of a not terribly
significant man interesting. |
|
465 |
1/06 |
The Da Vinci Code |
Brown, Dan |
Finally, I got to listen
to the book that people have been talking about so much. And it’s just an
action novel with a bunch of annoying narrow escapes. A very small amount of
subversive theology. |
|
464 |
1/06 |
One Flew Over the Cukoo’s
Nest |
Kesey, Ken |
Great. Takes you in right
from the start. |
|
463 |
1/06 |
A Pacifist’s War |
Partridge, Frances |
I skipped a few cassettes,
but it was good. She mentioned the holocaust, but I didn’t hear her address
whether it could provide a justification for using violence against the
Nazis. |
|
462 |
1/06 |
The Wild Blue |
Ambrose, Stephen E. |
Very good. |
|
461 |
1/06 |
The Closed Circle |
Coe, Jonathon |
Good. He covers a lot of
issues well, but he leaves some things dangling. |
|
460 |
1/06 |
Hard Times |
Dickens Charles |
Hard to follow |
|
459 |
12/05 |
The Gates of Rome |
Iggulden, Conn |
Worth a listen. I’m not
sure if it was intended for me to feel the pointlessness of what people
claimed they were fighting for, but I did. |
|
458 |
12/05 |
The Idea of Perfection |
Grenville, Kate |
I couldn’t get into it,
and gave up about halfway through. |
|
457 |
12/05 |
Beyond Belief |
Roy Johansen |
Mostly just an action
crime novel, but I liked his take on paranormal debunking. He sets it up like
the debunker has finally met somebody real and then he debunks that one too. |
|
456 |
12/05 |
Notes From a Big Country |
Bryson, Bill |
Good. |
|
454 |
12/05 |
Girl With a Pearl Earring |
Chevalier, Tracy |
Very good. |
|
453 |
12/05 |
A Treasury of Royal
Scandals |
Farquhar, Michael |
Superficial but
interesting. |
|
452 |
12/05 |
Being a Green Mother |
Anthony, Piers |
Not worth a read. |
|
451 |
12/05 |
Dead Air |
Banks, Iain |
Disappointing. |
|
450 |
12/05 |
Births Without Wings |
De Bernieres, Louis |
Very good. |
|
449 |
11/05 |
The Autograph Man |
Smith, Zadie |
It was interesting, but
some parts of it were hard to get. I could use a second listening. |
|
448 |
11/05 |
Mrs. Dalloway |
Woolf, Virginia |
I gave up halfway through.
Maybe it’s hard to listen to listen to stream of consciousness on audio. |
|
447 |
11/05 |
Dark Matter |
Iles, Greg |
Good sci-fi. It was a
little heavy in the action, but the theology-philosophy bits were very well
done even if I disagreed with them. |
|
446 |
11/05 |
The Fourth Hand |
Irving, John |
Started out good, interesting,
and told with an unusual voice after halfway through it developed the stock
chic-lit ending where the main character loses their job gets married has a
kid and lives happily ever after. But the main character was a man, so he
gets a new job. Also very strange how this woman who selfishly used him turns
out to be the perfect woman. |
|
445 |
11/05 |
Code to Zero |
Follet, Ken |
It was really just an
action novel about cold war spies, but they got in some politics about why an
American might want to work against the U.S. |
|
445 |
11/05 |
The Smiling Country |
Kelton, Elmer |
Fluffy. |
|
444 |
11/05 |
Krakatoa |
Winchester, Simon |
Good. |
|
443 |
11/05 |
Roses from the Earth:
Biography of Anne Frank |
Lee, Carol Ann |
Very good. Very sad. |
|
442 |
11/05 |
Losing Nelson |
Unsworth, Barry |
I learned more about
Nelson from this book than from the biography of Nelson I listened to. But I
missed some of the author’s point. |
|
441 |
10/05 |
Astonishing Splashes of
Colour |
Morral, Claire |
Not really that much color
in it. |
|
440 |
10/05 |
The Lighthouse |
Woolf, Virginia |
I couldn’t get into it,
and gave up after two cassettes. |
|
439 |
10/05 |
Game Over |
Parks, Adele |
Another feminist novel showing
us that women only work hard at their careers as a substitute for what they
really want the love of a good man and the chance to have his children. |
|
438 |
10/05 |
The Master |
Colm Toibin |
I think you need to have read
more Henry James to really enjoy this. |
|
437 |
10/05 |
Nelson: A Personal History |
Hibbert, Christopher |
Maybe a little too
personal. I really felt for his x-wife. |
|
436 |
10/05 |
Pompeii |
Harris, Robert |
When you’re dealing with Pompeii
you don’t need to exaggerate to make it interesting. For example, you don’t
need to have one guy on top of the volcano when it starts to erupt who makes
it to a safe town, comes back with a navy, goes back and gets the girl, and
makes it back out when most of the navy doesn’t. |
|
435 |
10/05 |
The Kid |
Lewis, Kevin |
It’s hard to avoid
comparing it to The Child Called ‘It’,
but it’s good on its own. |
|
434 |
10/05 |
Interview with the Vampire |
Rice, Anne |
I liked it a lot and will look
for more of her books. |
|
433 |
10/05 |
Jaguars Ripped my Flesh |
Cahil, Tim |
Very good. |
|
432 |
10/05 |
The Crazed |
Jin, He |
Tale of life under corrupt
totalitarianism. The narrator character keeps asking the questions most authors
leave implied, “why did he tell me this?” “What did he mean by that?” I think
this is meant to show you the naïve character of the narrator, but it amounts
to a lot of extra words that get annoying. |
|
431 |
10/05 |
Big Stone Gap |
Trigiani, Andriana |
Contemporary feminist
novel: Successful 36-year-old career woman finds happiness when she gets to
know her biological father, gets rid of her business and her house, marries a
good man, moves into his house, and has a baby. |
|
430 |
9/05 |
The God of Small Things |
Roy, Arundhati |
It had a lot of disjointed
stories and pieces of family history. It was hard to follow how it fit
together. |
|
429 |
9/05 |
The Witches of Chiswick |
Rankin, Robert |
OK |
|
428 |
9/05 |
Kowloon Tong |
Theroux, Paul |
I can’t say it was bad; I
just didn’t enjoy it. |
|
427 |
9/05 |
Father’s Race: A book
about paternity |
Jennings, Charles |
He’s willing to tell
stories that don’t make him look very good. But he puts a lot of the blame
for his frustration with fatherhood on his children. |
|
426 |
9/05 |
Dissolution |
Sanson, C. J. |
I thought it was going to
be a book about Henrey VIII’s England, but it was just a crime novel with a
16th Century background. Gave up less than half way through. |
|
425 |
9/05 |
The Prague Orgy |
Roth, Philip |
Good, but short. |
|
424 |
9/05 |
The Algebraist |
Banks, Ian M. |
It was hard to follow, and
when the protagonist figured out the mysterious formula the answer was so simple
that its makers need never have made a formula for outsiders to figure out. |
|
423 |
9/05 |
Affinity |
Walters, Sarah |
Gave up after a few
cassettes. |
|
422 |
9/05 |
Planet of the Blind |
Kuusisto, Stephen |
Similar to Pelzer in that it’s
about growing up and overcoming adversity, but surpasses Pelzer only in his
ability to laugh at himself. Not as good at putting you in his shoes.
Although the book is full length it reads like an abridgement. |
|
421 |
9/05 |
A Man Named Dave |
Pelzer, Dave |
He’s very good at making
his autobiography read like a novel. He puts you in his shoes. Ties up some
of the loose ends from the earlier books, but opens up one or two more. |
|
420 |
9/05 |
The Meaning of Everything |
Winchester, Simon |
I learned stuff. |
|
419 |
9/05 |
A London Girl of the 1880s |
Hughes, Molly |
Although it was a glimpse
at how people lived in a different age, it still wasn’t that compelling to
listen to. |
|
418 |
9/05 |
The Map that Changed the
World |
Winchester, Simon |
It’s really a biography of
the Map’s maker, Williams Smith, and only mentions in passing how the map
changed the world. It would have been more interesting if it had more of
that. |
|
417 |
8/05 |
The Adventure of English |
Bragg, Melvin |
Very good. |
|
416 |
8/05 |
A Home at the End of the
World |
Cunningham, Michael |
The book really drew me
in, but it had the worst writing on the back of the book, I’ve ever read. It
makes it sound like the 7/8ths of the book are merely the premise, so it
gives away almost everything that’s going to happen making you think that’s
the preface to what’s really going to happen, and then nothing else happens. |
|
415 |
8/05 |
In the Wake of the Plague |
Cantor, Norman F. |
This was my second listening.
Still learned a lot, but I wished he’d focused more on the direct results of
the plague. |
|
414 |
8/05 |
Zorba the Greek |
Kazantzakis, Nikos |
Although the book has
something to say, it’s thin on plot and it’s mostly Zorba spouting platitudes
about how to live your life. Anybody who thinks he knows everything is
annoying, but annoyingly, the narrator-character never gets annoyed with
Zorba. |
|
413 |
8/05 |
The Lost Boy |
Pelzer, David |
These two books tell a
very compelling story, you don’t want to stop listening. And it’s very
powerful. But he’s willing to leave unanswered questions. His brother becomes
the object of his mother’s abuse, after his rescue, and he promises his
brother he’ll help him get out. But his brother is never mentioned again. He
says that his was acknowledged to be one of the worst child abuse cases in
California history, but at the end of the book, his mother is still free and
raising three other children. Was there ever an attempt to prosecute her? Why
not? He doesn’t say. That’s really annoying. |
|
412 |
8/05 |
A Child Called ‘It’ |
Pelzer, David |
See above |
|
411 |
8/05 |
Other People’s Children |
Trollope, Joanna |
It was OK. |
|
410 |
8/05 |
The Fourth Queen |
Taylor, Debbie |
A few months ago, I didn’t
know that Moroccans had held European slaves from about 1600 to about 1815.
Now I’ve listened to two books on it. The similarities between this one and
the court described in The Last Empress
are very striking. Can they really have been that similar that far apart?
Audacious of Morocco—a small country at the tip of the Moslem world to
capture slaves both from the Christian north and the black African south. |
|
409 |
8/05 |
Bell, Martin |
In Harm’s Way |
Also a journalist’s story of
a war zone, but not as compelling as 101 days. |
|
408 |
8/05 |
A Hundred and One Days: A
Baghdad Journal |
Seierstad, Asne |
Very good. A journalist’s
life in a war zone, before, during, and after the war. She really shows you all
sides of the situation in depth. |
|
407 |
8/05 |
The Unbearable Lightness
of Being |
Kundrea, Milan |
This one answered the
questioned I asked myself reading “Dog Days.” Books like this are worth it. It
reads somewhere between novel and essay. But the essay is more integrates
with the story than in War and Peace. It almost reads like an essay with an
extended example. It breaks all the “show, don’t tell” rules, but it reads
great, and makes points that make you think. When a charter in “Dog Days”
says the journalists made whatever groups of bandits into democrats and
authoritarians, I’m thinking it would have been much more interesting it show
me that. But when Kundrea gives a 20-minute essay on the meaning of kitsch, I
don’t imagine there’s any better way to tell it. |
|
406 |
8/05 |
Dog Days |
Lee, Jeffery |
Makes very serious
indictment of war journalists, but I didn’t like the story very much. Why
listening to it I thought, “why do I listen to so many books and give so many
of them bad reviews?” It’s not that I disliked listening to it, I just wasn’t
that impressed with it. (See 407) |
|
405 |
8/05 |
Fire |
Junger, Sebastian |
Disconnected essays that have
very little to do with each other. But the telling is so much more
interesting than “Women Who Lived for Danger.” I can’t put my finger on why. |
|
404 |
8/05 |
A Son of War |
Bragg, Melvyn |
Gave up after three
cassettes. |
|
403 |
8/05 |
The Women Who Lived for
Danger |
Binney, Marcus |
Inherently interesting
story. I wasn’t that crazy about how it was told. |
|
402 |
7/05 |
Great Tales from English
History, Volume II: Chaucer to the Glorious Revolution |
Lacey, Robert |
Again, good. |
|
401 |
7/05 |
Great Tales from English
History: Cheddar Man to the Peasants Revolt |
Lacey, Robert |
Very good, and here is a
history of England that doesn’t skip over most ancient times and the dark
ages. |
|
400 |
7/05 |
Samurai William |
Milton, Giles |
The first have was very
interesting, but once other English people started showing up in Japan it got
very boring. It was like reading a history of company commerce. |
|
399 |
7/05 |
Haroun and the Sea of
Stories |
Rushdie, Salman |
I first wrote, “Maybe I should
have given it more of a chance, but it wasn’t my thing and I gave up.” Then I
gave it more of a chance and gave up again. It really wasn’t my thing |
|
398 |
7/05 |
Seizure |
Cook, Robin |
The author presents it as being
about important issues, but it only touches on them and most of it’s
entertaining fluff. |
|
397 |
7/05 |
White Gold |
Milton, Giles |
It’s a history I knew
nothing about before this. |
|
396 |
7/05 |
Pudd’nhead Wilson |
Twain, Mark |
Not his best. |
|
395 |
7/05 |
Fierce People |
Wittenborn, Dirk |
The story grabs your
attention, but the ending is pure fantasy. I don’t think it really has
anything to say more than an entertaining story. |
|
394 |
7/05 |
The Greatest Thing Since
Sliced Bread |
Robertson, Dan |
Great story. But it’s
caught right between children’s lit and adult lit. Most of it reads like a
children’s story until you get to the refinery explosion when people start
getting incinerated or horribly maimed. |
|
393 |
7/05 |
The Picture of Dorian Gray |
Wilde, Oscar |
Good, but too many
platitudes, like “men love with their eyes and women with their ears.” It’s
great, but I think it would be better without them. |
|
392 |
7/05 |
Brief Lives |
Deeds, W. F. |
Good, but I didn’t have time
to finish it before it was due back. |
|
391 |
7/05 |
Little Women |
Alcott, Louisa May |
Very episodic. I couldn’t
get into all of the episodes. |
|
390 |
6/05 |
Eight Feet in the Andes |
Murphy, Derula |
One of the most amateur recordings
I’ve ever hear. That’s the sound engineer’s fault not the author, but I gave
up after a few cassettes. Could find the story. |
|
389 |
6/05 |
To War with Witaker: The
wartime diaries of the Countess Ranfury, 1939-45 |
Ranfury, Countess |
Although a tangential
story of the war, it was interesting. |
|
388 |
6/05 |
The Outsider |
Camus, Albert |
Camus says that he wanted
to show that a man could be sentenced to death for not crying at his mother’s
funeral. Maybe the man wouldn’t have been sentenced to death if he’d’ve cried
at his mother’s funeral, but he was a sociopath who committed a rather brutal
murder. |
|
387 |
6/05 |
The Bookseller of Kabul |
Seierstad, Asne |
The author is pretty harsh
in judgment of the family that let her write about their lives. But she
paints society that’s very oppressive against women. |
|
386 |
6/05 |
Me Talk Pretty One Day |
Sedaris, David |
Very funny. |
|
385 |
6/05 |
Adam Bede |
Eliot, George |
I gave up after three cassettes. |
|
384 |
6/05 |
A Star Called Henry |
Doyle, Roddy |
Very good. It shows the
connection between people who are hero’s for their country and people who are
just criminals without being too judgmental. |
|
383 |
6/05 |
The Day of the Triffids |
Wyndham, John |
Now that I’ve listened to
three of this guy’s books, the theme of nature cruelly pitting one species
against another really comes out. |
|
382 |
6/05 |
The Time Traveler’s Wife |
Niffenegger, Audrey |
This one really held my interest.
But some of it is sort of a woman’s of making a bad boy good and always
sitting and waiting for him. |
|
381 |
6/05 |
The Midwhich Cuckoos |
Wyndham, John |
It’s really about nature and
how it pits species with a similar niche against another, and not about
cultures at all. But something about the cultures snuck in. These children
are planted all over the world, but only the group planted in England is
allowed to live to the age of 9. The implication is that the English are more
civilized or more kind than other nations. I’m not sure how intentional that
is but it’s there. |
|
380 |
5/05 |
Sophie’s World |
Gaarder, Jostein |
I enjoyed it, but I have
no way of knowing whether it succeeds in its goal of interesting 10- to
15-year-olds in philosophy. |
|
379 |
5/05 |
Chronicles: Volume One |
Dylan, Bob |
This book is written for
people who have already read three or four other biographies of Dylan. If you
don’t already know a whole lot about his life, you’re completely lost. |
|
378 |
5/05 |
Night Watch |
Pratchett, Terry |
What plot there was didn’t
interest me by the middle of the second cassette, so I gave up. |
|
377 |
5/05 |
The Crysalids |
Wyndham, John |
Captivating. Really kept
me listening, and I’ll listen to his other stuff. But it seemed somehow
flawed. The new people were rather unfeeling—even about their own kind. But
if that was the point, it wasn’t fully brought out. |
|
376 |
5/05 |
Dead Men’s Wages |
Pizzichini, Lilian |
Reads like a dirty laundry
list without insight that I could find. |
|
375 |
5/05 |
Catch-22 |
Heller, Joseph |
I didn’t like the ending. He’s
so iconoclastic about how Americans are not what we like to think of
ourselves, but he ends with the classic American ideal of the individual
finding a way to heroically challenge the system at great self-sacrifice. I
thought that weakened everything somewhat. |
|
374 |
5/05 |
When We Were Orphans |
Ishiguro, Kazuo |
“The remains of the day”
used realism. “The Unconsoled” was almost entirely surreal, like a bad dream.
This one was a weird combination. It was realistic with one interlude of the bad-dream
style of surrealism in a very large and crucial section of the book. I don’t
think the combination worked very well. It made me step back from the book
and take the characters and the story less seriously. |
|
373 |
4/05 |
The Seven Daughters of Eve |
Sykes, Brian |
Very interesting. The part
where he digressed into fiction wasn’t as good. I don’t know how true this
one guy’s perspective is, but regardless I liked it. |
|
372 |
4/05 |
Leonardo: The First
Scientist |
White, Michael |
Good bibliography. I
learned a lot. I would have liked to know more whether any of his scientific
writings actually impacted other scientists. |
|
371 |
4/05 |
Favorite Short Stories |
Asimov, Isaac |
I think I’d already listened
to this before I started keeping a list. Some good stories. There’s something
about him I find superficial, but I can’t put my finger on it. But I always
liked him for his history “the Dark Ages,” which I read when I was about 12
or 13 and really enjoyed. |
|
370 |
4/05 |
The Three Musketeers |
Dumas, Alexander |
I know it’s a classic and
everything, but I just couldn’t get into it. I tried for over a week and was
only about half way through when I finally gave up. |
|
369 |
4/05 |
Second Glance |
Picoult, Jodi |
I liked the parts that on
eugenics that took place in the 1930s best. The ghost story with the
105-year-old Indian in 2002 was not as good. First thing I’ve read that
discussed the connection between eugenics and gene therapy. That thought occurred
to me as well, would have liked more on that. |
|
368 |
3/05 |
Darwin’s Radio |
Bear, Greg |
See review of Blood Music |
|
367 |
3/05 |
Blood Music |
Bear, Greg |
I thought both of these books
were interesting but flawed. This one for example is just two quick. It
brings up all kinds of issues and then doesn’t deal with them very deeply.
This one did a lot of set up for the problem of fighting an intelligent
plague, but then never actually had people fighting the intelligent plague as
it took over North American overnight. |
|
366 |
3/05 |
Einstein’s Relativity and
the Quantum Revolution: Modern Physics for Non-Scientists |
Wolfson, Richard |
Borrowed this while I was in
New York, and unfortunately didn’t have time to finish it. |
|
365 |
3/05 |
Salt: A World History |
Kurlansky, Mark |
Sounds like the kind of
thing I’d like, but I was board by it and didn’t finish it. |
|
364 |
3/05 |
The Curious Incident of the
Dog in the Night Time |
Haddon, Mark |
Very good. |
|
363 |
2/05 |
Rachel’s Holiday |
Keyes, Marian |
Something like what if
Bridget Jones had to go to drug rehab? But it’s still pretty good. |
|
362 |
2/05 |
Ulysses, Volume 2,
episodes 15-18 |
Joyce, James |
Well, I finished it. I
could understand every sentence, but not the order in which the sentences
appeared. I got something out of it, but there’s so much more I missed. Why
does he make it so hard to follow? |
|
361 |
2/06 |
Carthage |
Leckie, Ross |
There is something
incomplete about his books. It’s supposed to be historical fiction, but the
whole siege and downfall reads like nonfiction with little characterization
and too much overview. |
|
360 |
2/05 |
Brixton Rock |
|
Crap |
|
359 |
1/05 |
The pleasure of my Company |
Martin, Steve |
There are often quirky,
crazy people in humorous books, but in this one the guys symptoms are so real
that it becomes less funny and more creepy and sad. However, it gets better
at the end. |
|
358 |
1/05 |
Empress Orchid |
Min, Anchee |
Good story, but poorly
recorded. There were pauses and background noises. That’s very unusual. |
|
357 |
1/05 |
Selected speeches |
Einstein, Albert |
Didn’t finish |
|
356 |
1/05 |
Ulysses, vol. 1, episodes
1-14 |
Joyce, James |
Difficult on first
listening. |
|
355 |
1/05 |
Perfume |
Suskind, Patrick |
Very good. |
|
354 |
12/04 |
Molloy |
Beckett, Samuel |
Couldn’t follow it, and it
didn’t make me want to try again. |
|
353 |
12/04 |
The Crimson Petal and the
White |
Faber, Michel |
This books is 45 hours
long—only about 10 hours shy of War and
Peace and if you take out the essay portions of W+R, this book is longer.
At that length I expected an epic, but it has only 5 major characters and
takes place in less than 18 months in 1874-1876. So, it goes into a lot of
detail about everyday life. Yet it doesn’t get boring and she has a lot to
say. |
|
352 |
12/04 |
Jude the Obscure |
Hardy, Thomas |
Depressing but good. |
|
351 |
12/04 |
Dubliners |
Joyce, James |
Stories of people with
bleak lives. I’ve listened to it before, and I’ve both read and see the movie
of “the Dead.” “The Dead,” at least, is hard to concentrate on because it’s
so thought provoking. If a book provokes thoughts, you stop and think, but if
a book on tape or a movie provokes thoughts, it’s easy to find you’ve let it
go on without you. I had to go back to several of the stories more than once.
I had to read “the Dead” after seeing the movie, and then still needed to
read the last bit a couple times before I got it. This time I wanted to give
the main character a copy of “the remains of the day.” He’s not dead yet, and
he and his wife have lot of living they could still do do. |
|
350 |
12/04 |
The Floating Madhouse |
Fullerton, Alexander |
Not really a floating
madhouse; rather ordinary sailors. Most of the book is actually about a love
triangle in letters |
|
349 |
12/04 |
I, Robot |
Asimov, Isaac |
Good, but the fact that the
three laws of robotics imply that robots will eventually take over is not
told as dramatically as it could be |
|
348 |
11/04 |
A History of Britain 3:
1776-2000 |
Schama, Simon |
He tells history with biographies,
which has a plus and a minus. It makes for very compelling reading, but it
makes for a very selective history. What’s told is told very well, but World
War I is told as little more than how it affected the development of
Churchill and Orwell. And the second half of the Twentieth Century is glossed
over in a half a cassette. |
|
347 |
11/04 |
Reading Lolita in Tehran:
A Memoir in Books |
Nafisi, Azar |
She tells a story of the
Islamic Republic of Iran as being much more totalitarian than I thought. It’s
really fiction because she’s changed details and combined characters to hide
their identities, but it reads like nonfiction. |
|
346 |
11/04 |
The End of War: A Novel of
the Race for Berlin |
Robbins, David L. |
Very good. Makes you want to
listen, makes a point. Although I don’t agree with all his points, especially
in the interview at the end. |
|
346 |
11/04 |
A Grue of Ice |
Jenkins, Geoffrey |
Crap |
|
345 |
11/04 |
The Girl in the Red Coat |
Ligocka, Roma |
A good book, less about
the holocaust than it was sold as. Although it spans 50 years of time, it’s
told entirely in the present tense. |
|
344 |
10/04 |
What she Wants |
Kelly, Cathy |
So this is chic lit. I don’t
think it’s the best chic lit. The story draws you in, but the ending is
pointless and a little too much like a fairy tale |
|
343 |
10/04 |
William Shakespeare |
Holden, Anthony |
I learned a lot, but I
just don’t know Shakespeare’s work well enough. |
|
342 |
10/04 |
David Copperfield |
Dickens, Charles |
I can’t see why it’s a
classic. Interesting story about his child wife though, she dies saying it’s
best because he would have gotten board with her. But he’s real wife lived
and he got board with her. Is this his way of saying it would have been
better if you were dead? |
|
341 |
10/04 |
Jonathan Livingston Seagul |
Bach, Richard |
Apparently this was an
abridged version, too short. |
|
340 |
10/04 |
The Mammoth Hunters |
Auel, Jean M. |
Very dull. Most of the
plot is drive by a lovers’ misunderstanding, and the main character adopts a
puppy. |
|
339 |
9/04 |
The Secret History |
Tartt, Donna |
A good thriller. |
|
338 |
9/04 |
Seeking Robinson Crusoe |
Severin, Tim |
It linked together a lot
of unrelated stories, but most of them were interesting. He was making the
case for a different person as the model for Crusoe (rather than the one
that’s usually mentioned), but he did not make much of until the very end. |
|
337 |
9/04 |
David Copperfield |
Dickens, Charles |
I’ve been able to listen
only to Volume 1 so far |
|
336 |
9/04 |
The Noonday Demon: An
Atlas of Depression |
Solomon, Andrew |
It was great to hear a heartfelt,
sympathetic, inside-story of depression by a patient rather than a doctor.
The drawback is that he tries so hard to show both sides of issues that you
often can’t tell what his point is. |
|
335 |
8/04 |
Heroes of History |
Durant, Will |
I didn’t finish this one
either. Each biography was so superficial that you couldn’t learn anything
from it. Also, I didn’t like his attitude about history “man” did this and
“woman” did that as if his theories about gender roles in evolutionary
history are proven facts. |
|
334 |
8/04 |
Don’t Sweat the Small
Stuff with your family |
Carlson, Richard |
It was only two CDs, but I
didn’t bother to finish even one of them. It was a string of homespun
clichés. |
|
333 |
8/04 |
Crome Yellow |
Huxley, Aldous |
I didn’t finish it. It
didn’t give it my full attention, but it didn’t command my attention either. |
|
332 |
8/04 |
Isaac Newton |
Gleick, James |
Newton’s life is
inherently interesting, but this biography doesn’t bring it out well. |
|
331 |
8/04 |
The Travels of Marco Polo |
Polo, Marco |
This is a 700-year-old
book. It doesn’t stand the time. It’s mostly a catalogue of facts (many
questionable) about places that are hard to place on today’s map. It would be
much more interesting to read about Marco Polo from another source. |
|
330 |
8/04 |
Eaters of the Dead |
Creiton, Michael |
OK |
|
329 |
7/04 |
1215: The Year of the
Magna Carta |
Danziber, Danny and
Gillingham, John |
Interesting |
|
328 |
7/04 |
3001: The Final Odyssey |
Clarke, Arthur C. |
This story was not well
told. It read like an abridgment even though it was full length. |
|
327 |
7/04 |
Wilful Murder: The Sinking
of The Lusitania |
Preston, Diana |
Good history. There wasn’t
a broad conspiracy to create the sinking to get the U.S.A. into the war, but
there were conspiracies on all sides to avoid blame. |
|
326 |
7/04 |
Sushi for Beginners |
Keyes, Marian |
I good story. |
|
325 |
7/04 |
Pride and Prejudice |
Austen, Jane |
A tale of a rich family
with daughters. Will the daughters manage to marry other rich people so that
the family can remain rich? You bet they can. |
|
324 |
7/04 |
Adam’s Curse |
Sykes, Brian |
Some of it is good science,
and it’s well written, but he wonders off on his historical theories that are
not well supported by his genetic theories. |
|
323 |
7/04 |
My East End: Memories of
Life in Cockney London |
O’Neill, Gilda |
The author is a little too
close to this too nostalgic. |
|
322 |
7/04 |
The Life of Pi |
Martel, Yann |
A good book. The message
seems to be that religion is worth believing even if it’s not true. But I
don’t understand what the man-eating island is supposed to symbolize. |
|
321 |
7/04 |
George Orwell |
Bowker, Gordon |
I listened to this one
twice even though it’s 24.75 hours. I did this partly as an experiment,
partly because I finished the first listening on a Sunday, and partly because
Orwell is my favorite author. Although I got more out of it with two
listenings, I don’t think I’ll repeat the experiment soon. I have very many
attitudes similar to Orwell—pro-poor libertarian not enough interest from
women—but enough differences that I can’t feel like he’s my alter-ego. |
|
320 |
6/04 |
Stalingrad |
Beevor, Antony |
A compelling account. |
|
319 |
6/04 |
The Age of Innocence |
Warton, Edith |
It’s about relationships
among the upper class, and it’s interesting. Although it recognizes their privileged
position, it ignores everybody else. I’m really annoyed by books about the
emotional lives of the rich that ignore the poor. The House of Mirth was much better in that respect. Also, the
problems that create the drama seem so easily avoided. |
|
318 |
6/04 |
Elizabeth the Queen, (also
titled) the Life of Elizabeth I |
Weir, Alison |
A good history. |
|
317 |
5/04 |
Oryx and Crake |
Atwood, Margaret |
An apocalyptic and
post-apocalyptic story of creating paradise by creating race of very naïve humans
who are able to eat grass. |
|
316 |
5/04 |
Ramses 5: Under the
Western Acacia |
Jacq, Christian |
He doesn’t know whether he
wants to write a historical novel or a magical fantasy. He writes something that’s
neither an educated guess about what Ramses was like nor an interesting story
of magic. It really goes down hill after God intervenes in book 3 to make
Ramses win the Battle of Kadesh, which my history book says he lost. It’s
also a white wash saying that the Pharos were good leaders, making Ramses out
to be completely unselfish, explain how he made his daughter his queen
without committing incest. |
|
315 |
5/04 |
Ramses 4: The Lady of Abu
Simbel |
Jacq, Christian |
See Ramses 5 |
|
314 |
5/04 |
Ramses 3: The Battle of
Kadesh |
Jacq, Christian |
See Ramses 5 |
|
313 |
4/04 |
Dark Star Safari |
Theroux, Paul |
Good stories, but
occasionally his attitude toward the locals gets a bit colonial. Blaming them
and their attitudes for problems that are actually outcome of a long
relationship with the North in which the North was dominant. |
|
312 |
4/04 |
White Teeth |
Smith, Zadie |
Very good characters, and
very good at putting individual family members actions in the context of a
long family history. |
|
311 |
4/04 |
Jack Maggs |
Carey, Peter |
“A variation on ‘Great
Expectations,’ in which Dicken’s tale is told from the viewpoint of the
Australian convict.” Didn’t hold my attention, or I didn’t pay enough attention.
You be the judge. |
|
310 |
4/04 |
Das Boot: The Boat |
Buchheim, Lothar-Gunter |
It’s a compelling story,
but only the narrator is a well developed character. |
|
309 |
4/04 |
A History of Britain 2:
1603-1776, The British Wars |
Schama, Simon |
Much more well-rounded
than part 1. A good history of a period I don’t know enough about. |
|
308 |
3/04 |
English Passengers |
Kneale, Matthew |
It says some really good
things about how genocide can happen even though the perpetrators think they’re
doing good things, but the last two cassettes suddenly become a festival of
shortcuts, coincidences, and unbelievable behavior. |
|
307 |
3/04 |
The Way We Live Now |
Trollope, Anthony |
A good look at what the silly
Victorians thought was important, but the author’s lack of knowledge of
finance really shows. |
|
306 |
3/04 |
The Prophet Mohammed: A
Biography |
Rogerson, Barnaby |
It was a well-written and
sympathetic biography. Some of it seemed to conflict with other accounts I’d
heard. Even though the account was sympathetic, it was hard for me to get
sympathy for Mohammed from it. He was the aggressor in war, who killed
unarmed prisoners, and wrote the Koran to give himself special privileges. |
|
305 |
3/04 |
Goon Show Classics 1 |
Milligan, Spike, Peter
Sellers, Harry Secombe, and Wallace Greenslade. |
I didn’t get it. |
|
304 |
3/04 |
Warlock |
Smith, Wilber |
Crap. |
|
303 |
3/04 |
Ramses 2: the Temple of a Million
Years |
Jacq, Christian |
The cliff-hanger endings
are annoying, especially when the library gets rid of episodes 3 and 4. See
Ramses 5. |
|
302 |
3/04 |
Ramses 1: the Son of the
Light |
Jacq, Christian |
Part of a series of five.
See Ramses 5. |
|
301 |
3/04 |
Holy Bible: the New
Testament, New International Version |
Various |
Can’t sum it up in a
paragraph. |
|
300 |
2/04 |
The Center of Everything |
Moriarty, Laura |
It’s about a girl growing up
in Kansas who’s betrayed by her friends, and not well treated by many of the
adults in her life. There’s a line at the end to the effect. “I walk through
a cloud of months, but I don’t disturb them.” That’s supposed to sum it all
up. But the narrator never takes responsibility for anything, like she’s just
better than everyone else. |
|
299 |
2/04 |
Breakfast at Tiffany’s and
other stories |
Capote, Truman |
The other stories weren’t
as good as breakfast. I wonder why they gave the movie the same title; it
bears little resemblance. They could have saved all that money they paid for
the rights. |
|
298 |
2/04 |
Doctor Zhivago |
Pasternak, Boris |
This one didn’t get a fair
listening. I was preoccupied with other things. Listened to most of it while drifting
off to sleep. |
|
297 |
2/04 |
Race of Scorpions |
Dunnett, Dorothy |
Boring. I didn’t bother to
finish it. |
|
296 |
1/04 |
The Gunpowder Plot |
Fraser, Antonia |
Too many small details and
not enough big picture. |
|
295 |
1/04 |
The Remains of the Day |
Ishiguro, Kazuo |
Excellent. It all comes
together at the end and it says a lot. One of my all-time favorites |
|
294 |
1/04 |
The Terminal Experiment |
Sawyer, Robert J. |
Opens up a forum to discuss
big issues, but doesn’t discuss them very deeply. And for a book about
morality, it has a really twisted sense of it. |
|
293 |
1/04 |
The Veteran |
Forsyth, Frederick |
Empty |
|
292 |
1/04 |
Blast from the Past |
Elton, Ben |
Disappointing. |
|
291 |
1/04 |
A Time of Changes |
Silverberg, Robert |
Good. |
|
290 |
1/04 |
The Seashell on the
Mountain Top |
Cutler, Alan |
Nice brief history lesson. |
|
289 |
1/04 |
The Unconsoled |
Ishiguro, Kazou |
Surreal, confusing, disconnected
and frustrating with a lot of symbolism not all of which seems to mean
something like a bad dream that’s not a nightmare. I guess that’s what he was
going for. As surreal as it was, it seemed to parallel my life at the time. |
|
288 |
1/04 |
My Life as a Fake |
Carey, Peter |
This could be the only
book in the world to mention both a product invented in my hometown (Kitty
Litter) and my college at Oxford (Lady Margaret Hall). But, I didn’t like it.
Failed to communicate what it was trying to say. Lost in digressions and
loose ends. |
|
287 |
1/04 |
The Grapes of Wrath |
Steinbeck, John |
I wish I could write like
that. Excellent. |
|
286 |
12/03 |
Braking the Chains:
African. American Slave Resistance |
Katz, William Loren |
He convinced me. There was
a lot more slave resistance than is generally believed. In some ways, slaves
were in a state of constant rebellion. |
|
285 |
12/03 |
On a Pale Horse |
Anthony, Piers |
Interesting premise, but
not that much to it. |
|
284 |
12/03 |
In the Wake of the Plague |
Cantor, Norman F. |
Disappointing |
|
283 |
12/03 |
Star Trek Avenger |
Shatner, William |
So unmemorable that I was
almost halfway through before I realized I’d listened to this before. |
|
282 |
12/03 |
Gone with the Wind, Part 2 |
Mitchell, Margaret |
Better than War and
Peace? Well, it’s obviously inspired by W&P, and I don’t think
W&P is as good as it’s made out to be, so I can ask that. You see the
influence during the civil war when it’s about people’s lives with the war,
the retreat, the burning of the city, the last minute escape, and the
author’s defense of the defending general. Tolstoy’s characters represent
ideals and virtues, but only the minor characters here have virtue, and the
virtuous without exception devote themselves to a morally moribund cause.
Maybe you’re not supposed to think it’s moribund. It is a racist novel. The
blacks in the book, at best, need to be led, and the narrator defends the
inception of the KKK. Perhaps, the message (aside from like should marry
like) seems to be ethical egoism: to see truth unclouded by notions of honor.
Scarlet is selfish, and does horrible things, but not because she’s selfish.
She does them because she’s too naïve to know it’s not the best way to get what
she wants. Ret is the only character set up to emulate. He’s as selfish as
Scarlet but doesn’t do terrible things (Mitchell doesn’t seem to want you to
count murdering a black who deserved it as bad), because he knows how to get
what he wants without doing terrible things. But the book is so well told
that it brings up the issues and helps you think about them differently even
if you completely disagree with her conclusion. |
|
281 |
12/03 |
How to be Good |
Hornby, Nick |
This book made me question
my commitment to BIG more than anything I’ve read in some time. It wasn’t the
recipients, it was the people giving the stuff away that wasn’t there’s. The
arguments that occurred to me against them was that they weren’t working for
what they were giving away, implying an obligation to contribute to the
well-being of others. |
|
280 |
12/03 |
High Tide in Tucson:
Essays from now or never |
Kingsolver, Barbara |
You listen to her tell you
about her life, then you wan’a sleep with her. But she’s best on the life and
the biology stuff. Not some much the travel writing. |
|
279 |
12/03 |
Eleanor of Aquitaine |
Weir, Alison |
I guess I’ve listened to
one to many biographies of monarchs. Collectively they portray the entire
history of the middle ages as if nothing happened beside the palace intrigues
of elite families. |
|
278 |
11/03 |
High Fidelity |
Hornby, Nick |
Very good. He’s really got
this character down. It’s a very self-absorbed guy telling a story in first
person, and the other characters are all minor, but he does a very good job
in way he describes the single life with all these musical references from
just my generation. |
|
277 |
11/03 |
Gone with the Wind, part
one |
Mitchell, Margaret |
Just before I returned
part one the library sent part two back to the manufacturer for repair. I
really want to find out what Scarlet does next. |
|
276 |
11/03 |
A Short History of Nearly Everything |
Bryson, Bill |
It’s interesting, but a
bit disjointed. From the big bang to botany to human evolution. |
|
275 |
11/03 |
Pole to Pole |
Palin, Michael |
He doesn’t bring his Monty
Python humor, but it’s still funny and interesting. |
|
274 |
11/03 |
Harry Potter and the Order
of the Phoenix |
Rowling, J.K. |
Another page turner, or
cassette changer, or whatever you’d call it. |
|
273 |
11/03 |
Something Fresh |
Woodhouse, P.G. |
I listened to this on
Douglas Adams’s recommendation. It was OK. |
|
272 |
11/03 |
The Salmon of Doubt |
Adams, Douglas |
It’s a posthumous
collection of unpublished writings, including his unfinished novel. Some of
it was pretty good, but it was pretty annoying when the unfinished novel just
stopped before it was finished. |
|
271 |
11/03 |
A History of Britain I: At
the Edge of the Word, 3000BC - AD1603 |
Schama, Simon |
Although I learned a lot,
the title is a lie. It’s really a history of England 1066-1603 with some back-story
tacked on. The first two cassettes cover 3,700 years, and the last two
cassettes cover about 50 years. They give huge details about the English
Monarchs, but the Scots and the Welsh are only mentioned when they interact
with England. He’s also selective in what he covers. The English reformation
gets huge attention, but the loss of British holdings in France during the
100 years war gets barely a mention. |
|
270 |
10/03 |
Elizabeth |
Starkey, David |
He says it’s subtitled apprenticeship.
It covers up to the early part of her reign. So you learn more about her
personality than her effect on history. |
|
269 |
10/03 |
French with Michel Thomas |
Thomas, Michel |
I think I learned a lot
from it. It does give you confidence, but he does a lot of speaking in
English. I’d like to see a second version where he goes over the same level
of material, but speaks only in French |
|
268 |
10/03 |
Silent Night: The
Remarkable Christmas Truce of 1914 |
Weintraub, Stanley |
I bit disjointed in that
it’s a story here and a story there. But the author is right that this was a
hugely significant event because it began from the bottom up despite the
actual opposition of the commanders at the top on both sides, who took steps
to ensure it wouldn’t be repeated. |
|
267 |
10/03 |
Life Before Man |
Atwood, Margaret |
Shit happens. Why this
book starts when it does and stops when it does is a mystery. Some of the
shit that happens in between is interesting, but I don’t see that much meaning
in it. This was no “Blind Assassin.” |
|
266 |
10/03 |
Sons and Lovers |
Lawrence, D. H. |
I found it tedious and
boring. |
|
265 |
10/03 |
Pimsleur French I |
Pimsleur |
Now that I’ve tried this and
several other ways of learning French, I’m convinced this is a very good way
to do it, and I’m thinking of buying the whole course, which is something
like 100 tapes. |
|
264 |
9/03 |
The World Owes You a
Living |
Fair, Matt |
Very good. It’s not academic
case, but it’s a very good artistic case for BIG. See my review of issue 23
of the USBIG newsletter |
|
263 |
9/03 |
Mistress Anne |
Erickson, Carolly |
There wasn’t very much in
here that wasn’t in “Great Harry.” Some parts of it read like they’d been
lifted right out of her other book. |
|
262 |
9/03 |
Great Harry |
Erickson, Carolly |
A biography of Henry VIII.
I learned a lot of history from it. He really was a catholic, who accidentally
reformed the British church. He didn’t even want a divorce he wanted an
annulment justified under catholic doctrine. It could be a case study against
absolute power. He was the most brilliant and capable leader of his age, but
paranoid and drunk with power he eventually executed many of the people who
were closest to him. But it annoyed me as so many biographies do by ending
exactly at the death of the subject without a word about his legacy. |
|
261 |
9/03 |
Bad Heir Day |
Holden, Wendy |
It was a coincidence fest,
although it made you want to keep listening and it wasn’t quite as
predictable as I thought it was going to be (but close). |
|
260 |
9/03 |
Atticus |
Hansen, Ron |
The last tape screwed up so
I couldn’t finish it, but I didn’t bother to try to get it working because it
just wasn’t very interesting. |
|
259 |
9/03 |
Mutiny on Board the HMS
Bounty |
Bligh, William |
It’s Captain Bligh’s own
story, but he makes the mutiny and his long trip in the lifeboat boring by
concentrating on uninteresting details like their latitude and longitude at
every stop along the way without examining what really caused the mutiny. |
|
258 |
8/03 |
Drop City |
Boyle, T. C. |
Gives some interesting insight
into what a 60s free love commune might have been like, but it’s too
tangential. |
|
257 |
8/03 |
Forever |
Hamill, Pete |
OK |
|
256 |
8/03 |
Shrub: The Short but Happy
Political Life of George W. Bush |
Ivins, Molly with Lou
Dubose |
Didn’t finish, only
because I ran out of time. |
|
255 |
8/03 |
A Walk in the Woods |
Bryson, Bill |
Worth the read |
|
254 |
8/03 |
The Jungle |
Sinclair, Upton |
I wish I could write like
that. Great statement. But the happy ending was a little disappointing:
Joining the socialist party solves all his problems. |
|
253 |
7/03 |
Johnny Tremain: A story of
Boston in Revolt |
Forbes, Ester |
Good, but the end was very
predictable. |
|
252 |
7/03 |
The Malaise of Modernity |
Taylor, Charles |
Thought provoking, but
almost too much so for a book on tape you’re listening to when you’re walking
around. |
|
251 |
7/03 |
Tourist Seaton (abridged) |
Hiaasen, Carl |
Bites. |
|
250 |
7/03 |
Lucky Man (abridged) |
Fox, Michael J. |
Very good story about the
perspective he gained from adversity. |
|
249 |
7/03 |
Beggars Banquet, Part One |
Rankin, Ian |
Some interesting stories |
|
248 |
7/03 |
About a Boy |
Hornby, Nick |
Really good. Interesting
story with the very pop cultural references that I know so well, like the
last months of the life of Kurt Cobain. But the author also had something to
say. It didn’t hurt that part of the story happened at platform 10a at King’s
Cross station, and I was listening to it when I was at platform 10a at King’s
Cross station. |
|
247 |
7/03 |
The Invisible Man |
Wells, H. G. |
Fun story, but I didn’t
see any deeper meaning. |
|
246 |
7/03 |
Clock This: My Life as an
Inventor |
Baylis, Trevor |
He invented a radio that’s
powered by a wind-up crank like a clock. It’s actually interesting, but it
takes way too long to get to the point where he starts inventing things at
age 45. |
|
245 |
7/03 |
Tropic of Cancer |
Miller, Henry |
Beyond the racism and
misogyny, he does have a few things to say, but it’s not well told. No plot
development, stuff just happens and he occasionally gets preachy. |
|
244 |
7/03 |
The Art of Travel |
De Botton, Alain |
Some good stuff, but I
didn’t feel it as a coherent whole. Just disjointed observations. |
|
243 |
7/03 |
The Leopard |
Di Lampedusa, Guiseppe |
I couldn’t concentrate on
this one enough. It seemed like all the real action happened in the
background, but I was missing a lot. |
|
242 |
6/03 |
The Great Railway Bazaar |
Theroux, Paul |
Some interesting stories
and interesting places, but I get this impression that it’s just matter of
what degree he looks down on every person he talks to. I never get the
impression that he’s really positively impressed by somebody |
|
241 |
6/03 |
The Lord of the Rings
(Trilogy) |
Tolkien, J.R.R. |
I liked it better this
time. When I read it, I read 2 and ½ books when I was 12-13 years old and the
last half of the last book when I was 28 or so, and I found it really
anticlimactic. But this time I listened to all three of the books in 3 weeks,
and I found the stuff after they destroyed the ring more interesting. When
Sam came back after seeing Frodo off, it was really sad. |
|
240 |
6/03 |
Diaries 1915-1918 |
Sassoon, Siegfried |
Couldn’t finish it. |
|
239 |
5/03 |
Lord Arthur Savile’s Crime
and other stories |
Wilde, Oscar |
I thought the first story
where he was ripping on Crime and Punishment was very good, but all the
others, where he was imitating Hans Christian Andersen, were tedious. |
|
238 |
5/03 |
Jane Eyre |
Bronte, Charlotte |
I was so disappointed. I thought
these Bronte’s were supposed to be geniuses but I thought it was a
predicable, conventional romance without any deeper meaning. |
|
237 |
5/03 |
Rendezvous with Rama |
Clarke, Arthur C. |
A good listen |
|
236 |
5/03 |
The Plains of Passage |
Auel, Jean M. |
Disappointing after her
first one. It was like listening to the details of somebody else’s honeymoon.
Interesting for them to tell, boring for us to hear. |
|
235 |
5/03 |
The Clan of the Cave Bear |
Auel, Jean M. |
Same plot as the ugly duckling,
but it keeps you interested |
|
234 |
4/03 |
Scipio |
Leckie, Ross |
Even though this guy’s
books are well researched, they’re just not that good. He dwells on his
childhood—the most speculative part of his life—then breezing through and even
skips some of his major battles, just as he did with his Hannibal book. He
also seems to be fixated with mundane bodily functions. |
|
233 |
4/03 |
Galileo’s Daughter |
Sobel, Dava |
It’s really about Galileo. |
|
232 |
4/03 |
The Mill on the Floss |
Elliot, George |
Started slow then I got
into it. Then the heroine died and it just stopped. I didn’t get it. Should
she have chosen the one she was passionate about or the one she was committed
to? What was the point of killer her off before she made the choice? |
|
231 |
4/03 |
My Legendary Girlfriend |
Gayle, Mark |
Too easy. And I think my
relationship stories are more interesting. |
|
230 |
4/03 |
Berlin: The Downfall 1945 |
Beevor, Antony |
It was worse than I
though. The war, not the book. |
|
229 |
4/03 |
Anna Karenina |
Tolstoy, Leo |
She falls in love with
another man. She leaves her husband for him. Then she becomes paranoid and
kills herself. Is that just a plot twist? Meanwhile Leavan falls in love,
gets married, has a child, and completes his happiness by becoming a
Christian. So, Anna killed herself because her life was meaningless without
God? Is that the message here? Well, anyway, that Tolstoy sure can build
character’s and tell a story. |
|
228 |
3/03 |
Cat’s Eye |
Atwood, Margaret |
I liked the early part of
the book. The part about the psychological way girls bully each other, but as
the book went on through the rest of her life, I lost the point even though
it remained interesting. |
|
227 |
3/03 |
The Cruel Sea |
Monsarrat, Nicholas |
An interesting story about
the British Navy in World War II. I hadn’t realized how bad sailors got it. |
|
226 |
3/03 |
In Siberia |
Thurbron, Colin |
Not as good as I’d hoped,
but he really does get around and meet all kinds of Siberians. |
|
225 |
3/03 |
Harry Potter and the
Prisoner of Azkaban |
Rowling, J. K. |
Another page-turner. I
figured out really early that Serious Black as a good guy, but it is a
children’s book. |
|
224 |
3/03 |
Frost in the Sun |
Lorrimer, Claire |
A real page-turner but a
silly immature view of love where an 18 year old decides she can never love
another, and it actually comes true even though me marries another and shows
no interest for 15 years. |
|
223 |
3/03 |
A Fight Caught in Time:
The Search for the Coelocanth |
Weinberg, Samantha |
The Coelocanth is the fish
that was thought to have been extinct 70 million years ago, but then was
caught off South Africa in 1938. The book tells the interesting story of the
search for it, but after seeing pictures of it on the web, I really don’t
think this is such a significant fish after all. They found out that their
theory that it used its legs to crawl along the sea bottom was incorrect, so
it may not be our ancestor after all. |
|
222 |
3/03 |
The Surgeon of Crowthorn |
Winchester, Simon |
I’d already listened to
this under the American title “The professor and the Madman,” but it was
worth a 2nd listen. I learned stuff. |
|
221 |
2/03 |
Blue Mars |
Robinson, Kim Stanley |
I’ve finally finished Robinson’s
Mars trilogy, and now that I’ve got to the end, I like it a lot. He gets in a
lot of ideas about science, economics, sociology, people, etc. It’s not
strong on plot. It has lots of little plots that start and stop, but they
don’t intertwine as the will in high literature. The overall plot is only the
gradual terra forming of Mars. |
|
220 |
2/03 |
Coming up for Air |
Orwell, George |
I love Orwell. This one’s
a bit depressing about a guy who takes no control over his life, but it’s
still good. |
|
219 |
2/03 |
Liberalism in the Classic
Tradition |
Von Mesis, Ludwig |
Not as bad as “Human
Action,” but still makes a very weak case on a lot of platitudes. For
example, he believes that cultural diversity implies that there should be no government
support for education, because it will inherently favor one language group
over another. He doesn’t think the government is capable of deciding (even as
a compromise) what language(s) the schools should be in, but he never
mentions what language the courts should be in, so he seems to tacitly
believe that the government is capable coming up with a good compromise for
what language the courts should speak. |
|
218 |
2/03 |
Hannibal |
|
A fictional biography of the
“I, Claudius” type. I think I’m getting tired of these, yet I know I’m going
to listen to the author’s other book on Scipio. |
|
217 |
1/03 |
In Patagonia |
Chatwin, Bruce |
Some of the stories were
interesting, but it was just a disorganized bunch of stories that doesn’t add
up to much. |
|
216 |
1/03 |
The Other End of Time |
Dohl, Fred |
Disappointing |
|
215 |
1/03 |
The Longest Walk |
Meegan, Gregory |
Good. For people like me
who have the desire to do nonstandard things like that it’s good to know somebody
did. But it seems like my travel stories are just as interesting as his.
Also, it seems that our world is know so closed and well known that we’ve got
to invent stuff like this to do. There’s no exploration anymore, there’s just
extreme tourism anymore. |
|
214 |
1/03 |
Timescape |
Benford, Gregory |
Interesting, but it was
hard to follow the cuts between time on tape. He explains the possibility of
affecting the past as dividing the universe into two. |
|
213 |
1/03 |
A Map of the World |
Hamilton, Jane |
I was compelled by
listening, but vaguely disappointed by the ending. |
|
212 |
1/03 |
Growing up |
Baker, Russell |
Really good look into life
during the depression and the war. |
|
211 |
1/03 |
April 1865: The Month that
Saved America |
Winik, Jay |
I was annoyed by how it
used the month to repackage the story of the whole war, but I learned
interesting stuff. He made a good case that if Robert E. Lee had not
surrendered, but go to the hills to fight a guerilla was, as Jefferson Davis
wanted, many of the troops would have followed his lead and the was would
have gone on much longer. |
|
210 |
12/02 |
Sitting Bull and his World |
Marrin, Albert |
Good book. Sad, but it
pointed out the brutality of both sides. I didn’t know that the Lakota had
only taken over the black hills about 100 years before the whites took it
away from them. |
|
209 |
12/02 |
The Woodlanders |
Hardy, Thomas |
Interesting plot twists,
but sometimes predictable. At times I thought he was going to make a political
point. Then he didn’t. |
|
208 |
12/02 |
Terra Incognita |
Wheeler, Sara |
Dull, I’m very interested
in the topic of Antarctica. Maybe despite that living in Antarctica is
inherently dull, or maybe the book is dull. It’s hard to say. |
|
207 |
12/02 |
The Old Patagonian Express |
Theroux, Paul |
Although it was pretty
good, I think my travel stories are a lot more interesting. I thought the
same of Bill Bryson. |
|
206 |
11/02 |
The Last English King |
|
Didn’t care for it very
much. |
|
205 |
11/02 |
The Blind Assassin |
Atwood, Margaret |
Depressing and a little
disappointing. Like “the Handmaid’s Tale,” it had the theme of a young woman
sleeping with an older man only for the purpose of having children while an
older woman who has more power and respect is hanging around. What is that
theme supposed to represent? |
|
204 |
11/02 |
The song of Troy |
McCullough, Colleen |
Except for the very
beginning she tells it as if there are no Gods, so it’s not the real legend.
I’ve listened to the Iliad and the parts that overlap are very different. So,
I can’t count on this book to give me a good knowledge of the Troy Legend,
and of course, it can’t give me any idea of what actually happened either,
because no one knows what really happened. It will give me an idea of what it
would have been like if the mythical people in the traditional story had been
actual people. I’m not sure what that’s worth but it’s a good story. |
|
203 |
11/02 |
The Long Dark Tea-Time of
the Soul |
Adams, Douglas |
Has some good Douglas
Adams one liners, but mostly it sucks. It’s an uninteresting take on a tired
idea. |
|
202 |
11/02 |
Genome |
Ridley, Matt |
Very good. I learned a
lot. Although it was interesting that the author’s apparently libertarian political
views came out in a book that wasn’t directly political. |
|
201 |
11/02 |
The Uplift War |
Brin, David |
Sucks, I’m sorry I
listened to the whole thing. It had loose ends and it get duller as it went on.
It climaxed with rather uninteresting legal maneuvers. |
|
200 |
11/02 |
Green Mars |
Robinson, Kim Stanley |
I can’t say I love it, but
I’m sticking with this trilogy to the end. |
|
199 |
10/02 |
A History of Islam |
|
Too short to get much out
of |
|
198 |
10/02 |
A Short History of
Byzantium |
Norwich, John Julius |
Interesting read |
|
197 |
10/02 |
I, Judas |
Caldwell, Taylor and Jess
Stearn |
A little too Christian to
be very creative. It’s obvious that pretty much the only source is the New Testament.
It mostly tells the story of the Gospel. I already knew that story. The
supposed motives of Judas aren’t that believable or that compelling. |
|
196 |
10/02 |
Claudius, the God |
? |
Captivating, but too much of
a whitewash. It makes you wish you could really know what really happened. |
|
195 |
10/02 |
Eminent Victorians |
Strachey, Liton |
Gordon and Nightingale
were interesting, but the stories of the religious figures were really
boring. |
|
194 |
10/02 |
Fury |
Rushdie, Salmon |
Didn’t get it all. Not
sure if it’s worth listening to again. |
|
193 |
10/02 |
Red Mars |
Robinson, Kim Stanley |
Good sci-fi, but hits on
too many of the same issues I’d just written in “The Cure for Death” this summer.
That was disappointing to me. |
|
192 |
10/02 |
The Pound: A Biography |
Sinclair, David |
Good history of the
currency, but underestimates its likelihood to be subsumed into the Euro. |
|
191 |
7/02 |
John Adams |
McCullough, David |
Really long book, but I
never got board with it. |
|
190 |
7/02 |
The March of Folly: From
Troy to Vietnam |
Tuchman, Barbara |
She has a very important
point, but she goes into too much explanatory historical detail that’s not
necessary to make her point. The intro make the point, the rest is more like
story telling than support. |
|
189 |
7/02 |
Harriet Tubman: Conductor
on the Underground Rail Road |
? |
She’s a hero. |
|
188 |
7/02 |
The Long Walk |
Rawicz, Slavomir |
Some things about this story
make it unbelievable. Like two stretches of 10 days without water in the Gobi
and seeing strange creatures in the Himalayas that match the description of
the abominable snowman. The survival for so long without water could be
explained by drinking the blood of the dead without mentioning it. But if the
story’s true they were awfully stupid. |
|
187 |
7/02 |
Dave Barry Does Japan |
Barry, Dave |
Funny. |
|
186 |
7/02 |
Ecotopia: An Audio Novel |
Callenbach, Ernest |
It was clearly shortened when
it was adapted for audio. Every utopian novel has something weird about it.
In this case it was ritual war games. The men act out their aggressions by
fighting each other with sticks in groups. The ecological ideas are
interesting. He just mentions the guaranteed minimum income. |
|
185 |
7/02 |
Liberalism in the Classic
Tradition |
Van Mises, Ludwig |
True liberalism is the
only sustainable economic system. True liberalism has never been tried by any
state in human history. Although he makes a few good points, when you’ve got
contradictions that large it’s hard to say it’s very meaningful. He believes
he makes not value judgment, that his conclusions are based purely on
science, and thus he must make the extreme claim that no government economic
interventions can work, and that unregulated markets always work, without
reference to an empirical verification of these claims and very scant
theoretical support is well. Since his time there have been a number of
theories of market failure that show quite clearly that unregulated markets
do not always work. |
|
184 |
7/02 |
To the Scaffold (Biography
of Marie Antoinette) |
Erickson, Carolly |
I’m really scrapping the
bottom of the barrel of history books available at the 53rd St.
Library, but it was actually a pretty good account of the revolution. It
could have used an epilogue. It ends the moment she dies. Says she asked
somebody to take care of her kids. Never said whether they survived. |
|
183 |
5/02 |
The Wars of the Roses |
Gillingham, John |
His premise is that the
Wars of the Roses aren’t nearly as interesting as Shakespeare makes them out
to be. And he makes a good case. |
|
182 |
5/02 |
The Voyage of the Armada |
Howarth, David |
Those Spanish really fucked
up. |
|
181 |
5/02 |
This Side of Paradise |
Fitzgerald, F. Scott |
That Fitzgerald’s a
genius, even if it’s not his best work. |
|
180 |
5/02 |
Star Trek: Deep Space
Nine: Warped. |
Jeter, K. W. |
Not that good of a Trek
novel. |
|
179 |
5/02 |
The Search for Intelligent
Life in Space. |
Shostak, Seth |
Although it was mostly
stuff I’d heard before, the lectures were very well done and captivating |
|
178 |
5/02 |
Annals of Tacitus,
abridged |
Tacitus |
I couldn’t get through it.
Not even this highly abridged edition. |
|
177 |
5/02 |
Free to Choose |
Friedman, Milton |
This was one of the most
influential books in my life. I read it when I was 14 and it made a big impression
on me, starting an interest that lead me to become an economist and lead me
to being a supporter of BIG. I’ve wanted to read it again, but I didn’t take
the time, and I was kind of afraid to until now. Although there were some
things I strongly objected to, it still impressed me with the importance of
knowing what works. He’s right to point out that many liberal policies that
we’ve tried haven’t worked. He’s wrong to say that therefore we should do
nothing. But if we don’t take arguments like his seriously, we can’t find
anything that does work. |
|
176 |
5/02 |
The Road to Wigan Pier |
Orwell, George |
The stuff about the lives
of the miners was great, but the last third of the book was a very dated essay
on how to get the working and middle classes to choose socialism instead of
fascism. |
|
175 |
5/02 |
Wealth and Poverty |
Gilder, George |
Really it’s just a shit
sandwich. He claims to propose a solution to poverty, but he actually
proposes no solution to poverty; he says only that the spur of poverty is a
good thing to get people to move up over several generations. He thinks it’s
good for women to be financial dependent on man, which means that he doesn’t
believe in freedom. |
|
174 |
4/02 |
The Last of the Mohicans |
Cooper, James Fenimore |
Well, I got through it.
But I couldn’t pass a quiz on it. I should’ve given up after a few cassettes. |
|
173 |
4/02 |
Empire of the Sun |
Ballard, J. G. |
A thought it was good the way
he got into the kids head. I’m glad I’m not the only one who was still that
naïve at 14, but I didn’t think he did as a good a job getting into everyone
else’s head. This is a rare case in which the movie was better than the book. |
|
172 |
4/02 |
Journey to Shiloh |
Henry, Will |
A little too Hollywood,
but an entertaining listen. |
|
171 |
4/02 |
The Wanderer |
Leiber, Fritz |
A good story. Early in the
book one of the characters says that science fiction is inherently trivial
because it deals with phenomena instead of people. It was very listenable,
but I was vaguely disappointed, I think because it really didn’t focus on the
hardships that so many people in the world suffered in the book. The story
focused on people who were relatively unscathed. |
|
170 |
4/02 |
A Separate Peace |
Knowles, John |
I enjoyed it |
|
169 |
4/02 |
The Rough Riders |
Roosevelt, Theodore |
I like the inside story. |
|
168 |
4/02 |
Moll Flanders |
Defoe, Daniel |
It’s the most listenable of
Defoe’s books. Well, the Robinson Crusoe I listened to was only an
abridgement, so I can’t go by that, but it’s much more listenable than A
Journal of the Plague Year. It’s supposedly a tale of a wicked woman who
repents late in life, but looked at with our modern morals, it’s all twisted
around. Most of her early wickedness involves sex outside of wedlock, and
accidentally marrying the brother she didn’t know she had. So, she looks less
wicked and more like a woman trying to make it in a sexist society. But it’s
all about maintaining property so that she doesn’t have to get a job. So she
does seem lazy. But it’s a Bourgeois upper class laziness. Well, she also
seems selfish because she keeps giving up her children. When she’s too old to
merry again she becomes a thief, and reforms when she inherits a bunch of
property from her mother in Virginia. But it’s only after her reform that she
commits her worst crime: she becomes a slave owner, but the author doesn’t
see this as in any way tainting her reform. By this time she’s reunited with
a husband with whom she had a child about 10 or 15 years earlier, but they
never consider sending for the child to offer him a share in the inheritance. |
|
167 |
3/02 |
Dracula |
Stoker, Bram |
A good story. I’ve seen a bunch
of movies of it, but none of them could let you know that the book was told
through a series of different narrators as letters and journal entries. |
|
166 |
3/02 |
Give me Liberty |
Spence, Gerry |
He talks very angrily about
a world where people are dependent on their jobs, where corporations have too
much power over people’s lives, and where government is run for the
corporations and not the people. He wants to replace elections with
government by lot. I think he overstates his case, but on some points he’s
right on. I like his anger. I wouldn’t replace all elections with government
by lot, but one house drawn by lot would be a good idea. |
|
165 |
3/02 |
Faster: The Acceleration
of Just About Everything |
Gleick, James |
I don’t know what his
point is. He debunks some accounts that things are going faster, but he talks
about other things that are without drawing much of a conclusion. I think
maybe he means that we feel rushed even if we’re just rushing ourselves. |
|
164 |
3/02 |
Maestro: Greenspan’s Fed
and the American Boom, abridged. |
Woodward, Bob |
A little too glowing. I
hate abridgements. You really don’t know what you’re missing. Also the last
tape screwed up so I didn’t hear anything after 1998. |
|
163 |
3/02 |
The Last Man on the Moon,
abridged |
Cernan, Eugene |
I enjoyed getting the
inside story of the Apollo program. |
|
162 |
3/02 |
Will Rogers: Reflections
and Observations 1922-1928 |
Rogers, Will |
Complied and edited by Frances
N. Sterling. I don’t think his humor holds up after 80 years. I liked the
political stuff best, even though they were the most dated. But his
observations of everyday life, we’re just I don’no, not funny. |
|
161 |
3/02 |
The Brothers Karamatzov |
Dostoevsky, Fyodor. |
I’ve only listened to part
one of three. I’m not sure I’ll check out the rest. Really hard to get
through. I listened to the Grand Inquisitor twice and still didn’t get it. |
|
160 |
2/02 |
The Feeling of What Happens:
Body and Emotion in the Making of Consciousness |
Damasio, Antonio R. |
Learned some stuff, but it
had too many technical terms. |
|
159 |
2/02 |
A Tree Grows in Brooklyn |
Smith, Betty |
A subtext runs through this:
you can tell that one of the author’s motivations in righting this book was
to give a big fuck you to everybody who under-appreciated her as a child. Her
mother, her teachers, etc. She tells their story so well, and so
sympathetically, but makes sure to include the times when they screwed her
over. They put her down. She tells their story her way. I love it. It’s also
sad but optimistic and moving. |
|
158 |
2/02 |
The Island of Doctor
Moreua |
Wells, H.G. |
A good story, but does it really
say something about what it means to be human? I’m not sure. I guess the
moral to the story is that the leopard can’t change his spots. So to speak.
But then a few weeks later, I saw Deirdre (formerly Donald) McClosky speak at
the EEA conference. I could see the masculinity resurfacing out of the body
shaped into a female. So maybe Wells does have a point. |
|
157 |
2/02 |
Pilgrimage to Medina and
Mecca |
Burton, Sir Richard
Francis |
A short account of his
haj. He lived a very interesting life. |
|
156 |
2/02 |
Don’t Look Now and other
stories |
du Maurier, Daphne |
Didn’t even bother to
finish it. I just didn’t find the stories interesting. |
|
155 |
2/02 |
Kennedy and Nixon: The
Rivalry that Shaped Postwar America |
Matthew, Christopher |
Their lives were
intricately connected right up until Nixon’s downfall. |
|
154 |
2/02 |
Bridget Jones: The Edge of
Reason |
Fielding, Helen |
Being a single person, I’m
interested in this book. But since Bridget is such an over-the-top
caricature, I thought at times that it fell into the Raney trap,
condescending to its own narrator. But not as bad as Raney. Here you’re
clearly supposed to identify with the narrator, while in Raney the book
seemed to ask you to look down on the narrator and identify with her husband. |
|
153 |
2/02 |
Alexander Hamilton, an
Intimate Portrait |
Emery, Moemie |
He had some contradictory
beliefs. He thought people were naturally base and knavish, but was
sympathetic towards Monarchy or a very strong executive, thinking that they would
be above corruption. |
|
152 |
2/02 |
Trial by Ice: The True
Story of Murder and Survival on the 1871 Polaris Expedition |
Parry, Richard |
This was the book on tape
equivalent of “I couldn’t put it down”—“I couldn’t turn it off,” I guess? It was
a really captivating story that read like a novel. He got a little over
dramatic with the use of phrases like, “they wouldn’t have long to wait,” but
other than that it was very good. He kept you in suspense until the very end
as to weather a murder had really occurred, when it didn’t have to. So I felt
a bit manipulated, but he did it to great dramatic effect. |
|
151 |
2/02 |
The Vinland Sagas: The
Norse Discovery of America |
Anonymous |
It was highly abridged and
the translation doesn’t make the most exiting storytelling, but it’s good to
hear. |
|
150 |
1/02 |
Abraham Lincoln: the
Prairie Years |
Sandberg, Carl |
I was surprised at all the
racist remarks Sandberg said about Indians. It gets a little tedious in the
minute details, but it was good. |
|
149 |
1/02 |
The Wealth of Nations |
Smith, Adam |
I was so happy to finish
this book. It’s THE classic work in economics, but it’s 25 90-minute
cassettes. Much of it is not all that interesting and most of what is interesting
is stuff, as an economist, you’ve heard before. You really know these issues.
You know where he got it right; you know where he made mistakes. There are
probably some gems of wisdom to find that have passed people by, but it’s
tedious to try and listen for them. It has many digressions about alcohol
taxes and the reformation, and much more. It took listening on and off for
over a month. |
|
148 |
1/02 |
Neanderthal |
Darnton, John |
It was OK. The Neanderthal
being telepathic was one thing, but in the end they didn’t want to disturb
the Neanderthal life, so they kept their existence a secret, which of course
means that the next person that stumbles on them can exploit them. |
|
147 |
1/02 |
The Great Catherine |
Erickson, Carolly |
Didn’t like it. She made
her sound like too much of a hero, which I really don’t see. |
|
146 |
1/02 |
The Razor’s Edge |
Maugham, Somerset |
I was disappointed. He did
a good job of showing what the guy was rebelling against, but his version of
enlightened lifestyle didn’t appeal to me as much of an alternative. |
|
145 |
1/02 |
In Pursuit of Reason
(Biography of Thomas Jefferson) |
Cummings, Noble E. |
Made me want to listen to
more stuff about the founding fathers. |
|
144 |
12/01 |
The Adventures of Sherlock
Holmes |
Doyle, Arthur Conan |
I wasn’t that into it,
following the little details or the implication that you can always solve a
crime by looking at these details. |
|
143 |
12/01 |
Jackson, a Novel |
|
A fictional story about a
guy who’s writing a nonfiction anti-Andrew Jackson book during the election
of 1928. The character author refuses to throw dirt on Jackson’s wife—the only
thing that might actually keep Jackson from being elected. Ends with
Jackson’s election so it doesn’t even mention some of his worst crimes. |
|
142 |
12/01 |
The Turn of the Screw |
James, Henry |
I just didn’t get it. I’d
like to say it sucked, but really I didn’t pay close enough attention to say
much of anything about it. It only held my attention for a brief period
toward the end of the first cassette, which was when I made the decision to
listen to the rest of it. |
|
141 |
12/01 |
The History of the Jews |
Johnson, Paul |
Not quite what I wanted to
know. Mentions the Hasidim, but doesn’t say how the movement got started.
Mentions the Ethiopian Jews, but doesn’t say how or when they got there.
Mentions the Samarian Jews, but doesn’t say if or when they died out. |
|
140 |
12/01 |
Fight Club |
|
One of those rare cases
where the book is not as good as the movie. |
|
139 |
12/01 |
Great Expectation |
Dickens, Charles |
I don’t really have a
comment |
|
138 |
11/01 |
The Experiment |
|
About cloning and
longevity, but too much of a chase movie for me. |
|
137 |
11/01 |
Sarek |
|
The first full-length Star
Trek book I’ve listened to. The others were 1 or 2 cassettes or maybe 4—like
extended episodes, but this one was 10 cassettes, like a real novel. It had
some really good moments and some stupid moments. |
|
136 |
11/01 |
Patriots |
Langguth, A.J. |
Even though it was 15
cassettes I felt like they were fast forwarding through the revolution. |
|
135 |
11/01 |
Voyage to the North Star |
Nichols, Peter |
No Voyage of the Narwhal. |
|
134 |
11/01 |
Shout! The Beatles in
their Generation |
Norman, Philip |
I think it was more
interesting for its topic than its writing. |
|
133 |
11/01 |
From the Anals of Tacitus |
Tacitus |
Just excerpts, only 3
cassettes |
|
132 |
11/01 |
Waterloo: Day of Battle |
Howarth. David |
Good, but like Stars in
their courses it’s mostly about what it’s like to be in battle, which isn’t
what I’m most interested in. |
|
131 |
11/01 |
The Great Crash of 1929 |
Galbraith. John Kenneth |
More history than economic
theory. |
|
130 |
10/01 |
Julius Caesar |
Grant. Michael |
I’m not sure if it’s the
author or the topic, but I found the endless political intrigues boring. |
|
129 |
10/01 |
The Hitler of History |
|
A study of the more than
100 different biographies that’ve been written about Hitler. I think I
would’ve liked a straight-ahead biography better. But as I was listening to this
in New York shortly after 9/11, I was really struck by Hitler saying that you
can only unite people by love of country so much. To really unite them you
need to unite them in their hate of someone else. That was chilling. The
outpouring of love after 9/11 was a little of both. |
|
128 |
10/01 |
Bagombo Snuff Box,
collected short fiction |
Vonnegut. Kurt |
Some of his stuff’s pretty
good. |
|
127 |
10/01 |
Napoleon 1812: Retreat
from Moscow. |
|
Interesting |
|
126 |
10/01 |
Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s
Stone. |
Rowling, J. K. |
Captivating at times. The
middle began to lose my interest when it was all about school. |
|
125 |
10/01 |
Brave New World |
Huxley, Aldus |
Some of it seems dated to
me. Didn’t understand the last scene. |
|
124 |
10/01 |
Crime and Punishment |
Dostoevsky. Fyodor |
Robert Louis Stevenson’s
review says it all (I was glad to finish it, it was like having an illness).
I had trouble concentrating on it, but I got most of it. Strange that it has
a sort of a quasi-happy ending. |
|
123 |
9/01 |
The Fires of Jubilee:
Story of the Nat Turner Rebellion |
|
It was a small and sat
rebellion that couldn’t’ve happened without Turners religious Zealotry and
delusions, and it was really brutal, but I’m glad somebody stood up to them. Is
that everything in September? Am I leaving something out or is that it? |
|
122 |
9/01 |
Hocus Pocus |
Vonnegut, Kurt |
Very good |
|
121 |
9/01 |
The Physics of Star Trek |
|
OK |
|
120 |
9/01 |
The Road to Serfdom |
Hayek. F. A. |
It’s stuff that I’ve heard
so many times before that it doesn’t seem new. I guess it was ground-breaking
in ’44. But it also seems silly to say all reforms lead to socialism today.
He does endorse a guaranteed income. |
|
119 |
9/01 |
The Girl Who Owned a City |
|
I read excerpts of this
when I was in junior high so I really wanted to get to read it. It makes a
very extreme case for property rights. |
|
118 |
8/01 |
War and Peace |
Tolstoy |
I listened to it twice, once
in June and once in August 2001. Parts of it was great, but at times I
thought he was condescending towards to serfs. The idea of having his
nonfiction editorial chapters mixed with the fiction book was weird. He’s way
too fanatical about no free will and the influence of historical ideas, and
he’s a little too much with the virtue. But you can’t beat him on
characterization. Even the minor characters are very well thought out and
very real. |
|
117 |
7/01 |
The Confessions of St.
Augustine |
St. Augustine |
I tried to listen, but I
didn’t finish it. The translation and the recording both sucked so it’s
really hard to tell if the underlying book was any good or not. |
|
116 |
6/01 |
War and Peace |
Tolstoy |
First listening see below. |
|
115 |
5/01 |
the Dome |
|
Not bad |
|
114 |
5/01 |
Left Behind |
|
Religions fantasy about
revelations. Listenable, but when you think about the fundamentalist agenda
behind it, well. |
|
113 |
5/01 |
Star Trek Generations |
|
The movie adapted to a book.
Not a great book or movie. But if it’s Star Trek, I’ll listen. |
|
112 |
97-01 |
Shiloh |
Foote,
Shelby |
Confusing,
but I guess that’s the point. It’s about what it’s like to be in battle
rather than the grand overview. |
|
111 |
97-01 |
Raney |
|
This
book condescends to its own narrator. Its narrated by a naïve southern woman,
but you’re clearly supposed to identify with her husband and to laugh at her
quaint beliefs. I didn’t like that at all. |
|
110 |
97-01 |
Lila |
Pirsig,
Robert M. |
He
takes on psychology in this one. It’s not as good as Zen, but he has an
interesting perspective. |
|
109 |
97-01 |
Zen
and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance |
Pirsig,
Robert M. |
It’s
not much about Zen; it’s about Greek philosophy. |
|
108 |
97-01 |
Wuthering
Heights, |
Bronte |
I
didn’t get it. |
|
107 |
97-01 |
Why
not me? |
Franken
Al |
funny
|
|
106 |
97-01 |
What it Means to be a
Libertarian (abridged) |
Murray Charles |
Interesting contradictions.
Doesn’t want any federal spending because it is coopted by interest groups,
but he makes an exception for interstate highways which are of course an
enormous subsidy for auto and oil industries. |
|
105 |
97-01 |
War as I Knew It |
Patton George S. |
hard to believe he could
make World War II so boring. I didn’t even finish. |
|
104 |
97-01 |
Walden,
or Life in the Woods |
Thoreau,
Henry David |
Know
it all. |
|
103 |
97-01 |
Voyage of the Narwhal |
|
I liked it a lot. |
|
102 |
97-01 |
Voyage
of the Beagle |
Darwin,
Charles |
Guy’s
a genius, but he gets more and more racists the longer the voyage goes on. He
says some very social Drawinist stuff even though they say was Spencer that
started social Darwinism. |
|
101 |
97-01 |
Underboss |
Gravano.
Sammy “the Bull” |
Really
interesting. |
|
100 |
97-01 |
Thomas Moore bio |
|
Interesting |
|
99 |
97-01 |
Thinner |
King
Steven |
sucks
|
|
98 |
97-01 |
The White Nile |
|
Interesting |
|
97 |
97-01 |
The
Trial and Death of Socrates |
Plato |
Can’t
sum up Plato in a paragraph |
|
96 |
97-01 |
The
Story of Philosophy |
|
Well
done |
|
95 |
97-01 |
The Shipping News |
|
I thought it was dull |
|
94 |
97-01 |
The
Seven Habits of Highly Effective People |
|
OK |
|
93 |
97-01 |
The
Scarlet letter |
Hawthorne,
Nathaniel |
Not
as relevant to my life. |
|
92 |
97-01 |
The Russian Revolution. |
|
|
|
91 |
97-01 |
The
Republic of Plato |
Plato |
Can’t
sum him up in a paragraph, but I got a quote out of this that I used in my
“Reciprocity and GI” paper. |
|
90 |
97-01 |
The Red Badge of Courage |
|
Good. |
|
89 |
97-01 |
The Rants |
Miller. Dennis |
Not as funny as I’d hoped. |
|
88 |
97-01 |
The Professor and the
Madman |
|
Interesting. |
|
87 |
97-01 |
The Perfect Storm |
|
Well written and interesting
material. |
|
86 |
97-01 |
The
Odyssey |
Homer |
Sorry,
but other than it’s one of the oldest pieces of literature, I don’t see how
it’s one of the best. If it came out today they’d classify it as fantasy
trash. |
|
85 |
97-01 |
The
Memoirs of U.S. Grant, only part 1 of 3 |
Grant,
U.S. |
Good,
I’d like to listen to the rest if I could find it. |
|
84 |
97-01 |
The Island of the
Colorblind |
|
Very good. |
|
83 |
97-01 |
The
Iliad |
Homer |
The
Odyssey was better. It’s about the Trojan War without the Trojan horse, the
face that lost a thousand ships, or Achilles getting an arrow in the foot.
It’s about Gods sleeping around and how you should take your anger out on
people’s bodies after you’ve already killed them. |
|
82 |
97-01 |
The
House of Myrth |
|
Excellent |
|
81 |
97-01 |
The
Handmaid's Tail |
Atwood,
Margaret |
I
love dystopias. |
|
80 |
97-01 |
The
Greatness of the Great Gatsby |
|
A
lecture on what a good book it was that was almost as long as the book
itself. A lot of symbolism I’d never get. And you wonder if all of it was
really intentional, but I guess you’ve got’a give’m that |
|
79 |
97-01 |
The
Greatest Generation, abridged |
Brokaw,
Tom |
Just
some homespun wisdom. |
|
78 |
97-01 |
The
Great Gatsby |
Fitzgerald,
F. Scott |
Good,
but I think I’ve missed a lot of the subtleties that make everyone say it’s
so great. |
|
77 |
97-01 |
The
Gift of the Jews |
|
It
was more a book on Jewish history, and too brief to cover that very well. |
|
76 |
97-01 |
The
Fourth Estate |
|
Fun. |
|
75 |
97-01 |
The
Epic of Gilgemesh |
|
I
didn’t get it until I listened to the lecture on it in the Superstar Teachers
Series. But it’s great. It’s supposedly the oldest piece of literature yet
found, but it has a more mature view of human life than so many religions
that came later. Gil does everything to try to obtain eternal life, only to
be told by the Gods that there’s nothing he has they want to trade for it. He
gets depressed, but then realizes he has to make his life meaningful by
caring for his community. |
|
74 |
97-01 |
The
Dilbert Principle |
|
very
good definition of work, something like anything you don’t like doing that
you have to do anyway. |
|
73 |
97-01 |
The
Confessions of Saint Augustine |
St.
Augustine |
It's
supposed to be a great great book, but the translation is unbelievably bad. They
translated it into Shakespearian English. Translate it into a language I
KNOW. Just cause it's by an early Christian doesn't mean it has to read like
the King James Bible. |
|
72 |
97-01 |
The
Breathing Method |
King
Steven |
Good. |
|
71 |
97-01 |
The
Body |
King
Steven |
Great,
but the movie was better. They took out the crap and rearranged stuff in a
good way. |
|
70 |
97-01 |
The Blue Nile |
|
Interesting |
|
69 |
97-01 |
The
Bible with the apocrypha |
Various |
I
thought there was no way I’d get through Leviticus and numbers, but I did. It
was the Psalms and the Apocrypha that was the most boring. Maybe that’s why
they left the Apocrypha out. I was surprised at how anti-Semitic some
passages in the New Testament were. We never listened to those in scripture
readings in church. |
|
68 |
97-01 |
The
Bell Jar |
Plat,
Silvia |
Given
that it’s about a person with suicidal depression by a person with suicidal
depression, it’s like Kurt Cobain music without being set to music. |
|
67 |
97-01 |
The
Barbarians |
|
Interesting,
but it tries to put too many groups together. The Goths who invaded Rome are
grouped in with Mongols that invaded Europe 800 years later. |
|
66 |
97-01 |
The
autobiography of Martin Luther King |
King,
M.L. |
Not
a true biography, pieced together for speeches, essays, and letters, but
pretty good. |
|
65 |
97-01 |
The 12 Emperors |
|
Asks me to respect these
guys. |
|
64 |
97-01 |
Tender
is the Night |
Fitzgerald,
F. Scott |
Good.
The way she recovers and he falls off. |
|
63 |
97-01 |
Tails of Survival on the
Worlds Highest Peaks |
|
Captivating. |
|
62 |
97-01 |
Various
short story compilations |
Various |
Twain,
Hawthorne, Hemmingway, Bradbarry, F. Scott Fizgerald, Kipling. Hawthorne’s
stories were amazing, but I was disappointed and didn’t even finish his
novel, not the scarlet letter, the other one, I can’t even remember the name. |
|
61 |
97-01 |
Stars
in their Courses |
Foote,
Shelby |
OK |
|
60 |
97-01 |
Star
Trek Movie Memories |
Shatner
William |
It’s
Shatner on Shatner. |
|
59 |
97-01 |
Star
Trek Memories |
Shatner
William |
It’s
Shatner on Shatner. |
|
58 |
97-01 |
Short
stories by Ray Bradbury |
Bradbury,
Ray |
Good. |
|
57 |
97-01 |
Several
lectures on Dickens |
|
Learned
something. |
|
56 |
97-01 |
Sea Wolf |
|
Very good. |
|
55 |
97-01 |
Salis
Mariner |
|
Good.
And it mentions never paying somebody not to do something |
|
54 |
97-01 |
Sailing alone around the
world |
|
As boring as it sounds |
|
53 |
97-01 |
Return
to the Moon |
|
Sucks.
Only one book was worse and I can’t remember the title. It was about a
strange race living underground—Descent, perhaps. |
|
52 |
97-01 |
Real Boys |
|
Made me cry while playing
Tetris at the Bard College game room |
|
51 |
97-01 |
Rasputin—bio |
|
I find this guy
fascinating |
|
50 |
97-01 |
Pure
Drivel |
Martin
Steve |
very
funny |
|
49 |
97-01 |
Portrait
of the Artist as a Young Man |
Joyce
James |
Good,
but I could use a second listen. |
|
48 |
97-01 |
Pimsular’s
Speak and Read Essential French I |
Pimsular |
I
think I learned a lot from these tapes, but – oh well. |
|
47 |
97-01 |
Numerous
Star Trek Novels by William Shatner and the others |
Shatner,
William and others |
I
just enjoy listening to these. |
|
46 |
97-01 |
Never be Lied to Again |
|
Paranoid. Tells how to get
somebody to tell you the truth assuming they’re lying, doesn’t say how to
recognize truth if your suspicions are false. I didn’t finish it. I don’t
think I have a big problem with people lying to me all that much anyway. |
|
45 |
97-01 |
Nelson Mandella, autobio,
abridged |
Madella, Nelson |
I’ve got to listen to the
full story. |
|
44 |
97-01 |
Napoleon,
bio |
|
made
me want to write an imaginary autobiography of him |
|
43 |
97-01 |
Moby
Dick |
Melville,
Herman |
I’d
been lead to believe that it was exceedingly boring, but actually it held my
interest. |
|
42 |
97-01 |
Man's
Search for Meaning |
Frankel,
Victor |
Very
good. I think you could write an amazing black comedy out of this, but you’d
have to wait until 2045 at least. |
|
41 |
97-01 |
Longitude |
|
Interesting. |
|
40 |
97-01 |
Lee and Grant |
|
Interesting |
|
39 |
97-01 |
Last Days of the Tsar—I
think it was called |
|
Interesting |
|
38 |
97-01 |
Larry’s Party |
Shields, Carol |
Told in a funny way that
really reduces the dramatic tension. |
|
37 |
97-01 |
Keep
the Aspidistra Flying |
Orwell,
George |
The
happy ending is sad. The main character gives up his dreams and surrenders to
a normal life. But maybe he was such a bad poet that that was the right move. |
|
36 |
97-01 |
Josephine:
a life of the Empress |
|
Really
stupid title. |
|
35 |
97-01 |
Invisible
Man |
Ellison,
Ralph |
Great.
Very different than Fredrick Douglas or Black Boy. The main character is just
an ordinary man who only grows into an awareness that his position is
unacceptable. |
|
34 |
97-01 |
Into Thin Air |
|
Captivating |
|
33 |
97-01 |
I, Claudius |
|
I don’t think it has even
the slightest resemblance to any thought Claudius ever had, but it’s still a
great book. |
|
32 |
97-01 |
Human
Action |
Von
Mesis, Ludwig |
Reeks.
(See my extended review somewhere in my documents folder) |
|
31 |
97-01 |
How
the Irish Saved Civilization |
|
Eh. |
|
30 |
97-01 |
Homage
to Catalonia |
Orwell,
George |
Loved
it. |
|
29 |
97-01 |
Heart of Darkness |
|
Didn’t get it. |
|
28 |
97-01 |
Hannibal,
bio |
|
Learned
from it. |
|
27 |
97-01 |
Get
a Life by William Shatner |
Shatner,
William |
Call
me crazy, but I like William Shatner. |
|
26 |
97-01 |
Frederick
Douglas, both bio and auto bio |
Douglas,
Frederick |
The
parallel between this and Black Boy (which took place, what 80 to 100 years
later?) are amazing. They’re both about a boy who was just too brilliant to
accept the subordinate role they were assigned. Others would think they were
stupid for banging their heads against the wall, but they triumphed. |
|
25 |
97-01 |
For
whom the Bell Tolls |
Hemmingway |
Very
good |
|
24 |
97-01 |
Farenheight
451 |
Bradbury,
Ray |
Not
as much too it as I’d hoped |
|
23 |
97-01 |
Dubliners |
Joyce
James |
I
liked it, but I need to listen to it again. I sometimes find it hard to keep
my concentration when listening to Joyce. |
|
22 |
97-01 |
Down
and Out in Paris and London. Great. |
Orwell,
George |
Orwell
is one of my favorite writers and this is my favorite of his books |
|
21 |
97-01 |
Desperation |
King,
Steven |
I
don’t know why I keep trying |
|
20 |
97-01 |
Dead Souls |
Gogal |
not as good as they make
it out to be. |
|
19 |
97-01 |
Confederates
in the attic |
|
Interesting |
|
18 |
97-01 |
Collect
Stories of Dorothy Parker. |
Parker,
Doroth |
Every
last story by Dorothy Parker. Each one depressing in it’s own way. The one
that sticks out involved a game of charades. |
|
17 |
97-01 |
Capitalism
and Freedom |
Friedman,
Milton |
I
think I have longer notes on this somewhere. |
|
16 |
97-01 |
Candide |
Voltaire |
Good,
but you don’t need quite that much to get the point. |
|
15 |
97-01 |
Burmese
Days |
Orwell,
George |
Orwell
has become one of my favorite authors, but not this book. |
|
14 |
97-01 |
Bag
o’Bones |
King,
Steven |
sucks
|
|
13 |
97-01 |
Atlas
Shrugged |
Rand,
Ayn |
You
want a straw man? You can ask for better than Ayn Rand. |
|
12 |
97-01 |
Anthem |
Rand, Ayn |
Probably one of her better
works. Simple enough not to get too silly in its preachiness |
|
11 |
97-01 |
Andersonville Diary |
|
Good, more readable than
most 19th century nonfiction. |
|
10 |
97-01 |
America’s Superstar
Teachers series, lectures on Political Science, Religion, and other topics |
|
These are really good |
|
9 |
97-01 |
A
Tail of Two Cities |
Dickens,
Charles |
There’s
a reason he gets so much respect. |
|
8 |
97-01 |
A Long Day’s Journey into
Night audio reading of the play |
O’Neill, Eugene |
Very good. |
|
7 |
97-01 |
A
lecture on why Wuthering Heights was so good |
|
I
still didn’t get it. |
|
6 |
97-01 |
A
lecture on the Bronte sisters |
|
Interesting |
|
5 |
97-01 |
A helmet for my pillow |
|
I didn’t finish this not
cause it was bad, just cause I had to return it before I was done with it. |
|
4 |
97-01 |
A
Brief History of Time |
Hawking,
Steven |
Interesting |
|
3 |
97-01 |
500 Nations (abridged) |
|
You try writing a 150 page
book about 500 nations and see if you can be any less superficial |
|
2 |
97-01 |
1984 |
Orwell,
George |
One
of my all-time favorites |
|
1 |
97-01 |
12 days that shook the
world |
|
A little too glowing
account of the Bolshevik revolution |