4 stars

Audiobook Review: Fake ID by Lamar Giles

July 20, 2015 Leave a Comment

Release Date: January 21, 2014
Genre: Contemporary/Thriller/Mystery
Length: 7 hours 58 minutes
Publisher: Harper Audio

In Lamar Giles debut novel, new kid in town Nick Pearson finds himself mixed up in a murder with a side of corruption. As Nick searches for answers to a murder that could upend all his secrets he dodges bullies, crashes a party and tries to keep his parents together. Move over Veronica Mars, Nick Pearson is on the case.

Lamar Giles writing is clever. He lays out tension, plot and conflict in front of you while still sneaking in a bit of misdirection. He has a great way of ending chapters on mini cliffhangers and you just HAVE to know what happens next. I totally did not see the ending coming. I was like “what !?” This isn’t really a spoiler but. . .literally anyone can die. Which takes the tension up to eleven

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Audiobook Review: Glory O’ Brien’s History of The Future by A.S. King

July 6, 2015 Leave a Comment

Release Date: October 14th 2014

Genre: Magic Realism

Audiobook Hours: 7 hours and 15 minutes
Publisher: Blackstone Audio

I picked this up from my library’s Overdrive because A.S. King is pretty much an auto-buy for me. Plus Jenn and Preeti at The Bookrageous Podcast gushed about this book in their interview with King.

King’s books tend to be near impossible to describe, so I’ll just give the premise that is in the prologue of the book. After drinking a petrified bat (stick with me here) Glory O’Brien is able to see people’s infinities–the lives of their ancestors and their descendants. As she starts putting the pieces of these visions together she realizes the near future isn’t looking so great…especially for women.

King strikes a great balance between the surreal and the real. I like how she gives her characters conflicts with small personal stakes and giant stakes. In this book there is Glory’s fear of committing suicide like her mother and uncertainty about her post high school life paired with visions of a coming war.

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Audiobook Review : Dreams Of Gods and Monsters

May 31, 2015 Leave a Comment

Release Date: April 8th 2014
Genre: Fantasy
Length: 18 hours 11 minutes
Publisher: Hachette Audio

IT IS FINISHED. I started listening to this series 3 years ago and have finally finished this sweeping epic fantasy and love story. Taylor’s use of language and creativity have me waiting eagerly to see what she will come up with next.

The Daughter of Smoke and Bone series starts off with a whimsical art student in Prague and free falls into a fantastical epic conclusion. While I enjoyed the world-building and conflict Taylor created, the ending fizzled just a bit for me. It wasn’t that I didn’t like it; it just came and went just a little to swiftly. But despite this, all these book have me sold. They are all plotted perfectly and follow an even pace.

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11/22/63 by Stephen King

May 11, 2015 Leave a Comment

Release Date: November 8th 2011

Genre: Thriller

Pages: 849

Publisher: Scribner

I’ve always been intrigued by the cover of this book; one side shows a newspaper with Kennedy’s assassination as the headline and the other side has the same newspaper with a headline saying the assassination had been avoided. This book has had been sitting on my Kindle since it was on sale for 2.99 and after finishingA Thousand Pieces of You I was looking for a more complex alternate universe story and figured King could deliver.

Everything you need to know about this book can be summarized from the cover. Basically, high school teacher, Jake Epping, goes back in time to stop the Kennedy assassination. I think saying anything else would just get… complicated….

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Ghost Boy by Martin Pistorius

February 10, 2015 2 Comments

U.S. Release Date: November 12, 2013

Page Number: 304

Genre: Nonfiction

U.S. Publisher: Thomas Nelson Publishing (Harper Collins)

I’ve recently become an NPR podcast junkie and I’m really loving their new podcast Invisibilia, about “the intangible things that shape human behavior.” Each week the hosts tell stories of people who have rare psychological or neurological experiences–on of their first stories is of Martin Pistorius, a South African man who spent six years trapped in his own body. After I heard this story, I had to know more and was happy to see his memoir was on Scribd.

When Pistorius (who as far as I can tell is not related to the convicted South African athlete Oscar Pistorius) is 12-years-old he develops a degenerative brain condition that leaves him mute and unable to move. Doctors couldn’t diagnose him and his parents were told he had the mind of a 3 month old and to take him home to wait for him to die. Only Martin doesn’t die and a few year later his mind comes back, but not his motor skills or speech. He can’t tell anyone he’s back and he lives like a ghost boy as the people around him assume he isn’t comprehending what he sees. It takes six years for his parents to finally figure out he was aware and the book is his reflections on his time as a ghost boy and his journey learning how to communicate using technology.

This book tells a really incredible story. Martin becomes well known in the Augmentative and Alternative Communication (AAC) community and it’s interesting to see all the people he meets as he goes to conference. It can be a little nightmare inducing too. One of his friends was paralyzed from the eyes down from a stroke at the age of twenty-five.But it’s amazing the amount of technology and work being done so everyone has a voice.

The parts I found most interesting are the parts where he tells the things he sees people do when they think no one is looking. He observes many of his caregivers mostly at their worse, but also some at their best.

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Tiny Beautiful Things by Cheryl Strayed

December 11, 2014 4 Comments

Release Date: July 10th 2012

Genre: Essay Collection / Self Help

Hours: 9 hours and 41 minutes

Publisher: Random House Vintage
Triggers: Child abuse

Cheryl Strayed is probably best known for Wild, the story of her journey hiking the Pacific Crest Trail, which kicked off Oprah’s Book Club 2.0 and was recently released as a film with Reese Witherspoon. I feel like a couple years ago I heard her name sprinkled through every literary website and podcast I subscribed to, so when I saw this audio on Overdrive I checked it out.

The set up for this book takes some explaining. It’s a collection of advice columns from when Strayed wrote an advice column on the culture website, The Rumpus under the pseudonym Dear Sugar. For each question, he usually picks a story from her past to illuminate her advice. Strayed has had such an interesting and full life and her stories are captivating. She’s brutally honest about herself and doesn’t hold anything back, she shows quite a bit of vulnerability with her readers and I think that’s why the columns were so popular.

I’d heard so much praise for this collection, but I wasn’t sure it would be for me. I didn’t really know what I was getting into when I started, but I really enjoyed this audiobook overall. Strayed’s mix of memoir through advice is fun. Strayed does the audio and I think hearing her voice gets across some of her intention in her responses to advice seekers. Like she calls her readers sweet pea and when you read it it can sound condescending, but the way she reads it it sounds more affectionate.

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