Douglas

Inspiring and motivational

Revisado: 10-09-16

Donald Trump is an American original. This book shows Trump has held consistent views throughout his life and yet grew in his views as he matured.

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A massive disappointment

Revisado: 07-02-16

This book came highly recommended to me and even though I am a conservative by inclination, I am always willing to listen to critical, factual information.

And this book has some very interesting factual information but when the author starts going after George W. Bush, it is like reading the front page of Raw Story.

Right now I am listening to how bad Katrina was and how it was all Bush's fault. The guy doesn't go into Ray Nagin and all the flooded school busses that could have taken people to safety, nor does he mention how Kathleen Blanco refused to let the Bush admin set up relief in advance of the storm. Nope. It was all Bush's fault. 40 years of Democrat Party corruption in maintaining the levy system in New Orleans? Doesn't come up.

I would say the first third of the book where the author writes about the history of the Bush family as very interesting and a book like this needs to be written without all the left-wing "Everything Is Bush's Fault" claptrap this tome seems to excel in.

It is a slog just to get past the last two hours of this book when the first several hours flew by. Because they were interesting and contained actual information. The last part of the book is just the typical Democrat Underground-style of baseless kvetching and blame without anything substantive or insightful given.

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King rehashes King

Revisado: 06-12-16

This book starts with a dedication to novelist and Hannibal Lector creator, Thomas Harris, and immediately my expectations plunged.

There is a scene in the otherwise forgettable Adventures of Rocky and Bullwinkle where Robert De Niro pays homage to his most quoted scene in the unforgettable Taxi Driver, the "You talkin to me" scene.

This book is Stephen King mostly paying homage to himself, most notably, The Shining, in a slightly better vehicle than De Niro had, but it is still mostly forgettable. King also liberally sprinkles references to other writers throughout the book, most notably, Thomas Harris and he recreates Steig Larson's Mikael and Lisbeth with the characters of Bill Hodges and Holly Gibney. If it the relationship wasn't obvious in the other novels it is unmistakable in End of Watch.

All the comfortable Stephen King tropes are present and if you've read any of his books in the last 40 years, nothing will surprise you here and you may even think it is a good novel if you are just looking more of the same. But at some point I think even the most diehard King fan would get bored.

This book is much better than the unnecessary Finders Keepers, which seemed to be only a place holder so King could wring a trilogy out of the Hodges character but it is still King shamelessly cribbing from himself. He is capable of much better at this stage in his career, see Under the Dome, 11-22-63, and Doctor Sleep. He is also capable of much worse, as Revival attests.

There isn't quite as much Christian bashing in this book, but he does sneak a sliver of that old King saw in as well. I think I said in the Finders Keepers review something to the effect that King seems to have checklist or box of character traits that he puts a new veneer on but even the veneer is like the paneled rooms of the 1970s.

Overall, this book is near the end of the King reading list, I think the only reason it kept my interest is because of the reader, Will Patton, who nailed these characters from the very start. But read Mr. Mercedes and then if you must, read this. You can skip Finders Keepers.

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Compelling 85% of the Story

Revisado: 06-30-15

Finders Keepers refers to a detective agency started by the protagonist from Mr. Mercedes, Bill Hodges and Bill works with Holly Gibney from the last novel too and all this is somehow shoehorned into this otherwise fine novel. Later on, Jerome Robinson from the first novel also makes an improbable visit home from Harvard or Princeton, not that it really matters which, and Jerome finds a way to inappropriately shoehorn his alter ego, the jive talking...I can't remember his name, I just hope he never makes another appearance. So those three characters make up the slow part of an otherwise engaging novel.

The good part, most of the rest of the novel, follows the parallel and separated in time lives of two protagonists who are obsessed with the fictional literary recluse, John Rothstein, who's character, Holden Caufield, or rather Jimmy Gold, AKA, The Runner, appeals to that certain kind of teen angst teenage boys are prone to. Or rather, were prone to until Political Correctness(TM) outlawed boyhood.

Unfortunately for Rothstein, the emotionally immature yet highly intelligent Morris Bellemy sees Jimmy Gold as more real than real and hates how Rothstein ended the series. Then the story alternates to Peter Saubers who discovers Rothstein some 35 years later and we see how it affects his life.

And then eventually the bad guy and the good boy have a showdown while the members of Finders Keepers fumble aimlessly through the plot, as if they had wandered into the wrong novel.

But there are many Easter Eggs (what I believe used to be called 'foreshadowing' which was a literary device used to clue in readers back in the day when we were more intelligent) that point to the third novel in the series as being a real humdinger.

So, get this novel for the 85% of it that is good and you can probably skip most of the Finders Keepers bits until near the end and be sure to listen to the epilogue because this book, while good enough, seems to merely be a place holder for something that could be really great if Stephen King doesn't let his laziness get the better of him.

Of course, the next book could be a royal disappointment as it is much easier to hint at good things than to actually produce them and Stephen King in his old age seems to increasingly resent his audience. So it's a crap shoot. But I am certainly going to be there to see what is really lurking in room 237!

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Modular King

Revisado: 06-26-15

Many of these characters have I met before in other Stephen King properties: the incestuous mother and son from Sleepwalkers, the African-American character who slips effortlessly back and forth between a dialect and proper Midwestern English, the semi-reluctant hero who is pulled into a situation that saves his life, etcetera.

But it is still an immanently entertaining listen that these character subroutines are plugged into. A non-essential yet somewhat enjoyable, if often implausible listen.

Great reader. He really brings these oft-used character subroutines to life.

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I liked everything but the epilogue

Revisado: 05-08-15

I really enjoyed and felt the truth of this book so when it got to the clichéd and hackneyed epilogue I simply employed the techniques the rest of the book gave me and didn't take it personally and didn't assume and employed doubt.

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One of my favorites...

Revisado: 04-17-15

A good novel entertains you and perhaps doles out an insight or two but a great novel transforms the world around you as you read and you aren't quite the same person who started reading the novel.

Kafka on the Shore is a great novel.

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Great story marred by an average performance

Revisado: 04-11-15

I enjoyed Mike Mayo's first detective novel, set against the backdrop of the Lindbergh kidnapping and U.S. prohibition era crime, very much. The world Mike creates is rich and textured and felt very real.

I first came to know Mike Mayo as a movie critic and his love of and expertise in movie history made this book particularly enjoyable. Mike's narrative and my imagination combined to create a world that was a softer sort of Dark City without The Strangers and I look forward to reading the other two novels in the series, either in audio format or in traditional paperback should it take a while for them to appear in audio format.

My biggest criticism would be the performance, which for the main character of Jimmy The Stick, I think the voice was fine most of the time but it was harder to distinguish other characters and at times the reading struck me as flat and uninteresting. Not a terrible performance but lacking inspiration.

If you are a person that can overlook an lackluster performance, and enjoy the mystery genre, there is much here to like and to look forward to.

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An interesting interpretation of Lovecraft

Revisado: 04-11-15

I started this story just after finishing up on Who Goes There? by John W. Campbell and I was immediately pleased I bought this book, thinking it was all a collection of Lovecraft stories from a different perspective, as the first story has to do with the events that happened in The Mountains of Madness.

But, as it turned out the whole book is a novel that takes different characters from Lovecraft's stories and brings them together on a mission to stop something from coming through.

Overall, I enjoyed the story although the choice that Oliver Wyman made for the main character, Robert Olmstead was both appropriate yet grating and while I do not fault him for his choice, I did mark the story down by one star. All of the characters are distinct and it is even masterful.

In my mind, though, Olmstead's voice would have changed as he gained more confidence.

The story itself will be familiar to any fan of Lovecraft. While not an expert on all of Lovecraft's writing, I was able to identify the majority of characters and their situations and I especially liked the bits that expanded on the Mountains of Madness

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Best Audio Book of 2014

Revisado: 12-27-14

I had tried to watch The Room a few years ago when The Cartoon Network showed it but something was so alien about the movie that it gave me a headache so, even though I am a fan of bad movies and I had seen Tommy Wiseau interviewed on Red Eye with Greg Gutfeld I put this one out of my mind for many years.

Then I was in the middle of a book on Hitchcock and The Disaster Artist came up as an Audible Deal of the Day. Well, my first instinct was to pass but I am glad I didn't.

The Disaster Artist as read by Greg Sestero should be the Audio Book of the Year. It is funny, well paced, insightful, and heart-felt.

The format of the book is to tell two stories, one being the making of Tommy Wiseau's now-classic cinematic misfire starting from the day before the first day of shooting through to its big Hollywood premiere. The other being the story of a young, struggling actor meeting and befriending this visionary outsider who's thinking is like that of quite-no-one-else.

It is through Greg Sestero's words that we are given insight into Tommy Wiseau's unique thought-processes and while we laugh a lot through this book we laugh mostly because of the child-like novelty of Tommy's thinking. While reading this book, I went through some of the reviews on IMDB, the Internet Movie Database for the uninitiated, for The Room and was saddened to see one reviewer snark "...we are laughing at you, not with you..." and there is never that kind of pettiness in Greg Sestero's account.

While I laughed out loud through most of the book, there were times I felt very sad for Tommy or exasperated with him. To a lesser extent, I experienced Greg Sestero's fears and hopes as he pursued and, for a time, gave up on his dream of being an actor.

I think this book speaks to anybody with a dream, even if you haven't seen nor have any interest in ever seeing The Room, this book is for you.

This book is currently in development for a major motion picture but I urge readers not to wait for the movie in this case. I think this book is untranslatable to the silver screen, unless the Hollywood Frat Pack intent on making this book into a movie surprise us and show us their own inner artist yearning to break free from the fratty sort of movies that make them money. I don't think this book can be made into a movie by a Hollywood insider. David Lynch or John Carpenter might have a shot and making this a good movie. David Cronenberg too. But these are not the people who will be making the movie.

I hope that whoever makes the movie, they are able to at least bring out the love that Greg obviously feels for Tommy out in a meaningful way and bring the audience to the point where they laugh more out of surprise at Tommy's thinking than at Tommy himself.

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