Clapton: The Autobiograpy

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by Eric Clapton, audio book by narrated by Simon Vance

This was an interesting book as I didn’t know much about Eric and his past (other than watching the Cream reunion concert on PBS and owning his Unplugged album).  It was somewhat tedious at times as Clapton listed all the performers he worked with and knew.  At other times it was a very compelling story.

I was amazed at how messed up and self-absorbed he was.  It seems that he has managed to straighten himself out over the last twenty years or so by giving up alcohol and drugs but I am still not sure I would like to be a close friend of his.

The book gave me a lot of insight into his world of music and, as a result, I will probably be looking at getting some of his recordings.3 stars

Shantaram

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by Gregory David Roberts, 2003, St. Martin’s Press, New York

I honestly don’t know what to think about this book.  There were times when I thought I was reading the best work of literature ever created.  At other times, I felt that the author was blathering platitudes.  One thing I will say is that I thought it was authentic; if what the author says is true, he lived a lot of this novel himself.

The highlights of the book, I think, are the vivid portrayal of life in India, espcially in the slums, and the emotions of a fugitive from justice, living on the run.  Also, the prose was pretty well constructed.  The sheer length of the book, however, seemed to detract from the entire work.  Every character in the book, no matter how minor, was described in detail.  Also, rather than building toward some kind of grand finale, the book seemed to stumble from one situation to another.  For example, in the last forty pages the story got sidetracked by a dancing bear that had to be smuggled out of Bombay in a disguise.  While this side story may have held my interest earlier in the book, by the time I got to this point (about 890 pages) I was really looking at getting toward some kind of conclusion.

Did I mention the book was long?  Anyway, it was a pretty good read but could have been much better with a bit more disciplined story line and editing. 3 1/2 stars

The Flight of the Falcon

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by Daphne Du Maurier, 1965,  audio book read by James Callis, 2010, by BBC Audiobooks Ltd.

This is still a very good book, although it is now a bit dated.  In another one hundred years or so I guess it will be considered a period novel.

The story is about a tour guide in Italy (or courier as the book terms it) who encounters an incident when guiding one of his tours.   The incident leads him to abandon his tour and pursue a mystery in his native city of Rafano.

The book was especially interesting to me as I once toured Italy on a guided tour bus so I could relate to the main character as well as the setting.  The plot is, at times, somewhat of a stretch as the coincidences that arise are a bit beyond belief.  I haven’t read a great deal of Du Maurier’s work, but I suspect that she often sets reality aside in favor of a good story.  She is a great story teller and, even if I sometimes had to suspend reality, it was very enjoyable.  The reader of this audio book did a great job, especially when using his Italian accents. four stars

The Man Who Was Thursday: A Nightmare

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by G.K. Chesterton, audio book narrated by Simon Vance, originally published in 1908, christianaudio/Hovel Audio, 2004

This book was not what I expected as I thought I was going to be treated to a mystery.  It took a couple of pretty neat turns and had some comical moments, but then morphed into a mystical/allegorical happening with religious overtones.  The way the book began and the characters who were portrayed suggested much more potential.  This is not what it delivered. two stars

Anatomy of Greed, The Unshredded Truth from an Enron Insider

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by Brian Cruver, Narrated by Mel Foster, 2004, Brilliance Audio

This is another book downloaded from the library to make my interior house painting job more enjoyable while I work!  Thank goodness for my MP3 player (non-IPod, I must mention).

Anyway, I wanted to hear something about the Enron implosion, and, although this book wasn’t exactly what I was looking for, it was pretty good.  I was looking for a bit more of the inside story and definitely some insight into the persons and personalities involved.  The author, Brian Cruver, was a new employee who got caught up in the downfall of Enron, and, as such, he wasn’t able to provide much about the powers at the top, having only encountered them in person for a few fleeting minutes.  His story, however, as one of thousands of Enron employees, is interesting.  Perhaps the most interesting aspect was the situation he encountered when he was laid off by Enron and told to go home, but found that he was, through administrative error, left on the payroll for over two months.

Some of the lessons that he took away from his experience seemed to me to be a bit trivial, but are, nevertheless, good advice.  I didn’t much care for the narrator’s style, however, as it didn’t seem to jive with the personality of the author at times.3 1/2 stars

A Briefer History of Time

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by Steven Hawking with Leonard Mlodinow, unabridged, read by Erik Davies, 2005, Random House Audio

I have a remodeling project going on and that is why I have so many audio books listed versus hard print (in addition to the fact that I am currently wading through a 937 page novel in print).  I thought I would give this one a try since I started out as a physics major in college (for one semester anyway).  The subject matter was pretty interesting and I had just a bit of knowledge to build upon.  However, listening to this book rather than reading it is, in my opinion, a mistake.  This is not due to a lack of talent on the part of the reader, but is rather because of the lack of time that I had to think about the material.  When listening to the examples that were provided, I quickly lost the sequence of thought because I didn’t have a chance to go back over them in my mind.  The information was so complex and presented in such rapid-fire succession, that there was no opportunity to pause and reflect (I certainly couldn’t hit the pause button because my fingers were full of faux paint).

I also think that the authors tried a bit too hard to make the explanations as brief as possible to fit in with the title of the book.  Maybe a bit more explanation or even repetition of some of the complex trains of thought would have helped.  The book does provide the reader (listener, in my case) with some thought-provoking ideas regarding the origins of the universe, predestination, and whether we will ever know how we and our world came to be.

3 stars

A Tale of Two Cities

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by Charles Dickens, originally published in 1859, read by Frederick Davidson, 1988, Blackstone Audiobooks, Inc.

First of all, I want to go on record that, as I have listened to two of Dickens’ books on tape in the last year, this one and Great Expectations, I did so prior to Oprah Winfrey’s choosing them as selections for her book club for the month of December, 2010.  Had I known that she was going to do that, I am not sure that I would have listened to either of them, but, be that as it may, I did choose them on my own and enjoyed both.

Secondly, I recall that this book was assigned reading for my 9th grade English class and I absolutely hated it.  I just couldn’t get into it and, even this time around, it was a bit tough going in the early chapters, especially the passages describing the coach ride and the court proceedings.  The book evoked even harsher feelings as I had previously read it at a time when I had just gone away to boarding school at the tender age of fourteen, and I was undergoing some major psychological adjustments.  This time, however, I stuck with the book and enjoyed it much more.  I think this is due to the fact that I was listening to it this time rather than reading it and also due to a much greater appreciation of world history and knowledge of the French Revolution.

There are times when Dickens’ phrasing seems a bit quaint but the novel still holds its interest in spite of the passage of time.  His characters are always interesting and the plot is much more involved than in some of his other books.  Overall, it was a very satisfying experience.  I might even go so far as to admit that Oprah’s choice of this book for her book club this month does seem to somewhat validate my very discriminating taste in literature.four stars

The Warden

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by Anthony Trollope, originally published  in 1855, read by Simon Vance, 2005, Blackstone Audiobooks, Inc.

I enjoyed listening to this audio book as the author writes well and the reader did a good job also.  I was a bit confused at the beginning by all of the characters and their relationships as it was a bit complex, although not nearly as complex as The Forsyte Saga, by Galsworthy.

At the beginning of the story it seemed as though Trollope was out to pillory the established Church of England and all of its clergy.  As the book progressed, however, it became evident that the “Warden” (an ordained minister who had been appointed to manage a rest home for retired workers) was an extremely moral fellow.  He had for years been receiving an overly generous salary for a position that provided him with a very comfortable life without the need to work much at all.  Despite his liking for this kind of life, he was devoid of virtually any other vice.  Of course there are other pillars of the church who are less likable in this novel, but Trollope is fairly even-handed in his overall treatment of the Church.  The ending is far more positive than I would have predicted.

The book is one of those well-written British novels of the 19th century that, in addition to being  a delightful story to read, provides considerable insight as to the living conditions of the era. 3 1/2 stars

The Blue Notebook

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by James Andrew Levine, M.D., PhD, read by Meera Simhan, 2009, Random House Audio, New York

This book depicts the plight of a child prostitute in India and does it extremely well.  Were it not for the disgusting subject matter, I could have rated the book a lot higher.  The author attempts to make the story more compelling by giving the child a degree of literary talent.  She keeps a notebook in which she relates all of the experiences in her horrible life.  In addition to describing specific incidents, she also writes allegorical stories in this notebook.  Despite this attempt to give the book some additional redeeming value, the book depicts one disgusting situation after another in great detail.

It is a sad state of affairs that these conditions exist in various areas of our globe;  it is also sad that it it would take an attempt at literature to bring it to our attention. 2 1/2 stars

Tears in the Darkness

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The Story of the Bataan Death March and Its Aftermath, 2009, by Michael Norman and Elizabeth M. Norman, read by Michael Prichard, Tantor Audio

This book is incredibly well-researched and the reader was great!    It also told the story of Bataan from both the U.S. and the Japanese perspective.  The authors used interviews and diaries to develop the story.

The negatives of the book are quite a few, however.  The book sometimes went into excruciating detail and it sometimes seemed as if getting through the book was was a death march in and of itself.  Also, the book seemed to jump around a bit and it left out some information that I would have liked to hear about.  For instance, the primary soldier that the book focused on was a Montana boy named Ben Steele.   There was quite a bit of narrative about Ben’s learning to draw while being held as a prisoner by the Japanese and how this activity helped him survive.  There was also some information about how Ben pursued his talent right after the war.  Then Ben is suddenly 80 years old and having a heart attack.  There is nothing about how Ben used his talent in his life after he went to school.

One thing that I gleaned from the book was how miserably MacArthur managed the defense of the Philippine Islands.  He probably should have been court-martialed  early on for such negligence rather than given a medal.  It is interesting how his public relations staff managed his image for him so that he was treated as a hero rather than the mediocre general that he really was.

This book is okay from the standpoint of the information it contains and the wonderful job Micheal Prichard did as the reader, but it certainly isn’t a great piece of literature or history.3 stars