I still have a blog...

If you have been wondering where I have been for almost 4 months, it's like this: business took off and I hired 3 people. Now business is dragging the bottom (as it usually does in June-July) and I am really hustling to keep my guys doing something. What I am trying to say is that whether I am training people or selling new accounts, I have precious little time alone in the world of audio any more. It's been a big change, and I hope to figure out how I am going to reintegrate audiobooks into my life. I enjoy them too much to quit.

I will post a review soon, but it will take a real effort to do so. It is also the escalation of the political season, and I am a very busy political activist. So please hang in there!

Don Marsh

The Appeal, by John Grisham

This audiobook was obtained from Overdrive Audio, through the Alachua County Public Library. It was 12 hours and 33 minutes long, and was narrated by Michael Beck.

Typical John Grisham story of noble, financially challenged attorneys doing battle with a huge company represented by the legal armies from Hell. In spite of being predictable and uncommonly preachy, it is still a good read. Characters and dialog pop off the page as a good writer does his job. If you have time on your hands and nothing else to read, it's worth three stars. If you have other books waiting, downgrade it to two and try a new author.

Rise and Shine, by Anna Quindlen

This audiobook was obtained for free from Netlibrary.com. It was 10 hours and 49 minutes long, and was narrated by Carol Monda.

Meghan and Bridget Fitzmaurice lost their parents at an early age. Meghan grew up to be a world famous host of a morning news show, Rise and Shine, while Bridget grew up to an unmarried social worker who also helps keep Meghan's family grounded. The city of New York is also a major character in this book, providing the classist backdrop that is constantly making itself heard.

Meghan's life takes a turn downward when she inadvertently drops a 4 megaton expletive before her mike is turned off on the way to a commercial. She is temporarily suspended while the show's producers figure out what to do, and Meghan decides to go into hiding while she sorts out her life, including her failing marriage.

It's an easy read and it wasn't boring. But I had a hard time caring enough about the characters to really get into it. I felt like a was treading water, waiting for my next book. For that, it's only worth 2 stars.

The Next Step in the Dance, by Tim Gautreaux

This audiobook was obtained from NetLibrary.com through the Alachua County Public Library. This book was 11 hours and 42 minutes long, and was narrated by Vernel Bagneris.

Paul and Colette Thibodeaux are a young married couple in an insular Cajun community called Tiger Island. Paul is a talented machinist who is happy with his work and just as happy to play his accordion and dance up a storm at the local pub. Colette is beautiful and bored, and deeply annoyed with her husband's contentment. One day she finds and excuse to leave him, and she makes her way to Los Angeles. She finds work similar to what she did at the bank back home, except there is more opportunity for advancement. She's smart, hard-working, and the boss likes her, so she is doing well when Paul decides to follow her. He is cool enough to give her some space, and he finds a job for his unique talents and he is doing well, too.

But not all that glitters is gold. They are both working for unscrupulous creeps, so they both end up returning to Tiger Island just after the jobs have all dried up. They are still separated, but now Colette is pregnant, care of a weak moment with Paul while they were living in California.

The hits just keep coming before they ever work it all out. It's a good story, but it seems to come from a different time. Paul seems way older than 24, and Colette does not seem like 23. They just seem so middle aged in their attitudes and demeanor. It was a big distraction that pecked away at the story's credulity. It had its good moments, but it was a little more work to read than I like a book to be. 2 stars.

One Mississippi, by Mark Childress

This audiobook was obtained from NetLibrary.com, through the Alachua County Public Library. It was 13 hours and 17 minutes long and was narrated by Jeff Woodman.

Daniel Musgrove gets to start his life over in Mississippi after his father is transferred to a new territory. Changing high schools is bad enough, but downgrading from Indiana to Mississippi is excruciating. But then he finds a friend, a local outcast named Tim Cousins.

It's 1973, and their high school is about to elect its first black prom queen. It's also the night that Tim and Daniel take a couple of girls to the prom, and Daniel gets his first kiss. After bringing their dates home, they accidentally hit the new queen, who was riding home on her bicycle. They flee in terror, come back to see that their nemesis, a popular jock and bully, is getting busted for it after stopping to see if she is alright. They let him hang, and when she comes to, she has a colorblind brand of amnesia: she thinks she is white.

The lunacy just keeps coming. This was very, very funny book, but it takes some very, very dark turns. Funny, thought-provoking, sad, disturbing: it gets a star for each, which makes 4 altogether.

No More Mr. Nice Guy, by Dr. Robert A. Glover

This audiobook was obtained from Netlibrary.com through the Alachua County Public Library. It was 6 hours and 38 minutes long and was narrated by Robert O'Keefe.

The long version of this title included this: A proven plan for getting what you want in love, sex, and life. Presumably, this was meant to boost Google hits. However, as a lifelong nice-guy/doormat, I could say, with apologies to Renee Zellweger, "You had me at the title".

Dr. Glover is a clinical psychologist who has been treating a lot of nice guys for years. And he recognized that they were suffering from the same sort of things that he was. They all had partners who they slavishly tried to please, which only gained them more scorn.

No friend to modern feminism, Dr. Glover blames this on an American culture which left raising boys to become men to women. When men started leaving the home to work in factories and offices, the boys had to stay home. They no longer worked with their fathers, learning the trades and learning to be men. Women raised their sons to be more passive aggressive, and when they grew up, they were incapable of providing leadership in their homes. They usually had a finger in the air to figure out what would please their wives.

This description may be a bit off-putting, but it is a legitimate challenge to our current nanny culture of risk avoidance that steals the spine from American males. It's a four star read.

Marker, by Robin Cook

This audiobook was obtained from Netlibrary.com through the Alachua County Public Library. It was 16 hours and 7 minutes long, and was narrated by George Guidall.

Laurie Montgomery and Jack Stapleton are both doctors with the Medical Examiner's office. They determine cause of death by day and are lovers by night. Right about the time that Laurie decides that she has no future with the noncommittal Jack, she takes notice of some unusual deaths at a particular hospital. The deaths have no apparent cause. Everyone else is willing to call them an anomaly. But the decedents are all relatively young people who came in for pretty ordinary surgeries. She begins to suspect foul play.

Laurie comes under a lot of pressure to bury her suspicions. To infer that someone is murdering patients at a prestigious hospital with a low death rate could create problems for the reputation of the medical staff there. Her only ally is the handsome, charming doctor who is the director of personnel at that hospital, who wants to get involved with her.

I know this sounds like a soap opera, and some of it is. It also sounds like the typical Robin Cook novel: young, good-looking doctor with strong ethics runs afoul of rich, powerful, greedy medical community. But Cook has been doing this for a long time, and knows just how much relationship fog to give a book without losing sight of the fact that he is writing a thriller. This is one of his better ones, and I give it 3 stars.