The Accidental Billionaires, by Ben Mezrich

This audio book was obtained from Overdrive Audio through the Alachua County Public Library. It was 7 hours and 19 minutes long and was read by Mike Chamberlain.

Think of it as the long-awaited "Facebook Story". Ben Mezrich, the author of the fabulous "Bringing Down the House," has done an exhaustive job of researching Facebook's genesis, and has created a work that is enough of a dramatization to make it almost a novel. To be sure, Mark Zuckerberg, the youthful founder of Facebook, did NOT sign off on this. And I cannot say I am surprised.

The story begins with Zuckerberg, and his friend, Eduardo Saverin, trying to meet girls at Harvard, where they are both undergrads. Mark gets an idea to create a website that archives photos of all the girls at Harvard and pairs random pictures for users of the site to choose which is hotter. While the site is in it's experimental phase, some of his computer science friends pass the site around and it goes viral in a short time and nearly gets him kicked out of school for hacking school databases and stealing the picture files that he used. His notoriety alerts some other students who were working on a social networking site of their own, and they approach him to help with it. He agrees, but then leaves them high and dry to create his own site, which goes on to become Facebook.

This is morality tale about friendship and how money changes everything. You will find yourself taking sides in this book, and perhaps even changing sides by the end of it. The Facebook relationship status "It's Complicated" is a fitting description of what happened between Mark and Eduardo. I think Mark was a lousy friend, and Eduardo was a lousy business partner. It's your call to decide which you think is worse.

The reader sounded so much like my favorite, Scott Brick, that it bumped this fun, interesting story into 4 star territory.

The Spire, by Richard North Patterson

This audiobook was obtained from Overdrive Audio, through the Alachua County Public Library web site. It was 11 hours and 3 minutes long, and was narrated by Holter Graham.

Mark Darrow was a star quarterback at his high school, but going nowhere, when he is offered a scholarship by the Provost at a local college that probably plays at division 3. It's a great opportunity for this orphan who lives with the family of his best friend, Steve Tillman. Mark accepts on the grounds that a place can be found for his Steve, and the Provost, ex-military Lionel Farr.

At the end of Mark's time at Caldwell College, he stumbles across the body of a young black woman, a student he knew fairly well, who was strangled at left at the foot of The Spire, a major landmark at the college. He is quickly cleared, but his friend, Steve, was the last person seen with her. He is arrested, tried and convicted.

Sixteen years later, Mark is a very successful attorney, and very recently widowed. The Provost calls him to come back and be the college President after the past President was investigated for embezzlement. Mark agrees, but he quickly finds himself at odds with a board that has its mind made up about how to pursue the investigation. And he just cannot let go of the unlikely conviction of Steve Tillman for murder.

Although it's hard to get past a 38 year old college President, the character is superbly written. And although figuring out the villain was not overly challenging, it was still a good story apart from that. I give it 3 stars.

Indignation, by Phillip Roth

This audiobook was 5 hours and 31 minutes long, and was narrated by Dick Hill. It's is Roth's 29th book, and was published in 2008.

I've read a few other Roth novels, and I run hot and cold on them. They usually have some witty, funny dialog, and have recurring themes of anti-semitism and youthful debauchery. This one is not much different.

This is the story of Marcus Messner, the son of Kosher butchers in New Jersey. He is a gifted student, and is bent on getting good enough grades to escape being drafted and sent into combat in Korea in 1951. He works in the family business while in high school, and goes to a local college for his freshman year. During this time, Marcus' father becomes increasingly paranoid that his son will get into some kind of trouble. His constant suspicions and smothering behavior gradually drives Marcus away, and he decides to go to school farther away.

At the new school, Marcus finds something to annoy him in each of his room mates, which leads him to change dorms twice in just a short time. He also has a sexual encounter with a girl who had once tried to commit suicide, and has issues with alcohol, with whom he becomes obsessed. He is also indignant that one of the graduation requirements is to attend chapel forty times during your time at the school, and has a major face-off with the dean over Bertrand Russell and atheism. All these things come to a head after his parents are on the brink of divorce, and Marcus seems to start sliding into his own form of madness. Eventually, he is expelled from school and gets sent to Korea.

It is entertaining enough to be worth the time, but it would have been a disaster to make it longer. Marcus goes to war right on time, because by then I was sick of him already. Maybe it's because he became an insufferable jerk too soon for me to get to like him. I give it 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.

Boom, by Tom Brokaw

This audiobook was obtained for free from Overdrive Audio through the Alachua County Public Library. It was narrated by Robertson Dean and was 18 hours and 16 minutes long.

I was quite taken with Tom Brokaw's last best seller, "The Greatest Generation". This book is about the baby boomer generation and it's journey through the 60s. Of course, the 60s is defined not by the numerical dates, but by the events that were a part of the 60s narrative. So, it begins with the assassination of JFK and ends with the resignation of Richard Nixon. It is also about people who were pretty much adults at the time. I was only 9 years old during the 1968 Summer of Love, so my own memories of that tumultuous year are undiluted by hormones or hallucinogens. Memories like mine are not represented here.

This is very much a reporter's collection of interviews, which means his subjects do most of the editorializing. And although Tom Brokaw weighs in with his opinions, you also get the recollections and reconsiderations of Gloria Steinem, Arlo Guthrie, Hillary Clinton, Karl Rove, James Taylor, Pat Buchanan, Carla Hills, Tom Hayden, and a lot of people you may have never heard of, but who played a role in the Viet Nam War, the Civil Rights Movement, the Women's Movement, or did a lot of dope.

Whether you miss the 60s or wish they had never happened, there is something here for you. Some of its most famous participants have their criticisms and regrets on both sides of every question. So there really are no definitive answers here, which is appropriate for a book about the generation that made moral relativism and ambivalence our national mood.

It's 4 star entertainment.

Feed, by M. T. Anderson

This audiobook was obtained as a free download from Overdrive Audio through the Alachua County Public Library. It was 5 hours and 1 minute long, and was narrated by David Aaron Baker.

A kind of technopunk novel set in what seems to be the mid to late 21st century. I may have missed a time reference. All the kids have had live feed installed from an early age. Now you can Instant Message each other, get updates, surf the net, and even watch network programming in your head. No one has to be smart anymore, because you can look up everything right now, wherever you are. So now we are all smart! And networked, and exploited by a continual stream of advertising to let you know you can also order anything you want, right now, from inside your head.

The most powerful thing about this book is not the concept, but the way the author makes it all so real. The kids are all high school age, going to privatized schools, and getting "malfunctioned" by going to game sites that quite literally blow their minds. Except for one girl, Violet, whose parents had home-schooled her and acquiesced to having her feed installed later in her childhood. Violet's awareness of a life beyond the feed makes her especially enticing to Titus, a boy who is caught up in the consumer culture of mindlessness. She likes real experiences, instead of the bizarre fads that overwhelm kids on an almost daily basis, now that it can be done so quickly.

If you can get past the fairly regular barrage of F-bombs, this is a very well-written and disturbing book. It all seems so possible in our own lifetimes. The dialog is an especially eerie feature. The adults talk like the kids today ("Dude, that was, like, awesome!") and the kids have a new jargon in which all sentences are punctuated by calling each other, "Unit!" No, it's just the boys that do that. And the girls are all hung up on a show called, "Oh! Wow! Thing!"

This is part tech satire, part sad love story, and it is especially engaging as an audiobook, where you can experience the Feed as it periodically bursts into the narration. This is a solid 3 star book with gusts of 4.

Fay, by Larry Brown

This audiobook was a free download from NetLibrary.com, was 17 hours and 24 minutes long, and was narrated by Tom Stechschulte.

Fay is pretty while trailer trash living in an abusive home situation. Her story begins with her deciding to go feral with only 2 dollars tucked in her bra. She is 17, vulnerable, and brings out the worst in men. Even the kind and well-intentioned Mississippi State Trooper Sam Harris is sucked into the vortex of sex and violence that is attendant in her life. Although she cannot be blamed for most of what happens, she does change the climate wherever she saunters.

This is a somewhat depressing story of bad choices colliding with bad luck. But it's sense that redemption is just within reach keeps you involved with characters for whom you can want it.

I can't put my finger on what keeps this from being a four star book, but I can only give it 3 and 1/2.

The Lords of Discipline, by Pat Conroy

This audiobook was a free download from NetLibrary.com, was 22 hours and 10 minutes long, and was narrated by Tom Stechschulte.

This was one of Pat Conroy's first novels, published in 1980. It is loosely based on his experiences as a cadet at The Citadel, where Conroy played Division 1 basketball in the mid 60s. Years later, Conroy wrote a non-fiction book about his senior year at The Citadel called "My Losing Season".

This one is about a young cadet, Will MacLean, who survives his plebe year and all the attendant hazing, and continues his college years as an iconoclast. He is a studious English major, a student athlete, and an uninspiring military specimen. Fortunately, he is part of a band of brothers. He and his 3 roommates would take a bullet for each other, and it is all that makes their time at South Carolina Military Academy possible.

During his senior year he is tasked with keeping watch over the school's first black cadet. This mission is not for the faint-hearted. Not only is this boy going to get the hazing of his life; but there is a secret organization on campus dedicated to keeping the school "pure", and they don't observe any limits.

This is a long book, but it flies by because there is so much going on. There is also much that will touch you, anger you, and even inspire you. This is Pat Conroy's most emotional book, in my opinion, because it strikes so close to his own heart. Even "The Great Santini", a book based on his relationship with his father, does not bring up Conroy's bile like this one. He hates bullies, and he hates the system that creates them; even turning former victims into bullies.

It was easy to give this one 4 stars.