Burglars Can't Be Choosers, by Lawrence Block

This book was 6 hours and 34 minutes long, and was narrated by Rick Ferrone.

I eagerly snapped up this one from NetLibrary because I recognized this as the first book in the series about the bookish burglar, Bernie Rhonebarr. I have read some of the other books in this series, and found them to be entertaining with likable characters. They were light fare, written well.

I was pretty disappointed. Not only was this one a bit raunchier than the others, but the solution to the crime was pretty implausible and unsatisfying. This came out originally in 1977, so maybe the Disco Era was having a bad influence on everyone, even crime writers.

Others may like this more than I did, largely because I had higher expectations. I give it 1 star, but you may give it 2.

A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, by James Joyce

This was yet another free audiobook download from NetLibrary. It was 11 hours and 16 minutes long, and was read by Donal Donnelly.

One of the great things about audiobooks is that you can get some of those intimidating "classics" of literature and listen to someone else read them. I seem to recall finding a copy of Joyce's "Ulysses" in my father's bedroom (Mom would never have read this), opening to the first page, and closing it after about ten seconds. I was worn out already. I went back to the comics.

This is the kind of dense and thoughtful reading that gets assigned to students because it is believed that it will do them some good. And I believe it does. The character development is quite vivid and deep. You really get inside the head of Stephen Dedalus, an autobiographical shadow of the author who appears in some of Joyce's other works. This book is also very philosophical and critical of the Catholic Church, although it is not without its sentimental side.

Personally, I enjoyed the book. But I also have to admit that it probably goes down better as an audiobook. Reading this Irish accented prose and dialog and preachy monologues off the printed page might be a different story. That said, the narration was very good and contributed to the good quality of the overall experience. This is the first 3 and a half star review I have given.

Violation, by Darian North

This book was written in 1999, was 10 hours and 16 minutes long, and was narrated by Ed Sala.

A cautionary tale about chat rooms and the power of clever people to manipulate others in the online world. However, this story fails to get inside your head in a holistic way. It attempts to jumpstart that process periodically by trying to shock you, but it keeps sliding back into the same droning story about people who just aren't real enough.

A woman who was raped and suffered a brain injury 14 years earlier is now raising a son in another part of the country with the son she conceived on the night she was raped. She has been hiding this from her son, who knows his mom is lying to him about his father.

Their landlord is a retired LAPD detective who is idolized by the boy, and he tries to help the woman find her son after the kid runs away with the help of a man the boy met online. However, the woman and the landlord discover this separately, so mom thinks the ex-cop is the culprit. It's a cross country chase, which would have been a better story if the characters were better written. I give it 2 stars.

Her Own Place, by Dori Sanders

This is from Net Library, is 6:33:12 long, and is narrated by Kim Staunton. It was published in 1993.

Taking a rest from crime and history, I got this because I was looking for a literary respite. This was a good place to find it. Dori Sanders lives the life she writes about: growing up on a farm in South Carolina in the same ara as her slave ancestors.

This is not a book that dwells on the tragedy of racism but on the triumph of an ordinary life lived well, with all the ups and downs of the people of her times. It is easy for any person to identify with someone who is not scanning the horizon for someone to blame; not even the man who abandons her main character, Mae Lee, with 5 children after World War Two.

Her Own Place begins at the start of the war and moves briskly, yet without missing the details. This is quite an accomplishment, and it marks Ms. Sanders as a great storyteller. I rambles through the civil rights era, Viet-Nam, and desegregation while seldom leaving the farm she bought as a young wife with the money she earned at a munitions plant.

I really enjoyed this and will look for books by this author again when I am looking for a real escape from the tensions of my life. 4 stars.

Act of Treason, by Vince Flynn

This novel was published in 2006, was downloaded from NetLibrary.com, and is 11:06:34 long. It is narrated by George Guidall.

If you are a left-wing zealot who has issues with the US military, take a pass on this one. Or upgrade your Prozac. The hero of this anti-terrorism novel is Mitch Rapp, a CIA undercover-opps assassin who burns through red tape and legal procedure when that's the only way to achieve a just result.

Our story begins when a Democratic Presidential candidate's motorcade is attacked with a bomb blast that kills 19 people, but misses the Presidential and Vice-Presidential candidates. Although this was clearly the work of a professional, it seems like he got the wrong limo, the one that contained the wife of the Presidential candidate.

After the widowed Democrat is elected, Mitch Rapp manages to find the bomber, collect the evidence, get a confession (the hard way), and is then faced with new hurdles as the news leaks out and the new President-elect wants the man put on trial. Well, that's not gonna happen. But there is still another problem: finding out who really put this hit on the Liberal Democrat candidates.

I give it 3 stars for being fast-paced and well-written. I won't weigh in on the politics. :)

Loot, by Aaron Elkins

This novel was my first time experience with this author. I downloaded the audiobook from NetLibrary.com. It was 11:03:39 long, and was narrated by Paul Hecht.

A pawn shop owner buys a painting from a mysterious Russian visitor, and it turns out to be a very rare painting that was part of the looting of the Jews by the Nazis. During the last gasps of WW2, a truckload of art was seized by a Russian patrol, and then it all disappeared until after the fall of the Soviet Union. And now this painting has made its way to Boston.

The owner calls in a friend, Ben Revere, who is an art expert who has done some contract work for the police. Ben, who is our main character, believes this is a rare Valasquez, and tells his friend that they should get the police involved. After Ben leaves, his friend is beaten to death in his shop, but the painting is still in his safe, providing a good bit of evidence to begin his search for who killed his friend, and where this masterpiece came from.

Although this book is not a masterpiece, it was a well-paced, easy read with good characters and an interesting background story: the ever-circulating treasures of the Holocaust. It gets 3 stars if you just want to be entertained, 2 if you wanted violence and bloodshed.

The Cheating Culture, by David Callahan

This book was about 11 hours and 50 minutes long, and it is a rather damning indictment of everyone who has a lot of elasticity in his or her integrity.

Unfortunately, what begins as a very compelling account of the moral malfeasance of everyone from accountants to Little Leaguers begins to degenerate into a politically motivated hit piece that blames most of our current trend toward dishonesty on Republicans. To be sure, that party's stone needed to be unturned. But when the final verdict is one that is sure to leave partisan Democrats feeling smug and vindicated, it loses some of its own aura of integrity. And that is too bad, because the criticisms are largely valid, and the warnings need to be heeded.

Callahan's central premise seems to be that there are two sides to America: tough America and fair America, and that the toughies have made our society so competitive that it has goaded us into cheating. Whether it's a family perpetrating a fraud to allow their 14 year-old son to compete against 11 and 12 year-olds in Little League, or bookkeepers who embezzle the money they think they deserve, people rip off the system because they are feeling ripped off.

Overall, I give this 3 stars for being a must read on the subject of integrity, because it is hard not to find yourself in it. But I lower it to 2 stars if you don't balance it with something like Steven Covey's Seven Habits series.