★★★★

Audiobook Review: Fake ID by Lamar Giles

July 20, 2015 Leave a Comment

Release Date: January 21, 2014
Genre: Contemporary/Thriller/Mystery
Length: 7 hours 58 minutes
Publisher: Harper Audio

In Lamar Giles debut novel, new kid in town Nick Pearson finds himself mixed up in a murder with a side of corruption. As Nick searches for answers to a murder that could upend all his secrets he dodges bullies, crashes a party and tries to keep his parents together. Move over Veronica Mars, Nick Pearson is on the case.

Lamar Giles writing is clever. He lays out tension, plot and conflict in front of you while still sneaking in a bit of misdirection. He has a great way of ending chapters on mini cliffhangers and you just HAVE to know what happens next. I totally did not see the ending coming. I was like “what !?” This isn’t really a spoiler but. . .literally anyone can die. Which takes the tension up to eleven

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Audiobook Review: Glory O’ Brien’s History of The Future by A.S. King

July 6, 2015 Leave a Comment

Release Date: October 14th 2014

Genre: Magic Realism

Audiobook Hours: 7 hours and 15 minutes
Publisher: Blackstone Audio

I picked this up from my library’s Overdrive because A.S. King is pretty much an auto-buy for me. Plus Jenn and Preeti at The Bookrageous Podcast gushed about this book in their interview with King.

King’s books tend to be near impossible to describe, so I’ll just give the premise that is in the prologue of the book. After drinking a petrified bat (stick with me here) Glory O’Brien is able to see people’s infinities–the lives of their ancestors and their descendants. As she starts putting the pieces of these visions together she realizes the near future isn’t looking so great…especially for women.

King strikes a great balance between the surreal and the real. I like how she gives her characters conflicts with small personal stakes and giant stakes. In this book there is Glory’s fear of committing suicide like her mother and uncertainty about her post high school life paired with visions of a coming war.

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Audiobook Review : Dreams Of Gods and Monsters

May 31, 2015 Leave a Comment

Release Date: April 8th 2014
Genre: Fantasy
Length: 18 hours 11 minutes
Publisher: Hachette Audio

IT IS FINISHED. I started listening to this series 3 years ago and have finally finished this sweeping epic fantasy and love story. Taylor’s use of language and creativity have me waiting eagerly to see what she will come up with next.

The Daughter of Smoke and Bone series starts off with a whimsical art student in Prague and free falls into a fantastical epic conclusion. While I enjoyed the world-building and conflict Taylor created, the ending fizzled just a bit for me. It wasn’t that I didn’t like it; it just came and went just a little to swiftly. But despite this, all these book have me sold. They are all plotted perfectly and follow an even pace.

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11/22/63 by Stephen King

May 11, 2015 Leave a Comment

Release Date: November 8th 2011

Genre: Thriller

Pages: 849

Publisher: Scribner

I’ve always been intrigued by the cover of this book; one side shows a newspaper with Kennedy’s assassination as the headline and the other side has the same newspaper with a headline saying the assassination had been avoided. This book has had been sitting on my Kindle since it was on sale for 2.99 and after finishingA Thousand Pieces of You I was looking for a more complex alternate universe story and figured King could deliver.

Everything you need to know about this book can be summarized from the cover. Basically, high school teacher, Jake Epping, goes back in time to stop the Kennedy assassination. I think saying anything else would just get… complicated….

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Audiobook Review: Silver Linings Playbook by Matthew Quick

February 24, 2015 3 Comments

Release Date: October 16th 2012

Audiobook Hours: 7 hours 22 minutes

Genre: Adult Fiction

Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux

I have this thing where I tend to read popular fiction waaaaay behind the curve. I read The Fault in Our Stars 3 years after I bought it, Gone Girl is still on my TBR and I bought 50 Shades two years ago and I will get past the first 50 pages at some point.

If you think back to late 2012 it was all about Silver Linings Playbook because the movie was super buzzy. So buzzy they have the actor’s names on the movie tie-in cover. When I saw this as one of the audiobooks available on Scribd’s audiobook section I figured it was time…

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Ghost Boy by Martin Pistorius

February 10, 2015 2 Comments

U.S. Release Date: November 12, 2013

Page Number: 304

Genre: Nonfiction

U.S. Publisher: Thomas Nelson Publishing (Harper Collins)

I’ve recently become an NPR podcast junkie and I’m really loving their new podcast Invisibilia, about “the intangible things that shape human behavior.” Each week the hosts tell stories of people who have rare psychological or neurological experiences–on of their first stories is of Martin Pistorius, a South African man who spent six years trapped in his own body. After I heard this story, I had to know more and was happy to see his memoir was on Scribd.

When Pistorius (who as far as I can tell is not related to the convicted South African athlete Oscar Pistorius) is 12-years-old he develops a degenerative brain condition that leaves him mute and unable to move. Doctors couldn’t diagnose him and his parents were told he had the mind of a 3 month old and to take him home to wait for him to die. Only Martin doesn’t die and a few year later his mind comes back, but not his motor skills or speech. He can’t tell anyone he’s back and he lives like a ghost boy as the people around him assume he isn’t comprehending what he sees. It takes six years for his parents to finally figure out he was aware and the book is his reflections on his time as a ghost boy and his journey learning how to communicate using technology.

This book tells a really incredible story. Martin becomes well known in the Augmentative and Alternative Communication (AAC) community and it’s interesting to see all the people he meets as he goes to conference. It can be a little nightmare inducing too. One of his friends was paralyzed from the eyes down from a stroke at the age of twenty-five.But it’s amazing the amount of technology and work being done so everyone has a voice.

The parts I found most interesting are the parts where he tells the things he sees people do when they think no one is looking. He observes many of his caregivers mostly at their worse, but also some at their best.

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