Michael

The people William Least Heat Moon met. They made this book, without them the book would be lacking.

A man sets out across America with a few gas cards, little money and a van to live in. He's searching for something, maybe himself, what America is to him, history, peace of mind, adventure? He doesn't fully understand it himself. Recently divorced, out of work and generally down on his luck, Least Heat Moon is taking a stab at a long time dream to drive across America on the back roads, avoiding mainstream everything. He does it and this book documents his journey.

No, but the performance is excellent. The voice changes and inflection capture the essence of the words and make you feel as if you are there.

The encounter with the guy in the desert. The guy is depressed and a bit strange. I can't really describe it here, but somehow the whole incident becomes a metaphor for two different ways to solve your problems or to look at the world.

What is this book? It's part local lore and history of various places in America, part travel adventure, part introspective and all excellent writing. America is a different place than it was in 1978 when the journey was made, but I think the basic fabric of America that Least Heat Moon discovered is still there.

I didn't read the book, so I don't have any idea.

The main character, whatever his name was, the American.

The main bandit, I think his name was Pedro. He captures the attitude perfectly and the character really comes to life

It did make me feel a sense of how futile and stupid war can be. Maybe it's because the good guys are Marxists and somehow the bad guys are worse. It's like you want both sides to lose, but the Marxists are portrayed as the good guys so you want them to win but you also know they do end up losing the war as a matter of historical fact.

A rather long book that spans a rather short period of time, something like 3 days and the only thing that really happens is the plans to blow up a bridge. I'm not disappointed though. I find that I can't read Hemmingway books back to back, I have to intersperse them with other more cheerful stuff. This is grim manly stuff, and I guess with a name like "For Whom the Bell Tolls" what was I expecting anyway. It makes you think a lot about yourself. This book is a true classic.

No. The main character is not very sympathetic, so most of the time I found myself thinking "I hope he fails". The story drags a lot and the only suspense is because the author simply keeps you in the dark.

I can't help thinking that this book was written with the thought of making it into a movie. The whole Uranium and crooked federal judge ideas are just trivial details and not worked into the story at all. So much time is wasted in the details about how careful the main character is doing this and doing that, switching cell phones, paying with cash, blah blah etc. etc.. But it's the main character that drags the story down. You just don't like the guy. He seems more like Snoop Dog with a law degree than someone whose side you can get on.

I have to say the reader captured the essence of the main character, it's just too bad that essence happens to have a bad smell.

Didn't have one.

Barely, but not by much. If you thought some of Grisham's other books were bad, this one is probably worse.

Wait for the movie. This books feels like it was written with potential movie deal in mind, right down to the black lawyer.

Dumb question, why would I both listen to and read the book at the same time? Does anyone do this? I understand if it was a book I was studying or something, but this book is pure entertainment.

Court Gentry

An excellent narration. I hope I he does more in the future

Court Gentry takes on the Mexican drug lords.

Great book.

Well, since I rarely read books anymore and never read a book while listening to it, I wouldn't be able to answer this question. How many people actually read and listen to a book anyway?

Rapp is put completely out of commission and doesn't remember much of anything for a while.

When Rapp is being a nice guy due to a head injury.

when I heard that old guy had 6 months to live.

You think you know what is happening and then there is a twist and everything changes. It's like a murder mystery taking a twist, except this isn't a murder mystery kind of book. Unlike many authors who struggle to come up with new ideas and whose new books are frequently stale, Vince Flynn continues to deliver in the Mitch Rapp series. This book might just be one of the top 3 in that series.

Who Frank Marshal Davis was is a matter of record. Nobody would give a rats butt about this guy if it wasn't for the fact that he was a role model and mentor to Obama. It's quite clear to any thinking person that Obama is and was a Marxist, and that he was heavily influenced by Frank.

What does all this mean? Let me answer my own question with another question: What would it mean if Vladimir Lennon or Joseph Stalin were POTUS? Obama isn't those men, but he believes the same things they believed, as did Frank Marshal Davis.

First of all you need a really big crisis. Then you get "temporary" powers to deal with the crisis. But then you don't give those powers back, and who can make you give them back? Nobody. Will this work in United States? I'm afraid that's not going to be a theoretical question much longer.

But back to the book, It's engaging, readable, insightful and chocked full of information. It does at times get difficult to keep the cast of Communist characters straight. The book is so based in facts that at times it's difficult to draw the lines as to what it all means for yourself, but the author eventually gets around to telling us. Like why the move to Hawaii? He eventually gets around to telling us that was a Moscow initiative, but not for a while. So I'm here wondering for a long time, "Ok, tell me why the sudden move to Hawaii!!" It's sort of like someone telling you a trivia question and then not getting around to telling you the answer for a long time. Just tell me. I don't freaking know the answer if you don't tell me.

The author stops short of drawing conclusions about certain things, but you can figure these out for yourself, usually. We don't all have the towering intellect to immediately draw the necessary conclusions without someone pointing them out. Like the David Axelrod, Valerie Jarrot connection. All have commi parents that knew each other and such, so what is the connection? Obviously the Commi's are a small community that sticks together, but is there a deeper plot? It's this sort of failure to draw the lines that I find frustrating. But factual journalism doesn't seem to allow for a conclusion to be drawn. Only a question can be asked. Well, Mr. Professor - draw the damn conclusion please because the rest of us are left wondering what the heck it is you are getting at.

Although the book focuses on Frank the Communist, and mentions that he wrote a book called Sex Rebel, it fails to give more than a single dimension of Frank. Frank was an angry black man, but unlike the vast majority of black people, this man was a Communist. It would have been nice to include more of the personal side of Frank. I don't feel like I have a complete picture of the man. Maybe there isn't much more that that though. He's a poet, a writer, a Communist loyal to mother Russia. Perhaps it's not possible to get an accurate picture of a man like Frank for a lot of reasons: He's dead and anyone who knew him is either old, dead or motivated to lie about who he was.

Yes, but it is going to be a while. This isn't really my kind of book, too much flowery language and the Elvis stuff just falls flat with me. Difficult to explain the Elvis stuff, but the ghost of Elvis is here and there and depressed and whatever. I don't care, and it's not amusing to me. To someone else - quite possibly.

It is certainly original. A psychic detective that sees ghosts and other shadowy things. The character himself feels real, even if everyone in his life feels fake. Granny Sugars feels real also, but his Mother and Father feel contrived.

His name is Odd Thomas, so you expect him to be odd but sometimes he seems a little bit over the top. One expects characters to be interesting, but does Odd's Dad really have to sell real estate on the moon and date a 20 year old girl who struts around in a thong? I mean really, it just goes so far that I can't even pretend to believe it at times. I'm not even going to get into Odd's Mother issues.

This book left me wanting something more at the end.

I'm giving the book a 4 out of 5 stars because I recognize that many of the things that I find annoying, are actually positive's to other people.

Odd Thomas is actually pretty irritating in many different ways. Here is a guy who could beat the best at cards, but won't do it because using his psychic senses in that fashion would be wrong or something. He also doesn't like guns, and pretty much refuses to own or carry a gun except in the most extreme circumstances. This actually makes sense when you think about it, but only because giving him a gun would make him comparable to every other detective who carries a gun.

Granny Sugars feels real, but she's already dead and only referred to in Odd's recollections.

Stormy doesn't really feel real, she's more of an ideal than a real person. Cast in the mold of a perfect woman for Odd, and given just a bit of an emotional scar.

N/A

No. For a book full of the emotions of other people, I only found the death of one character to be moving and that doesn't happen until the end. Maybe that is what's bothering me about the book. I didn't find a lot of it convincing, and therefore was disengaged to whatever happened to the characters.

I thought I liked this book when I was reading it, but now that I have been thinking about it, I'm not all that fond of it.

I have no idea, how would I know how to best fix a work of art? Stupid question.

Not sure, nothing really sticks in my mind.

Another stupid question.

A good book, but not Baldacci's best. The whole book feels way too familiar to Hell's Corner, the hero is being hunted at the same time he has to investigate homicides. By the time we find out how and why the killings are going on, it's sort of like: Really? You are thinking and thinking if the explanation actually makes sense with all the facts, and then you are like, does it really matter? Do I care?

The main character comes to life, but he struggles to flesh out. He's a skeleton. I think the basic problem with a stoic main character is bringing him to life without making him either a clown or a man who's a little too in touch with his feelings. You do that by letting his friends fill in the gaps.

There was good suspense and action. And there were a lot of times where I wanted to keep on listening even though my drive was over. I listen to these books while I drive. I don't want to sound too critical, but the more I think about it the more forgetable this book is.

Right near the top.

I don't have much to compare this book to, because I have never listened to anything quite like it. For one, this is one long book at over 37 hours it took quite while to get through it. It's a book about the CIA beginning in the cold war and going into the early 90's. It's a mix of fictional characters and real events, but you have to wonder if more of it is true fact than not. I for one will never view the CIA in the same way, and I'll never think of the cold war the same way again either. Not that I had a flawed misconception to begin with, I just didn't know the details so well.

Scott Brick captures all of the melancholy and all of the irony of a situation perfectly. He's actually a perfect fit for this book because there is so much irony and melancholy. The author hits you with it from time to time and you just keep thinking about it. I don't want to give anything away, but the death of one of the main characters wives towards the end of the book just hits you like a sledge hammer, and Brick delivers the line with perfect tempo, perfect pitch and if anything he actually adds to the experience.

Over 37 Hours? are you kidding me? This stupid question always comes up and my answer, no matter how much I loved the book is No.

I was disappointed when the story skipped from the Bay of Pigs in 1958 to post Vietnam in the 1970's. The pick of the stories makes me think they are more fact than fiction, because nothing that could be considered sensitive to modern day is touched on.

It's not always the fast paced edge of your seat kind of story that a Vince Flynn novel delivers, but then again this is a different kind of book. It's almost a documentary. One of the most fascinating things the book documents is what the CIA thinks of itself. The answer is the CIA is divided among those who believe in more direct actions and those who believe more in strict intelligence gathering.

No idea, since I have never seen or read the printed version

There is nothing I can directly compare it to. I love the lecture series books because it's a way of learning that is interesting and done while driving.

A ton of insight about Rhetoric is gleaned from Professor Drought.

I'm not sure this question is applicable to the subject matter being discussed, since we aren't talking about an actual story with characters. I will say that this stuff is not just theoretical garbage useful only in trivia contests. It is so applicable to real life that I have already used some of the ideas to persuade my kids, my wife and influence a decision at work. Now that I think about it, I am moved by one thing and that is the fact that in 12 years of school and 4 years of college I have never been exposed to rhetoric per say. By that I mean it shows up here and there in certain ways, but not in one course as it should. How can we not teach this stuff when it is so useful to everyday life? I'm pissed off about that.

A great lecture series. I'm going to listen to it at least 1 more time to reinforce the content and ideas. I'm also trying to get my kids to listen to this stuff. I think I almost have them sold because I told them the stuff could actually help them persuade me to agree with them!