Stephen T. Coomes

If you're a car fan or a history fan--and especially a fan of car history--this is your book. Well written, nicely researched without ever being tedious, Ingrassa does a great job of connecting memorable automobiles and how they affected mankind and so many cultures. Sean Runnette is a great narrator, too, so it's a pleasure to listen to.

the weaving together of history, cars and their impact on cultures

Well worth listening to.

the team meeting Paul Bocouse at Keller's Yountville, Calif., home.

No, I don't think so, but as a reader, he's really good.

If you're a budding, current or former chef, you'll likely love the book. I can't imagine others who don't know the difficulty of the trade caring much. Though I never competed as a chef, I know the skills they were struggling to master for the contest. That kept me interested throughout. Great story and documentary.

I loved learning about the history of sushi and how the CSA taught its students to prepare it. Very interesting to know its origins.

I don't think narrarators should always mimic every accent of every character. In the case of Zoran, the Australian sushi instructor, hearing a narrator with an Asian accent imitating an Aussie was like daggers in my ears. Other than that, he did a good job.

Yes, it was more than fine.

No. Too academic.

The story sometimes swung from nicely historical to sounding a bit contrived. The whole "rock and roll sushi chef" image of guys banging out rolls, downing sake and hollering "kampei!" (sp?) all night sounded a bit dubious to me.

Insightful. The only people who wouldn't be surprised at the statistical research in this book are the actual millionaires themselves. Fascinating to see that they are mostly ordinary people living humble lives.

Rich Dad, Poor Dad. Both books overlap nicely in that they focus on wealthy people's smart use of money.

Adequate and fitting for a book of this gravity. Not exciting, but probably not supposed to be for the nature of this content.

This makes me sad to write since I've met the author, Chang-rae Lee, a man who couldn't have been more kind and charming or humble. But his book, The Surrendered, is simply awful. Firstly, the book desperately needs a team of editors to steer Lee back to its myriad flaws needing repair. It's missing many details essential to the story, pieces which are astonishingly left out. I've never listened to or read a book in which so many words are just made up, nouns and verbs turned into adjectives and adverbs seemingly out of convenience to the author. And the reuse of the same words over and over--he must have used "welling" in 10 different ways 30 different times.

The story line is unbelievable, even for historical, wartime fiction, and I'm not talking about the brutality of the combatants. There's not a single happy character in the lot, and the one who comes closest is a drug addict. As one other reviewer put it, Lee's use of tropes is just nauseating. I can't tell if he's trying too hard to impress readers or himself by twisting every description into something symbolic and deep, or whether he just can't make himself write cleanly and concisely.

The narrator needs to find a new line of work. He was just not good in any way, shape or form. I know that sounds mean, but it's the truth, I'm sorry to say.

To think that this book is up for a Pulitzer Prize is purely astonishing. It's such a bad nomination that it makes me think so much less of the Pulitzer Prize itself--a marker by which I've often bought books. Just as shocking is the fact that Lee is a professor of literature at Princeton! Who knows? Maybe he teaches better than he writes.

Unlike the other reviewer who simply gave up on the book, I finished it out of respect to Lee and the fact that I paid for it. Frankly I wish I'd bailed out, because the ending was not even close to being worth it. Sorry, Chang-Rae, you're a very nice man, but I can't imagine letting anyone else read this book without fair warning

I have to say that I really enjoyed this book until its ending. It was as if the author got near the end and said, "Oh, wow, I've got to sew this whole thing up and make it as fantastical as possible." I'll not blow it for anyone by saying what happens, but as a serious reader, professional writer and fan of auto racing, the coda ruined it for me.

Brilliant book, brilliantly told and brilliantly narraated. I write for a living and scrutinize books pretty harshly, and I couldn't find so much as a syllable out of place in this text. I loved it and recommend it highly.

I read the book five years ago and loved it then, but enjoyed it even more hearing author Bill Bryson reading it. A true treat. Highly recommended.