Constant Reader

About halfway through the book, I realized I couldn't, for the love of me, understand why people would want to crawl through caves. Unlike climbing a mountain, with your spirit soaring, and heaven just out of reach, caves are wet, smelly, dark, and claustrophobic in the extreme. When you get to the bottom of a cave -- well, there you are. At the bottom. In the dark. And the stink. Caving is a creepy activity. And intentionally or not, James Tabor communicates that. After reading Blind Descent, I decided I didn't even want to go into basements. I'd rather seek the sky above -- than the mud below.

I always enjoy David Sedaris. But the seemingly endless musical interludes between essays were a misery. Were they filler?

There is no ending -- these are essays.

The readings performed in front of live audiences -- dreadful audio.

More essays -- of course.

I listen to recorded books for the stories. Not for musical interludes. They're a bother...

A proper Thom Sharpe novel, rather than one that appears to have been written out of bits and tatters lying about.

Of course. I love his novels. I wish Audible carried more of them.

Entertaining. Witty. British.

Annoyance.

This is not a proper sequel ot Porterhouse Blue. But it is properly named. Reading it really was...a Grind.

Jeez! I avoided this book for years, frightened away by the moans and groans over Bernadette Quigley's reading. Yes, it is a bit odd. But it's not bad. Indeed, it's rather sweet. And heck, her accents are no worse than mine. Indeed, they're better. All my accents sound the same. And anyway, Mary Roach is always -- always! -- worthwhile. The woman is a national treasure. I can't wait to see what's next...

I've long been a great fan of James Wolcott, and look forward to reading his reminiscence on New York in the 1980s -- a decade so dreadful, I fled west, along with much of my generation. Attack Poodles is fun -- but so dated! Listening to Wolcott praise Lou Dobbs is painful. And really, he doesn't pay enough attention to Olberman. So much has changed -- though O'Reilly remains the same. Hannity, on the other hand, ain't near as swell as Wolcott thinks him to be. And a bit more on the madness of Coulter is always appreciated.

The usually (indeed, always) reliable Carl Hiaasen seems to have run out of gas halfway through this amusing tale of Life in the Passing Lane. The first third of the book is diverting. The middle third loses its way. The final third is just filler. And the epilogue gave me a headache. Good concept -- but not much follow-through. And I grow weary of the runaway Governor...

This collection of shards and fragments, bits and pieces, would be more of a pleasure for the many fans of Adams, had someone taken the trouble to edit his various notes, comments, memoes and the like. Instead, it was all thrown into the mix -- where no one seems to have noticed the same stories told over and over again. I guess it was edited by the Redundancy Department of Redundancy...

For some odd reason, I thought South of Broad was written by the same Pat Conroy who wrote The Great Santini and Lords of Discipline. My mistake. This is clearly the Pat Conroy who used to write under pseudonyms like Harold Robbins and Jacqueline Susann. For this is nothing but a shabby melodrama, a soap opera peopled by cardboard cutouts, with a little "hot" sex tossed in, and an amazingly bizarre structure. It feels as if whoever this particular Conroy is, he tried to cobble together a bunch of stories he had sitting around in shoe boxes. At best, it's chewing gum for the mind -- a brainless book to read while burning on the beach...