Patricia

Somewhere around the one hour mark, (Perry and his client are at the motel) the final chapter has been inserted. After a couple of minutes, the story resumes and ends before the final chapter begins. Since it is already a rather confused plot, the first time around it was REALLY confusing!

There are audiobooks that make you laugh out loud in public but this one had me in tears on the subway more than once. Fortunately, the reader had an academic style, which kept the book from being even more difficult to bear. The book is also academic in nature with distinct chapters devoted to various populations. In addition to actually learning a lot of history, what I got from the book was a sense that I (and a lot of other people who grew up in the '50s) had been effectively brainwashed - the book contrasts press presentations such as those of The Allies entering Paris with the lack of information on the misery and devastation on the Normandy front, the starvation of Holland, and a number of other situations in which 'the little people' felt the pain of the efforts underway to free them from Nazi rule ranging from actual bombing to misplaced political and military decisions. Not an easy read, but a must read for anyone attempting to understand WWII and the years that followed (up to the future for that matter).

It was good to find that a Swedish writer could write something that did NOT endanger your mental health. With its echoes (pronounced) of Forest Gump and (faint) Crytonomicon, this book is a terrific antidote to the usual dour northern european crime fiction. It is a great romp with the perfect narrator. As it says in its introduction, "those who only says what is the truth, they're not worth listening to..." Go ahead, suspend your disbelief and enjoy!

if there are any...seems impossible. This is one of the most annoying books that I have ever tried to read. I started it a couple of times, put it away, and now its too late to return it or I would do so. AND I resent the reference by another reviewer along the lines of "60 year old grandmothers" not appreciating it. Many 60 year old grandmothers (and grandfathers) grew up in the heyday of the great science fiction writers - Clarke, Heinlein, Brunner, too many to mention, - and this writer is simply not in their class. If you go ahead and buy this showy piece of jumpy junk, don't let the "return by" date pass you by.

... this should be required reading for anyone interested in business, management, politics, great scams, or just wants an exciting story that they already know the end of. The author's fly-on-the-wall details of how key figures behaved; the intricacies of the financial sleight of hand; and the behavior of the management, employees; auditors, lawyers, and rating firms were beyond what even the most cynical (well almost the most cynical) person could imagine. It is a true tragedy - on both the personal and political level - which reads like a fast-paced novel. If you are interested in (or obsessed by) other contemporary accounts of corporate and political bad behavior (as for just one example, The Big Short) don't miss this book.

This was my third-in-a-row Enron book, so maybe I was just over it by then, but although it was an interesting perspective, it didn't add much to either Conspiracy of Fools, in my opinion the best, or The Smartest Guys in the Room, which did make some of the financial dealings a little easier to understand. It took me until the second section to get resigned to the narrator - it made sense to have a female narrator and maybe she actually sounded like Sherren - but she was definitely trying (way too hard) to emphasize things that were really not that exciting and did nothing to add to the story. Stick with stopping at two unless...

I love Jasper Fforde. I like Thursday, love the Nursery Crimes, and go back often to Shades of Grey, which keeps turning up new shades of meaning. I actually pestered Audible to make The Last Dragonslayer available in the U.S. Although I'm not at all sure that my pestering helped, I feel a bit responsible, and therefore want to warn others. This is in no way up to Mr. Fforde's standard.

I like paranormal tales, and in particular creepy appartment stories (Rosemary's Baby remains one of my favorites, and I have been a H.P. Lovecraft devotee since I discovered him many years ago, so I bought 14 on the basis of the description and the good reviews.
At the start it looked like I was onto a good thing. The book starts well with a cast of normal-but-just-a-bit-off-center characters (voiced perfectly by Mr. Porter) and increasingly weird indications that something very strange was going on. Then it got stupid, draggy and pointless, And then it got grossly ugly in an an apparent attempt to channel Lovecraft (which failing, remained only gross), and moved on to an ending that didn't make any sense at all.

Maybe, maybe, if Mr. Clines had written three separate books each of them would have been able to have a focus, or maybe if he had tightened up the plot? Or, as someone once said about Stephen King, "he's a brilliant writer, but he really does need an editor."

Her reading of The Incorrigible Children of Aston Place sold me on Katherine Kellgren, so although I generally don't trust the hype for cozys, particularly historical cozys, I fell for HRS when tempted by a sale. I'm not sure whether or not I'll follow the series - it may take more sales to tempt me (Hint) - but the book is a lot of fun - the heroine a ditz who admits her ditziness and prevails in spite of herself and a full complement of upstairs/downstairs characters all perfectly voiced by Ms. Kellgren, Although I'm not an expert on the period, I have read enough about the 1930's (mainly Evelyn Waugh and the Mitfords in the fiction category and quite a bit of history), and Ms. Bowen gets the tone of that era spot on.

If you are a fan of the standard Reginald Hill books, you could be surprised by this one, which is much longer, much darker, and more intricately plotted than the Dalziel and Pascoe series. Having said that, once you suspend disbelief - a necessity for accepting the somewhat fantastic plot and its coincidences - it is a truly great listen, and Jonathan Keeble is the perfect voice for a protagonist (who is a just a bit Dalziel-esque).

I enjoyed Connolly's "The Gates", which had an energetic protagonist and a reasonable premise, and fell for the good reviews for this book. After 2+ hours of hearing about the problems of a depressed and depressing young boy, the action finally started. Some of it was inventive; much was ugly; some was related to fairy tales but other bits seemed like just an opportunity to bring in grotesques. There was an almost complete lack of humor, and what there was was heavy-handed and soon over. Since it was set in WWII, I kept looking for parallels, but, trust me, Tolkein did it a lot better. But obviously, given the reviews, a lot of people have like it. Go take a look at a hard copy before you decide this one is for you.