299 Days

The Preparation, Book 1

De: Glen Tate

Narrado por: Kevin Pierce

Meet Grant Matson: lawyer, father, suburbanite husband who awakens to the fragility of modern society and embarks on a personal journey that introduces him to a world of self-reliance and liberation. 299 Days: The Preparation, the first audiobook in the 299 Days series, depicts the inner struggles Grant must face as he exists in a social system he recognizes as unsustainable and on the verge of collapse, but one in which he has built his life around. What begins as a return to his roots, self-sufficiency and independence, becomes a full blown move to prepare for what may come.

Engaging, insightful, and a bit suspenseful, follow Grant's transition from a self-perceived "sheeple" to a full-blown "prepper". Will his fears come true? Is he an extremist? What if nothing happens? What if something does?

©2012 Glen Tate (P)2014 Sellerman and Sweeney, LLC

final get to hear the books

Would you recommend this audiobook to a friend? If so, why?

Yes. It is a great book to,open people's eye to the world around them. For me it is so easy to relate to Grant and it makes me think about so much more in my life.

Who was your favorite character and why?

Grant by far is my favorate character since I can relate to him in so many ways.

Which scene was your favorite?

The drive back from forks when Grant's eyes are opened to so much around him.

If you were to make a film of this book, what would the tag line be?

I miss America

Any additional comments?

Even if you are not a prepped or a survivalist it is a great story with a look into how people think and feel when they do not do what the people around them do.

A refreshingly realistic survivor scenario

Would you listen to 299 Days again? Why?

I've listened to a lot of 'day after' books and this one is realistic because there is a big system breakdown but not total. Water and electricity still work, mostly. Food becomes an issue, socialist attitudes pop up once elitists run out. 'Loyalists' vs 'patriots' try wooing the undecided, which is most of the population after idiots and thugs.

I read all 10, but too lazy to write 10 reviews.

An entirely credible scenario of what the future may very well be, but liberals and Democrats beware, it is an extremely conservative Republican viewpoint. I believe the author also has religious convictions which are underlying but conspicuously absent from these writings in order to be more appealing to those who do not possess faith in deity. I suspect atheists will see through this anyway and object. I hope this doesn't stop anyone from considering all the events this book describes as serious possibilities to prepare for.

I enjoyed the 9 books (though they could have been consolidated to probably 4) but 10 was a little contrived and not really necessary.

Great book, with a different approach.

Not what I was expecting. Great book with a totally different approach to a genre I enjoy. Probably the best character development I've come across so far.

Starts off great!

I finished book 9 a couple of weeks ago. I've listened to a couple of more books by my favorite author to find a comparison to what I like. This is my complete review of the entire series.

The first book was good, it was about prepping. The detail seemed well thought out and planned. Told a good story and the reader I think was the perfect voice for the main character "Grant Matson".

The book has a very distinct line drawn in the sand between the two political parties. Liberals and Conservatives, and for general purposes that is fine. This is suppose to be about people and the author even says that he wanted to write a book about a true depiction of what a partial collapse would be like. The author did a state that there are more people who tend to just fall in line with what ever is popular in the political sense, but it stops there and puts most people in the dumb and liberal category.

An example of this is gun control. You will always have the hardliners of either side that will probably represent about 20% of the population will be very liberal, and 20% of the population will be very conservative about gun control. Where as 60% of the population will more or less be swayed one way or the other based on their own personal experience with the issue, but are not hard lined based on principles.

The author takes a stance that the majority of the population are under the impression that a gun will just go off by looking at it. Maybe that is the way that it is in the state of Washington, but I've lived in a multitude of states and haven't found that to be the case in the general public.

The first book was good enough that it kept me interested, but that is all it really did. I spend a lot of time traveling across my state and it gives me a lot of time to listen to books. So when I finished the first book it was pretty well written and thought I'll keep listening.

Well, that is about as good as it gets being a prepping book. The story was more about a list of coincidences that really played a bigger roll in his survival more than the prepping he actually did himself, and I found a lot of holes in his prepping. The story was tidy and neat and doesn't represent what a normal person is going to go through in a time of a partial collapse.

The author starts off with a prologue that essentially gives away the whole story, but you don't know that you got the whole basis of the story till you get to the 9th book, and you are left wondering wtf.

The author also starts off saying that a lot of mistakes where made by Grant. Where? I didn't see a single mistake that almost killed him and his family. Like I said this was a neat little tidy story that Grant is given every ounce of possible coincidence to survive that really no one would be that lucky.

Characters like "Special Forces Fred", and terms like the "Rental Team" are names of characters and references of certain industries that really make no sense. No special forces guy that I know would ever want to be called special forces anything. They don't want the recognition like that. Most of them won't even come out and tell that they are special forces, and the people who do know are generally close and would never nick name their friend Special Forces Fred, or Navy Seal Timmy, or Green Beret Scotty, ect. It silly, and so is the name "Rental Team". It is a true reflection of the books 2-9 that show that there is a lack of solid development, and instead I know nothing about this topic and will just throw in a name that sounds cool to me, but really gives the author no credibility on the topic. The term the author should have used was a security team for hire. But the author did use that to describe another group in the book, but why it didn't translate to other parts of the book are beyond me.

The National Guard. The Author really fouled this up. The picture is painted that the National Guard is a bunch of unskilled, pussies that have never seen combat. In truth, most of the wars being fought in the middle east in the last 14 years has been done by...the National Guard. To say that your only good forces are going to come from the real army is yet another indication that the author took no time to really research his idea, and again shows that he wrote his book behind closed doors. This is either because he has no idea how it really works, or because he has some military friends that really don't acknowledged the how big a roll that the National Guard, Army Reserves, and just military reserve forces have played in this war over the last decade and a half. It is baloney.

If you like the word Ah-May-Zing, then you will love this book. The Author must have a very small vocabulary if the only way he can describe something is amazing, or a few "it was perfect" then he had no business writing a book. BUT, he did write a book, and he did a pretty good job in terms or putting a story on paper, but he took no time to find different ways to tell me that it surprised him, it horrified him, it was Ah-May-Zing that the reader didn't throw this job out the window and ask the editor to give him something better to perform.

As the story continued I felt like I was listening to my Grandpa tell me a story. Kind of watered down, not to violent to make me (his child of a grandson) to have nightmares.

This whole series could have been written in about 4 books, that would give each of the following books after the first a lot more substance, and I wouldn't have to waste money, or credits to finish the series.

There was very few life or death conflicts, there was not a lot of drama. There was not a lot of story that played against the prepping that was so heavily centered on the first book. In fact the main character ate a lot, and never really seemed to have gone hungry at any point, and that wasn't because he prepped, it was because the author tied the whole story in a nice little bow that didn't require him to create too much of a complex story.

The series of books gives me the idea that this was one man's fantasy of being the hero in an impending collapse, doesn't give any kind of a guide of how to prep.

If you want to hear a good story, read "The Grey Man" that is a story that is well thought out, well told, and leave you wanting more. It took that author 15 years to write that book, and it shows with how well it written.

This was garbage, written by an amateur...that had me yelling at the book after the 100th time the word "Ah-May-Zing" was used.

If you find this book to be as good as the stars indicate you are as delusional as the guy who wrote it.