Motorcycles, Minotaurs, & Banjos

A Modest Odyssey

By: Steven Sherrill

Narrated by: Steven Sherrill

Length: 15 hrs and 39 mins

Publisher's summary

This book is about 21 days and 60 years. A motorcycle ride down the spine of Appalachia, with a little banjo and big myth for company, to play and sing at the graves of dead banjo heroes. About making a life about making work. This book is about outsiders. Interlopers. Class migrants. Death. Awakening. Creative process. Growth through risk-taking. It’s a book about ghosts. Music. Writing. Not writing. What’s this book not about? “Finding myself.” I know who I am.

Steven Sherrill is a high school dropout, a nearly retired professor, a family man, a ne'er-do-well banjo player, a motorcyclist, an aquarist, a sonic/video muckraker, and a novelist with five books in the world, one of which (The Minotaur Takes a Cigarette Break) is a cult classic.

©2022 Steven Sherrill (P)2023 Steven Sherrill

I couldn't take it anymore

In all of my years of reading books and listening to Audiobooks, there has only been three occasions that I have returned the book before I got 8 chapters into it. This book I kept giving it chapters in hopes it would get better until finally I couldn't take it anymore. i even tried listening to it at 1.5 times speed to move it along but that didn't help either.

Somewhere in here, there is a motorcycle travel adventure story. The intent seemed interesting enough; ride to the graves of his favorite banjo players. Simple and that could have driven the adventure all by itself. But no. The author felt the need to wax poetic on his demons, specifically his minotaur and his poor life choices. I got this book because I thought it was a motorcycle adventure story, and a lengthy one, which I have a preference for. Not what I got.

Now the worst part. Some authors are just brilliant at narration and narrating their work. Graham Field, Sam Manicom and Jeremy Kroeker are just a few who were wonderful to listen to and brilliant with their delivery. For those authors who elected to have someone else do the talking, I applaud these authors because they realize that maybe their voice isn't quite up to the task. In doing so, they were able to provide a voice that did their book justice.

Sadly, Mr. Sherill, however, felt he was better suited for the job and he couldn't have been more wrong. For a guy who, apparently, was a professor at a college, his ability to speak and read his own writing begs a lot of questions. The reading of his very own manuscript was horrid, completely intolerable. Just the though that there was 64 chapters (15 hours) of this I can't imagine. I felt as though I was listening to a 10-year-old read a book report in front of his class. So, thank you Mr. Sherill, you murdered any desire for me to listen to or read your book.

By the way, the other two books were "The Art and Zen of Motorcycle Maintenance" and "American Road Runner".

freak in the room

This guy might be the freak in the room. He’s quite weird for how critical he is of others, but at the end of the day, it is a story about a motorcycle journey and who doesn’t love a story about a good ride.