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AUDIOBOOKS > BOOKS TO READ WHILE WORKING
December
2011 - Audiobooks reviewed by Jonathan Lowe |
 An
Army CID warrant officer is sent to investigate a military family's
murder in a West Virginia mining town in
ZERO DAY by David Baldacci, an offbeat police procedural narrated
by Ron McLarty and Orlagh Cassidy. The efficient use of two narrators
to cover the male and females voices is appropriate and effective,
given the dialogue-heavy text. Cassidy is particularly adept at accent
and tone to differentiate her gender's characters, and the banter
between her main character Samantha Cole and McLarty's John Puller
convince the listener with its ease and authenticity. Occasional sound
effects are added to highlight the action scenes, as in explosions or
fights, while the plot twists are never telegraphed by the author or
the narrators, making an engrossing experience for what might have
been a formula suspense in lesser hands.
Next, fear can
make a man do strange things, have odd dreams and recollections. . .
especially when that fear has led him to abandon his children. Yet Cal
has not forgotten them, nor does he want to shirk his
responsibilities. Rather, he attempts to understand himself and the
monumental task of parenthood in an age when trucks roar through
school crossings and pedophiles lurk online, seeking prey. BOOK OF
DAYS by Steve Rasnic Tem has elements of horror, fantasy, and even
romance to it, but it's really a poetic homage to childhood itself,
when we conjured entire worlds out of sticks in mud, and the future
held limitless promise. Cal, returning to his own childhood memories,
chronicles his own personal calendar, making spontaneous, visceral
connections between past events in aid of present understanding.
People, particularly dead writers, inform his awareness of his fear.
You will not be shocked by any of it. Rather, you will nod
acknowledgment of empires in the clouds which were your own, and are
now your child's gift. Prepare for an unusual experience that is also,
in a magical way, familiar. Narrator Nathan Lowell is ideal to voice
the character, as he possesses the right sense of timing and tone,
knowing just when the sentences need to flow together like a poem.
THE HISTORY OF WESTERN ART is a broad view of art history by
Renaissance man Peter Whitfield, who covers the subject from ancient
times to the modern dilemma of defining what art is. An intriguing
connection between past ideals & beliefs, and our current estrangement
from the natural world is discussed, as modern deconstruction has led
us into a box canyon of perpetual revolution without agreed upon
parameters. It's all covered in four CDs, including commentary on
architecture, architects, and artists, and is read by Sebastian
Comberti, with classical music accompaniment.
AMERICAN
DESPERADO by journalist Evan Wright is the chronicle of "Cocaine
Cowboy" Jon Roberts, the man most responsible for the transport of the
drug into America during the Medellin Cartel's heydays in the 1980s.
Besides being a smuggler, Roberts was also an assassin during the
Vietnam War, and was then recruited by a Republican Congressman and
the CIA to fly guns to rebels into Nicaragua. Roberts, an admitted
sociopath without feelings, also displays classic signs of the
psychopath, including a need to brag about and exaggerate his
exploits. Wright attempts to verify the conversations he had with
Roberts, with only partial success. So we are left to believe the
account or not. Certainly Roberts is evil, repeatedly saying how evil
is "stronger than good"(a motto learned from his father, who coldly
killed a man in front of him as a child to show him "the way.") But
oddly, while trying to convince us he's one of the worst human beings
to ever live, (witness his murder of children, skinning people alive,
firebombing houses, not to mention the relish he takes in describing
how best to disable a victim quickly by cracking a knee and stabbing
an eye), he occasionally claims to regret his choices, hoping his son
doesn't become like him. This is certainly one of the most disturbing
books ever written. Tour guides into Roberts' heart of darkness
include Erik Davies, Mark Deakins, and Christina Rooney, among others,
all of whom enhance the text with appropriate seriousness or flippancy
of tone, showing how morally clueless a sociopath is, and also how
dangerous to those who underestimate him due to his charm.
Finally, BACK TO WORK is Bill Clinton's version of Obama's THE
AUDACITY OF HOPE, with solid economic advice and an appeal for
national cooperation. Although Clinton's one big economic blunder was
to sign into law a Republican repeal of the Glass-Steagall Act in
1999, which allowed investment banks to trade in mortgage backed
securities (and led to the 2008 collapse on Wall Street), he admits to
this mistake, and now urges us to learn from our mistakes and move
together toward a solvent economic future, as was the case during his
administration (until it was derailed by Bush's war and Greenspan's
spendthrift ways). As usual, and particularly now, Clinton sounds
honest and smart, despite the fact that history has shown him to have
the heart and soul of a politician (meaning he will say and do
whatever it takes to look good.) Given our current disastrous economy,
in fact, most people today would care not a wit about his personal
life, and would vote him into office again in a heartbeat over all
contenders--Democratic, Republican, or Tea Party.
(Jonathan's
audiobook novel FAME ISLAND is now an ebook as well as THE INSTANT
CELEBRITY from Amazon and Nook.)
 |
BOOKS TO READ WHILE WORKING
November
2011 - Audiobooks reviewed by Jonathan Lowe |
 If
you're flummoxed about how the state of
affairs in the Middle East came about, with religious wars threatening
to erupt (again) over Israel's very existence, (and with America mired
in unwinnable battles in the region costing $300 Million per day), you
might step back in time with James Carroll as he explains the big
picture, tracing the history of religion and violence, including how
it has polarized everyone to take sides. Carroll's broad thesis is
that religion and violence have always been closely tied together,
with the implication that faith which rejects the material world
encourages an unfortunate interpretation of scriptures. Columbus
carried a Catholic worldview to America, and that worldview all began
with the struggle of Israel for survival, and its identification with
the most important city in the world:
JERUSALEM, JERUSALEM is read by
Mel Foster, but rather than focusing on the city itself the book
approaches the subject of religion's focus on violence from all angles
in a comprehensive, analytical, and intriguing look at why blood-based
sacrifices offered to God create meaning for believers, and how
resistance to Roman violence influenced Biblical texts and formulated
Jewish attitudes toward the world, (which in turn influences us as
well). A perfect storm continues to brew around the Temple mount in
Jerusalem, which is perceived by both Jews and Arabs as ground zero
(despite our fixation on the less important one in New York City.) It
is from this point that the world has turned since ancient times, and
which also turned it more recently to the brink of nuclear holocaust
during the Nixon debacle. Will it happen again, since Islam also views
Jews the way Hitler did, once Iran gets the bomb? The author expresses
a hope that believers of all monotheistic religions view "one God" not
as a numeral 1 in opposition to perceived infidels, but as "God is
one," meaning "in harmony with" rather than "at war with." Otherwise,
says Carroll, the human race is doomed.
As a genre, romance has
tended to fluctuate between the sappy and steamy, taking stock
characters on a predictable roller coaster ride that ends with either
a wedding or some twist on revenge. In recent years, romance has
strayed into mystery and suspense in a crossover attempt to win a
wider audience. Working mothers or career women whose hopes for
advancement included snagging the resident Adonis are no longer
typical of this new wave of novels populated by serial killer
investigators, ghost busters, and even vampires. The boring has turned
into the ridiculous. So it was with pleasant surprise that, having
ejected the first disk of a vapid Danielle Steel novel, I next
inserted TRAIN TO TRIESTE by first time novelist Domnica Radulescu, a
literate romance that breathes spontaneous life from its opening
paragraphs. In the memoir-clarity of first person, the story of Mona
Manoliu is told, circa 1977 in Ceausescu's Romania, as she falls in
love with a young man who is later seen in the uniform of the secret
police. Fleeing the country for Chicago, Mona goes on to live a quite
different life with another man, but can never forget her one great
love. Indeed, twenty years later, when she finally returns to Romania
to learn the truth, the moment is rendered with exquisite detail,
something that is simply absent in most of today's less believable
manipulations. This audiobook kept me through all nine disks, thanks
to the well drawn character of Mona, whose hauntingly original voice
is honest, brave, witty, and most of all passionate and alive. Thanks
also to narrator Yelena Shmulenson, whose ability to empathically
inhabit the character is matched by her masterful delivery and
authentic accent.
ABOUT TIME by Adam Frank re-asks the big
questions about the origins of the universe from the perspective of
time, and how our perceptions of time change along with technology.
With the subtitle "Cosmology and Culture at the Twilight of the Big
Bang," the book shows how differently our lives are ordered when
compared to the past, and what the future may hold. Is time real? Are
there multiple universes out there? Why are we stuck in our
understanding of time, just as Einstein was stuck melding forces with
gravity? And if there is a breakthrough, what will it tell us about
what happened before the Big Bang? Read by David Drummond, the book
will get you thinking about time in a new way. Because, unlike a rock,
time is not solid, and is all in the point of view.
There's a
lot of anger out there regarding Wall Street greed, and the overall
lack of morality, with corporations focused solely on profits at the
expense of other people and the environment. With laid off workers
picketing the dissolution of the middle class, the iconic play DEATH
OF A SALESMAN by Arthur Miller has been given a new audio rendering,
with Stacy Keach at the helm as Willy Loman, a disillusioned man who
can only give his sons the American Dream by committing suicide so
they'll collect the insurance. Keach has a long career on stage and
screen, and is also the host of American Greed on CNBC. This powerful
play is as befitting today as when it was written in 1949, and is
available from L.A. Theatre Works.
Finally, have you been
BRANDWASHED? Indubitably, says marketing expert Martin Lindstrom. Not
only are you being influenced to remember product names, but you're
being manipulated to purchase products based on carefully scripted
commercials and visuals linked to psychological tests. Your own biases
and perceptions are being used against you, regardless of whether
those perceptions reflect reality. Multinational corporations spend
millions to discover what influences your choices, and then they bring
to bear tools of deception based on that data. What's most surprising
here is the depth and extent of the con, even among those who think
they've chosen freely. Narrated by Dan Woren, Brandwashed shows that
we are all just like the child screaming for that box of Sugar Pops
set at his eye level for a reason. |
BOOKS TO READ WHILE WORKING
October
2011 - Audiobooks reviewed by Jonathan Lowe |
 What's
wrong with Facebook and Google and Amazon? They have revolutionized
search, and customized your experience on the web. But in his book
THE FILTER BUBBLE researcher Eli Pariser has revealed a dark side
to this personalization, in which every click you make is tracked and
analyzed in order not just to provide you with targeted ads, but also
to feed back to you news and views which coincide with your own. What
are you missing? Everything else. If all you want is a feedback loop,
devoid of learning, cultural interaction, and creative insight, this
is a good thing. If, however, society is to advance and people to
grow, it is not. For example, with everyone's focus narrowed, it's
easy to compartmentalize people into targeted "control groups" for
study and exploitation. If you browse a website for Hyundai cars,
say, you will be targeted by Hyundai for future ads, which Google will
enable the company to do for a fee. You will not be shown
alternatives which do not match your weaknesses, regardless of whether
those alternatives are better or not. Combine the power of the
internet with TV, and you can be guided inevitably toward what to buy,
who to vote for, and what to believe. Scary? It's happening all the
time. Corporations and politicians alike now use social media to
generate buzz, while companies compile data on you and your friends,
reinforcing your choices and offering up Top 10 lists to show that
you're making the "right" choice, which they in fact engineered.
Narrated by Kirby Heyborne, this is a rare and important book that
examines how and why this focus has come to be, and what we can do to
quell a pervasive new control on our thoughts and actions.
A decade ago America came under attack in the most visible way
possible, but now it is unlikely an attack will occur the same way
again. Things have changed, and the element of surprise for such a
method has been lost. The latest battlefield is the internet, with
cyber attacks and spyware successfully plundering secrets from
corporate and military targets in the U.S.. According to Joel
Brenner, a global risk management consultant and former National
Security advisor, human spies are becoming obsolete due to
increasingly sophisticated malware and executable programs that invade
computer systems to do the bidding of unseen enemies. Little is safe
anymore, since professional, state-sponsored hackers exploit not just
code flaws but also human naivety to steal and mine data. In a book
narrated by Lloyd James, AMERICA THE VULNERABLE--Inside the New Threat
Matrix of Digital Espionage, Crime, and Warfare, reveals startling
gaps in the security of the banking industry, the Pentagon, and the
research and development arms of technology companies. Not only is
the credit card information of millions up for grabs, but trade
secrets and source code valued in the billions, as when China stole a
Navy radar system which took years to develop. In one case, Russia
distributed thousands of secretly corrupted thumb drives until one was
used by a covert military worker who uploaded a picture of his baby on
a "secure" computer, and unknowingly installed an executable file that
relayed classified information back to Russia via the internet. In
another case, Iran hacked into Predator drone aircraft systems, and
saw the same images the controllers saw in real time, relaying the
feed so that insurgents could avoid detection. Every time we use our
credit cards, or our cell phones, or visit a website which may or may
not be phishing for data, we leave a trail that can be traced and
exploited. Companies are fighting back, but according to Brenner,
nothing is 100% safe from criminals with ingenious methods and
cutting-edge technology. His book is a must hear for security
personnel hoping to prevent Iran from obtaining nuclear weapons that
might be used in any of thousands of container ships entering ports
daily, or for anyone else wishing to protect themselves or their
companies from attack. Also out is GHOST IN THE WIRES, Kevin
Mitnick's memoir about how he hacked phone companies nationwide for
years, creating false identities while conning security employees into
helping him mine their data by pretending to be an employee himself.
It's read by the always listenable Ray Porter, whose narration is
almost entrancing as well as intriguing. It's like another amazingly
true memoir "Catch Me If You Can," and will no doubt become a movie
like that did as well.
(Note: Jonathan's audio novel Fame
Island is now available in ebook format as "The Instant Celebrity" for
Kindle, Nook, and iBooks) |
BOOKS TO READ WHILE WORKING
September
2011 - Audiobooks reviewed by Jonathan Lowe |
 In
the futuristic adventure novel
READY PLAYER ONE by Ernest Cline, our near future is a dystopian
world from which everyone wants to escape. Clues to these cyberspace
alternatives exist today, but in Cline's imagined "Oasis" a myriad of
very realistic but computer-generated planets exist which millions of
players plug into, since we've lost hope in the real world. And in
keeping with our obsession for game shows, the main character is on a
treasure hunt for an inheritance left by an eccentric billionaire, and
he must fight other players through various levels or gates, winning
points by playing video games popular in the 80s, (which was the
billionaire's obsession). Wil Wheaton narrates this cross genre
adventure, which is a fable at heart. He tells Wade Watts' story as
part confession, part travelogue, part social commentary. In the end,
after an exhaustive quest for keys to the imagined kingdom (something
our culture also relentlessly seeks online and on TV these days), the
novel suggests that happiness can only be found by returning to
reality, not believing in something for nothing. (A non-fiction
companion to this novel might be "Reality Is Broken" by Jane McGonigal.)
Kudos to Random House for allowing something undefinable into print,
and although Wade's intimate familiarity with every movie and book and
game from the 80s is hard to believe, given his youth in 2044, (when
does he have time to study in school?), the overall goal of the plot
is simplistic enough to attract more than just those who remember the
80s fondly. While not as literary or deep as the prose of genius
writers like Neal Stephenson and William Gibson, who inspired the
book, if you add Willy Wonka into the matrix, as it does--along with
an always believable narrator--this just might be the audio fiction
pick of the summer.
For the book that started it all, a
breakthrough novel by a true visionary, try NEUROMANCER by William
Gibson, a science fiction masterpiece and winner of the Hugo, Nebula,
and Philip K. Dick awards. In some ways it had an effect on how the
internet was developed, as Gibson coined the word "cyberspace," and it
described "the matrix" in detail. With a plot involving a hacker hired
to steal a code allowing an artificial intelligence to merge with its
twin identity, the book is light years beyond the cyberpunk genre that
it created. Now, with a movie version in pre-production, a new
recording on audio of this iconic 1984 novel is read by the
always-listenable Robertson Dean, who has also being doing some TV
documentary voiceovers of late.
Jussi Adler-Olsen is a Danish mystery
novelist who has won the Glass Key award, and is being compared to the
late Stieg Larsson with THE KEEPER OF LOST CAUSES--the first of a
"Department Q" series, essentially introducing a detective who's been
"kicked upstairs," ironically to the basement to work (alone) on cold
cases. Luckily for one forgotten victim in dire need of fate to reopen
her "lost cause," Carl begins to process the missing politician's
records, and comes up with an electrifying twist in historic
oversight. Eric Davies narrates with his usual aplomb in rendering
with precise understatement an engaging narrative that fluctuates
between dark and light, between cleverly personal character
development and a sublimely evocative sense of personality and
setting.
Finally, one deeply ingrained facet of human nature,
unfortunately, is our unwillingness to embrace the new or different,
or anyone we perceive as coming from the outside. The pressure for
conformity is universal, and nowhere is this pressure as great as in
high school, when adolescents are becoming young adults and are
expected to define themselves by their choices. In THE GEEKS SHALL
INHERIT THE EARTH author Alexandra Robbins explores the foundations of
an irony inherent in our prejudices: often those who are considered to
be shunned "outsiders" in high school are the ones who achieve the
most success later in life. If you want to work as a factory worker to
retire as a Wal Mart greeter, "fitting in" with your group and
maintaining the same opinions throughout life is reasonable, but if
you want to excel and be an innovator like Steve Jobs or Bill Gates,
you should probably revel in breaking the rules and taking different
paths. Kathleen McInerney gives a personable reading of this
examination of the science (and consequences) behind popularity,
showing that our culture might be a bad influence on individual
members of that culture if followed blindly. Even Lady Gaga, one of
the most popular icons of our media obsessed times, would agree. Being
popular is not as important as being yourself. |
BOOKS TO READ WHILE WORKING
August
2011 - Audiobooks reviewed by Jonathan Lowe |
 Rebecca
Lowman reads
RULES OF CIVILITY, a debut novel by Amor Towles, who is an
investment banker with an MA in English from Stanford. His main
character is Katey Kontent, a poor Wall Street secretary whose
ambitions soon eye higher floors in late 1930s New York society.
Suitors with money pursue her, while the compromises needed to ascend
the marble staircases vex her, and at each step her unfolding life is
a canvas for life-altering choices. Lowman is always believable as
Katey, a character who will resonate with today's ambitious young
women as well as anyone on American Idol. The new rage in music is
jazz, though, and in tone there are only nods of the top hat to
Dominick Dunne and Nicholas Sparks.
"Think Different" is the
motto of Apple computer and its founder, Steve Jobs. He's an
innovator obsessively focused on creating products that people don't
even know that they'll need yet. Sometimes tyrannical like his early
competitor Bill Gates, Jobs' company finally surpassed Microsoft in
2010 to head the largest technology company in the world. Two audiobooks that will help you understand Jobs the man, and how he
thinks, are, first THE STEVE JOBS WAY by Jay Elliot, former VP at
Apple, read by Christopher Hurt, and THE INNOVATION SECRETS OF STEVE
JOBS by Carmine Gallo, read by Sean Morgan. Now if only Steve would
run for President!
Could you torture a man? Under what
circumstances might it be right? What is right? These are questions
CIA officers are forced to confront from day one on the job. Now, for
the first time, a former CIA operative named Glenn Carle tells the
story of his involvement in the interrogation of a high profile Al-Queda
captive at a secret black site overseas. As told by Malcolm
Hillgartner, THE INTERROGATOR is a chilling but true tale, and the
listener is ably carried along to witness events firsthand. THE
TRIPLE AGENT by Pulitzer Prize winner Joby Warrick is the true story
of a once trusted informer with access to al-Qaeda who suddenly
detonates a bomb he's wearing to kill seven CIA operatives. Read by
Sunil Malhotra, the book possesses a driving narrative, full of
surprises, and is certainly one of the best books ever about American
espionage against terrorists, although the narrator is not as good as
is Hillgartner, except in pronunciation of Arab names.
Is
formal "fundamentalist"religion on the way out? Yes, says Dr. Harvey
Cox in THE FUTURE OF FAITH, read by Don Hagen, an ear-opening treatise
on orthodoxy that proposes we are leaving the Age of Belief for the
Age of the Spirit, much like leaving the letter of the law for the
spirit of it. Science plays a role in this, says Cox, exposing
fallacies of belief such as the 6000 year age of the Earth. As such,
the audiobook is a must-hear by anyone whose "orthodoxy"
(unwillingness to listen or dialogue) prevents them from seeing the
separate-and-subjugate intentions of religious institutions, which are
run like multinational corporations.
Finally, Anne Flosnik
reads an ear-opening look at the follies of American finance, and the
decline of the West in the face of a record breaking debt. Can
America forestall catastrophe, or is it already too late? In HOW THE
WEST WAS LOST Dambisa Moyo outlines the breathtaking ignorance of
politicians and regulators in allowing industrial bases to erode while
housing bubbles inflated and Americans moved from using cash to using
credit cards to sustain their illusions. With pension funds facing
collapse, is the dollar itself next? One thing is certain: America
has been falling for over a decade in its rankings in science and
engineering education compared to the rest of the world. While our
culture encourages competition in sports and non-productive pursuits
such as song and dance, and while we discourage any identification or
progression of the best performing academic students, emerging
countries like China do the exact opposite. There, students are in
intense competition, spending more time in school, and with science
and engineering related careers and education a more realistic goal
than the far less likely chance of winning game show fame. So the
future now favors emerging markets, while a relative lowering of
living standards is inevitable for the Western world. |
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