(This is an overdue review of an audiobook completed this past May)

As many of you know, I am a passionate reader of fiction. Novels and short stories dominate my reading time in any given year. In looking back over the last several years I have not read a great deal of nonfiction, but of those nonfiction books I have read, many of them are from one of my favorite authors, Bill Bryson.

This past Spring my wife and I checked out the unabridged audio of Bill Bryson’s latest book, One Summer, America 1927, read by the author himself. There is no reason for me to be coy with you, ladies and gentlemen, the book is excellent, and Bryson is as entertaining a narrator as he is a writer.

This detailed, fascinating account of events that began, or culminated, in America in the year 1927 focuses largely on to anchoring events: Babe Ruth’s run towards hitting 60 home runs and Charles Lindbergh’s historic flight from New York to Paris. Woven round and in-between these two major events in our country’s history are events well known and obscure that will keep you riveted to the pages.

My Rating: 10/10

Continue reading One Summer, America 1927 ~Bill Bryson →

This past summer I decided to give Wil Wheaton’s book Just a Geek a try after my friend Jeff went on a tear, ripping through it and raving about it the entire time. I borrowed it with the idea that I would slowly work my way through it and then quickly followed suit. I finished it off in no time at all and in turn raved about it to one of our mutual friends who then took the loaner and tore through it himself. Gotta love it when books catch fire within your circle of friends.

Just a Geek was a shoe in on my favorites list for the year and remains one of the most inspiring books I’ve read when it comes to thinking about the way that I want to write on this site. In my review I stated: “…the plain truth is that this book is really for any kind of nerd or geek out there and as such is one I can recommend without reservation. It is a quick, entertaining and satisfying read that has me looking to track down the rest of Wil Wheaton’s books…this was a real treat.”

And indeed it was. I made good on my promise, buying a copy of his essay collection, Dancing Barefoot, as a Christmas gift for Jeff. I thought it was the least I could do by way of thanks for introducing me to Just a Geek in the first place. The bonus of that kind of giving is that as soon as Jeff finished it he offered to loan it to me.

Pretty slick move, wasn’t it? Heh, the gift that keeps on giving. 🙂

It is my great pleasure to announce that this, my first completed book of 2012, was every bit as entertaining as Just a Geek. I only had one minor complaint…

Continue reading Dancing Barefoot ~Wil Wheaton →

On the Way to Other Country ~C.W. Gusewelle

–published 2001
–Kansas City Star Books
–355 pages
–9/10

I doubt that there are many people alive who have not been overtaken, on certain gray days of the spirit, by a sense of the futility of words.

~C.W. Gusewelle

The steady blinking of the cursor on open white space is keeping perfect rhythm with the steady beat in my head–“I don’t know what to write. I don’t know what to write.”… C.W. Gusewelle is ever so right. On some days it feels like an exercise in futility to put fingers to keyboard in order to get the words out. I don’t make it a habit of reviewing everything I read. My intentions are good, but there are days when I am weighed down with too much to do and others in which I cannot drum up enough inspiration to do a book review justice (either for good or ill) regardless of my feelings after closing that final page. Yet there are some books that just cry out to be reviewed, especially a decade after they are published when they are perhaps more forgotten than they should be. On the Way to Other Country is one such book and so I will press on, endeavoring to inject my words with some of the emotions sparked by reading this book, both to myself and at times aloud to my wife and child.

Continue reading On the Way to Other Country →