Fascism: A Warning

Fascism: A Warning by Madeline Albright, 288 pages. Narrated by the author.

Secretary of State under President Clinton and currently a Professor of  Diplomacy at Georgetown University, Albright has written several books on political affairs and her role in them, now gives us a history of Fascism, from Mussolini's Italy and Hitler's Germany, to many of our modern fascists. She gives us several defining attributes of "this extreme form of authoritarian rule," and tells us that in the end it is the leader's actions and not labels that are important.
Chapters on Hitler's rise and fall, Stalin and the early Cold War, Milosevic, and Putin are all informative and make for interesting reading. Albright has a great perspective on all of this and it is well-written, and a great book to listen to, as well.

Barracoon

Barracoon; The Story of the Last "Black Cargo" by Zora Neale Hurston, 171 pages.

Hurston, the famed author and folklorist, died in 1960 without ever publishing this account. which she wrote based on interviews with Cudjo Lewis in 1931. Lewis, born Kossolla, had been enslaved and brought to the United States in 1859 on the ship Clotilda. The importation of slaves had been outlawed in the United States fifty years before. In a series of interviews, Hurston gains Lewis's trust and talks to him about what her remembers of the country of his youth, his years as a slave, and how he has lived since the Civil War.

The Overlook

The Overlook by Michael Connelly, 225 pages. Narrated by Len Cariou.

The presence of so many of the Connelly novels in our Hoopla and Overdrive collections is good news for anyone who loves police-based thrillers, or fans of the Amazon series Bosch. 
This is the 13th in the Bosch series and part of the story is adapted to the TV show. The victim here is a doctor with access to some dangerous material while the TV version changes that to a porn producer. Maybe because the book is more of a story of its time, with the FBI and the police frantically searching for some international terrorist. The book moves along nicely. Harry locks horns with the FBI again, this time while breaking in a new partner. Cariou is always a great narrator, second only to Titus Welliver himself.

The Soul of a Thief

The Soul of a Thief by Steven Hartov, 293 pages.

Shtefan Brandt finds himself in the unusual and unenviable position of serving in the Waffen SS. As a young Jewish man (a Mischling, actually, son of a Jewish mother and Catholic father) this is not where he thought he would find himself. Brandt was working in a Viennese hospital when he was chosen to serve as the adjutant to a reckless, rule-breaking, war hero of an SS officer, Colonel Himmel. Rumors of his parentage haunt Brandt, and he has to hope that his false papers hold up well. Himmel doesn't care who
Brandt really is, just as long as he does his job. But when Brandt falls in love with the French mistress of the Colonel, he and the young woman find themselves in deepening jeopardy.

Letters to My Palestinian Neighbor

Letters to My Palestinian Neighbor by Yossi Klein Halevi, 224 pages.
A provocative and engaging book about the state of affairs in Israel and the surrounding Palestinian territories from a man who has been a soldier, a reporter, and the co-director of the Muslim Leadership Initiative at the Shalom Hartman Istitute, and who is the author of 2013's Like Dreamers. 
In a series of letters addressed to "Dear Neighbor," Halevi, an American-born Israeli who moved to Israel in the early 1980s, attempts to explain his, the Israeli, side of the story to his Palestinian neighbors, feeling that the inability to hear each other or to acknowledge each other's humanity is a large part of the continuing problem. Halevi presents his arguments for Israel's right to exist and balances this against what he sees as intransigence on the Palestinian side. His letters are unlikely to sway anyone firmly committed in their beliefs, but he does a good job of explaining the timeline, at least as seen through Israeli eyes.
Narrated by the author.

Educated: A Memoir

Educated: A Memoir by Tara Westover, 334 pages.

Westover tells the fascinating story of her life. She grew up on a mountain in Idaho, the daughter of two survivalist parents, who members of a very fundamentalist group of Mormons. Her father was a man driven to conform to the very narrow path that he believed God wanted him and his family to follow. The government in all its forms had a plan to control everyone, and school was a part of that plan, so Westover and her siblings were homeschooled. Well, not exactly schooled. More like left in a room with some books. Westover tells compelling stories of the hard work they did, helping their father scrap cars, buildings, and machinery, with her father making each job more difficult and more dangerous than it needed to be with his frantic energy and cost-cutting schemes. Cuts, minor amputations, falls, and explosions were all part of her young life. She also talks about her relationships with her siblings, all of them suffering under her father's strict rules. Westover's brother Shawn, bipolar, manipulative, and, to a degree, evil also made her suffer quite a bit. Westover makes some difficult decisions as she grows up, deciding to pursue an education that takes her from BYU to Harvard and to Cambridge. This path, and her confronting some of the realities of her family's actions strains her relationships with her mother and father.
A compelling book. Well-narrated by Julia Whelan.

The Lincoln Lawyer: A Novel

The Lincoln Lawyer: A Novel by Michael Connelly, 404 pages.
I have really been enjoying the fact that between Overdrive and Hoopla we seem to have the bulk of the works of Michael Connelly available on audio. While Titus Welliver and Len Cariou are among the best of all possible narrators, the others that you come across reading the Connelly collection are quite good, too.
This is the book that introduced Connelly's new character, Mickey Haller, back in 2005 and became a movie starring Matthew McConaughey in 2011. Micky Haller is a criminal defense attorney who advertises on bus stop benches, works out of his Lincoln Town Cars instead of an office, and has frequent run-ins with the California Bar Association. When he lands a wealthy client, a real estate broker, seller of exclusive Bel-Air homes, who has been accused of a heinous crime, Haller must figure out a way to get his client acquitted and keep himself safe. A good solid legal thriller.

Narrated by Adam Grupper.

The Brass Verdict: A Novel

The Brass Verdict: A Novel by Michael Connelly, 422 pages.
Mickey Haller retired from practicing law for a while after The Lincoln Lawyer incidents. It's a little vague in the beginning and I almost thought that I had missed a volume, but this is the 2nd in the Micky Haller series, or the 14th in the Harry Bosch series, since he shows up and investigates. Haller is named the attorney of record for a whole slew of clients when a lawyer with whom he sometimes worked is murdered. The biggest of these clients is a Hollywood producer who has been accused of murdering his wife and her lover. It is clear to almost everyone that the man is guilty. As Haller tries to find some way to clear his client he also tries to help in his late colleague's murder investigation. Well-paced and interesting to the end. Narrated by Peter Giles.

Lost Light: A Novel

Last Light: A Novel by Michael Connelly, 360 pages. Audiobook narrated by Len Cariou.

The ninth Harry Bosch novel finds Harry retired from the force. He has his private investigator's
license but instead of working for a client he decides to try and solve a case that has been bothering him for the last four years. A young woman had been gunned down during the robbery of a movie set. The director of the movie had felt it necessary to have actual cash on hand while shooting a scene involving a pile of money, leading to a series of violent events that left the young production assistant dead. While investigating, Harry runs afoul of an FBI terrorism investigation and finds himself, as a retired cop, with no leverage. Eleanor plays a part in the novel and Maddie makes her first appearance.

Lincoln in the Bardo

Lincoln in the Bardo by George Saunder 343 pages.

I read this in 2017 and then listened to in in early 2018 for a book discussion group. I have to say that as good a read as this book is, and it is in the "very good" to "excellent" range, it is even better as an audiobook. With Nick Offerman as Hans Vollman, David Sedaris as Roger Bevins III, and the author as the Reverend Everly Thomas, the audio is a marvel. I listened to it about three times in succession because it was so good (and because I didn't have anything else to listen to on a long trip.
Here is what I said last year: Winner of the 2017 Booker Prize, Saunder's new novel is phenomenal read. When Lincoln's eleven-year-old son Willie died of Typhoid in 1862 the
president comes close to falling apart. Willie waits for him in the graveyard, ignoring the cacophony of voices around him. The graveyard is filled with the dead. Not just the bodies, but the spirits of those who have not yet fully departed, for one reason or another. We hear fascinating stories from these dead and witness weird scenes played out. I have not listened to the audio, but I hear that it's wonderful, with a great cast reading the book. Saunders has a magical style and I look forward to reading his backlist.

4 3 2 1

4 3 2 1 by Paul Auster, 866 pages.

One of my absolute favorites from 2017, I read this one a second time for SB2017 earlier this year. The audio, with Auster narrating, is excellent as well.

Here is what I said last year:
A phenomenal book, really one of my all-time favorites. Strongly recommended for fans of Kate Atkinson's Life after Life (and, of course, A God in Ruins), David Mitchell's The Cloud Atlas, and other literary works with a speculative edge.
this extraordinary novel opens with a joke a that tells how the main character's grandfather, Isaac Reznikoff became Ichabod Ferguson. The joke is repeated near the end of the book, and this framing, and it's accompanying explanation somehow tie together the four different lives of Archie Ferguson. The novel presents four different lives for Archie, four different paths that his life could take based on different decisions made when Archie was still young. Each chapter has four versions, 1.1, 1.2, 1.3, 1.4, then 2.1, etc. (chapter 1 actually has a 1.0, too, before the split)

The View from Flyover Country: Dispatches from the Forgotten America

The View from Flyover Country: Dispatches from the Forgotten America by Sarah Kendzior, 239 pages.

Kendzior, a St. Louis-based writer and journalist, has built this informative and incisive book from her blog-posts and then from her earlier ebook. These columns are from 2012-2014, with the first version of the book published in 2015. So the columns themselves, while well-researched, on-point, and deftly presented seem to come from a kinder and gentler dystopian America. Kendzior has been busy of late doing book-release related activities, but we can hope that sarahkendzior.com will soon be home to new work once again. A great writer for our troubled time.

Masters of Sex: The Life and Times of William Masters and Virginia Johnson, the Couple Who Taught America How to Love

Masters of Sex: The Life and Times of William Masters and Virginia Johnson, the Couple Who Taught America How to Love by Thomas Maier, 411 pages. Audio narrated by Dorie Barton.
There's a lot of information here about Masters and Johnson, their lives, their research, and their relationships. I didn't know any of it except the bits that have entered the kind of "everybody knows that about sex" stuff, that apparently not that many people knew before their research.
I wasn't really aware that Masters and Johnson had done their research at Washington University (though I had noticed their stars on the St Louis Walk of Fame), or that Johnson had lived here in University City. Johnson's changing role in the research also was a revelation. I had always assumed, from the way the team was referred to, and from the iconic photos of the two lab-coated researchers, that they were a pair of researchers embarking on this quest together, and not that it had started as Masters' research and that Johnson had joined the team at a rather lower level and worked her way up. Lots of interesting detail and a well-told story. The narration on the audio was well-done. Obviously there's some rather frank discussion of human sexuality here, so steer clear if that offends you. And with the weird coerced to semi-coerced sexual relationship between the two researchers added to the general ideas surrounding sex back then (and today), well, there's some creepiness too.

All the Names They Used for God: Stories

All the Names They Used for God: Stories by Anjali Sachdeva, 256 pages.

Sachdeva's first book of stories contain's some beautiful work. The collection starts with the story "The World by Night," and it is eerie and odd, with a lonely woman wandering around a strange underworld. Continuing with "Glass Lung" which was another strange and off-kilter story, and then on with "Logging Lake," a story that filled me with a strange sort of dread. It was difficult for me to read this story about a man and his new girlfriend, both pretending to match the online the profiles that brought them together, and whose lives are permanently altered at a lonely campsite when the wolves come out at night, but it turned out to be a story well worth reading.
With her other stories like "Anything You Might Want," showing the difficult choices and grim regret of an almost ordinary life to the creepily dystopian "Manus," the collection shows the author's impressive range and dazzlingly creative imagination.

Asymmetry

 Asymmetry by Lisa Halliday, 275 pages.

The characters and the wonderful, absorbing writing by Halliday, and her absolute clarity masked, for me, the fact that until the end of the book I had no idea how the two disparate parts were really coming together. Even after the end, I'm still not too sure, but I am pretty sure that this lack of understanding reflects a flaw in my reading and not in the writing. I am pretty sure that I love this book and am grateful to my coworkers who were talking this one up. The first part of the book concerns Alice, a young woman who is working as an editor and who wants to be a writer, and who after a chance encounter, develops a relationship with an elderly writer, an icon of American literature. In the second part of the book, Aman, an American Economist, born to Iraqi immigrants, reflects on recent events in his life and the lives of his family as he waits out a layover at Heathrow airport in an airport detention facility.
Really worth the time. Plus there's a list of recommended recordings at the end of the book.

The Parking Lot Attendant

The Parking Lot Attendant by Nafkote Tamirat, 225 pages.

Told from the viewpoint of a 16 year-old, unnamed Ethiopian-American girl, living in Boston with her father (well, for most of the story, anyway), This story is strange, compelling and beautifully odd. The narrator has lived with her mother and with her father, but never with both at the same time. As the story opens, she hasn't seen or heard from her mother in the last several years, and her relationship with her father is very strained. One day after school, upon hearing Amharic spoken at a local restaurant, she becomes acquainted with Ayale, the man described in the book's title. Besides the parking lot, Ayale tends to many other hidden enterprises, dispenses favors, delivers odd packages and argues with the narrator's father.
Tamirat writes beautifully and keeps the plot twisting enough so that everyone, reader and character alike of off-balance and a little confused.

Luxury: Poems

Luxury: Poems by Philip Schultz, 76 pages.
Philip Schultz, Jewish-American poet, author of the Pulitzer Prize-winning collection, Failure, and the founder and director of the Writers' Studio,
has written an another astoundingly good collection. The emotional range of the works included is great, from the loss and despair found in poems like "Sacrifice,"

A vest designed to explode.
An argument about God
and nothingness and shame.
An idea infused with hunger,
with hate spread over the pavement,
smeared along the wall, obscuring
every view and reflection . . .

to the depth and vision found in the title poem, make for great reading, this is from the beginning of section Two of "Luxury,"

Sometimes
a noise I can sense
but not hear
ricochets
in a place in me
I can't name.
That's when
the darkness accentuates
of guilt and shame
and I'm unable to distinguish
between misery
and nothingness.
When
all dignity vanishes
and nothing is left to say
or do,
be curious about,
or desire.
When
my mother's voice
pleads
for me to remember
everything
I live for.

Hillbilly Elegy: A Memoir of a Family and a Culture in Crisis

Hillbilly Elegy: A Memoir of a Family and a Culture in Crisis by J.D. Vance, 257 pages.

Vance's paean to his family and the land they came from. Vance grew up in Jackson, Kentucky, and in Ohio, bouncing around between living with his mother and her series of boyfriends, and staying with, or at least seeking shelter with, his Mamaw and Papaw. Colorful and honest, it is a good story. Many of my coworkers have read and commented on this book, and it has received a lot of attention elsewhere. I liked it, thought it was excellent in parts, and I will just let what others have said about it stand in for my comments. The audio was capably narrated by the author.

The Poet X

The Poet X by Elizabeth Acevedo, 361 pages.
Xiomara Batista, daughter of immigrants, high-school student in a tough school, twin, a young woman trying to get comfortable with her new larger self, and the self-named Poet X of the title, tells in a long beautiful series of poems the story of herself. She fights with her mother, does her best to protect her twin brother, questions her faith, and tries to navigate encounters with male classmates and grown men and their unsolicited and often crude comments regarding their desire for her. The Poet X emerges slowly, after her break-up with her boyfriend, after her move away from the church, and after she feels the loosening of the lifelong bond with her twin, as Xiomara starts to read and perform her poems in public. A very well-written, engaging and moving book written for a young-adult audience.

My Soul to Keep

My Soul to Keep by Tananarive Due, 346 pages.

Dawit has been around for a while, born in what is now Ethiopia, he has been alive (more or less) since around 1520. Dawit is sworn to secrecy about how he came to be the way he is but when he falls in love, marries, and settles down, he begins to think about how he can keep his wife and daughter with him throughout eternity. Jessica, his wife, is a journalist who stumbles across a couple of seemingly unrelated stories that link back to the man she knows as David.
Moody, and violent (like its protagonist), Due's novel moves along quickly with twists and turns.