Review: Choosing Light: When an Earthquake Buried Me and My Family for 5 Days, I Learned to Fully Live

Choosing Light: When an Earthquake Buried Me and My Family for 5 Days, I Learned to Fully Live by Viral Dalal
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

An amazing story of being buried alive for days during the 7.7 magnitude October 2015 Hindu Kush earthquake and surviving and recovering: physically, psychologically, and spiritually. The claustrophobic detail of the immurement juxtaposes the frantic and tragic search for family members amidst the regional ruin. Chapters feature epigraphs: a quotation to highlight the chapter. Isn't it a bit vain for the author to feature himself several times as the epigraph author, too?

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Review: A Higher Loyalty: Truth, Lies, and Leadership

A Higher Loyalty: Truth, Lies, and Leadership by James B. Comey
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I expected this to be an insider's The Emperor Wears No Clothes account rushed into print, which would have been fine with me. Maybe rushed, but certainly much broader in scope. Comey's long career in federal law enforcement allows him to relate details on the Martha Stewart insider trading desk, the showdown at John Ashcroft's hospital bed over the STELLAR WIND surveillance program—a massive NSA effort authorized by President George W. Bush after 9/11—and more. This also includes Comey's history in fighting the mafia under Rudolph Giuliani. This includes conversations with "Sammy the Bull" Gravano which allows Comey to compare the mafia organizational style of demanded loyalty with the famous personal loyalty demand from Trump.

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Review: The Hobbit [Dramatized]

The Hobbit [Dramatized] by J.R.R. Tolkien
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This a 1979 radio series of The Hobbit, adapted and directed by Bob Lewis and produced by Mind's Eye. It would be most remembered as an NPR radio series and I used to have the cassette box set. It seems most reviews note it as less well done than the famous BBC radio treatment. I would not go as far as that - it holds its own. Each adaptation is a subset of the material and the production tells a slightly different story. The recent Peter Jackson movies of this story is really The Tragedy of Thorin Oakenshield. This treatment puts Bilbo more to the fore for saving the dwarves who are unsure and largely aged, past their prime. My only real complaint is that Tom Luce as Thorin makes the grim figure sound like William S. Burroughs. I wish that director had switched Luce with Bernard Mayes (this Gandalf).

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Review: It's Even Worse Than You Think: What the Trump Administration Is Doing to America

It's Even Worse Than You Think: What the Trump Administration Is Doing to America by David Cay Johnston
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Johnston obviously has it out for Trump and this is not his first tossing of an inkpot at that devil... His loathing lies so much on the surface, it may be hard for him to be taken objectively. Toss in wonk details about tax law and more and this is a mediocre listening experience among the many published attacks on Trump. Taking in this audiobook, none of which I have cause to dispute, it came to me that whether Trump is deluded or evil is rather beside the point. Even collusion with Russia is only an academic point when considering that it looks like some Russian hackers know more about the buttons to push for the electorate to draft a demagogue. That seems the real issue; a sheep-like voting body. Johnston goes right to that at the end; the very end for a few pages and suggests a more aware and alert and informed group of votes needed. But, how to get there?

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Review: Great Stories of the Great Lakes

Great Stories of the Great Lakes by Dwight Boyer
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

An excellent review of the mysteries around ships gone missing in the great lakes and a few odds and ends about the harsh business of plying that trade, such as managing ice. Not a line about the SS Edmund Fitzgerald is required to make fascinating the unresolved questions around from 1679 when LaSalle's wooden barque the Le Griffon was lost, to each Dean Richmond.

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Review: The Home Front: Life in America During World War II

The Home Front: Life in America During World War II by Audible Original
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This is a collection of podcasts. The audio is a fascinating glimpse into WW II life stateside, largely around women coming into their own: jobs and pants! This is largely presented in oral history from interviews with people that staffed aircraft factories and the women that flew them stateside only when they were not being sabotaged and killed in the attempt. Another part of this era I did not know of was WW I atrocity propaganda that was recalled then and made it difficult to believe stories of the Nazi holocaust and other terrors. There is also exploration of racial unrest at the time including an exploration of the zoot suit riots.

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Review: Jackie Oh!

Jackie Oh! by Kitty Kelley
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I love the Kelley unauthorized autobiographies. I guess this book does largely slur Jacqueline "JACK-leen" ("rhymes with queen") Kennedy Onassis, but from what I know, for someone in a bubble whose reflections back amplify and rationalize any negative personality traits, was she really that far beyond the norm? I don't think so, really: her cheapness in outgo combined with luchre-amassing actions and acting superior while hounded by paparazzi all seems par for the course. The main things I come away from: How would JFK's rampant philandering playout in today's journalistic arena? I think they call it something like R.I.P.: Reveal - Investigate - Prosecute, or something.... Also, Jackie's final abandonment of Onassis on his deathbed really seems to reveal a mercantile aspect to that marriage which (partly) scorned mistress Maria Callas slammed when asked for a comment after his wedding: “She did well, Jackie, to give a grandfather to her children. Ari is as beautiful as Croesus.” Ah, wonderful muckraking about the 1% of the 1%.

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