APRIL
2016
AUDIO BOOK REVIEWS
by Jonathan Lowe
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Tom
Cruise is in post production on his next Jack Reacher
movie NEVER GO BACK, based on the novel by Lee Child
(whom I once interviewed.) The audiobook is narrated
by Dick Hill, a dramatic voice actor who does most
of Child’s books, and has a gift for timing
and tone. What is your fav Cruise movie? If you
asked me, there are several scifi like Minority
Report, War of the Worlds, plus MI3, etc., but have
to say Collateral simply because it was so unusual,
visual, symbolic, and with a great script and stunning
direction by Michael Mann. Few movies have ever
nailed our age so well, and with such pathos. Cruise
and Jamie Foxx both deserved Oscars. Back to Audiobook:
Former military cop Jack Reacher makes it all the
way from snowbound South Dakota to his destination
in northeastern Virginia, near Washington, DC: the
headquarters of his old unit, the 110th MP. The
old stone building is the closest thing to a home
he ever had. Reacher is there to meet the new commanding
officer, Major Susan Turner, who so far has been
just a warm, intriguing voice on the phone. But
it isn’t Turner behind the CO’s desk.
And Reacher is hit with two pieces of shocking news,
one with serious criminal consequences, and one
too personal to even think about. When threatened,
you can run or fight and Reacher fights, aiming
to find Turner and clear his name, barely a step
ahead of the Army, the FBI, the DC Metro police,
and four unidentified thugs. |
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Another
Dick Hill narration is that of a biography of Craig
Claiborne. Claiborne would give Julia Child her
first major book review. He brought Paul Bocuse,
the Troisgros brothers, Paul Prudhomme, and Jacques
Pépin to national acclaim. His $4,000 dinner
for two in Paris was a front-page story in the Times
and scandalized the world. And while he defended
the true French nouvelle cuisine against bastardization,
he also reveled in a well-made stew or a good hot
dog. He made home cooks into stars—Marcella
Hazan, Madhur Jaffrey, Diana Kennedy, and many others.
And Claiborne made dinner an event—whether
dining out, delighting your friends, or simply cooking
for your family. His own dinner parties were legendary.
Through Thomas McNamee's painstaking research and
eloquent storytelling, THE MAN WHO CHANGED
THE WAY WE EAT unfolds a history that is
largely unknown and also tells the full, deep story
of a great man who until now has never been truly
known at all. As narrated by Dick Hill, this is
an appealing, tasty audiobook for anyone interested
in food and restaurant history, particularly in
New York since Claiborne was food critic at the
Times for many years. He transformed the bland out-of-a-can
or Cheez Whiz jar meals that characterized America
post WWII, and into something elegant and complex,
with new tastes derived from French cuisine and
more. This was a complex yet simple man without
great ambition, except to indulge his passion for
food. It was a surprise, even to him, how much influence
he ended up wielding. Hill transforms the pages
of the book into something to be savored, too, with
a dramatic lilt and tone that carries the listener
along from one rapturous meal to the next. Comparing
FAST FOOD MANIAC (for junk food addicts) to this
book is like comparing the laundry list of a corporal
in the Civil War to the Gettysburg Address. |
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THE TRAVELERS by Chris Pavone: It’s
3:00 a.m. Do you know where your husband is? Meet
Will Rhodes: travel writer, recently married, barely
solvent, his idealism rapidly giving way to disillusionment
and the worry that he’s living the wrong life.
Then one night, on assignment for the award-winning
Travelers magazine in the wine region of Argentina,
a beautiful woman makes him an offer he can’t
refuse. Soon Will’s bad choices—and dark
secrets—take him across Europe, from a chateau
in Bordeaux to a midnight raid on a Paris mansion,
from a dive bar in Dublin to a mega-yacht in the Mediterranean
and an isolated cabin perched on the rugged cliffs
of Iceland. As he’s drawn further into a tangled
web of international intrigue, it becomes clear that
nothing about Will Rhodes was ever ordinary, that
the network of deception ensnaring him is part of
an immense and deadly conspiracy with terrifying global
implications—and that the people closest to
him may pose the greatest threat of all. It’s
3:00 a.m. Your husband has just become a spy. Read
by Paul Michael, who is always great in this genre
due to his ability to guide an air of intrigue with
a steady and not overly dramatic tone. Michael is
a veteran stage and TV actor who also narrated what
is the most viral mystery novel of all: The DaVinci
Code. |
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Next,
ISIS is similar to the Aztec empire, as seen in the
movie Apocalypto. They are driven by the belief that
life on this Earth doesn’t matter compared to
the next. Devalue life, and killing becomes easier—especially
if you see yourself as a emissary of God. Demonize
the opposition, as all major religions have done at
some time in their history, and slaughter becomes
a way of life (or death.) Mayan ball courts were their
basketball courts (their March Madness), and the losers
got their heads lopped off. In the audiobook THE
FAITH INSTINCT by Nicholas Wade, the history
of all religions with violence is examined, and one
of the conclusions reached is that because many Islamic
countries (except perhaps Dubai) have yet to separate
church and state, Islam cannot accept democracy or
western values. The Christian crusades were bloody,
and the Pope’s escapades in the Middle Ages
rivals that of ISIS, but western religions have largely
separated church and state in the modern era, and
this has led to the kind of freedoms which radical
fundamentalists in Islam decry (and want to see die.)
Narrator Alan Sklar is a veteran voice actor with
over a hundred audiobook credits, plus training spots
for the military, documentaries, library readings,
etc. He described himself to me as a workaholic. His
voice is authoritative and, as most pro readers must
be, flexible and precise in inflection and tone. |
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Finally,
Douglas Rushkoff has a new book out (which might be
a companion to The Filter Bubble, titled THROWING
ROCKS AT THE GOOGLE BUS. The primitive empire business
model of “growth at all cost” is too costly
to sustain, he contends, especially if we expect any
middle class to survive. Uber is putting out of business
many private taxi services, while disavowing any responsibility
for what its drivers do…while those drivers
make the minimum wage on average, after expenses.
Twitter evolved from a useful app to shareholder demands
for world domination, selling the personal data of
its subscribers to the highest bidder and forcing
more and more ads on its users. Coke and Pepsi have
put out of business many small bottlers by demanding
control over exclusive shelf space for its unhealthy
products. Instead of fostering optimization of the
internet for the benefit of all, the growth model
of short term profits now has companies hoping to
employ robots to enslave the public in ways that will
hurt as much as help. Technology is being used in
short-sighted ways in order to maximize profits, channel
more to the super rich at the top, and to leave everyone
else eating dust. These days, on iTunes, the odds
of “winning” are far less than previously
for anyone not already connected and rich. Will anyone
on The Voice sit in the judge’s chair, except
as a joke? They tell you, “you can take it all,
and become a superstar.” Sure, but you have
about as much chance of that as winning the lottery.
It’s as though The Bachelor now had 428 women
after him in the same time frame instead of 28. Good
luck getting a real relationship off the ground. Or
making a splash without a nip slip event going viral,
followed by a Shark Tank appearance. Rushkoff offers
alternatives to the cynical "Mr. Wonderful"
model of trying to join the upper .1% at the expense
of the vast majority who are disadvantaged by the
model and its ruthless Avatar algorithms. His solution
is to encourage corporations that work on alternative
models that emphasize employee and customer benefits
over exploitation and extraction of value to meet
unrealistic quarterly goals. Publix is the most profitable
grocery store chain (with the highest satisfaction
to employees and customers) because it was set up
as a sharing enterprise, as opposed to Wal Mart. "Jack
Welsh of GE was worshiped as a model CEO, but what
did he do? Decided that making stuff was less profitable
than selling credit to buy stuff, and sold the manufacturing
to China, while pushing paper debt and firing people.
And the markets decided to reward those who make money
from money rather than from creating value and products."
But the future is not sustainable without cooperation
and sharing. And in the intellectual property arena,
talent is overlooked and opportunities squandered
while we follow famous media icons, and buy only bestsellers
or top selling albums simply because they get the
most hits. Douglas Rushkoff is the author of Present
Shock as well as a dozen other bestselling books on
media, technology, and culture, including Program
or Be Programmed, Media Virus, Life Inc and the novel
Ecstasy Club. He is Professor of Media Theory and
Digital Economics at CUNY/Queens. He made the television
documentaries Generation Like, Merchants of Cool,
The Persuaders, and Digital Nation. He lives in New
York, and lectures about media, society, and economics
around the world. This audiobook is read by the author,
who does a decent job keeping the text lively. |
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