Category Archives: 2023 Fiction

I first saw this at Audible – it looked good  and sounded good so it went on my Wish List there (now almost 300 books).  Then a friend in a reading group recommended it and it sounded right up my … Continue reading →

The really abridged version of this review is “I don’t think this was written for me or maybe even my age group.”  Real LifeBy Brandon Taylor2021 / Read by Kevin Free 9h 25mRating: 4/ 21st cent fiction Stupid.  I’m allergic … Continue reading →

The first major problem with this one is that the premise is too far fetched; like, way beyond my suspension of disbelief.  And it opens and closes with too much thriller-type violence for my tastes. So I just figured an avid … Continue reading →

This book is so funny.  And it’s marginally informative, too, but I don’t think that’s the point.  That’s not really why I read it anyway.  And it’s funny only until you think about it.   Landslide: The Final Days of … Continue reading →

Amazing book by Neil Price who tries to write a history of the Vikings more from their point of view than has been done before.  He tells about who they were and how we know this, or intelligently figure it. … Continue reading →

I’ve been reading legal thrillers by Methos for a couple years. That’s what he writes! Up to now. Now he’s got a new game and it’s a procedural thriller. Vanished is the first in a trilogy featuring the detective partners … Continue reading →

It felt like I needed a break from the violence but I sure didn’t get it with this book.  I guess I knew I wouldn’t this being a Scandi-noir but it doesn’t require a lot of analytic thinking so …  … Continue reading →

In WWI there was a troop of Senegalese riflemen who fought alongside their French colonizers in their war against Germany. These troops were called the Chocolats.   Our 1st person narrator, the 20-year old Alfa Ndiaye, joined up with them … Continue reading →

I got tired of politic books after Trump’s first impeachment trial and although I watched and read the news as carefully as usual, I had no desire to go more deeply into anything.  In January of 2021 I read Ten … Continue reading →

This is another book I got at the last Audible sale. I’d had this on my Wish List for several months already, but just hadn’t done anything about it and then it pops up on the sale.  I probably had … Continue reading →

This very literary work of nonfiction comes to us from the hand of the same author who wrote The Hare with the Amber Eyes so popular a couple decades ago (2000).   It’s the same general material with the focus … Continue reading →

This book started out so good – and then there got to be too many characters which, because I thought to take notes, ended up being okay.  But then there were so many things happening that between the “too many’s … Continue reading →

It’s April of 1949 and the seven remaining Trustees of the Temple Academy for Boys have been living at the old school in Westchester County, New York for the 34 years since it closed.  That is, since 1915. These alumni are … Continue reading →

Originally published in 1916, this is the first of the 44 Hercule Poirot mysteries by Agatha Christie published between then and 1975 (she died in 1975 and the last volume was published posthumously). I read many (!) of them in … Continue reading →

I want to read this again because it’s different from any book, at least any history book, I’ve ever read. This is a history/memoir as an historian would write it and it’s about his own personal experience as it relates … Continue reading →

This is a really, really good book – an excellent book actually.  A powerful book if you read carefully.  I listened to it twice with no Kindle version involved.  The reader, McLeod Andrews,  is that good, too, made for a … Continue reading →

Oh this is a wonderful book,.  It’s the history of the Freemasons from the 17th or 18th century to modern times plus some folklore from misty ancient times. It’s easy to read often reading like a novel. Dickie, an expert … Continue reading →