Under the Dome (Audio)

by Stephen King

read by Raúl Esparza

with an Afterword by The Author

(New York: Simon & Schuster Audio, 2009)

MP3 Audiobook, 2.88 GB, 34.4 Hours, Fiction

ISBN: 9780743597302, US$75.00

From the Cover: On an otherwise normal, beautiful day, the town of Chester’s Mill, Maine is suddenly and inexplicably sealed off from the rest of the world in Under the Dome, Stephen King’s biggest, most riveting novel since The Stand.

My Review: So, I feel like I am in an abusive relationship with Stephen King.

When we first started our relationship together, he was wonderful. He never failed to disappoint, he was intriguing, he had interesting things to say, I enjoyed spending time with him, and even lost track of time when we were together. Then, after fifteen or twenty years of being together, the relationship started to get a little stale, and often we had to fall back on the “good times” we used to have together, and I started looking at other people, even enjoyed spending time with other people. Then, things got violent. He would promise me something new and exciting and I would, like a fool, keep coming back in spite of the fact that I kept getting hurt. However, I kept telling myself that maybe this time it would be different. This time would be more like the early days of our relationship. Yet, in spite of all that I was hurt time and time again, some times painfully hurt. Then, just when I was about to give up entirely on our relationship and begin divorce proceedings, he came to me one more time and told me he was sorry about everything he had done over the last decade or so, and that he really had changed, and look … I can make it just like the old days. Without daring to hope for much, I started to believe what he was telling me and I went crawling back; expecting to be hurt at every turn, but daring to hope that he really had changed.

I think he has … but we’ll get to that in a minute.

After the stinker that was Duma Key and the disappointment that was Just After Sunset I had almost decided that I was going to stick with King’s earlier stuff (i.e. pre-2000) and then the hype surrounding Under the Dome started and I began to believe again … mostly because this was a retooling (and updating) of material that he had started and stopped in the late 70s and early 80s. I got the hardcover from my parents for Christmas and was able to get my hands on the audiobook and decided that that would be a much easier way in which to get through this book (given that I had readings for two classes to do as well as prep and readings for an English 101 class I was teaching and picking up King’s largest book to date (1,074) just didn’t seem feasible).

There is a lot to say about this book and I’ll try to get to it all, but we’ll see. I scrupulously (maybe even neurotically) stayed away from any and all reviews of the book in order to experience it on my own and form my own opinions of it (this was hard to do since I subscribe to a number of not just book blogs but also blogs that are concerned with the horror industry) and as of this writing, I still have not read any outside reviews of the book.

First and foremost, I will unconditionally say that this is the best Stephen King novel in at least the last four or five years (since Cell). Why? Well, since King’s accident in 1999 there has been a change in the tone of King’s novels. Dreamcatcher, From a Buick 8, Lisey’s Story, Duma Key … they’re all much different than, say, The Shining, It, The Stand. They are much more intimate novels, and I don’t know that I can explain it any better than that. They don’t seem as encompassing in their scope as some of King’s prior novels did (the exceptions to that rule are, perhaps, the last three novels in The Dark Tower series). With Under the Dome, though, some of that scope is brought back. This is a much bigger novel than any King has produced recently, not only in length, but also in scope. This is a novel on a par with The Stand and It. (Though as such, it suffers from some of the same problems that those larger novels do) and shows off King’s real talent for creating characters.

Second, this is a long book. That may be the understatement of the year, but I think it still warrants saying. In print it is 1,074 pages long, and in audio it is 34.4 hours long. It takes a major commitment to sit down and read or listen to Under the Dome. It took me 45 days to through it. Often I had to roll back the time on my iPod to remind myself what was going on if it there had been some time between listening sessions. I imagine that reading the book would present some of the same problems, though I would imagine that it would be (1) easier to backtrack in the print edition and (2) the fact that there is not only a map in the front of the book but also a Dramatis Personae list of a kind. (Though, I will say that when I was done with the audiobook and looked at the map in the front of the book, my vision of the geography of Chester’s Mill was much different than that of the map’s, and I’m not even sure that the map’s conforms entirely to King’s descriptions, in that it seems that on the map things are much closer together than they are in the book.)

Third, and this holds true for many of King’s longer books (especially It and The Stand), the build-up in the book is much more exciting than the denouement and conclusion. The set-up to Under the Dome is absolutely brilliant, and King constructs some very interesting inter-personal dynamics as things start to unravel (Second Selectman “Big Jim” Rennie is a good (if somewhat stereotypical) villain (if there was any sort of cosmic justice, he’d be played by the late-J.T. Walsh in any sort of film adaptation of the book)) but when the novel takes 900 pages to set up and only 100 to get out … it was bound to be somewhat disappointing. When the explanation for the dome arrived, I felt quite let down and it seemed more like an original Star Trek episode-like explanation (with Shatner and Nimoy and the rest) than something from Stephen King. But that kind of deus ex machina is what happens in The Stand and It and so I guess I shouldn’t have expected anything different from a novel of similar length, but I was kind of hoping … I was also a little disappointed in the finale of “Big Jim” Rennie’s character. I was hoping for something a little more dramatic, once again, there is a lot of set up but very little pay-off, though one might be able to read a certain amount of karmic intervention in what happens to Rennie.

Fourth. While I miss having the late-Frank Muller growl his way through Under the Dome, and would have thought that either Campbell Scott or Ron McLarty would have been the choice to narrate this tale. I have to admit though, that Raúl Esparza (a new audio Reader to me) does an excellent job of bringing King’s words to life. My one nitpick with his reading though, is that all the children under the age of ten in the book sound like their noses are stuffed up.

What it boils down to is that if King’s next books (he has talked about an eighth Dark Tower book The Wind Through the Keyhole, writing a sequel to The Shining titled Doctor Sleep, a collection of novellas (coming out November 2010) Full Dark, no Stars, and a third part to The Talisman-Black House series) are anything like Under the Dome, I think that I’m prepared take him back, even though he’s hurt me in the past. With Under the Dome he’s promised he won’t hurt me any more.

Shutter Island (Audio)

by Dennis Lehane

read by Tom Stechshulte

(Prince Frederick: Recorded Books, LLC, 2003)

MP3 Audiobook, 881.9 MB, 9.6 Hours, Fiction

ISBN: 9780061906282, US$19.99

From the Cover: Ashecliffe Hospital for the Criminally Insane looms like a fortress on Shutter Island. As a massive hurricane swirls toward the island, U.S. Marshall Teddy Daniels arrives with his new partner, Chuck Aule, to track down an escaped patient—a murderess who may hold the key to what really happens in the locked wards and laboratories. But as Teddy digs deeper into the workings of the hospital, nothing is as it seems…

My Review: I have had this book on my To-Be-Read List for quite some time now, but had never gotten around to it. Then, Martin Scorsese and Leonardo DiCaprio decided to turn Lehane’s book into a film, and I knew I had better get on the horn and read (so to speak) before I had the plot’s twists and turns spoiled for me by some careless movie reviewer or movie goer. It was a rough road, but I scrupulously avoided any and all discussions of the film and potential plot spoilers as I worked my way through Shutter Island and in the end, it was very much worth it because I was genuinely taken along for the twisting ride that Lehane has created and enjoyed every minute of it, trying to work out the mysteries of Ashecliffe for myself.

Now, any real discussion of the plot of Shutter Island is going to run the risk of spoilers, but I will do my level best not to spoil anything for those who have not either already read the book or seen the movie. It will be difficult however, since there are, by my count, four major Sixth Sense­-style rug-pulling plot twists that make the Reader/Listener completely reevaluate their understanding of what has been going on. I hope that that is as plot-spoiler-y as it gets, but no promises.

As much as I tried to avoid any exposure to the plot, a few things leaked through here and there, so I had a general sense from the beginning that nothing was as it seemed that knew to be wary of any and all characters that waltzed across the page, including that of Teddy Daniels (whose view and perspective frames the story (even though it is not told in the first person)), however, when the revelations started coming it was fast and furious and, as I said above, absolutely enjoyable. Though, I do have one bit of the plot that didn’t work for me, given what the eventual outcome of the plot. Being as vague as possible, I felt that the woman in the cave is never satisfactorily explained by the penultimate twist. What she reveals and what she represents flies doesn’t exactly contradict the end, but neither is it supported by the end, and so I’m left to wonder what the point of including her in the story at all does, other than to deepen the ominous atmosphere and sense of paranoia that Lehane is seeking to create.

I will say that one of the key factors in enjoying this book was the Reader. Tom Stechshulte is one of the best Readers that I have come across, and I will definitely be on the look out for more audiobooks that he reads. His gravelly bass voice is ideal for the noir sensibilities that Lehane injects into Shutter Island and what he does with the text by way of performance is sublime.

I think that Lehane himself summed it up best when he said that he was deliberately channeling the Brontë sisters when he wrote Shutter Island. That Romantic/Victorian influence is quite clear (possibly with a little Poe thrown in for good measure) and all one would have to do is replace Ashecliffe with Bedlam and U.S. Marshalls with … oh … I dunno, a Revolutionary-Era Redcoat, or (if we’re going the Poe route) an ex-Union soldier (though if we are going the Poe route (with a side trip into Ambrose Bierce) Federal Marshalls have been around since the 1780s, so…). Anyway, the point of all of that was that in spite of all of its post-WWII and Cold War-era and film noir/B-movie trappings, Shutter Island is, at its heart, a novel deeply steeped in the tradition of the Romantic and Victorian eras.

I cannot recommend this audiobook highly enough, and if you haven’t yet had it all spoiled for you, get your hands on Shutter Island right away, and even if you have seen the movie and do know all the twists and turns, I would still say that you will enjoy Shutter Island in much the same way that, say, The Sixth Sense holds up to a second viewing because now, you’re in the know (and, from what I understand, there are some key plot points in the movie that does not get satisfactorily explained (the anagrams, for instance) that are explained in the book’s dénouement, so that ought to be worth the price of admission right there).

'salem's Lot (Audio)

by Stephen King

read by Ron McLarty

(New York: Simon & Schuster, Inc., 2004)

MP3 Audiobook, 868.2 MB, 17½ Hours, Fiction

ISBN: 9780743536967, US$59.95

From the Cover: A dark wind is blowing into Jerusalem’s Lot, Maine, in the guise of antique furniture dealers R.T. Straker and Kurt Barlow. Novelist Benjamin Mears has returned to the village near Portland to exorcise his childhood demons. Immediately, townspeople begin suffering from strange flu symptoms, or disappearing altogether. Mears and local high school teacher Matt Burke understand the peril the town faces. Soon they’re joined by an artist, a doctor, an alcoholic priest, and an 11-year old boy, forming a modern-day team of vampire hunters.

My Original Review: 11/22/2005 – 08:50:00 PM

My Redux Review: Stephen King’s ‘salem’s Lot is a story that holds a lot nostalgia and fond memories for me. It was one of the first novels I ever owned, it was the first Stephen King story I ever read at the tender age of eleven (with the blessing of my Mother though—looking back—I have no idea what she was thinking when she okayed that, I don’t think I’d let my son read it when he turns eleven), and it is one that even now never fails to induce chills and thrills. I have even used it to make arguments for my ever-evolving academic paper on passive-sexism in Stephen King’s The Shining (showing how ‘salem’s Lot is a kind of “run up” to what he does in The Shining).

I find so much about ‘salem’s Lot to be so very fascinating, that it is difficult to know where to start. Well, perhaps it is best to start with something small. This time through the book I was struck by just how dated ‘salem’s Lot is. It really is a relic from the early- to mid-1970s when it was written. So much of the novel is so outdated that I found myself wondering just how well Mssrs. Barlow and Straker would fair if they were to plunk down in Jerusalem’s Lot in an era of cell phones and the internet. This is addressed, somewhat, in the 2004 TV miniseries which is, all things considered, not a bad adaptation, given the problems of updating such material. Still, as I said, I am struck at just how dated the book is.

Another “theme” of the novel (for lack of a better word) that I have been dealing with (mostly because it jives with my paper on Stephen King) is just how passively sexist the works of Stephen King are, and ‘salem’s Lot is no exception. In fact, it is a pretty good example of what I am talking about. Two characters come to mind as I have run this through my mind: Susan Norton, of course, and Bonnie Sawyer. Susan is, to all appearances, a pretty “liberated” and “strong” female figure, holding her own with man and vampire alike, and yet, looking a little deeper she is a “shackled” character; very one-dimensional when compared to the male characters in the novel. She plays little more than the role of girlfriend and tragic victim. Susan makes some very poor decision in the course of the novel (the kind that would have you shouting DON’T GO DOWN THERE to the screen if this were a movie) and as a result of these decisions (and, I would argue, due to King’s indifference to his female characters) she pays the price.

The same could be said for the character of Bonnie Sawyer, a bit player in the overall drama, but one that King keeps coming back to. She is the “Jezebel” character type; the “wanton woman” who is having an affair with a younger man, but when they are caught by her husband, she is literally beaten into submission and—as King puts it—raped by her husband regularly, until their end comes in the final third of the book. I bring up their characters because they both are women who initially seem liberated and in control of their destinies, but ultimately are brought down by their inability to listen to the male authorities in their lives (in the case of Susan it is Matt Burke and Ben Mears and even the teenage Mark Petrie whom she ignores, and for Bonnie, of course, it is her husband whom she disobeys) and as a result they are brought to ruin.

This passive-sexism (as I’ve chosen to call it) and assertion of male dominance (culminating in the staking of the vampiric Susan (which Freud would undoubtedly call “phallic” and a violent sexual act in and of itself, a rape of a kind) and the beating and raping of Bonnie Sawyer) really show King’s true colors as a closet-conservative in spite of all his trappings and claims of open-mindedness and liberalism. He falls back on the conservative world view whenever a female comes into the pages of his novels (they are usually either a milquetoast hausfrau or a wanton jezebel) that bucks the male authority structure and have to be either saved or dispatched (in the case of Susan, they come to one and the same). It is true of Susan Norton and Bonnie Sawyer in ‘salem’s Lot, it is true of Wendy Torrance in The Shining, it is true of Rose Daniels in Rose Madder, it is true of Emily in “The Gingerbread Girl” and it is true of Lisey Landon in Lisey’s Story.

But enough theorizing. In spite of these “flaws” (for lack of a better word) I still think that ‘salem’s Lot is one of Stephen King’s finest, and is certainly in the Top 5 of my favorite King books. King has crafted a very believable world in ‘salem’s Lot, one that is described as Peyton Place meets Dracula, and I think that that is a pretty fair assessment. It is hard to imagine which the greater evil in the township is: the external force of Barlow and his vampirism, or the internal forces of the town and its small-town insularism. King has stated in interviews that ‘salem’s Lot was written at a time of great social and political upheaval: the Ellsberg break-in, Nixon’s tapes and enemies’ list, Liddy and the CIA, Watergate, the invasive federal investigations of war protestors, Vietnam … and so it is no wonder that these feelings of paranoia bled over (no pun intended) into ‘salem’s Lot and informed the novel; paranoia of vampires, paranoia of outsiders, paranoia of the unknown, paranoia of the future … it’s all there in the pages, and makes for one hell of an atmospheric novel.

Atmospheric and arguably one of the scariest of King’s tales (his early ones are so much better than his later). I’ve mentioned it in my prior review of this audiobook, but the scenes with Mike Ryerson in Matt Burke’s house (both times) and then the scene with Marjorie Glick’s body in the mortuary are some of the scariest scenes that have even been penned. They never fail to give me the chills (and this time around, it didn’t help that I was listening to the Marjorie Glick scene as I was taking a late night walk to clear my head after a stressful day and as a thunderstorm passed overhead, I have to admit that I looked over my shoulder more than once as I walked the storm-darkened streets).

Also, what makes this such a great audiobook is Ron McLarty’s reading. If you have never experienced a book read by Ron McLarty you need to, and ‘salem’s Lot is as good a place as any to start. It is amazing how much the story comes to life in McLarty’s capable hands. It really brings an already great book to an even more sublime level.

You don’t have to be a Stephen King fan to enjoy ‘salem’s Lot, and since vampires are very much in vogue right now, take the time to listen to (or read) a real vampire story. Yes, it borrows heavily from Dracula (with Matt Burke playing Van Helsing, Susan playing Lucy Westenra and Mina Harker, Dr. Cody as Dr. Seward, Ben Mears playing Arthur Holmwood and Jonathan Harker, Straker as Renfield and, of course, Barlow as the Count) but I would say that that is intentional, since the idea behind ‘salem’s Lot was what would happen if Count Dracula came to America and settled not in New York City (where, in King’s words, he’d “be killed by a taxi cab like, Margaret Mitchell in Atlanta”) but in rural, small-town Maine.

It is a question that I think King has answered well. As I said, in spite of its “flaws” ‘salem’s Lot is a stellar novel and one that every vampire groupie needs to have under their belt, and if you’re going to try it, why not pick up the audio edition, since Ron McLarty’s reading is nothing short of amazing.

The Composer is Dead

by Lemony Snicket

illustrated by Carson Ellis

read by The Author

with music composed by Nathaniel Stookey

(New York: HarperCollins, 2009)
Hardcover, 36 Pages, Children’s Fiction

MP3 Audiobook, 56.5 MB, 30 Minutes, Fiction

ISBN: 9780061236273, US$17.99

The composer is dead. “Composer” is a word which here means “a person who sits in a room, muttering and humming and figuring out what notes the orchestra is going to play.” This is called composing. But last night, the Composer was not muttering. He was not humming. He was not moving, or even breathing.

This is called decomposing.

From the Cover: There’s dreadful news from the symphony hall—the composer is dead! If you have ever heard an orchestra play, then you know that musicians are most certainly guilty of something. Where exactly were the violins on the night in question? Did anyone see the harp? Is the trumpet protesting a bit too boisterously? In this perplexing murder mystery, everyone seems to have a motive, everyone has an alibi, and nearly everyone is a musical instrument. But the composer is still dead. Perhaps you can solve the crime yourself. Join the Inspector as he interrogates all the unusual suspects. Then listen to the accompanying audio recording featuring Lemony Snicket and the music of Nathaniel Stookey performed by the San Francisco Symphony. Hear for yourself exactly what took place on that fateful, well-orchestrated evening.

My Review: I have to admit that I love Lemony Snicket. The man’s writing is simply wonderful, I loved A Series of Unfortunate Events (in spite of my misgivings about the final book in the series) and The Composer is Dead is no exception to that love of Snicket’s writing.

This is a delightful book that walks the Reader through the orchestra pit—on the premise that the composer is dead, and the Inspector is investigating that death and questioning all of the orchestra’s various sections. Along the way to the conclusion (this is C.S.I.: Orchestra Pit or maybe Law & Order: Orchestral Investigation) the Reader (ideally parent and child together) learn all about the various jobs of the instruments in the orchestra, what they do and how they sound. It’s learning, but it’s fun!

Even better, the book comes with a CD which includes a reading of The Composer is Dead by Lemony Snicket himself accompanied by the Nathaniel Stookey and the San Francisco Symphony. Usually, a reading by Lemony Snicket (a.k.a. Daniel Handler) is something dreadful, a word which here means that Daniel Handler is a poor performer and his readings sound overly scripted and stilted and are not pleasurable to listen to in the least. However, Handler has obviously been working on his reading out loud skills as his performance of The Composer is Dead is top notch and quite enjoyable (or perhaps it is the fact that he is not following in the footsteps of Tim Curry as he was in the A Series of Unfortunate Events).

In fact, my only complaint about the book is that Brett Helquist, the illustrator for A Series of Unfortunate Events, did not illustrate this book, because while Carson Ellis’ illustrations are nice, they lack the whimsy and sheer beauty of Helquist’s for the exploits of the Baudelaire orphans.

All-in-all I have to highly recommend this book to any and all comers. This is a very fun book to read through, especially with the youngsters in your life, and would make a wonderful bedtime story. Or, bring the book and CD along with you in the car during a trip and enjoy a wonderful half hour together with a great book and some wonderful music.

This review also available at Bryan's Book Blog

Good Book: The Bizarre, Hilarious, Disturbing, Marvelous, and Inspiring Things I Learned When I Read Every Single Word of the Bible

by David Plotz

read by The Author

(Newark: Audible, Inc., 2009)

MP3 Audiobook, 145.1 MB, 10.5 Hours, Nonfiction

ISBN: N/A, US$24.95

“Whoa, good Bible.” —Captain Malcolm Reynolds, Firefly episode 6, “Our Mrs. Reynolds”

From the Cover: Like many Jews and Christians, David Plotz long assumed he knew what was in the Bible. He read parts of it as a child in Hebrew school, and then attended a Christian high school where he studied the Old and New Testaments. Many of the highlights stuck with him—Adam and Eve, Cain versus Abel, Jacob versus Esau, Jonah versus whale, forty days and nights, ten plagues and Commandments, twelve Tribes and Apostles, Red Sea walked under, Galilee walked on, bush into fire, rock into water, water into wine. And, of course, he absorbed from all around him other bits of the Bible—from stories he heard in churches and synagogues, in movies and on television, from his parents and teachers. But it wasn’t until he picked up a Bible at a cousin’s bat mitzvah—and became engrossed and horrified by a lesser-known story in Genesis—that he couldn’t put it down. At a time when wars are fought over scriptural interpretation, when the influence of religion on American politics has never been greater, when many Americans still believe in the Bible’s literal truth, it has never been more important to get to know the Bible. Good Book is what happens when a regular guy—an average Job—actually reads the book on which his religion, his culture, and his world are based. Along the way, he grapples with the most profound theological questions: How many Commandments do we actually need? Does God prefer obedience or good deeds? And the most unexpected ones: Why are so many women in the Bible prostitutes? Why does God love bald men so much? Is Samson really that stupid? Good Book is an irreverent, enthralling journey through the world’s most important work of literature.

My Review: It should come as no surprise, to those who know me at least, that I read and listen to Slate.com. One of the podcasts that I subscribe to is the Slate Political Gabfest, in which David Plotz, who is also the editor of Slate participates. It was through the Gabfest that I was first introduced to Plotz’s book—Good Book: The Bizarre, Hilarious, Disturbing, Marvelous, and Inspiring Things I Learned When I Read Every Single Word of the Bible—and it was as a loyal listener of the Gabfest that I was “rewarded” with a free download of Good Book from Audible.com (the Gabfest’s sponsor).

Needless to say I jumped at the chance to download an audio book for free, though this can often be a crapshoot. However, in this instance I was well rewarded. David Plotz’s Good Book is one of the best books that I have read/listened to this year. Hands down. To set it up, Plotz—a Jew—was at a family member’s bat mitzvah and bored and so picked up a copy of the Torah and opening up to a random passage, started reading. What he came across was the story of Dinah, daughter of Jacob/Israel. If you do not know the story, it is in Genesis 34. If you do know the story, then you can understand why Plotz would be shocked and dismayed at reading the story and wondering why he had never heard it before. It was, in Plotz’s experience conveniently left out of both the Hebrew school he attended and the Episcopalian school he attended. It was then that the seed of Good Book was planted. Plotz began to wonder what other stories in the Bible he did not know were in there, and so, he started reading and began chronicling his discoveries and reactions at Blogging the Bible, from there, it turned into Good Book.

(One caveat up front, as a Jew, Plotz skips the New Testament and reads only the Torah or Old Testament, so when he says “Bible,” he means the Hebrew Bible.)

Anyway, what I liked most about Good Book was Plotz’s openness to the stories and messages in the Old Testament. Much of what is in there is very different from the Sunday School versions we are all taught (which are often “cleaned-up” for young ears) and which we think we know. Plotz approaches the Bible as something in which he doesn’t really believe, but which he respects and which he can understand why people treat it the way they do. He is respectful of other’s beliefs in the Biblical stories, even if those beliefs are not his own. I bring this up and emphasize it because I find it very agreeable. At about the same time I started listening to Good Book, Bill Maher’s Religulous arrived in our mailbox via Netflix. Unlike Plotz, who approaches religion from a standpoint of respectful skepticism, Maher’s supposed documentary and inquiry into religious beliefs across the world is not respectful in the least. Maher comes at religion from a stance of complete disbelief ad disrespect. There is no courteousness in Maher’s approach. He treats all those in every religion he “investigates” as insane and stupid for their beliefs. We turned it off after about 20 minutes.

Back to Plotz. In spite of my own belief in God and the stories in the Old Testament, I found Plotz’s experiences with and commentary on his reading of the Old Testament to be enlightening, fascinating and refreshing. Just for my own background, I am LDS (Mormon) and, as a Sunday School/Gospel Doctrine teacher have taught the Old Testament at least three times over, so I guess you might say I am relatively knowledgeable about the Bible and Old Testament. So, to hear Plotz’s take on these 39 books was, as I said, refreshing, because unlike a lot of other books about the Old Testament, Plotz came to it as a complete neophyte. By his own admission, his past experience with the Torah was very limited, and so when he decided to read the Bible from cover to cover, he eschewed all Biblical commentary and extraneous reading and decided to take the Old Testament on, mano-a-mano. Good Book contains only Plotz’s and his Bible and his own personal reactions to and thought on the stories he is reading.

It was a fascinating listen, especially since it is Plotz himself who reads the audio edition, and really, would you want anyone else reading such a personal book? Plotz has a friendly and likeable style that greatly adds to the engrossing tale he is telling as he goes chapter by chapter through the books of the Old Testament.

His style is made all the more likeable due to the “every man” reaction he has to the stories he is relating. In describing Biblical stories, figures, events, and laws, Plotz endlessly makes references to pop culture and modern life, including (in no particular order): 9½ Weeks, Abercrombie & Fitch, The A.C.L.U., Adam Smith, After-School Specials, All About Eve, Arnold Schwarzenegger, The Bar Scene, Big Brother, Bob Dylan, The Branch Davidians, Brokeback Mountain, Bugsy Siegel, The Byrds, Casablanca, Chicken Soup for the Soul, Cinderella, Cold Fusion, The Congressional Medal of Honor, Cormac McCarthy, C.S.I., David Koresh, Divorce Lawyers, Doctors Without Borders, Donald Trump, Edgar Allan Poe, Entourage, Ernest Hemingway, Flowers in the Attic, Frat Rushes, Freddy Krueger, The Gap, George Orwell, The Godfather, Gone with the Wind, Good Cop-Bad Cop, Grifting, Hippies, How To Win Friends and Influence People, Hustler Magazine, Jack Nicholson, Jane Austen, Judge Dredd, The Justice League, K-Rations, A Knight’s Tale, Last Tango in Paris, Law & Order: SVU, The Life of Brian, The Lifetime Network, “The Lottery,” Macrobiotic Diet, Madame Bovary, The Madness of King George, Maoist Economics, Married, with Children, Martha Stewart, Mata Hari, Mayor Fiorello La Guardia, Midnight Cowboy, Michael Jackson, Miss Manners, The Miss Universe Pageant, Monty Python, Morgan Freeman, Muhammad Ali, The New Yorker, Nixon’s Historic Visit to China, Oprah Winfrey, Penélope Cruz, Penthouse Forum, P.E.T.A., Pete Seeger, Pimp My Ride, Pol Pot, Portrait of a Lover, Pretty Woman, Project Runway, Pro-Wrestling, Pulp Fiction, Quentin Tarantino, Raiders of the Lost Ark, Real Estate Deals (Crooked and Otherwise), Restraining Orders, Rogaine, Salma Hayek, The Saw Franchise, Self-Help Books, Shirley Jackson, Soap Operas, Sports Talk Radio, Stage Moms, Stephen King, Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia, Supreme Court Justice David Souter, Three Dog Night, The Three Stooges, Total Home Makeover, Ty Pennington, Viagra, William Shakespeare, Woody Allen, The X-Men, “Yo Momma” Jokes, Yuppies, and in what is quite possibly my favorite statement in the book, Plotz refers to Ezekiel as “the Groovy Whole-Grain Hippie Prophet,” and, even more amazingly, he makes it all work and seem natural to the stories of the Bible.

Another fun aspect of Good Book is Plotz’s Appendix, which contains Useful, and Not-So-Useful Bible Lists:

• The Bible’s 12 Best Pick-Up Lines
• The 11 Best Miracles in the Bible and 1 Very Lame One
• The Bible’s 13 Most Spectacular Murders
• The Bible’s 9 Best Parties
• 10 Bible Prostitutes
• 11 Biblical Heroes You Don’t Want to Be Named After
• 9 Truly Hellacious Biblical Punishments
• The Bible’s 8 Trippiest and Most Important Dreams
• 9 Weird Biblical Laws
• The Bible’s 6 Most Important Business Deals
• 6 Abuses of Animals Rights in the Bible
• The Bible’s 10 Most Important Meals

These are pretty self-explanatory lists and actually a lot of good-natured fun with the Bible.

My only complaint in all of what Plotz has to say about the Bible was his over use of the word “feckless” (which, according to dictionary.com, is defined as: “1. ineffective; incompetent; futile 2. having no sense of responsibility; indifferent; lazy”) in describing at least five Bible personages that I can think of off the top of my head, and there is possibly more that I can’t remember. It is not because it was in any way offensive to the person, or my personal belief about them, they were all apt descriptions of these people, it was just an overexposure to the word that I took a dislike to. Kind of like Céline Dion’s “My Heart Will Go On” … it was alright the first time you heard it at the end of Titanic, but after it played on the radio ad nauseum you were sick of it, and it grated every time you heard it. That’s the way it was with the word “feckless” in Good Book.

Other than that one, little nitpick, I thoroughly enjoyed the time I spent listening to Good Book, and I found the conclusions that Plotz makes upon finishing his reading of the Bible to be very inspiring and thought-provoking, coming as they do from a starting place of disbelief and no faith and even skepticism. It made me rethink my belief in the Old Testament and the stories it tells, not in a bad way, but in a way that challenges my faith and makes me want to strengthen my own conclusions about God and the Old Testament’s teachings, moral and otherwise, and those things I took on “blind faith” and what I thought the Biblical story was saying and teaching.

I don’t care whether you’re religious or not, skeptic, atheist or believer, whether your belief is Christian, Jewish or Whatever … Good Book, at the risk of a cliché, has something for everyone, and I guarantee you’ll enjoy the journey of one man’s quest to read “every single word of the Bible.” (And for a real treat, you have to try it out on Audio. Plotz’s intimate reading is a wonderful experience.)

This review can also be found at Bryan's Book Blog.