Blackbird –
Jennifer Lauck
Reviewed by trucker
Dyan Y. Bartlett
Round Rock, Texas
Title: Blackbird
Author: Jennifer Lauck
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
Listening Time: 6 hours
Retail: $26
Genre: Jennifer Lauck’s childhood memoirs
Plot: Blackbird is the memoir of Jennifer Lauck’s childhood, during the early 1970s. Through tragic events, Jennifer learns she can depend only on herself.
Main characters: Jennifer Lauck is a small child who deals with caring for her dying mother. She must also face her father’s marriage to the wicked stepmother.
Mrs. Lauck, the mother, is an ailing woman unable to cope with losing her dignity and her husband. Mr. Lauck, the father, is a man who will not deal with his ailing wife and spends more time at work than with his family.
Narrator’s style: It was very hard to get into the story. But if you can get past the semimonotonous voice, the story becomes engrossing.
What’s best (or not): That one so young could endure so much and still come out OK. I look
forward to the sequel.
Would you recommend? Yes, I think we sometimes feel that we have it bad. I couldn’t even imagine being that young and dealing with Jennifer’s life. It made me thankful for my own life.
Rating: 6
The Indwelling –
Tim LaHaye and Jerry Jenkins
Reviewed by trucker
Robert D. Goff
Cottonwood, Ala.
Title: The Indwelling
Author: Tim LaHaye and
Jerry Jenkins
Publisher: Books in Motion
Listening Time: 10 hours
Genre: The Indwelling is a fictional presentation based on a nonfictional religious belief. Anyone will surely be drawn into the suspense as reported by Jack Sondericker.
Plot: The Indwelling is the continuing drama of those left behind. It is the midpoint of the seven-year tribulation with the Battle of the Ages raging which will eventually engulf the earth and allow hell to emerge in a new light throughout the land.
The tribulation force continues their tasks to stand and fight the enemies of God during the most chaotic years that the earth will ever see and await the rise of the Antichrist. The flight of the tribulation force is international in nature including underground operations with operatives inside the global communities awaiting the Antichrist to organize his takeover and continue his one-world government based in Bablyon.
Main characters: Rayford Steele is one of the main characters of the tribulation forces. Steele, an airline captain who lost his wife during the rapture, organized the tribulation force, and he is the main support for new believers. Steele gets involved with the assassination in a strange turn of events and struggles with other believers to flee from the global community as they search for the assassin. Other tribulation force members include Buck Williams, Bruce Barnes and Chloe Steel. They work together to form a new safe house for the force in condemned Chicago.
Nicolae Carpathia, grand potentate, maintains his leadership of the global communities and instills the ideology of a one-world government by discrediting the works of God. Carpathia is believed by the tribulation force to be the Antichrist and will be targeted for assassination.
Abbey, a global community operative, aids the tribulation force to escape from the assassination and flee to Chicago to establish a new safehouse. He is not fully accepted by the members of the force, and a shadow of doubt becomes present as they journey toward Chicago.
Narrator’s style: Jack Sondericker narrated the book with highly effective dramatic presentation. His style forced the listener to be attentive and prevented monotony.
What’s best (or not): The Indwelling is the seventh in a series of books. The prologue did not provide the listener with an adequate background of the previous books in the series. Reading or listening to the preceding books in the series would ensure the listener a solid foundation for full enjoyment of The Indwelling.
Would you recommend? A positive recommendation is warranted. To go along with this recommendation, I would suggest a sequential reading/listening of the Left Behind series in its complete order to ensure an understanding of the contents.
Rating: 10
Notables:
The Powder River –
Winfred Blevins
The northern Cheyenne still call the lush Powder River country their sacred home. But now, far to the south in harsh Indian Territory, the bitter remnants of that once mighty nation are growing feeble and dying. To survive, they must return to their ancestral home across 1,500 miles, eluding pursuit by thousands of well-armed soldiers. Joining their outnumbered band are Adam Smith Maclean, a half-breed torn between two opposing ways of life, and his wife, Elaine, a strong-willed New Englander determined to stand by Adam and his desperate, daring people on their trek through the hostile heart of the white man’s West to the Powder River.
The Powder River
11.1 hours
Books in Motion
Dreamcatcher –
Stephen King
Once upon a time, in the haunted city of Derry, four boys stood together and did a brave thing. Certainly a good thing; perhaps even a great thing. Something that changed them in ways they could never begin to understand.
Twenty-five years later, the boys are now men with separate lives and separate troubles. But the ties endure. Each hunting season the foursome reunites in the woods of Maine. This year, a stranger stumbles into their camp, disoriented, mumbling something about lights in the sky. His incoherent ravings prove to be disturbingly prescient. Before long, these men will be plunged into a horrifying struggle with a creature from another world. Their only chance of survival is locked in their past – and the Dreamcatcher.
Dreamcatcher
23 hours
Retail: $49.95
Simon & Schuster Audio
Be Quick – But Don’t Hurry! –
Andrew Hill with
John Wooden
Perhaps the last controversial sports honor in living memory was the selection of John Wooden as “Coach of the Century” by ESPN. Wooden presided over college sports’ most famous dynasty, winning 10 NCAA basketball championships in 12 years. His UCLA teams won with quickness, and always with class. Wooden was a teacher first and foremost, and his lessons – taught on the basketball court, but applicable throughout one’s life – are summarized in his famed Pyramid of Success.
An all-city high school player in Los Angeles, Andrew Hill played – a little – in three national championships, from 1970 to 1972. At that time, Hill was upset at how unequally Wooden treated his starting players, and clashed with Wooden over a variety of social and political issues.
Hill went on to a successful career in television, rising to the presidency of CBS Productions. And one day, some 25 years after graduating from UCLA, he realized that everything he knows about getting the best out of his people he had learned directly from Coach John Wooden.
Be Quick – But Don’t Hurry!
4.5 hours
Retail: $25
Simon & Schuster Audio
Truckers News Associate Editor Donna Pierce has a novel out on CD (for computer) titled “A Secret Of Color,” about a bigoted district attorney who frames a woman for murder. From Page Free Publishing, this virtual CD includes photos and other enhancements and can be read on a computer screen.
$8.99
www.booksonscreen.com
