Sarah
Mark Owen,Kevin Maurer,+2 more
While I appreciate the SEAL narratives and the almost behind-the-scenes details of an historic mission, Owen does not seem to know exactly what he wants from this book and from the public. He wants respect for these highly trained men but is frustrated with the nonstop public attention the SEALS face after this high-profile mission. He laughs at a description of SEALs as perfectionist egomaniacs while describing himself as exactly that (though perhaps he sees himself as a morally righteous public servant, I would call that ego-maniacal). The mission itself is rather morbid - yes, this is a terrorist mastermind they are killing, but Owen and his team seem less focused on Bin Laden than on the thrill of the hunt and the joy of bringing down prey.
Overall, rather disturbing that these “intelligent” men can't see the hypocrisy of their actions. It also really bothered me that Owen claims that SEAL Team 6 “respects” Obama as Commander in Chief while Owen includes unnecessary details designed to discredit the President. If you're looking for a good insider-SEAL book, check out The Heart and the Fist.
Fun with interesting tidbits, but I wish Jacobs would have delved into each topic more thoroughly. There is just so much that feels unexplored - possibly to be expected given the subject, but still, I wanted more. It's much more humorous when someone else tries out diet and exercise regimes so that I don't have to :)
I am thoroughly enjoying this! I picked it up based on the title and it turns out to be one of the best books about books I've ever read. WAY better than Tolstoy's Purple Chair, or whatever that memoir of reading a book a day was called. It's lovely standing alone and hey, you might get some great book suggestions out of it!
I wish I had known that this book was published posthumously before I started listening to it. I might have chosen another Binchy book instead. With a variety of characters converging on a remote Irish b&b, I kept expecting this novel to turn into whodunit. No such intrigue. This is a twee book and it felt unfinished to me. The individual characters are interesting, but there is a lack of cohesion that bothered me. Oh well.
This is the best book I've read in a long, long time. Ward's prose is gorgeous - poetic, sharp, and flowing. The audiobook narrator does an excellent job bringing each character to life. The story is not an easy one - four motherless children, neglected by their alcoholic father, living in deep poverty in rural Louisiana - but oh, this one is richly deserving of its National Book Award.
I listened to this as an audiobook and it was slow going at first. The extensive cast of characters confused me initially, but I was soon absorbed in their lives. There are a few characters who seem to have no redeeming qualities, and I thought that was a miss on Rowling's part, especially when she works hard to establish a backstory for a few otherwise unsympathetic characters, partly, one assumes, to build sympathy. In any case, I enjoyed the book and would recommend it. Lots for a book group to talk about in terms of class, technology, rural/urban, and age divisions.
This was quite interesting, even to someone who knows next to nothing about football (but I'm trying to learn!). Great behind-the-scenes details that are rather rare to glean from the NFL (which seems to be an organization as publicly popular and secretive as the CIA). There are A LOT of names, and that gets very confusing for the NFL novice, but I still enjoyed it.
