Books On Tape

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Review

CORE — Fri, 12 Dec 2008 08:43:19 +0000

I suppose that you could say that each and every Harry Potter book is a bitter sweet gift. You get totally excited about the chance to read a new book in the hugely popular series, but you know that you’re going to have to wait at least a year or so for the next one to arrive.

But with Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, this bitter sweetness is even more so, because of the fact that this is the end of the series.

For those who have been following along with Rowling’s fine tales of the boy wizard Harry Potter, they’ll be pleasantly overjoyed and a bit surprised both by the fact that Rowling’s supplies the answers to some of the questions that we’ve been desperately trying to figure out and guess upon in her books, and by the answers to those questions themselves.

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Cross (Alex Cross) Audio Book

CORE — Sat, 22 Nov 2008 07:59:52 +0000

What more can you say about a guy who’s sold over 150 million books world-wide, and is responsible for roughly 1 out of 17 book purchases made? What kind of book do you expect when it’s coming from the man who holds the record at the New York Times Best Sellers List for most best selling titles of all time?

You just expect that whatever you’re getting is going to be a tremendous story, that’s going to keep you riveted. When you’re listening to an audio book you expect that whatever else you have going on at the time of listening is eventually going be held-up because the stories are just so good that you can’t break away.

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Thousand Splendid Suns Audio Book

CORE — Thu, 24 Jul 2008 09:47:41 +0000

You would think that it’s normal for an author to be able to suck you into a story, and cause you to be totally immersed into so much that you really can’t stop reading…or in this case listening. However, the fact is that it’s actually a rare trait, and therefore why the ratio of authors compared to best-selling authors is so vast.
Khaled Hosseini is definitely apart of that rare breed of great story tellers, and has a keen ability to create a trance within the reader, and hold them there through to the end of the story. He proved this with his big breakthrough hit debut novel “The Kite Runner” and now he’s gone and done it again with “A Thousand Splendid Suns”.

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Audition A Memoir Audio Book Review

CORE — Thu, 10 Jul 2008 14:17:06 +0000

Barbara Walters is a television icon. She’s been on our TV’s for what seems like forever. She’s pioneered the way for female television anchors that were to follow her, and inspired nearly each and every one of them in some way. She’s interviewed just about every VIP from entertainment, politics, royalty, and business that there is.

With Barbara’s track record as a go-getter, we expect that she’ll get all the big interviews that are to come on the horizon, and she usually lives up to that expectation, sometimes even with exclusives. She’s been paving her way since the 1950’s and she’s still going strong today in her 70’s. So why then did she feel compelled to expose her life…warts and all…when she could have bowed out gracefully and fancifully?

I supposed it could be the fact that she demands the same candor from herself as she does her guests. It must be from her compulsion to be relentless in her interviews (and her life in general) that she even demands that all of the secrets come out of her own self.

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Great American Stories Ten Unabridged Classics

CORE — Thu, 10 Jul 2008 14:14:03 +0000

We all understand how important it is to read the literary classics by those authors who have shaped the American literature scene to what it is today. We know how crucial it is to experience those works that make us think, make us dig deeper into our own lives and psyches, and force us to contemplate life as we know. This done through the eyes of characters from years past – brought to us by authors who have molded so many great minds and thinkers of present times.

Authors like Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens), Stephen Crane, Ambrose Bierce, and Jack London should be and often are required reading in so many schools in our great nation, yet so many of there best pieces have past us by.

However, even though we know that we’re doing ourselves a great disservice by not indulging in these classic works, it’s very difficult for us to get the opportunity to force ourselves to sit with a book of yester-year, when life zooms past us daily at what seems like a thousand miles per hour. Not to mention the fact that between the internet, and other forms of media, giving ourselves the gift of literatures early works tends to take a backseat to the more hurried pace of timely “new releases” of today.

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