Breakfast of Champions

By Kurt Vonnegut

Breakfast of Champions was suggested to me by a friend who really liked the book, so I gave it a try so that I could pass the recommendation on to you. Admittedly I did not pay as close attention to this audiobook as I have others in the past so I had to Wiki reference afterwards to summarize what I listened to and it brought it all into prospective.

So the book is basically about some authors, one auther writes Syfy. He writes a book about humans being programmed like robots. One of this readers gets ahold of his book and takes it for truth. This takes them on a journey in which they meet and the author has to find a way to correct and set straight the misinformed reader. That is as vague as possible so to not spoil it as little as possible.

The thing that I enjoyed most about this book was just random rid bits about people and places. They are odd and a little humorous. What I did not enjoy so much as the use of the N word, which in this day in age shocks me like using the name Voldemort. It was written in the 70's and the story was placed shortly after the time of slavery.

I would recommend Vonnegut if you too have heard good things, and are able to pay attention to adult fiction. I had a hard time with it at work because I do best with a fast pasted audiobooks more geared for young adults, or a non-fiction self-help type. This book received 4-5 stars on most audio book sales websites such as Amazon and Barnes and Noble.

★★★☆☆ 3/5 Stars 

Runtime: 5 hours 40 minutes.

Genre: Fiction, Science Fiction, Humor, American Literature, Classics

The Casual Vacancy

By JK Rowling

Quite the opposite of Harry Potter, Casual Vacancy is not very fun to listen to. The book is basically a Wes Anderson, dysfunctional family story without a character or two you learn to love regardless. The story is of a small town in England. There seems to be a vacancy around a town hall position that has opened up, though I could be wrong. The audiobook consisted of mini stories of several families. There isn't really a focal point of this story, Fats Wall is kind of the anti-hero. He smokes does the horizontal polka, and acts as "authentic" as possible. I've read that they are making a TV series out of this, I promise it won't be worth watching. This is my first bad book review, sorry to bring you down. Rowling must have wrote this book pre-soul-sell.

★☆☆☆☆ 1/5 Stars 

Ages 16 & Up

Runtime: Aprx 18 hours

1. Genres: Fiction, Fantasy, Black comedy, Tragicomedy

Hannibal Lectar Series

By Thomas Harris

Starting with Red Dragon, followed by Silence of the Lambs, and ending with Hannibal as was suggested to me, I enjoyed this series quite a bit. I was a pretty big fan of the movies, so I decided to give the books a try to see if there was any more to be had from the chronicles of Clarice and Hannibal. I was surprised at how accurate the movies were. There was also one other really big surprise that actually very much contradicted the movies, and I liked it. Let’s just say, it has a really good alternative ending. You may be wondering why I did not add Hannibal Rising to this review. I made a conscious decision to do this review before listening to the Pre-ist-quel because I’ve only heard and read really bad things about it. I liked the movie so we will see, I will start Hannibal Rising today and get back with you. 

So if you have no idea what the Hannibal series is, let me start by saying in my opinion Hannibal is one of the most well developed characters in literary history. Hannibal is a world renowned psychologist and also likes to eat rude people. It’s hard to talk about him because the books never let you think that you are smarter than he is, or that you can ever really get to know him because of his unpredictability. He has no problem going after whom could be called his equal Will Graham, then chooses to help and protect Clarice Starling develop as a person and an FBI investigator, because he sees something in her that he likes. Clarice was one of the only people Hannibal cannot predict.

These books are basically three individual mystery-thrillers linked together by Hannibal, who is in and out of a maximum security psych ward. I will have to recommend these books if you enjoy mysteries and psychological thrillers. I’m not even sure which is my favorite because they were each so individually good. You can listen to them in just about any order you choose, but I was really happy with the order that I chose.

***
Update: I listened to the Hannibal Rising audiobook, wanted to keep it separate from the first three because I heard how bad it was. To me it wasn't bad at all, it was just very different. I felt like this writing style kind of changes over time, but that is to be expected as an author grows and their interests change. Hannibal Rising is about the "coming-up" of Hannibal and how he because "Hannibal the Cannibal" There is/was a lot of mystery shrouding the character, and some of that is revealed in Rising. The time lines don't totally make sense to me, with the wars up to modern day, but I just accepted it. I would recommend Hannibal Rising as a decent fourth and final option to a really mind grabbing series. Like most things, go into it accepting it's probably not the best, and you'll come out pleasantly surprised.

★★★★☆ 4/5 Stars 

Ages 18 & Up

Approximately 50 hours.

Genre: Horror, Thriller, Psychological Thriller