The Lazy Man's Guide to Audible Books Start your lazy journey today. Someday you too could be struggling to remember what the heck you heard while drooling on the guy sitting next to you on the bus.
Written by: James Watson with Andrew Berry
A history of the science of genetics from the man who got famous for ‘discovering’ DNA. Interesting stories that I think I remember or that might be from high school.
Length: 17.75 hrs
1/2004: What he said.
Written by: Orson Scott Card
Insect-like aliens attack Earth and are repelled but since they will probably come back at some point we start monitoring little kids for fighting talent and then train them to fight in a special school. Then we train them to command ships that simulate attacking the alien homeworld. During his training, Ender, the smartest kid of the bunch, kills a bully in a shower scene reminiscent of the iconic confrontation in the movie “Top Gun” (if Maverick and Ice Man were in 3rd grade, in space to fight aliens, and not gay). Eventually the kids get really good at playing the alien homeworld-killing simulation game but [SPOILER ALERT] it turns out to NOT BE A GAME AT ALL. Then Ender feels sad, finds the last alien queen, and tries to mate with her to breed a new invincible army of termite people.
Length: 12 hrs
1/2004: This book had been a around a long time as a classic that needed reading. There are a few others in the series but I wasn’t so much interested in hearing any more about insect-alien-queen-loving little kids.
Written by: Kurt Vonnegut
Something about repeating a decade over again, Kilgore Trout, and some Vonnegut memoirs. Definitely weak in comparison to his other books.
Length: 5.75 hrs
1/2004: The best part of this book can be summed up by a previous reviewer: “This book was published and how many people will buy and read it like I did to find that it is a waste of ink.” Not sure exactly what that means, but it feels right.
Written by: Many People
A few speeches are great in both content and delivery. Some are good content but don’t sound so great. Many were pretty boring. I have to assume there will be even better speeches in the future, so the title feels a little misleading.
Length: 1.75 hrs
11/2003: Fortunately this was short.
Written by: Bill Bryson
In a nutshell: “First the Earth cooled. Then the dinosaurs came but they got too big and fat and died and turned into oil. Ooh look! There’s a sale at Penney’s!” Actually that’s from Airplane, which was a whole lot funnier than this book.
Length: 18 hrs
11/2003: I like Bill Bryson in general, but this one got pretty boring and I don’t remember learning much either.
Written by: Eckhart Tolle
Read by the author, this book is a gentle massage for the brain. Not a lot of complexity here, it is about what it is about – encouragement to remain focused on the present and why that is a good thing. Plus some exercises to help do that. Nothing earth shattering, but decent enough.
Length: 7.75 hrs
10/2003: A helpful sleep aid for long bus rides.
You know how someone tells you something and then recommends an action based on that thing? And that action kind of makes sense based on what they told you? Except that the thing they told you was a total lie? Turns out a bunch of jerks in government and on the news do this all the time, and when you expose this they get mad but you sound really funny.
Length: 9.75 hrs
10/2003: This is even better because Al Franken became a Congressman.
A “semi-fictionalized” history of the United States from 1939-1954, focusing primarily on American politics and Franklin Roosevelt. While not entirely true, it does give a sufficiently accurate enough portrayal of the events of the time and how people thought about them so as to be useful in understanding the flavor of an era.
Length: 17.5 hrs
10/2003: Best. History. Class. Ever.
The War and Peace of the West, this book meticulously tracks the adventures of a few cowboys and an Indian who likes to pop out of the grass and kill them. Probably because the cowboys are retired Texas Rangers and killed the rest of his tribe. This may not be exactly what the book is about but definitely there is a part about how when you are really thirsty and are very hot and dusty that the best thing to drink is whiskey.
Length: 36 hrs
10/2003: Holy crap this book was long, but very engaging almost the whole time.
Boy meets girl. Boy and girl go to Mars, have baby, die. Baby raised by Martians, becomes man. Man returns to Earth with special powers, lives with hippies in a water nest. Government scared.
Length: 16.25 hrs
9/2003: This is where the term ‘grok’ comes from, a word that nobody actually knows what it means.
Moving your eyes back and forth and turning pages is for chumps. That's why I've spent the last 12 years in a semi-conscious state while the gentle readers at Audible.com whispered words from literary masters, cheesy hacks, inspirational gurus, and fluffy crap artists into my ears. These are there stories.
