Kirjailijakuva

John Isaac Jones

Teoksen A Quiet Madness tekijä

19 teosta 57 jäsentä 12 arvostelua

Tekijän teokset

A Quiet Madness (2020) 15 kappaletta
The Hand of God (2017) 5 kappaletta
For Love of Daniel (2018) 5 kappaletta
The Last Cowboy (2012) 4 kappaletta
Tembo Makaburi (2017) 4 kappaletta
Lonely Magnolia (2017) 4 kappaletta
Going Home (2017) 3 kappaletta
Alabama Stories (2012) 2 kappaletta
The Duck Springs Affair (2015) 2 kappaletta
Mother's Day (2017) 1 kappale
The Old Men (2017) 1 kappale
Trapping Rabbits (2017) 1 kappale
The Agreement (2017) 1 kappale
Boone (2017) 1 kappale
The Old Indian (2017) 1 kappale
The Angel Years (2019) 1 kappale

Merkitty avainsanalla

Yleistieto

Sukupuoli
male

Jäseniä

Kirja-arvosteluja

The things we do for love.
I actually listened to this a couple of years ago but forgot to review it, so I just listened again and decided to upgrade my star rating to 3.5 stars. This is the third of John I. Jones's short stories/novellas that I've listened to and I'm getting to recognise his style of writing. He has a sharp eye for characterisations and people's interactions and reactions to each other.

In The Agreement, Alma finds herself unable to pay for her daughter's last year at college and has to find a way to raise the funds. I couldn't help but sympathise with her as she rummages through her belongings to find anything of value and pays repeated visits to the bank manager in search of a loan.

I enjoyed the narration by Susan Marlowe, although I notice that she is not the narrator for the other two books I listened to.
… (lisätietoja)
½
 
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DubaiReader | Jun 5, 2019 |
Bound by a child.
This is a 79 page novella, just one minute short of 3 hours of audio. It kept me entertained on a long-haul flight, but for some reason I wasn't totally invested in it. It has a great premise: two social misfits come together and discover happiness when they find themselves sharing the care of a baby.
There are several hiccups; questions are going to be asked when you suddenly appear with a child, out of the blue. These were the parts that kept my interest, while the remainder of the narrative rolled along uneventfully.

Maybe it was the fact that this was short, maybe I just didn't have time to get into the lives of the characters. Perhaps I needed a bit more body to the story.
Quite a surprise ending, raised my rating to 4 stars.

I loved the narration by Tom Zainea, who has read several of John Isaac Jones's novellas.
… (lisätietoja)
½
 
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DubaiReader | May 10, 2019 |
This tale starts off in Florida in 2017 but the bulk of the tale is set in 2007 as the main character, J. L., reminisces meeting his current wife. J.L. of 2007 has just been laid off from a Montana ranch but he has a fall back plan which is to go to Argentina and work as a vaquero there. Along the drive to catch the boat to his new life, he meets Karina, who is also making a journey cross country heading to Florida.

While the set up was there for this to be the romantic comedy it claims to be, it fell flat in many ways. The story felt very dated, Karina’s main purpose in the tale was to be the romantic interest, some of the situations just didn’t ring true, and there just wasn’t much humor at all. I’ve listened to several stories by this author and some of them have been top notch. Alas, this is not one of them.

To be up front, contemporary romance isn’t my cup of tea. With that said, I found the little bit of romance we have in this book to be rather stiff and not titillating at all. In fact, when we get near the end of the story (and we know from the beginning that marriage happens), the whole marriage thing felt more like a business arrangement between two people who have a bit of fondness for one another instead of a great sweeping romance. Now, if that was the plot point, I’d be fine with it. But since this is labeled a romance, I want there to be real romance & heat between these characters.

The book is set in 2007 but it really felt more like 1967. I believe J.L. is in his late 20s in 2007 so I expected some modern ways of thinking. He insists on opening doors for the ladies (which isn’t all bad but when added with all the other dated things, it leaves this impression of a cowboy out of time). There’s some arguments about Custer’s last stand and an old Indian show that J. L. catches. Then that restaurant scene where J. L. was the only one to know the Heimlich maneuver. Then that scene where he splashes a little gas on the vehicle carburetor to get it started and the whole car catches on fire and no one has a fire extinguisher or a fire retardant tarp or even thinks to slam the hood down to smoother the flames. I could go on, but I won’t. All together, this didn’t feel like it was set in 2007.

Karina was a problem for me. For much of the story, she could be any woman. She does get a little background here and there but her lines are pretty standard and she makes few (any?) of the plot-relevant decisions in the story. The first night she and J. L. are traveling together, he offers to sleep in the truck and get her a hotel room. But she counters by insisting they just put up a sheet between the beds. The next day, she confesses that she’s always been afraid of men and that she doesn’t know why (so why were you OK sharing a room with a strange man?). Yet she then launches into her upbringing with a father who beat her mother regularly. J. L. then mansplains the psychology of how she’s afraid of men because her father was an abusive spouse. She then has an epiphany in which all that becomes clear to her. Sigh… Really? Later in the story, she faints and has to be carried. Further on, she says nothing would make her happier than to have his babies. Then even later, she wants a daughter so she can teach her how to be a lady, because gender roles…. in 2017…. sigh. Karina was not a worthy character.

During the 2007 trip, these two get into several situations that could have been funny but they are told so seriously that I didn’t find any comedy in them. Indeed, the main characters rarely laugh at their predicament either. There’s not even any slap stick humor. All told, this wasn’t the story I was expecting. 3/5 stars.

The Narration: Richard L. Walton has a very good cowboy voice. I liked his deep voice for J. L. While he gets a B for effort on attempting distinct character voices, he didn’t usually achieve clear, distinct character voices. Sometimes he used a lighter voice for the ladies, but not always and he pretty much only had the 1 female character voice. For the male characters, he relied on attitude and emotions rather than actual different voices, with the exception of doing a deeper voice for a very minor character mentioned by Karina as she went over a memory. His pacing was good. I did notice some background noise (rustling paper?) once or twice. I liked how he handled J. L.’s rudimentary Spanish while being pretty smooth with Karina’s native Spanish. 3/5 stars.

I received a free copy of this book.
… (lisätietoja)
 
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DabOfDarkness | Jan 26, 2018 |
Set in the 1940s in Alabama, this story is seen through the eyes of a boy whose mother is a live-in nurse for an elderly dying woman, Mary McDaniel. Mary’s husband, Boone, is still an active farmer and is doing his best to deal with his wife’s impending death. The boy, referred to as Little Turd Knocker by Boone, is curious about the farm and splits his time between helping out with chores, exploring, and playing with his circus set or pretending to be a cowboy.

Mary takes weeks to reach her final breath, so this story has time to ramble through the life Mary and Boone built. Even though we know at the beginning that this tale is going to end in death, it gently meanders along. Little Turd Knocker and his mother move onto the farm for the summer so Mary can be eased into her death as best as possible. Boone’s best friend, other than Mary, is his dog Nero, who attends him daily in the fields. Eventually, Boone asks Little Turd Knocker to go with him and the two become friends.

Jones kicks things up a notch when we learn of Nero’s near escape from death as a pup. Then the story goes up another notch when we learn of Boone’s old injury and how that affected his life. So when Mary’s last breath arrives, I was ready for it. I wasn’t ready for what happened next. Oh my! I felt this story was ending on a sad disastrous note. Then in swoops the final scenes and this poignant, almost joyous ending lands on both feet.

This is one of my favorite stories so far by this author. For a short tale, Jones really pulls the reader in with imagery of the farm and phrases and attitudes that were common to the time and location. I nodded knowingly when Little Turd Knocker mentally noted how a sharp goose quill can poke through a pillow, making the experience of a feather filled pillow realistic. Then there’s cotton growing on many acres and hidden money and simple toys and the cowboy story craze of the 1940s. It’s a rich atmosphere that encapsulates these believable characters. 5/5 stars.

I received a free copy of this book.

The Narration: Michael T. Downey was OK for this story. He did have a great voice for the inner thoughts of Little Turd Knocker and his gruff older voice for Boone was perfect. His female voices were also believable and he had distinct voices for each character. However, the technical recording of this narration is where the trouble lies. There are many mouth noises throughout the story. The volume occasionally goes a little up or down (but not enough to hurt your ears). So a little polishing is needed there. 3.5/5 stars.
… (lisätietoja)
 
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DabOfDarkness | Dec 31, 2017 |

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Tilastot

Teokset
19
Jäseniä
57
Suosituimmuussija
#287,973
Arvio (tähdet)
3.8
Kirja-arvosteluja
12
ISBN:t
27

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