Audiobook, 6 hr. 26 min., 2022.
Jennette McCurdy, a Nickelodeon star of iCarly, started auditioning for acting roles when she was six years old. She did it because she wanted to please her mother, a wanna-be actress. She also went along with her mother's schemes to keep her thin by limiting her intake of food and weighing herself up to five times a day. By the time she was cast in iCarly at age 16, Jennette was struggling with an eating disorder, followed not many years later, with an addiction to alcohol. Lonely and self-conscious she also seemed incapable of having healthy friendships and relationships. All of this was caused, at least in part, to her over-intrusive, smothering, abusive mother. When her mother died of breast cancer, Jennette was eventually able to get to therapy and started addressing all of her issues. Along the way she decided to quit acting.
My daughter listened to the audiobook, she said, in one big gulp, finishing the book in one or two days. She urged me to read it and I admit I was intrigued based on the title alone. As I started listening to the audiobook I realized something, however -- I had never heard of Jennette McCurdy, having never watched a moment of iCarly or its spin-off. I wanted to call CPS on the mother and wanted to slap the father for never standing up to that monster either. I'm definitely not in the demographic for this memoir and won't be recommending it to any of my friends. I'll let the younger generations read it without comments from me.
My rating: 4 stars.
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Audiobook-with-Don, 4 hr. 13 min., 2025.
When San Francisco starts rebuilding from the chaos of war and climate-related emergencies, a group of food services bots take over a ghost kitchen, rebranding the restaurant as a local hand-pulled noodle spot. The bots proudly start developing a good following until someone or something start review-bombing their feedback page. It the bots don't figure out what is going on quickly their new business will be destroyed before it has a chance to thrive.
Don and I went on a 13-day car trip. We spent a lot of time in the car listening to audiobooks. Automatic Noodle was what we considered to be a palette cleaner after we had finished two rather serious books in a row earlier. We both felt like the book was a little like ear-candy...not very high on plot, relatable characters or drama, maybe a little too high on technology and directed toward a younger set. But we liked it and thought it was sweet. The audiobook did provide the bridge we needed before be tackled another serious book.
Our ratings: Don - stars, me - 3.25 stars.
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Audiobook-with-Don, 8 hours 6 min., 2021.
The subtitle pretty much sums up the book perfectly. Kevin Grange leaves his job as a paramedic in the LA area to become a paramedic working for the National Parks, becoming a park ranger responding to medical and traumatic emergencies often in isolated and very rugged environments.
When Don and I were on a tour of Grand Teton National Park another couple kept raving about this book, having recently listened to it as they drove through Nebraska. By the time we were finished with the tour everyone, including us, were checking their phones to see if their library system had an e-source of the book. Ours did and Don and I started listening to it as we drove around Yellowstone. Kevin Grange is a paramedic not a writer but we enjoyed the situations he reported very much since many of them happened in spots we were visiting in real time. Clearly there is no limit to the stupid things people do or say in national parks.
The writing impacted our ratings. Don gave the book 3.5 stars and I was little more generous with 3.75 stars.
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Graphic novel, 32 pages, 2003.
Ha-ha. I read this whole 32-page version of Moby Dick while my husband took a shower. (In other words, it took 10 minutes.) After I was finished I thought to myself, "Well, that pretty much sums up the 800+ pages I just finished reading that took me a month to complete." The illustrations were very good but all I got was the story's outline.
It does leave out all the spiritual and psychological aspects of the original, which is really the good part. What does one expect in 32 pages?
My rating: 4 stars.
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