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Title: Carolina Roots

Subtitle: From Whence I Came

Author: Thomas Shytle

Narrator: James R. Clevenger

Format: Unabridged

Length: 15 hrs and 23 mins

Language: English

Release date: 03-25-13

Publisher: Tom Shytle

Genres: Bios & Memoirs, Personal Memoirs

Publisher's Summary:

The textile industry in Piedmont North Carolina was among the first to feel the ripple effect of the stock market crash in October 1929. The author was barely a year old in 1933, when his family was forced by events over which they had no control to leave the cotton mill where they worked and relocate to the mountains of Western NC. Economic conditions there were even worse. By 1939, war was already raging in Europe and the mills were flooded with orders to produce fabrics for the military.

When the author was seven, his family moved back to the mill village; to much better conditions. His story is about his experiences while growing up in a cotton mill village, followed by a career in the USAF. From the Great Depression to the 21st century his story includes the sociological, political, and economic dynamics of that period and his personal reaction to the evolution that shaped our world during the last 75 years.

Members Reviews:

The World Owes You Nothing

A tremendous book on growing up during America's great depression (what's so great about it?), of particular interest today. Tom Shytle went on from humble beginnings to spend 25 years flying for the Air Force. His writing style is lucid and to the point, with some deft touches of humor. The best recommendation I can give this military biography is to quote an entire paragraph from his youth. Growing up in the company-provided shacks surrounding the Park Yarn factory, he wrote:

"Growing up on a cotton mill village was a unique experience, probably unlike any other anywhere in the country. I read somewhere that 'you can take a boy out of the cotton mill village, but you can't keep lint from returning to his navel.' Growing up in that environment teaches you early on that the world owes you nothing."

What an amazing message for today's generation, where too many have come to expect everything be given to them. This man started with nothing, at the bottom, and never believed that he was destined to stay there. This is an American work ethic our country needs to find again, because the hard times today are nothing like those faced, and overcome, during the 1930s.

What an inspiration, we are honored as a country to have had warriors like this fighting for our freedom. And people like this are needed, once again. If not from this generation, then perhaps the next one. Read this, and believe in an America worth cherishing and protecting.

Family and background

I believe the author is a relative of mine and he grew up in the same situation and near the same place as me. I relived a big part of my childhood.

A page from our history

The year 1932 was an important one. Hitler's star was rising in Germany, and the great depression peaked as America struggled to regain its footing. Average annual income in the U.S. was $1,900, but in the poor counties of western North Carolina, many farm families survived on annual incomes as low as $100. Tom Shytle was born to a poor family in the cotton mill town of Kings Mountain, NC. His parents worked in the local cotton mill, Park Yarn, lived in company housing, and bought their necessities at the company store. Together, his mother and father made $25 per week when the mill was at peak production. In 1932, the mill operated three days per week and they earned a maximum of $7.20 each.

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Title: The Catholics, the Chickens, and Me

Author: Thomas L. Scott

Narrator: Jason Sullivan

Format: Unabridged

Length: 18 mins

Language: English

Release date: 03-21-13

Publisher: Thomas L. Scott

Genres: Bios & Memoirs, Personal Memoirs

Publisher's Summary:

An often funny, often heartbreaking short story about a young man's experience with chicken farming, and his father's alcoholism. "The Catholics, the Chickens, and Me" will leave you laughing and crying at the same time. This new audio short by Thomas L. Scott offers a poignant glimpse into a troubled yet hilarious past.

Members Reviews:

Excellent!

I just wish it had been continued as a novel - short stories often leave me wanting more. There were a few grammatical errors, but the author is very responsive to hearing about those so that he can correct them. I will happily read anything and everything by Thomas L. Scott.

Page turner

Brutally honest short story. Very entertaining and well written. the author makes the story come to life with an unpredictable tragically funny commentary... I thoroughly enjoyed it.

Very entertaining

I didn't expect to be laughing the entire time I was trying to read. Recommend to anyone with a sort of sick sense of humor.

Catholic mystery? Hardly.

I looked up "Catholic mysteries" on the Amazon Bookstore hoping for a pleasant read in that genre. Within the first two pages of this supposed "light comedy" I see Our Lord Jesus' name vilely defiled (probably in the name of humor). This "free" book is too costly.

Much Unnecessary Profanity

Guess I was taken in by the misleading title. What is funny about unnecessary profanity??? Sure glad the short story was free! I would certainly be upset if I had paid for it.

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Title: The Cutteslowe Walls

Author: Mark Whitaker

Narrator: Mark Whitaker

Format: Original Recording

Length: 28 mins

Language: English

Release date: 03-11-13

Publisher: BBC Worldwide Limited

Ratings: 3.5 of 5 out of 3 votes

Genres: Bios & Memoirs, Personal Memoirs

Publisher's Summary:

Between 1934 and 1959 a middle-class community in North Oxford shielded itself from the working-class next door behind seven foot high walls. Those who grew up in their shadow tell the story.

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Title: European Volunteer Workers

Author: Mark Whitaker

Narrator: Mark Whitaker

Format: Original Recording

Length: 56 mins

Language: English

Release date: 03-11-13

Publisher: BBC Worldwide Limited

Genres: Bios & Memoirs, Personal Memoirs

Publisher's Summary:

Between 1947 and 1949 the British government, desperately short of workers in the 'essential' industries of agriculture, coal mining and textiles, turned to the millions of East Europeans living in Displaced Persons camps in Germany. Nearly 100,000 were brought here as 'volunteers', and those who stayed founded the East European communities of Northern England.

In the early 1980s the Bradford Heritage Recording Unit (a pioneer of local authority oral history) interviewed dozens of Ukrainians, Latvians, Estonians and Yugoslavs about their often difficult early days in Britain. The interviews they gave form the basis for this programme.

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Title: Brotherly Love

Author: Dalton Giesick

Narrator: Greg Paxton

Format: Unabridged

Length: 1 hr and 43 mins

Language: English

Release date: 03-11-13

Publisher: Dalton Giesick

Genres: Bios & Memoirs, Personal Memoirs

Publisher's Summary:

"When Dayton was hammering the staples into the wood, Grandpa cut a window on each end. Then he made a door for us.... Our clubhouse was finished."

Dalton Giesick's short memoir Brotherly Love depicts the author's early childhood years, being the all too brief moment in time that he was able to spend with his little brother, Dayton. The book describes those early years in a fleeting but endearing way. At the center of the story is the family's relocation to Colorado, the boys' moving in with their grandparents during that short duration, and the heart-wrenching changes the family endures once they have moved out West.

Part coming of age story and part eulogy, Giesick's treatment of his subject is heart-felt and gentle. His book is a sweet and tender listen and the author's presentation of his memories of Dayton is much in tune with how an adult would treat a young child. A quick, yet powerful listen, Giesick's writing is strong and tight. There are foreboding moments embedded throughout the story alluding to Dayton's disappearance. Although anticipated, the last revelation is both unexpected to the narrator and listener.

Critic Reviews:

"Brotherly Love is a tribute to a little boy with a large heart and an even bigger soul, Brotherly Love is a big brother's beautiful telling of the precious and too brief an instant he spent in the company of his little brother. Although short, the time that the author spent with Dayton was deeply transformative for himself, and by telling his story the author was able to provide this transformation for his readers." (The US Review of Books)

"Brotherly Love is a true, inspirational story that is sure to appeal to readers with siblings, as well as those who have that one special person they may sometimes take for granted or who have lost someone special they have cared about." (Trafford Press)

"There are few things more shattering than the sudden death of a small child. It's a parent's worst nightmare; one many never fully recover from. But young siblings also suffer mightily, their confusion and fear often forgotten in the vortex of the grown-ups' grief." (BlueInk Review)

Members Reviews:

This book was an easy read and a simple story about brotherly love

This book was an easy read and a simple story about brotherly love. It was cleverly written as it brings to light the importance of family relationships and how important parents are to their adult children and how grandparents can influence their young grand children's lives. Would be s good book for educational and sociology classes.

The US Review of Books

Brotherly Love by Dalton Giesick

reviewed by Omar Figueras

"When Dayton was hammering the staples into the wood, Grandpa cut a window on each end. Then he made a door for us... Our clubhouse was finished."

Dalton Giesick's short memoir Brotherly Love depicts the author's e'rly childhood years, being the all too brief moment in time that he was able to spend with his little brother, Dayton. The book describes those early years in a fleeting but endearing way.

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Title: Squatters' Paradise

Author: Mark Whitaker

Narrator: Mark Whitaker

Format: Original Recording

Length: 27 mins

Language: English

Release date: 03-11-13

Publisher: BBC Worldwide Limited

Ratings: 4 of 5 out of 1 votes

Genres: Bios & Memoirs, Personal Memoirs

Publisher's Summary:

Lack of housing was perhaps the most urgent social problem facing post-war Britain. In the summer of 1946 tens of thousands of people took the situation - and the law - into their own hands, squatting first military camps and then luxury flats and hotels in London.

Those still alive tell what happened and how the authorities responded.

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Title: Babysitting George

Author: Celia Walden

Narrator: Kate Reading

Format: Unabridged

Length: 7 hrs and 24 mins

Language: English

Release date: 03-08-13

Publisher: Audible Studios for Bloomsbury

Ratings: 2 of 5 out of 1 votes

Genres: Bios & Memoirs, Personal Memoirs

Publisher's Summary:

As a young reporter, Celia Walden receives an unusual assignment: track down a global superstar and keep him away from all other journalists. That man is soccer player George Best, who made his debut for Manchester United at age 17 and was the star of a star team throughout the 1960s. Enormously skilled and ruggedly handsome, idolized by men and women alike, he was referred to as 'the fifth Beatle', and still holds a firm place among the world's all-time best players.

But in 2004, George Best is nearing 60 and deteriorating like a much older man. A notorious alcoholic and philanderer, he has just received a liver transplant and has Antabuse tablets sewn into his stomach lining. His wife has left him again. When Celia finds him in a bar in Malta, he isn't exactly delighted to see her. He's been chased by journalists all his life. Yet as Celia's assignment to "babysit" George around the clock stretches out over months, an unlikely sort of friendship develops, and she gets to know George as a funny, volatile, and complex human being, an avid reader and member of MENSA, ravaged by alcohol and gradually withering under the constant glare of the spotlight.

Babysitting George is a tender account of a unique relationship between a young journalist and a dying star. It questions the exploitative nature of tabloid journalism; the terrifying, all-consuming nature of addiction; and the implausible meetings that can change one's life.

Members Reviews:

Repetitive

Having grown up in the Man United/George Best era I was hoping for some insight into his later years yet there is little insight here only a repetitive account of his drinking, his health, the women in his life and his reaction to being "babysat". Inevitably there was always going to be a limit on how close Celia Walden could come to the aging and ill Best but the reader finds out little more than any reader of news stories at the time. What was the purpose of this book? The reader might feel that it was far more about the author than about the subject. I certainly did.

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Title: Inside Grand Central Terminal

Author: Kurt Boone, John Sarsgard

Narrator: Marcus Anderson

Format: Unabridged

Length: 17 mins

Language: English

Release date: 03-07-13

Publisher: Kurt Boone

Genres: Bios & Memoirs, Personal Memoirs

Publisher's Summary:

Inside Grand Central Terminal is a short memoir about a messenger who rides the New York City Subway.

This is a unique story written by Kurt Boone, a veteran messenger who rode all 22 major subway lines in a week while picking up and delivering critical documents and packages to businesses in New York City. The story details a series of Kurt's experiences and thoughts about the Terminal - during a time that Mr. Boone used Grand Central Terminal as his main location to expedite pick-up and delivery. At Grand Central Terminal, the subway trains run every few minutes.

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Title: Beg, Borrow, Steal

Subtitle: A Writer's Life

Author: Michael Greenberg

Narrator: Michael Coon

Format: Unabridged

Length: 4 hrs and 52 mins

Language: English

Release date: 03-05-13

Publisher: Audible Studios for Bloomsbury

Genres: Bios & Memoirs, Personal Memoirs

Publisher's Summary:

In Beg, Borrow, Steal Michael Greenberg regales us with his wry and vivid take on the life of a writer of little means trying to practice his craft or simply stay alive. He finds himself doctoring doomed movie scripts; selling cosmetics from an ironing board in front of a women's department store; writing about golf, a game he has never played; and botching his debut as a waiter in a posh restaurant.

Central characters include Michael's father, whose prediction that Michael's "scribbling" wouldn't get him on the subway almost came true; his artistic first wife, whom he met in a Greenwich Village high school; and their son who grew up on the Lower East Side, fluent in the language of the street and in the language of the parlor. Then there are Greenberg's unexpected encounters: a Holocaust survivor who on his deathbed tries to leave Michael his fortune; a repentant communist who confesses his sins; a man who becomes a woman; a Chilean filmmaker in search of his past; and rats who behave like humans and cease to live underground.

Hilarious and bittersweet, Greenberg's stories invite us into a world where the familial, the literary, the tragic and the mundane not only speak to one another, but deeply enjoy the exchange.

Members Reviews:

I Really Wanted To Hate This Book

I really wanted to hate this book. I'm a struggling writer myself, and so it's in my nature to hate any writer who's more successful than I am - which would include almost anyone living or dead who has ever taken up a pen. But I also wanted to hate the book because I think the writer is guilty of a certain type of dishonesty that really annoys me: false self-representation as a struggling member of the proletariat. This is akin to Joseph Epstein's constant references to himself as an "autodidact" when in fact he was educated at the University of Chicago and has spent nearly his entire adult life employed in academia. This is akin to Anne Fadiman -- a graduate of Harvard University, an academic, former editor of The American Scholar, and frequent book reviewer -- constantly referring to herself as one of Virginia Woolf's "common readers," when Woolf states specifically that such readers are not critics or scholars nor even very well educated. One might also mention Diablo Cody who likes to pass herself off as some sort of edgy streetwise punk-turned-self-made-celebrity-screenwriter when in fact she's really just plain old upper-crust Brook Busey, raised in the affluent community of Lemont, Illinois, and educated at an exclusive private prep school before going on to earn a degree from the University of Iowa. Greenberg likes to pass himself off as some sort of hard-luck bohemian type from the pages of Jim Carroll's "Basketball Diaries." In his essays he emphasis the seediness of many of his apartments, the low-level jobs he's held, his intimate acquaintance with druggies, conmen, and other social misfits. But for the most part he has been just a tourist in the American underclass, descending into it just long enough to gather enough material for an essay or a story and then returning to the comfort of the upper-middle-class milieu in which he has spent most of his life. He emphasizes the fact that his father was a violent scrap metal dealer, as if to suggest that he grew up in some sort of hard-knocks working-class environment.

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Title: Bittersweet

Subtitle: Lessons From my Mother's Kitchen

Author: Matt McAllester

Narrator: George Holmes

Format: Unabridged

Length: 9 hrs and 10 mins

Language: English

Release date: 03-05-13

Publisher: Audible Studios for Bloomsbury

Genres: Bios & Memoirs, Personal Memoirs

Publisher's Summary:

Matt McAllester lost his mother, Ann, long before she died, as mental illness snatched the once-elegant woman away and destroyed his childhood. In this beautifully written memoir, the Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist chronicles the journey he took to forgiveness, which brought him straight to the place that evoked his happiest memories of his mother: the kitchen. Recounting the pleasures of his early days, culinary and otherwise, McAllester weaves an unforgettable tale of family, food, and love.

At first, Matt McAllesters childhood was idyllic, a time when his mother placed heavenly, delicious food at the center of a family life brimming with fun and laughter. Then came the terrible years, years when he had to watch helplessly as his warm, quick-witted mother succumbed to an illness that was never properly diagnosed or understood. Desperate to escape, he eventually found work as a foreign correspondent, hiding in the terrors and tragedies of other people as he traveled to the most dangerous places in the world, from Beirut to Baghdad. But nothing he saw on the battlefield prepared him for his mothers death - and his own overwhelming grief.

In the weeks and months that followed, Matt found himself poring over old family photos and letters, trying to reach out for the beautiful, caring woman who had now vanished for the second time. But as he looked anew at her long-cherished collection of cookbooks, it occurred to him that the best way to find her was through something they both loved: the food she had once lovingly prepared for him, food that introduced him to a thousand sources of joy - from spare ribs to the homemade strawberry ice cream that seemed in memory the very essence of happy times.

With a reporters precision and a storytellers grace, McAllester guides us through a long season of grief - cooking, eating, and remembering - at the same time describing his and his wifes efforts to conceive and nourish a child of their own. Complete with recipes to delight body and soul, Bittersweet is a memoir of extraordinary power, at once a moving tribute to his mother and a dazzling feast for the senses.

Members Reviews:

More than you expect

That "Bittersweet" would be a moving memoir is no surprise. It's written by one of our generation's most compelling chroniclers of humanity in conflict, who now turns his skills toward his fraught relationship with his mother, a woman burdened with demons, stifled ambitions and insanities. It's easy to lump it in with other "cooking" memoirs ("Julie and Julia" has already been referenced here) or reflections on motherhood but it's much more.

This book ranges from lighter questions about modern day detachment (topical enough to be the subject of "Up in the Air" in cinemas) and health care indifference to deeper issues like neglect, guilt and love. The themes are carefully unveiled in a plot arc with an emotional twist at the ending. (Disclosure: I'm a friend of the author's but not an automatic cheerleader for his work).

elegant prose, beautiful and tragic

A moving and fascinating book by a gifted journalist, who focuses his investigative talents this time on his own childhood. Years covering the world's most complicated conflict zones apparently gave McAlester great practice at untangling individual tragedy and spinning it into elegant and lucid prose.