Behind Blue Eyes

Rainbow in the Dark: The Autobiography by Ronnie James Dio My rating: 4 of 5 stars I was given an advance copy of this audiobook from the publisher through NetGalley. I've always enjoyed music memoirs written by the artists themselves, especially after listening to Scar Tissue by Anthony Kiedis , so when I heard that this was coming out, I immediately added it to my ever-growing TBR pile. I've been a fan of Ronnie James Dio ever since he was fronting Black Sabbath in the very early 80s, and one of the concert highlights of my late teens was seeing him with his own band, Dio. The man was an epic singer and had one of the most powerful voices in rock. This was a nice trip down memory lane, though admittedly most of these memories belonged to RJD himself and were significantly before my time. It did take awhile to get going good, as RJD seemed to go into great detail on his early years. This was a foundation for the artist he'd become, but ...

Secrets of the Force: The Complete, Uncensored, Unauthorized Oral History of Star Wars by Edward Gross My rating: 4 of 5 stars I was provided with an e-copy of this book from the publisher through NetGalley. I think "complete" might be the most apt word in that long book title. That's certainly not a bad thing, but it lead to a very long read. The writing was rather dry as well, with the main narrative from the authors being little bridge paragraphs to connect the quotes from directors, authors, actors, writers, critics, and production crews. That said, there were fascinating bits throughout this book. The insights from Lucas and the primary players (on camera as well as behind the scenes) were invaluable. This is a great tribute to the body of work that is Star Wars , covering the phenomenon from its earliest draft beginnings to the present day Disney Plus productions. No stone was left unturned. I can just think of two things I would ...

The Ancient Minstrel by Jim Harrison My rating: 3 of 5 stars I was provided with an ecopy of this book from the publisher through NetGalley. That said, the formatting gave me fits, so it wasn't until I found this on Audible Plus that I actually finished it. Three novellas by a literary author most famous for Legends of the Fall . This was an odd assortment that was very well written as for the turn of phrasing, but meandered a bit in the telling. Overall it was pretty interesting but not as engaging as I'd hoped. View all my reviews

Zombie CSU: The Forensics of the Living Dead by Jonathan Maberry My rating: 4 of 5 stars I received an audio copy of this title from the publisher through NetGalley. This was all it was advertised to be: A great analysis of the zombie craze that's been taking over popular culture in recent years. More specifically, it digs deep down, looking into the extensive police procedures and forensics in a sample case of a zombie outbreak. This gives a realistic approach to how a plague might begin and the likelihood of it raging out of control. All in all we got some great perspectives from the professionals and experts, and their results were equal parts reassuring and frightening. This made for a great audiobook too, as it was a very interesting listen that I could take with me while driving or doing other tasks. The only thing I could add is that as this was originally written in the 2010-11 timeframe, it would have been useful to get an update on worl...