Audiobooks – stephenhucker.com

Simon Turney – Legion XXII

August 16, 2023 by Stephen Hucker

Finnished listening to two audio books in the Legion XXII series by Simon Turney.
I really like historical fiction as it gives you a view of life lived another way.

No modern medicine, no electricity, and a life that could be short, brutish and ugly.

The Capsarius

Simon Turney – Legion XXII 01 – The Capsarius

Warrior and combat medic, Titus Cervianus, must lead a legion and quell the uprisings in Egypt in a new Roman adventure from Simon Turney. Egypt.
25 BC. Titus Cervianus is no ordinary soldier. A former surgeon from the city of Ancyra, he’s now a capsarius—a combat medic. Cervianus is a pragmatist, a scientist and truly unpopular with his legion. The Twenty Second Deiotariana have been sent to deal with uprisings and chaos in Egypt. Yet the Twenty Second is no ordinary legion either. Founded as the private royal army of one of Rome’s most devoted allies, the king of Galatia, their ways are not the same as the other legions, a factor that sets them apart and causes friction with their fellow soldiers.
Marching into the unknown, Cervianus will find unexpected allies in a local cavalryman and a troublesome lunatic. Both will be of critical importance as the young medic marches into the searing sands of the south, finding forbidden temples, dark assassins, vicious crocodiles and, worst of all, the warrior queen of Kush….
From Audible

Bellatrix

Legion XXII: Bellatrix

Egypt, 25 BC. Titus Cervianus marches into the unknown as he and the Twenty Second Legion contend with the armies of the Bellatrix: the Warrior Queen of Kush. The Kushites and the Egyptians are united against the Roman presence in their lands—but there are complex political and military forces at work. Deep in the deserts, Cervianus and his comrades must brace themselves for a furious onslaught as they take on the might of the Bellatrix.
audible.com

Andy Serkis is great

April 18, 2023 by Stephen Hucker

As a younger man I read the Lord of the Rings every year for 13 years.

It is one of my favourite novels of all time.
The films were brilliant, (the Hobbit less so, 3 films WTF)

I had listened to an old audio book of LOTR, but the narrators voice was horrible.
A bad narrator can ruin a good book.
Not the case here, Andy Serkis is great, especially the Gollum/Smeagal character.

It took me about two weeks of listening to get through it, well worth the effort. Listening to the book helps with the pronunciation of names.
The only things that could make this production better would be a full treatment like Neil Gaiman’s Sandman series on Audible.
The three Sandman audible books have multiple actors doing characters, excellent sound effects and music. In effect a movie sans moving pictures.

Tribe – On Homecoming and Belonging

June 5, 2020 by Stephen Hucker

Just finished listening to Tribe by Sebastian Junger. I found the authors take on what is missing from modern society compelling. It is a very short book at 196 pages or less than three hours for the audio version. The amazon page for the book sums it up better than I can:

… a book about why men miss war, why Londoners missed the Blitz, and what we can all learn from American Indian captives who refused to go home.
Tribe is a look at post-traumatic stress disorder and the challenges veterans face returning to society. Using his background in anthropology, Sebastian Junger argues that the problem lies not with vets or with the trauma they’ve suffered, but with the society to which they are trying to return.
One of the most puzzling things about veterans who experience PTSD is that the majority never even saw combat—and yet they feel deeply alienated and out of place back home. The reason may lie in our natural inclination, as a species, to live in groups of thirty to fifty people who are entirely reliant on one another for safety, comfort and a sense of meaning: in short, the life of a soldier.
It is one of the ironies of the modern age that as affluence rises in a society, so do rates of suicide, depression and of course PTSD. In a wealthy society people don’t need to cooperate with one another, so they often lead much lonelier lives that lead to psychological distress. There is a way for modern society to reverse this trend, however, and studying how veterans react to coming home may provide a clue to how to do it.
From amazon page for book

Talking to Strangers

May 23, 2020 by Stephen Hucker

A very entertaining book, but I feel it doesn’t really go anywhere other then to say what we already know.
– strangers lie, and we are not very good at detecting this.

It was like listening to a very long episode of Gladwell’s Revisionist History podcast. Always entertaining, but in this case without a strong actionable conclusion.

Talking to Strangers
What We Should Know About the People We Don’t Know