2024 the best books on tape review

Price: $7.49
(as of Dec 01, 2024 20:40:10 UTC - Details)

Five CDs, approx. 5 hrs.
performance by David Lansbury

The hill people and the Mexicans arrived on the same day. It was a Wednesday, early in September 1952. The Cardinals were five games behind the Dodgers with three weeks to go, and the season looked hopeless. The cotton, however, was waist-high to my father, over my head, and he and my grandfather could be heard before supper whispering words that were seldom heard. It could be a "good crop."

Thus begins the new novel from John Grisham, a story inspired by his own childhood in rural Arkansas. The narrator is a farm boy named Luke Chandler, age seven, who lives in the cotton fields with his parents and grandparents in a little house that's never been painted. The Chandlers farm eighty acres that they rent, not own, and when the cotton is ready they hire a truckload of Mexicans and a family from the Ozarks to help harvest it.

For six weeks they pick cotton, battling the heat, the rain, and fatigue, and, sometimes, each other. As the weeks pass Luke sees and hears things no seven-year-old could possibly be prepared for, and finds himself keeping secrets that not only threaten the crop but will change the lives of the Chandlers forever.

A PAINTED HOUSE is a moving story of one boy's journey from innocence to experience.

Publisher ‏ : ‎ Random House Audio; Abridged edition (February 6, 2001)
Language ‏ : ‎ English
ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 0553712527
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0553712520
Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 0.01 ounces
Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 5.66 x 1.05 x 4.95 inches
Reviewer: John
Rating: 5.0 out of 5 stars
Title: nostalgia, southern comfort, joy and sadness
Review: One of Grisham’s great books. I had no idea what to expect and, quite frankly, I was a little dubious after reading the book summary. However, reading this book was worth every chapter, page, phrase and word read and every minute reading.

Reviewer: D, S, & N
Rating: 4.0 out of 5 stars
Title: Insightful look into 1950's poverty in America's farmland
Review: The Walton's but detailed and full of youthful perspective on race and stereotypes, and good and bad, right and wrong. A look into how country life just was back then. A piece of history now a days.

Reviewer: Lisa Lewis
Rating: 5.0 out of 5 stars
Title: wonderful
Review: Grisham tells a great story from the perspective of a young g boy growing up on a farm in Arkansas in the early 50s. It is more than nostalgia, it captures the emotional, familial and social complexities of growing up with all of its wonders, burdens and newness. Deeply moving and endearingly entertaining. Well conceived and written.

Reviewer: Sev's Mom
Rating: 5.0 out of 5 stars
Title: Beautifully Written and Refreshing
Review: I admit, I was a bit skeptical about this one, because I am a serious legal & crime drama fan, which is why I became hooked on Grisham's books from the very beginning. But I had to read it, because, without exception, I own and have read everything he's published. Well, I was pleasantly surprised - I loved this book.Far from the flashy courtroom dramas, tailored suits, and lawsuits, A Painted House carries the reader, on a gentle breeze, to a simpler time and place, facing challenges and drama of a very different nature. Through the eyes of the young protagonist, Luke, we are welcomed into the Chandler family to escape into a world of hand-picked cotton and homemade fried chicken, and where, for entertainment, the family gathers around the radio in the evenings to listen to broadcasted radio shows and baseball games.But it's not all peaches and cream on the Chandler farm. Luke's family is struggling to make good on the debts incurred while running their farm, and when they acquire the help of migrant workers and a hired family from the hills, conflicts arise, tension builds, and their lives take some very different and sometimes turbulent turns.I enjoyed "escaping" within the pages of A Painted House, and JG does a magnificent job painting his story so vividly, one can almost smell baking biscuits over the clean morning air in rural Arkansas. This is a great read for anyone looking to take a brief respite from today's supercharged Reality-TV-laden nonsense.

Reviewer: bob brooks
Rating: 3.0 out of 5 stars
Title: Missing
Review: I felt throughout that something was missing. Characters are made rich when we know them. The only character in this story was Luke.. I yearned for more Ricky or Gran?

Reviewer: John M. Bogniak
Rating: 5.0 out of 5 stars
Title: Second time I've read this. Love it
Review: I feel like I know how it feels to live on a farm in the 50s. I can relate to this kid.

Reviewer: teols2016
Rating: 4.0 out of 5 stars
Title: Quiet...
Review: The first non-legal novel for John Grisham, this story revolves around a boy named Luke Chandler, a young boy who seeks to one day leave his family's cotton farm behind him and play major league baseball. While it's a fine departure for the author of legal thrillers such as A Time to Kill: A Novel and The Chamber, it's sometimes too quiet for me. While characters do die in this story, these deaths are never really followed up on because of a lack of information for the surviving characters. Instead, this story is largely just about cotton picking and the seasonal workers that the Chandler family finds to help out with the job. The biggest mystery for them is who is painting their farmhouse white. While the painting is a nice story ark and definitely good symbolism as painted houses in the town are a sign of some financial prosperity, it's all just sometimes dull. The few moments of real action are quick and rarely touched on again long afterwards. The ordinary events in young Luke Chandler's day are sometimes just too ordinary. Also, what was with that whole scene with the girl at the river? I'm more disturbed than anything else. But despite all it's faults and the consequent loss of one star in the ratings, it's still a decent book and die-heart Grisham fans like myself shouldn't go without. The audio book is abridged, but I can't imagine all the excitement is only found in the full version. Go find out for yourself though. Enjoy.

Reviewer: Wilhelmine Shuck
Rating: 5.0 out of 5 stars
Title: Not the standard John Grisham
Review: After someone told me not to read this book because she had never been able to get farther than page 20, I decided to read it after all. I had never read a John Grisham book but had been told that this one was not like the others (implication: negative).My reason for choosing it was because we had moved from Hawaii to Arkansas and, knowing that John Grisham is from Arkansas, I wanted to read a narrative about cotton farming. And that is exactly what I got. The story is realistic in an almost John Steinbeck sort of way, relating the joys to be found within the hardships of a cotton farmer's life. That life was so rough AND touch in the 1950s surprised me since it took place twenty years after the Great Depression.A murder that occurs early in the book puts the story right into the "John Grisham" type of territory. While this book seems to be deeply personal, it still moves, has tension, has resolution, as a well told story should have. In addition it is informative about the lives of the Mexicans, the "hill people" (hillbillies in our parlance), so called "poor white trash" and a struggling white farm family. This book gives a true sense of what the lives of these families must have been like.I was left with no doubt about why someone would want to escape kind of life entirely and also why a family might choose to stay.My expectations of this book were adequately met. This might not be the case for the average John Grisham reader.

Reviewer: No name
Rating: 5.0 out of 5 stars
Title:
Review: Loved this book, many heartaches.

Reviewer: Luiz Netto
Rating: 5.0 out of 5 stars
Title:
Review: A farmer is looking for Mexican and hill people to pick cotton in its farm and, when they start to work at their rented farm, several characters get into the story such as: a beautiful young lady from the hills that entice the seven-year-old boy and narrator of the story, a bully who harasses people and get into fights and the friendly Mexicans.The dynamics of cotton picking is detailed and pleasantly described, such as the weekends in the nearby city with presence of a circus, the preoccupation of possible flooding, the little boy dream of playing for the Cardinals and the burden of bills to pay and cotton to pick.They pick cotton during the day and at night some interaction occurs, as well as during weekends. Three inside stories (love, death and intrigue) are prepared in great style and its development catches the attention of the reader, which is really entertaining. Nevertheless, the outcome of them is simplified and not worthy the expectation generated. Anyhow, it is still another great book by Grisham.

Reviewer: Chester Studzinski
Rating: 5.0 out of 5 stars
Title:
Review: This is not,as the tagline tells us, a crime thriller but a fascinating story of rural life in the 1950's. Coincidentally, the story teller was the same age as myself at the time of the story. It is a really interesting tale of a world so different to the one that I grew up in. It has the usual Grisham attention to detail and is an excellent read.

Reviewer: Julian Vertefeuille
Rating: 5.0 out of 5 stars
Title:
Review: La vita dell’America rurale nel dopoguerra è descritta magistralmente, come ci si aspetta leggendo Grisham.La disinvoltura con la quale passa da un legal thriller alla storia di una famiglia Battista è sorprendente. Lettura avvincente.

Reviewer: Jean-Marc
Rating: 5.0 out of 5 stars
Title:
Review: Récit touchant, dans la peau d'un petit garçon. Bonne description de l'Amérique rurale des années 50. Pour ma part, la seule critique serait qu'il y en a trop sur le base ball...