Novels

Novels (a la Cervantes' Don Quixote or John Kennedy Toole's A Confederacy of Dunces or Andy Weir's The Martian):

These books revolve around central characters the listener eventually grows attached to, and are thus easier to listen to. After being exposed to hours of characterization, Sancho Panza, Ignatius Reilly, and Mark Watney become emblematic of imaginary friends. You relate with them, and find it easier to pay attention to their stories even if you are tiring out.

Reviews of novels are inherently more subjective than the other tiers.
As of now, there are six reviews available in this tier: The Road, War and Peace, The Iliad, The Martian, Don Quixote, and Dracula.

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★★★★★
The Martian — Andy Weir
The Road — Cormac McCarthy
A Confederacy of Dunces — John Kennedy Toole

★★★★
Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas — Hunter S. Thompson
Moby Dick — Herman Melville
Ready Player One — Ernest Cline
Don Quixote — Miguel de Cervantes
The Long Walk — Stephen King
War and Peace — Leo Tolstoy
The Iliad — Homer
The Legend of Sleepy Hollow — Washington Irving
Astrophysics for People in a Hurry — Neil DeGrasse Tyson

★★★
The Metamorphosis — Franz Kafka
Heart of Darkness — Joseph Conrad
Gulliver’s Travels — Jonathan Swift
The Odyssey — Homer

★★
Dracula — Bram Stoker

★
Ulysses — James Joyce

REVIEWS

REVIEW BY ERIC TRAVIS

PCT location when listening: Shelter Cove, Central Oregon

Plagued by a painful big-toe injury, Stephen King’s The Long Walk accompanied me whilst I hobbled through a relatively flat portion of central Oregon. Having vowed to avoid painkillers for the trip, I instead fashioned a flexible makeshift toe-splint using several strips of KT tape. The splint held pretty well, but it was The Long Walk that muted the pain.

Like most King books, the plot is seriously demented. The annual contest (dubbed “The Long Walk”) consists of 100 pubescent boys briskly walking along a pre-determined path. Last kid living takes home prize money to last a lifetime. The other 99 are unceremoniously gunned down by assault-rifle wielding vultures as soon as they should markedly slow beneath the established pace. The inept, unlucky, or weak-minded are quickly dispatched, and a battle of desperation ensues between a knot of well-characterized survivors.

I’ve done no research to confirm this, but I suspect Stephen King hadn’t much experience walking long distances before this writing. The characters make facepalmingly rookie mistakes at rapid clips. The commonly fatal missteps normally involved avoidable hazards like inadequate footwear or subpar nutrition strategy. Since the contestants voluntarily signed up for the titular contest and were clearly all aware of the deadly stakes beforehand, I found myself smugly grumbling at their unpreparedness. One of the more foolhardy boys starts with 100 pennies in his right pants pocket and morbidly switches them (one by one) to his left pants pocket as his competitors die off. 100 pennies clearly representing an unnecessary amount of extra weight to lug around what is 99% likely to be his death march. Experienced long distance hikers (but apparently not the kids in this story) are obsessed with the weight of their belongings, sometimes snapping their toothbrushes in half just to save a couple ounces of weight.

Why this book received a 4 star rating:

This was my second Stephen King book. After reading a physical copy of The Green Mile while traveling in Ireland, The Long Walk felt like an inferior work of literature. It didn’t surprise me then to learn this was one of King’s earlier works and was originally published under a pseudonym.

It’s tough to rate a novel with the purposeful-star-scale I use for these reviews because novels are subjective. There were lots of parallels between the book and my life while I was listening to it, thus making the book more enjoyable and relatable for me. As such, you might not like it as much as I did. Nonetheless, The Long Walk receives a solid four stars. I suggest going for a long walk while listening to it.

REVIEW BY ERIC TRAVIS

PCT Location when listening: Central Sierra Nevada Mountains

During my PCT hike, there were only two audiobooks I enjoyed so much that I listened to only that book for days straight until I finished it. This is one of them (the other being Stephen King’s The Long Walk).

In reality, our orphaned protagonist, Wade Watts, lives in a depressing Ohio trailer park in the year 2045 with his selfish and abusive distant relatives. It would be an entirely cruel existence.... Except he isn’t Wade Watts most of the time and he doesn’t actually spend much of his waking hours in the trailer park. In VIRTUAL reality, his avatar’s name is Parzival, and he, like the rest of the world, spends his time in the Oasis, an intricate virtual reality universe.

In his last will and testament, the creator of the Oasis lays out a challenge to find an Easter egg within his expansive universe. This announcement creates a global frenzy of egg hunters eager to gain the reward: unlimited riches and unfettered control of the Oasis.

What follows is a whirlwind of ear-bud-gripping fun filled with cool 80s trivia, nerdy hijinks, and the constant threat that any person Wade meets in the Oasis could actually be cat fishing him. This book is fun. Period. It’s a mystery wrapped up in a sci-fi prettily topped with ultra-creative bows dedicated to the 1980s.

Why this book received a 4 star rating:

Ready Player One receives 4 stars because it is very heavy on 80s trivia and so is a tad esoteric. If you were around during the 80s you will love this book. I loved it and I wasn’t around in the 80s. The plot is a tried-and-true anti-fascist Star Wars 4-5-6 arc, so don’t expect anything too outlandish there. The fun lies in the creativity of the Oasis and with Wil Wheaton’s fantastic narration.

You may have heard of Ready Player One because of the big-budget Spielberg-directed 2017 blockbuster. The audiobook is much better. The sequel, Ready Player Two, is a pretty good audiobook too.

REVIEW BY ERIC TRAVIS

PCT Location when listening: the San Bernardino Mountains

I listened to this book at the perfect point in the trail. It was just north of Big Bear Lake along Deep Creek. We were hiking across abandoned dams and skirting the bleak transition between forest and desert. The characters themselves are in the midst of an arduous hike, thus providing parallels between the story and my own situation.

The story itself is a post apocalyptic landscape wherein a boy and his father leave the relative safety of their homes to embark on a desperate death march towards the coast. The world is gray and lifeless. World order has collapsed and cannibals patrol the major roads foraging for anything to sustain themselves.

The struggle for hope is the most poignant theme of this book. Embodying this theme is the symbol provided by their final destination: the coast. At one point, miles and miles from the coast, the haggard pair stumble upon a deserted, fully-stocked panic chamber. After nursing their emaciated figures back to relative health, they proceed to abandon this godsend, choosing instead to risk the cannibal-strewn forests — all in the name of a hopeful possibility the coast might bring. This is a repeated, yet poignant, plot device seen in fiction works like Cast Away (when Tom Hanks has created a stable environment on his island, but still builds his Wilson-raft), and also within history books (like when East Berliners with steady working jobs made desperate attempts to cross over the Berlin Wall during the Cold War). The heroic hope of an unguaranteed, brighter future outweighs the temptation of comfort within the bleak.

This was my first Cormac McCarthy book. McCarthy likes to include physical descriptions of mundane objects around the characters. Having worked in construction, I especially enjoyed esoteric details like galvanized fasteners and mention of different metals, the description of which immediately reminded me of my old work.

Why this book received a 5 star rating:

It’s hard to describe my reaction to the ending of this book without providing any spoilers. All I can say is I finished it, and I weeped for an entire hour afterwards. I also was at the very end of my longest day of hiking up to that point (32 miles), so perhaps my exhausted state exacerbated the ending for me. Generally, I am not a tearful person, but this ending hit me in a vulnerable, personal way. I was shocked by my own reaction as I was racked with helpless and uncontrollable sobbing. Although I expect this to be a relatively unique reaction, no other book has ever affected me this way, and thus I believe this book to be as purposeful as a novel can be.

REVIEW BY ERIC TRAVIS

PCT Location when listening: the entirety of Oregon and half of Washington

War and Peace is equal parts aristocratic romance and Napoleonic war chronicle (unexpectedly, Napoleon is a minor character within the story). While I personally enjoyed the war parts most, the peace parts are fantastic in their own right.

I’ve done no research to confirm this, but War and Peace may be the first occurrence of a popular and particularly poignant piece of imagery. During the battle of Austerlitz (one of Napoleon’s first great victories), a shell-shocked soldier gazes up at a peaceful sky while a raging battle furiously surrounds him. This contrasting juxtaposition is a common technique film writers commonly use in contemporary war movies. Off the top of my head I can think of Saving Private Ryan and The Lord of the Rings as examples. 

My favorite paragraph from the War and Peace text is as follows:

“Princess Marya, Natasha, and Pierre all equally experienced that feeling of awkwardness which usually follows when a serious and deeply felt conversation is over. To continue on the same subject is impossible, to speak of trivial matters seems desecration, and to be silent is unpleasant, because one wants to talk and this silence seems a sort of affectation. In silence, they came to the table. The footmen drew back and pushed up the chairs. Pierre unfolded his cold dinner napkin and, making up his mind to break the silence, he glanced at Natasha and at Princess Maria. Both had plainly reached the same decision at the same moment. In the eyes of both there gleamed a satisfaction of life, and an admission that there was gladness in it as well as sorrow.”

While I appreciate this quote for many reasons, its chief imprint on me was my introduction to the word affectation. Affectation means “behavior, speech, or writing that is artificial and designed to impress.”
I see affectation every single day, and every single day it is annoying to me. Most marketing campaigns, politicians, pick-up artists, and influencers-- all are congenitally affectatious. Before this book, I never had a satisfying word to use as an all-encompassing symbol for this constant bother of mine. 

Why this book received a 4 star rating:

As novels go, War and Peace is beautiful and informative at the same time. It is, however, a gargantuan undertaking to complete. I was particularly interested in completing this endeavor because I was influenced from a young age to consider War and Peace to be the pinnacle of literature. Even so, it took me a month to finish when I had nothing else to do but walk and listen. It is a whopping 50+ hours, and thus is docked a single star. 

REVIEW BY ERIC TRAVIS

PCT Location when listening: the windy rushes of the North Cascade mountains in Washington.

“My dear Patroclus, why are you crying like a baby? You might be some little girl running to her mother and pulling at her apron and keeping her from work and blubbering, and looking up, and saying ‘Nurse me mammy dear.’ That's what you look like, my dear man, crying like that!” 
—The untouchable Achilles with the sickest of burns upon his dear cousin Patroclus. It is perhaps one of the earliest recorded burns in history.

The Iliad was written by Homer, the 12th century BC Greek poet. It is half history and half epic novel, following the Trojan war between the Greeks (of Athens) and the Trojans (of Troy). 

The conflict is directly caused by a tryst between Helen, the wife of the Greek King Menelaus, and Paris, Prince of Troy. Menelaus, enraged by his wife’s infidelity, decides to seek revenge. A common thread within the conflicts of ancient civilizations is pettiness between leaders. Though arguably less of an issue in today’s world (besides the all-too common occurrences of venge-fests like Appalachian feuds and modern-era gang violence), it is an example of the actions of two reckless people causing thousands to die, and civilization to progress even slower as a result. 

Fun fact: Troy, also known as Ilion (hence the “Iliad” title), is located in present-day Turkey. The ruins are a tourist attraction today.

Why this book received a 4 star rating:

You may have read a tiny excerpt of The Iliad in high school, but the whole book is worth the read. Within the scope of the PCT 71, The Iliad is the book most referenced by all the others. Thus it is purposeful in that it has likely been a great influence (in one way or another) upon most literature subsequent to it.

It feels strange to give only 4 stars to one of the oldest and most famous books of all time, but the book is not without its problems. It is a tad long-winded, the many battles are essentially clones of each other, and there is an annoying amount of seemingly pointless name-dropping.

One of the biggest negative surprises I experienced was how prominent the Greek Gods were for the outcome of the plot. They are constantly meddlesome and petty (just as petty as the humans!), but they are also totally omnipotent—undermining the survivability, heroism, and dramatic impact of the human characters.

I particularly enjoyed the names of the characters in this audiobook, especially Menelaus, Agamemnon, Achilles, Odysseus, Diomedes, Paris, Helen, Priam, and Laertes.

The best character, however, is the indefatigable Trojan champion, Hector. He is a man driven by honor and bound to his people. You’d be hard pressed to find a more badass character in all of literature. I will end this review with a dramatic quote from the text:

“But Hector stayed where he was, in front of the Scaean Gate, for the shackles of fate held him fast.”

REVIEW BY MAX TRAVIS

Science. It works, bitches,

-        XKCD T-Shirt

Our story starts during a Martian sandstorm. A NASA mission to Mars is cut short and the team, already on the surface, must abort and leave the planet. During the retreat, astronaut Mark Watney is struck by debris and presumed dead. The crew leaves Mars without him. But, he is not dead. He is very much alive and now marooned on Mars. It will be another four years before the next NASA mission is scheduled to come back. How will Mark Watney stay alive?

No, really, how exactly will Mark Watney stay alive? Because the math, and there is a lot of it, says he will starve in only 300 sols (Mars days) if he does nothing but eat the rations left behind in the Mars camp. What follows is a series of engineering problems. Mark uses his knowledge of botany, chemistry, physics, computer science, etc. to stay alive on this alien planet for years with nothing but the tools his team brought along for a thirty-day excursion. This book was written by Andy Weir who is, notably, not a writer, but an engineer with a knack for storytelling and a particularly good sense of humor. Mr. Weir has taken it is as his primary mission to tell his story in a way that will stand up to the scrutiny of those nerds who would be so presumptuous to check his math. The result is unlike any book you have read.

It may help to describe this book by taking note of what isn’t in its pages. There is no love story or family drama, no superheroes or aliens, no class warfare or crime, not even sex or violence. In fact, there is not much human drama at all. All the humans like each other, they have an optimistic and can-do attitude, they tell jokes and support each other. It is Mars, steeped in its own harsh realism, that provides the drama. And Mars is presented through the eyes of a hero so easy to like it seems unfair.

Some books are better adapted as audiobooks than others. The Martian is one of them. Much of this has to do with the structure of the book, which is a series of audio journals dictated by our hero, Mark Watney. Thus, the writing itself was written in the conceit of being spoken out loud. An audiobook therefore is a very apt way to experience the story. The Martian is a wonderful, humorous, optimistic story about determination and teamwork. If you are the type of person who is interested in those things, you’ll probably like it.

ERIC’S TAKE

PCT location when listening: The San Bernardino Mountains

Why this book received a 5 star rating: Max’s review is spot-on. This is a terrific audiobook, especially if you are a nerd (like me).

REVIEW BY MAX TRAVIS

“Phillip III, says an old tale, standing on the balcony of the palace at Madrid, observed a student with a book in his hand on the opposite bank of the Manzanares. He was reading. but every now and then. he interrupted his reading and gave himself violent blows upon the forehead accompanied by innumerable motions of ecstasy and mirthfulness. That student, said the King, is either out of his wits or reading Don Quixote.”

-        Will Durant, The Story of Civilization

Sometimes a book is so much better than it should be, that you need to take a step back and remind yourself that you are hearing immortal greatness. Don Quixote was written and published in 1605, in Spanish too. It has no business being understandable in English, less so being amusing, which requires the reader to understand not only what is on the page, but also what is between the words. But this is Don Quixote de la Mancha, defender of the oppressed, liberator of the imprisoned, chaste servant to the peerless Dulcinea del Toboso.

He is a madman. The terrible victim of a bad education. You see Don Quixote bought all the romance prose concerning the chivalric knights of olde (not so olde in 1605 actually) and read them day and night. These books dried up his brains, and he started to think he was a knight errant. He sallies forth to roam the countryside righting wrongs and all such nonsense.

Don Quixote is a satire. Its premise is simple. What if a man in the real world dared to act like all those knight errants in those highly implausible romance novels? The result is disaster upon disaster. Don Quixote has never heard of any knight errant paying for food or a bed in an inn. Such things were never mentioned in the books, so they must not have been necessary. Don Quixote expects to get all of it in gratis for being a great and noble adventurer. What should result, does result. De Cervantes makes up for, in one book, a dark age of bad tropes and terrible writing.

With Don Quixote is his opposite: Sancho Panza, a peasant with no formal education. They are a match made in comedy heaven. Don Quixote thinks entirely in the abstract, the prism of his insane education having entirely replaced the real world. Whereas Sancho Panza, illiterate, untraveled, and unimaginative, can’t help but think of everything in the most literal sense. For every situation, he has a proverb. He is a walking anthology of vague wisdom.

Most audiobooks will feature both Part 1 and Part 2 of the story. It should be noted that ten years passed before Part 2’s publication, enough time for unofficial sequels to surface. Part 2 has an especially modern first several chapters in which the characters discuss the success of Part 1, and cast criticism on the fraudulent Part 2s out in the world.

Don Quixote is still mad in Part 2. He is, however, also wildly famous, his adventures having reached a large audience. Therefore, his madness is now routinely taken for wisdom. After all, attention is like a currency, and Don Quixote is rich in it. Perhaps there is more to his madness than meets the eye?

Miguel De Cervantes lived in failure for 58 years before the publication of Don Quixote. A modern analogy would be Rodney Dangerfield, who only became enormously successful at about the same age. What lacks in both artists is any presumption of kindness in their audience. Their writing is wonderfully to the point, the humor is perfectly timed, and there is a cruelty of realism so harshly drawn that it ultimately endears the audience. Rodney Dangerfield got so little respect in his life, it is hard to be acquainted with his work, the deftness and sheer diligence of his professionalism, to not come away with an admiring affection. As reality deals with Don Quixote as harsh as it should, he gains more and more of our sympathy. We understand him so well that we wish the world could be as crazy as him sometimes.

ERIC’S TAKE

PCT Location when listening: Northern Sierra Nevada Mountains

A thought you would only fully understand after listening to the Pride, Poise, and Courage chapter of Wander Purposefully: The word quixotic (derived from Don Quixote the character, but found nowhere in the book) has connotations that land anywhere between unrealistic to ludicrous. However, I would define a quixotic mission as one based on pride and courage. Don Quixote’s version of what is Right (pride) commands his reality, and he will courageously act—no matter the possible cost. Thus, he will joust a windmill he has perceived to have insulted his honor, or challenge a somehow-offensive, full-grown lion. This, depending on whether your version of what is Right aligns with Quixote or not, can seem either insane or heroic. Many of our most inspiring tales derive their poignancy from their characters’ unlikely successes. Katniss Everdeen would be insane to quixotically challenge the Hunger Games District leadership; she was only one person. Rosa Parks would be insane to quixotically stay in her seat; she would get thrown in jail.

Quixotic should not be defined as ludicrous, but as noble… depending on your point of view.

On a personal note, much of my childhood was spent listening to musicals—Man of La Mancha (based upon Don Quixote) being one of them. While listening to the audiobook, I was hoping to hear the lyrics of my favorite song from that soundtrack (The Impossible Dream), but was disappointed to reach the end with no mention of it. I suppose I should have expected this to happen, but was nonetheless bummed.

Fun fact: Manchego cheese is named after the La Mancha region in Spain.

Why this book received a 4 star rating: The first half of this audiobook is gold. The narration is excellent, and the characters come alive. It is laugh out loud funny. Part two is less so. The adventures become more and more predictable, and thus less amusing. Part two should be treated as an unnecessary sequel. The audiobook clocks in at 26 hours long, but it should have been 13. Thus, the book takes up too much of your precious time, and is docked a star because of it.

REVIEW BY MAX TRAVIS

This audiobook version of Dracula is on the forefront of audiobook innovation. Generally speaking, an audiobook has one voice actor who plays all the parts. Dracula [Audible Edition] has eight voice actors, some of whom you may recognize as broadway and movie stars. Dracula is a good choice of a book for this gathering of names. The book was written as a series of diary entries strung together. The diary entries are written by different characters. This audiobook employs a different voice actor for each character. It gets interesting when the diary entries record the words of other characters. Then the voice actor for that diary entry will do impressions of the other voice actors. The impressions are quite good, some remarkable, like when the voice actors whose narrative characters are British ladies impersonate the gruff and German Van Helsing.

The story itself may disappoint those well familiar with vampires. Bram Stoker’s version was one of the first versions of Dracula and because of this, the human characters are a bit slow on the uptake. That is, they don’t know anything about basic vampire rules. Thus, they tend to make decisions slowly, and are generally plagued by inaction in such ways the reader may find frustrating. The story also seems to suffer from that well known 19th century novel fatigue wherein a story meant to be read in serial form (a new chapter coming out every few weeks), is subsequently adapted into one end-to-end book. The result is like binge watching all eight seasons of The Walking Dead. Some of this has to be filler, and many details seem to be reiterated over and over again before the characters catch on to their significance.

In short, Dracula the book is a bit like a classic old movie. You can appreciate its historical innovations and cultural significance while being slightly bored by its timing and lack of complexity. Some of these qualities make it a very good audiobook. Minds tend to wander a bit more when listening, so a book that repeats itself is not necessarily a bad thing. Moreover, the voice acting is likely better articulated and better acted than your mind’s voice if you were reading this novel by hand. Of course, you can always see the movie. It’s been made about one hundred times so far.

ERIC’S TAKE

PCT Location when listening: The San Gabriel Mountains

I should have read Max’s review above before listening to this book. I had no knowledge of the serial nature of the book (they should have included this in a preface!). I was incredibly frustrated throughout, as the characters act like dumbasses EVEN IF they had known about basic vampire rules. During one scene the vampire hunters trap Dracula in a room in London, and neglect to block his only conceivable exit (the window!!). I think two of the characters did absolutely nothing with this golden opportunity, and just watched as their arch-nemesis escaped. I just about screamed in disgust while listening.

Compounding my frustration with the narrative, the San Gabriel Mountains were probably my least favorite section of the PCT. I was plagued by dehydration-related retching fits throughout. Had I been hiking in more favorable conditions, I may have been more patient with the characters.

Why this book received a 2 star rating: My personal enjoyment of an audiobook relies much less upon the narrators’ performance, and more upon the content of the writing relative to my investment of time. If this book were 5 hours long, I wouldn’t have minded the general character malaise, and the book would have received 5 stars. But it was 15 hours long. Thus, it receives 2 stars, and I consider that to be generous.