This was our monthly selection for book club. I almost never listen to audio books because I cannot keep the attention span (I'm a visual learner.) However, I heard there were "celebrity" special guests readers, so I thought I would give it a chance.

Plus the audio book boasted music composed by Academy Award winner Michael Giacchino (who is one of my favorite film scorers.) If you are a pop culture movie junkie, like I am, you would know his music from JJ Abrams projects such as the new Star Trek films, Super 8 and the TV series, Lost. He is also known for Pixar soundtracks like Ratatouille and Up.

… but I digress ... MUCH like this book.

This book drove me crazy with all the sidetracking and little commentary and ramblings about nothing to do with the main point she was trying to make.

I was looking through the reviews of so many people saying this was humorous and funny. I just found it boring and monotonous. There were a few little side tidbits that I did find slightly interesting, but for the most part, this was the road trip from hell for me. It got to the point where I didn’t want to get in the car because I knew I would have to listen to the same voice droning on and on and on.

And those celebrity guest readers? Next to non-existent. Some had a few lines or paragraphs to say, but the majority was one to ten words and that was it for the entire book.

I love Sarah Vowell and I loved this latest read. Her depth of knowledge and passion for history are really enhanced by her humor. While many of her travels involve serious and solemn events, she never takes herself too seriously, sharing self-deprecating moments without digressing from the story at hand. I would love to travel with her (probably chauffeuring as she has a phobia of driving) but books like these are the next best thing. What a great trip!

In this book you'll find architecture, literature, nature, US and international history, art, music, films, and just about everything else.

While there were a number of slightly off-color lines that wouldn't really fly today, and a certain sentimentality about the American government that really shows how closely this book was written to 9/11, I loved it. Absolutely adored it.

Vowell and I think similarly about presidential assassinations, which is probably concerning. Fun fact about me: in 4th grade I used my book fair money to buy a (now very out of date) presidential encyclopedia. I read it obsessively for years, absorbing facts about my many favorite presidents. The main one, of course, being Abraham Lincoln. I was obsessed with the man to the point that as a fun little vacation, my parents drove me to Springfield, IL to visit Lincoln's grave, house, and the Lincoln museum. I don't think many other 10-year-olds are specifically requesting that, but here I am. I also used the opportunity to visit the start of Route 66 which I learned about from the Molly American Girl Doll books and clung to like a gremlin of classic Americana.

I was in high school when I first saw the musical Assassins, a dramatic reenactment of the four successful presidential assassinations and several of the very unsuccessful ones. It's catchy, in my opinion, making a series of murderers fairly sympathetic. It reignited something in me, probably because I saw it at the same time I was taking AP US history, and I spent about six months listening to the soundtrack on a loop on my electric blue iPod Nano (which I refuse to get rid of because I love it very much.)
(Anyway, I'm not diagnosed with Autism, but I hope you can understand why I'm beginning to seek a diagnosis.)

If you enjoyed this absolute tangent of a review, you'll definitely enjoy this book. Made up primarily of personal anecdotes, the book is mainly a series of vaguely connected thoughts inspired by events related to the assassinations of Lincoln, Garfield, and McKinley. JFK gets a mention, but he's so well-trodden that there aren't as much quirky little asides to make.

I did not finish this book. I suppose I could have, it was somewhat interesting and at times quite clever. However, its due date came up at the library and I could not renew it because there was a hold on it. If it were a more compelling read, i would have just suffered the late fees, after all, I did read the first two sections, and I rarely put down a book when I have invested my time in consuming 2/3 of it. Yet Vowell's tendency for convoluted sentences and incoherent messages or points made it easy for me to return. I didn't hate it, the idea was excellent and creative. I guess I just felt the execution did not live up to the concept, and the writing,format and content could have been a lot better. And so, very disappointed, I had no trouble returning this book to the library.

Very interesting read. Sarah has some very dedicated friends and family - willing to take her tooling around the United States visiting landmarks related to assassinations. The next time I'm in DC I definitely want to go to that medicine museum. New bucket list items!

Sarah Vowell has written a number of 'history' books whereby she explores a theme (Pilgims and Puritans, Lafayette in America, presidential assassinations) and shares, often wittily, what she discovers in her related travels and readings. This particular book circles around the deaths of presidents Lincoln, Garfield and McKinley.

When i started reading this book i was wearing my William Henry Harrison t-shirt. Yup, I do have one. I bring this up because I figured I would either love or hate this book given my typical attire usually includes some dead president’s image across my chest. And, having read this book, I find myself rather apathetic about it. It was amusing but not funny, somewhat interesting but not engrossing. That’s disappointing.

Some interesting historical detail here, but I found the book as a whole a rather uneven jumble, not nearly as interesting as I had expected. And the audiobook was simply dreadful. While I'd enjoyed Vowell's unique voice on NPR, etc., I now realize that such enjoyment is limited to small doses. And the inclusion of celebrity narrators for direct quotes didn't work at all, making this one of the clunkiest audio adaptations I've encountered.

U.S. history has never been so much fun! There’s nothing Sarah Vowell loves more than a presidential plaque, monument, home or grave, and her enthusiasm is infectious. Over half of this book is about Abraham Lincoln’s assassination; the rest goes to those of James Garfield and William McKinley (attempts on T. Roosevelt and Reagan get a brief mention, but she pretty much avoids JFK – presumably because that would fill a book of its own). If all you remember about these last two assassins is that one was a disgruntled civil servant and the other was an anarchist with a funny name, let Vowell enlighten you with her mixture of zany travel and trivia. She follows John Wilkes Booth’s escape route from the nation’s capital, traces Charles Guiteau back to upstate New York’s Oneida community, and sympathizes with Leon Czolgosz’s hard early life: one of eight children of Czech immigrants, he was sent to work in a glass factory when he was 12.

This is offbeat tourism for sure, but I’m game for hitting some of Vowell’s destinations on my next trip to the States, including the National Museum of Health and Medicine outside Washington, D.C., the Surratt House Museum in Clinton, MD (I can’t believe I’ve not been to these two yet!) and the Mütter Museum in Philadelphia. The book came out in 2005, and what with Vowell’s outrage over the Dubya administration and her comparison of Iraq with McKinley’s own interventionist war in the Philippines, it does feel a little dated. But that’s history for you. Now go out there, find a plaque or a statue, and share your excitement with all your unsuspecting friends. If the rest of Vowell’s books are this nerdy-cool, I’ll be reading them all.

Favorite lines:

“Somewhere on the road between museum displays of Lincoln’s skull fragments and the ceramic tiles on which Garfield was gunned down and McKinley’s bloodstained pj’s it occurred to me that there is a name for travel embarked upon with the agenda of venerating relics: pilgrimage.”

A friend says to her, “Assassinations are your Kevin Bacon. No matter what we’re talking about, you will always bring the conversation back to a president getting shot.”

“If there is a recurring theme in Garfield’s diaries it’s this: I’d rather be reading.”

“My fantasy is to one day become a docent.”

“To me, every plaque, no matter what words are inscribed on it, says the same magic informative thing: Something happened!”

If you enjoy Sarah Vowell's stream-of-consciousness, phobic, obsessive voice, you'll love this book.

Vowell is wacky, and I say that in the nicest way. She writes very honestly and openly, which I enjoy because she is so wacky - absolutely obsessed with the assassinated presidents, which kind of freaks her friends out. I loved reading about their reactions, and her inability to curb her enthusiasm.

But her enthusiasm is not just a wacky quirk. She's very well-informed. And that makes this book not just a stream-of-consciousness memoir, but an interesting look at the history of the assassinations of Garfield, Lincoln, and McKinley. It makes me want to add a new shelf just for this book: humor/history. It's a great combination.

Her style of writing reminds me quite a bit of Jenny Lawson - The Bloggess.

3.5 stars -- This one was a lot of fun and educational to boot. History comes alive in all its bizarre, messy glory as Vowell takes us on a most unusual tour.

This was my first encounter with Sarah Vowell, and it was interesting to read reviews from friends who felt Sarah is funnier heard than read. Since this was an audiobook read by Sarah, one could argue that I had the best of both worlds. But maybe Sarah is funnier off-the-cuff than she is in a planned delivery.

From listening to Sarah's voice and to her content (when I was able to stay tuned, which was unfortunately not as often as I would have liked), she sounded like a quirky person I would enjoy being friends with although I don't know if I'd enjoy it enough to agree to be dragged on her crazy pilgrimages to presidential assassination sites. Somehow, though, I couldn't maintain interest in her book. I would say that it was audiobook ADD but others who read the book in print believed it would be more entertaining as a listen.

So I don't know what to tell you, especially since lots of other people liked this book. It just didn't hold my interest. But I'm certainly open to revisiting Sarah Vowell at some other point, in some other venue.