REVIEW

Assassination Vacation

Posted: September 20, 2005
Category: Almost King
I have just finished Assassination Vacation by Sarah Vowell and since it’s not the kind of book you would suspect to find a review of here let me tell you why it’s here. As you probably have suspected King is involved somehow and that is correct. King actually does a cameo (if you can call it that when you talk about a audio book) here. He narrates the part of President Abraham Lincoln.

Even though Assassination Vacation isn’t really the kind of book I usually pick up I enjoyed it quite a bit. It’s sort of a history book but not one of those boring once. The story is told in a rather humorous and relaxed way. You learn and at the same way your entertained, how about that?

We get to come along as Vowell takes a vacation and travels in the footsteps of presidential assassins. She reports about the travels as she visits the places. Vowell has, as I have already told you, a very humours way of telling the stories she finds and that makes it easy to listen to. But please be warned, her voice is very, very special. It took me quite some time to get used to it. I almost put the CD player down when I first heard here but please, stick with it, you do get used to it and eventually you get to like it. In the end it’s perfect for the book.

Other guest narrators you can here on this CD is Conan O'Brien, Dave Eggers, Catherine Keener among others and you can hear a clip from it here.

Lilja's final words about Assassination Vacation:

If you want a lessen in presidential assassinations this is really the book for you, if you want a King book this is not the book for you.

If you want to comment or discuss this review, please mail me.