{"id":24476,"date":"2015-06-18T08:00:24","date_gmt":"2015-06-18T13:00:24","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs2.davenportlibrary.com\/reference\/?p=24476"},"modified":"2015-06-10T09:45:17","modified_gmt":"2015-06-10T14:45:17","slug":"an-audiobook-for-the-mom-taxi-how-they-choked-by-georgia-bragg","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.davenportlibrary.com\/reference\/an-audiobook-for-the-mom-taxi-how-they-choked-by-georgia-bragg\/","title":{"rendered":"An Audiobook for the Mom Taxi: How They Choked by Georgia Bragg"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Taxi\"You\u2019d think that summer would mean spending less<\/em> time driving the Mom Taxi, but even though there\u2019s no school commutes, there\u2019s day camp, play dates, vacation trips, and So Many Birthday Parties.<\/p>\n

Since my pre-teen and I have a mutual dislike of each other\u2019s favorite radio stations and my eight-year old\u2019s tummy rebels when she reads in the car, audiobooks are a peaceful way to stave off boredom when the conversation runs out on those long rides.<\/p>\n

As long as we all agree on the book, of course.\"How<\/a><\/p>\n

A co-worker (the librarian who selects the audiobooks for our three library locations) recommended How They Choked: Failures, Flops, and Flaws of the Awfully Famous<\/em><\/a>, written by Georgia Bragg and read by L. J. Ganser (CD NF 920 BRAGG GEO)<\/p>\n

This book is a collection of the biggest LifeFails of fourteen historical figures, from Marco Polo (even Kubla Khan<\/em> knew better than to send him into battle) to Amelia Earhart (her fame took off without her) to \u201cShoeless Joe\u201d Jackson (baseball done him wrong).<\/p>\n

As we listened, it became clear that the phrase \u201cawfully famous\u201d could mean \u201creally famous\u201d or \u201creally awful\u201d. Or both. This book provides ‘behind the scenes” 411 on well-known people who worked through their failures to achieve greatness . . . and those who refused to learn from their mistakes.<\/p>\n

(My family will never look at Queen “You Should Have Expected The Spanish Inquisition!”Isabella of Spain the same way.)<\/p>\n

Whether inspirational or a dire warning, each of these stories is fascinating and L. J. Ganser\u2019s voice lends a certain dry sarcasm that perfectly matches Ms. Bragg\u2019s wry and witty tone. He even manages to read the lists of fun (and \u201cnot so fun\u201d) facts at the end of each chapter in a way that made us look forward to them (who knew George Custer was a clothes horse?).<\/p>\n

There were even a few times that we arrived at our destination and didn\u2019t leave the car until the chapter was over. That\u2019s one sign of a pretty good audiobook.<\/p>\n

Unfortunately, I wasn’t able to successfully convince my kids to clean their rooms by withholding chapters of How They Choked<\/em>—because I<\/em> didn’t want to wait!\u00a0 But I\u2019m planning to follow the example of Susan B. Anthony, learn from my failure, and try, try again.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

You\u2019d think that summer would mean spending less time driving the Mom Taxi, but even though there\u2019s no school commutes, there\u2019s day camp, play dates, vacation trips, and So Many Birthday Parties. Since my pre-teen and I have a mutual dislike of each other\u2019s favorite radio stations and my eight-year[Read more]<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[361,10,8],"tags":[360,2986,2984,2985,952],"class_list":["post-24476","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-audio-books","category-books","category-staff-picks","tag-audiobook","tag-georgia-bragg","tag-how-they-choked","tag-l-j-ganser","tag-review"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pd0CXx-6mM","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.davenportlibrary.com\/reference\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24476","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.davenportlibrary.com\/reference\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.davenportlibrary.com\/reference\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.davenportlibrary.com\/reference\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.davenportlibrary.com\/reference\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=24476"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.davenportlibrary.com\/reference\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24476\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":24540,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.davenportlibrary.com\/reference\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24476\/revisions\/24540"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.davenportlibrary.com\/reference\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=24476"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.davenportlibrary.com\/reference\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=24476"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.davenportlibrary.com\/reference\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=24476"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}