Shooter

I’ll admit, I approached *Shooter* with skepticism—another niche hobby book narrated by someone who sounds like they’ve never held a gun, let alone ridden a horse at speed. But Thomas Block shattered those assumptions within the first chapter. His voice has the rough charm of a rodeo announcer, and he slips seamlessly between the role of instructor and storyteller. The audiobook’s pacing mirrors the sport itself: deliberate but never dull, with moments of explosive energy when Larson describes the thrill of a perfect run. Block’s delivery of Larson’s dry humor is especially sharp, like when he quips about the ‘art of not shooting your own horse’—a line that landed with a satisfying chuckle. That said, the book isn’t without its flaws. Some sections spiral into overly technical details about gun maintenance or the nuances of historical reenactments, which might lose listeners who aren’t already invested in the sport. And while Block’s voice is compelling, his occasional mispronunciations of Western terms (like ‘colt’ sounding more like ‘colt’ than the colloquial ‘cult’) jolted me out of the immersion a few times. Still, the positives far outweigh the hiccups. By the final chapter, I found myself itching to sign up for a mounted shooting clinic—something I never expected after starting this audiobook just to pass the time. If you’ve ever wondered what it’s like to live by the creed ‘fast is fine, but accuracy is final,’ this is your front-row seat.