DWD's Reviews

Fantastic cast, poorly written 1979 movie with two main plot lines that barely interact If I told you I had a western based on Louis L'Amour books starring Glenn Ford, Ben Johnson, Tom Selleck and Sam Elliott with Slim Pickens and Jack Elam as supporting actors you'd think you'd found yourself a piece of cinematic gold. Well, you'd be dead wrong in the case of Louis L'Amour's The Sacketts. Sam Elliott is the eldest Sackett brother who is living in Purgatorie, a piece of God-forsaken mountainous wasteland in what must be northern New Mexico. Tom Selleck and Jeff Osterhage are two younger brothers who become cowhands and later sheriff and deputy of Santa Fe. The two plot lines interact only twice - once to hand the Ben Johnson character off from Tom Selleck to Sam Elliott (Johnson is great, as always, playing second fiddle and making every scene he's in better) and in the climactic fight scene that ends the movie. The Sam Elliott plotline is the best

Touching, Powerful Look at Extreme Poverty and at What Christians Can Do Richard Stearns has been the president of World Vision U.S. , perhaps the leading Christian relief organization in the world, since 1998. In The Hole In Our Gospel Stearns lays out powerful, persuasive arguments for the need for Christians to act out their faith, especially when helping "the least of these." (Matthew 25:40) The book's title comes from the visual image of literally cutting out the parts of the Bible that are uncomfortable for you. Stearns asserts that we have cut out the parts that demand the church act because of a desire to avoid the concept of doing good works to get into heaven. Clearly, the Bible states that faith alone is all that is required. The church has stopped with that and is ignoring the opportunities to do good works in the name of Christ. Stearns is quick to affirm that good works without faith is pointless for salvation. But, he is fond of quoting Matthew 25

An amazing tale, fascinating to this non-Catholic Christian (a review of the audiobook) Running time: 7 hours, 9 minutes 6 CDs Read by Kirsten Potter Let me start this review by saying three things: 1) I am not a Catholic (I am a Lutheran); 2) I have never left the faith in any meaningful way; 3) This is my first Anne Rice book - I've never even seen more than a tiny bit the Tom Cruise movie. I have never had much interest in the topic of Vampires and Vampire LeStat series was literally of no interest to me. When I noticed that Rice was writing the Christ the Lord series I had the same thought that she expressed in this book - what is she going to do to mess with Jesus? So, I ignored that as well. But, when I ran across this audiobook I suddenly grew interested and I was not disappointed. The book is broken into three general sections: her childhood in New Orleans, her college/career/atheism and her return to Catholicism. The childhood section is deeply descript

Very good despite a few little factual errors. Theodore Roosevelt (1858-1919) Some of these are really thought-provoking and well thought out. I especially enjoyed the one concerning Teddy Roosevelt following through with his plan to ban college football unless they did something to curb the extreme violence (23 young men died in the 1905 season). The consequences were interesting and I thought very plausible. The book is marred by a few factual errors. They really are not terribly important to the outcome of the author's alternate histories but show a sloppiness in editing. Some examples are placing the Revolutionary War fort of Kaskaskia in present-day Kentucky when it is actually in Illinois and saying that people blamed Lincoln's assassination on people who were wanting to revive the Union cause (obviously the Union cause was in great shape by the point of the war - I assume his editors did not catch it and he meant to say Confederate). Despite the errors, the b

OK thriller with a feature that irritated me to no end... A short summary: Set on the eve of the D-day invasion, the book features American Lt. Skeet Merrill and his ultra-lovely female spy partner, a Norwegian named Sigi Peterson. Their goal is to disrupt the German U-boats that are massing at a French shipyard in order to deploy against the Allied armada about to launch the invasion at Normandy. The book is full of intrigue all around - is the U-Boat captain truly a loyal German? What are Sigi's secret orders? Which members of the French Resistance can be trusted? Who will Sigi sleep with next? My review: It is a tolerable thriller with a very irritating feature about the writing - how the author treats a Dutch member of the French Resistance, Erika Vermeer. Erika is a lesbian - a fact that we are never allowed to forget since the author constantly refers to her as "the lesbian" (as in, "the lesbian crossed the room" and "the lesbian sat qui

A marked improvement in the series . This is part of a series of books about Jenny Cain and her police detective husband, Geoff. In most of the books, Cain runs a philanthropic organization. In this book, she has left the foundation and is casting about for the finances to start another foundation in order to help the people of the New England seaport city of Port Frederick. While this is happening her husband has a mysterious visit from a teenage boy who claims that Geoff is his biological father and he wants nothing to do with Geoff except that he use his position as a policeman to re-investigate the murder-suicide of his parents and come up with a different conclusion. This novel is mostly notable for the fact that its author makes a serious effort to raise the bar in this series of run-of-the-mill mysteries. What she's created here is an actual novel - full of themes and interesting trips into her character's psyches. This book has all of the necessary ingredients f