DWD's Reviews

Published in 2016 by HarperAudio. Read by Roger Wayne. Duration: 5 hours, 17 minutes. Unabridged. Two things before we start: 1) I am not a reader of self-help books - I can't think of the last one I read.  The author, Mark Manson 2) You simply cannot read this book if coarse language bothers you. I will follow the style of this book in this review. Manson makes many points in the book, but two stuck out to me. He posits that many people are unhappy because they simply try to focus on too many things and can't do any of them well. In short, he says that you have to stop giving a f*ck about everything and figure out the very few things that you actually give a f*ck about and make them your priority. One of his other points is similar, but worthy of mention. He points out that no matter where you go, there's a 500 pound bag of sh*t problems waiting for you. If you move to a new city, there will be a 500 pound bag of sh*t of problems. If you quit your job because

Published in 2009 by Random House Audio. Narrated by Mirron Willis Duration: 11 hours, 17 minutes. Unabridged. The author, Colson Whitehead. It is 1985. Benjie Cooper and his brother are spending the summer at the resort town of Sag Harbor, New York. This Long Island resort town is actually two resort towns - one white and one black. The Coopers are part of a very close-knit African American community of New York City professionals that started their part of Sag Harbor two generations earlier. During the summers, families head out on the weekends and older kids are often left out in Sag Harbor for the summer. Benjie and his brother are in high school and a group of high school boys hang out together all summer. Benjie is desperate to be cool (being on Dungeons and Dragons-playing Star Wars fan doesn't help - take it from a kid who was both in high school at the same time). They get summer jobs, they hit the beach, they look for girls, they try to get into concerts at local

Published in 2013 by Eastern National Manuelito (c. 1818 - 1893) One of the best things about visiting a National Park is visiting the book section of the gift shop. If you visit a Civil War-related site, the book sections are a rare treasure trove of high quality books all gathered in one place. Nestled in among the books are a series of attractive books printed by Eastern National. Physically, they remind me of the old style of National Geographic. They are bound similarly and, most importantly, they are chock full of color photographs like National Geographics were. The pictures are truly the strong point in this book, however. The text of the book is a series of essays written by different authors from the points of view of several different Native American groups. There is a lot of overlap and a lot of gaps because they are not edited together into a coherent narrative. The perspective provided by the book is a welcome one, but the book would have been much strengthened

Originally published in 2014. Audiobook version published in 2018. Read by the author, Ron Stallworth. Duration: 5 hours, 50 minutes. Unabridged. Ron Stallworth, at the time the only African American detective in the Colorado Springs Police Department (this was the 1970's), wrote a letter in response to a classified ad. It was looking for recruits to the Ku Klux Kan. Stallworth expressed his interest and thoughtlessly signed his own name, rather than an undercover name. Soon enough, the Klan leader called the number and Stallworth found himself being recruited. Clearly, Stallworth couldn't show up in person so he created a little task force complete with a white undercover officer pretending to be Stallworth, when needed. Eventually, Stallworth had a membership card (!) and having frequent phone conversations with David Duke, the most famous KKK leader in the country. The premise of the book was, sadly, more interesting than the follow through. The book was written in a ver

Published in 2018 by Random House Audio. Read by Scott Brick. Duration: 12 hours, 51 minutes. Unabridged. Jack Reacher is in New Hampshire and is working his way cross-country to San Diego. As normal, he is hitchhiking. He gets dropped off near the town where his father was born, Laconia. He has never been there and decides to check it out. His father has been dead for thirty years but he might find someone who remembers him.  The more  digs, the more he finds that this father's backstory doesn't quite jive with what he is discovering on the ground... Meanwhile, a Canadian couple is travelling through New Hampshire on their way to New York City. They are carrying a mysterious cargo in the trunk of their rattletrap Honda. When the Honda dies in the parking lot of a lonely hotel, the owners of the hotel convince the couple to check in for the night and try to find a mechanic in the morning. But, something doesn't seem right... This book had all of the pieces to make a

Originally published in 2009. I am a big fan of Berkeley Breathed and have been for 35+ years. I have multiple volumes of his Bloom County books, I enjoyed his movie Mars Needs Moms so much that I went out and bought it after I had rented it. I love his children's book Pete and Pickles . This book, however, is a rare misfire. To begin with, the book assumes that you read an earlier childrens book called Flawed Dogs: The Year End Leftovers at the Piddleton "Last Chance" Dog Pound . This book is like a catalog of dogs that no one will adopt because of their flaws. The dogs from the first book are thrown into the Flawed Dogs: The Novel with little or no introduction - just a pack of dogs with names and skills and oddities that the reader had better remember. No character development, no real chance to get to know any of them. There was a whole dog that I had no idea was even in the book until he was shown in an illustration. The main character of the book is a dachshund