DWD's Reviews

Published by Disney and Blackstone Audio in October of 2014 Read by MacLeod Andrews Duration: 2 hours, 18 minutes Unabridged Big Hero 6 is, in my mind, one of the best superhero movies that has been made in this time of the renaissance of the superhero movie. It is fun and colorful, but it also has loss and shows the power of friendship and love. It also demonstrates how love can be twisted into something evil. Hiro Hamada is a teenaged robot-building prodigy who competes in robot fighting contests. His brother attends the local university in the future city of San Fransokyo and also builds robots in a high-tech lab in the school with several other talented young engineers. When his brother dies in a horrible explosion at the lab, Hiro is thrown into a profound depression. He re-discovers Baymax, a health care robot built by his brother, and he and Baymax discover clues that his brother wasn't killed in an accident, but was murdered instead. Baymax, Hiro and his brother...

Published in 2013 by Blackstone Audio. Read by William Hughes Duration: 11 hours, 42 minutes. Unabridged Thomas Fleming readily admits that he mostly writes about the era of the American Revolution (such as his excellent book Liberty! The American Revolution ) but he felt compelled to make a long commentary on the origins of the Civil War by writing A Disease in the Public Mind . Fleming's take on the causes of the war are based on a comment from James Buchanan's that the furor over slavery was a "disease in the public mind." Fleming is quite confident that this disease was mostly caused by the North. Shelby Foote alludes to this, in a way, in the Ken Burns Civil War documentary when he notes that there was a war "because we failed to do the thing we really have a genius for, which is compromise...our whole government's founded on it and it failed." An exhibit at the Lincoln Museum in Springfield, Illinois. Photo by DWD Foote meant that both ...

Published in 2014 by Disney. Read by Chris Patton. Duration: 1 hour, 39 minutes. Rocket Raccoon Unabridged (sort of). This is the sanitized, unabridged version of the abridged book of the movie. That means that not all the movie is in this book, but the audiobook version that I listened to does have everything that the abridged book has in it. We picked this up to listen to on a short family trip. We are all fans of the movie but we were interested in a version with no cursing and less sexual references when we were listening in the car. Some scenes are edited and lots of great dialogue has been added that was not in the movie. It makes me wonder if the author was working from an early script. The reader, Chris Patton, does a good job of voicing each of the Guardians, especially Rocket and Drax. But....despite all of these good things the book ends at just past the halfway point - the point where the Guardians just lost the Infinity Stone to Rona the Accuser. The story just ...

Published in 2013 by Random House Audio. Read by Dick Hill. Duration: 13 hours, 43 minutes. Unabridged. Lee Child Admittedly, I bounce around as a I read the Jack Reacher (so far I have read #8, #11, #14 and #18) but I was very pleased to note that #14 and #18 are tied together so that I had sort of a seamless experience while still skipping around. In #14 Jack Reacher meets, via telephone, Susan Turner. Susan Turner has Reacher's old job in the military police and they make a connection. Reacher decides to hitchhike across the country to meet her only to find out that she has been arrested and he is not allowed to see her. To top it off, he has been recalled into the army so they can file charges against him - a person he investigated for selling stolen military weaponry in Los Angeles more than 15 years before has passed away from injuries that he claims Reacher inflicted during an interrogation. Of course, Reacher won't stand for this kind of silliness and he sta...

Published in 2016 by G.P. Putnam's Sons This installment in the saga of Joe Pickett starts out with a bear encounter in the mountains and ends up in a violent confrontation in Wyoming's Red Desert. Adobe Town - a part of the Red Desert. Photo by Randy C. Bunney; Great Circle Photographics. Joe Pickett's special relationship with the Governor is coming to an end because the Governor's term is coming to an end. But, that doesn't stop him from going on one last special mission to the Red Desert area of Wyoming. Meanwhile, Nate Romanowski has been approached by men from a secret group of government agents who are worried about national security issues. They know all about Nate and his delicate legal situation and promise to clear all of that up if he goes on a special assignment for them in the Red Desert area of Wyoming. Also, Joe's daughter Sheridan goes for a weekend camping trip to volunteer to help an unknown activist group in (you guessed it) the Red ...

Published in 2014 by Grand Central Publishing. Bill Geist has been a favorite of mine for years on CBS's Sunday morning show. His son, Willie is a relative unknown to me because I don't have cable or satellite television. They team up in this book to talk about the topics they, perhaps, should have spoken about while Willie was younger with a lot of humorous insights and commentary.  They talk about "the birds and the bees" as the title suggests and they also discuss such topics as "what really happened at summer camp", how Willie lost a lawn mower while working on a mowing crew, Bill's love of Elvis, weird extended family, Bill's experiences in Vietnam, teenagers and alcohol and Bill's announcement that he has Parkinson's. Full of cute stories, this book is fun if not particularly profound.  This book can be found on Amazon.com here: Good Talk, Dad: The Birds and the Bees and Other Conversations We Forgot to Have . I rate this book 4...

Brilliant! Published in 2012 by Hachette Book Group Seth Grahame-Smith is, perhaps, most famous for his books  Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter and Pride, Prejudice and Zombies , two books that I have never read and probably never will because I care not one wit for vampire or zombie tales. But, this book intrigued me and I am very glad that I read it. As in the other books I mentioned, Seth Grahame-Smith has a talent to take an existing story and put a twist to it. Unholy Night takes the traditional Christmas nativity story and makes this little change : What if the Three Wise Men were actually not three learned scholars but three criminals posing as three learned scholars? That's it - that's the heart of the book. But, what a twist! Here is all anyone really knows about the the Three Wise Men from the Biblical account, from Matthew 2, verses 1-12: In the time of  King Herod , after Jesus was born in Bethlehem of Judea, wise men from the East came to Jerusalem, aski...

Published in October of 2016 by Mark Mooney Read by the author, Mark Mooney Duration: 5 hours, 57 minutes Unabridged CNN Money editor Mark Mooney's Three Cents a Mile tells the story of his 2 year trek across the world as a vagabond traveler more than 35 years ago. He left New York City and headed east, visiting Ireland, England, France, North Africa, Greece, Turkey, Iran, Pakistan, India, Thailand and even more destinations with nothing more than a few dollars in his pocket and a typewriter and a notebook to compose travelogue articles that he sold to newspapers back in America. Along the way he met playwrights, authors, poets, star-crossed lovers, thieves, hippies, drug burnouts, farmers, beggars, mystics, and he turned down the chance to meet Mother Theresa. He slept on beaches, in flophouses, on buses, above a bookstore with other aspiring writers, in an apartment building filled with strippers/prostitutes and in a barn. He traveled by plane, by ferry, by bicycle, by b...

George Patton (1885-1945) Published in November of 2015 by Blackstone Audio, Inc. Read by Robertson Dean Duration: 16 hours, 2 minutes Unabridged George Marshall (1880-1959) Winston Groom, forever associated with his iconic character Forrest Gump, has written an interesting and solid history of three equally iconic World War II generals: George Patton, Douglas MacArthur and George Marshall.  Douglas MacArthur (1880-1964) Groom's triple biography format works quite well as all three of these men's life stories were on parallel tracks once they entered World War I and they all knew one another and had worked with one another in one capacity or another through the years (the story of Patton and MacArthur meeting up and working together on the front lines of World War I is a great one). The histories of these men during peacetime only served to reinforce my impression that both of these men were eccentric, sometimes to the point of being bizarre - especiall...

Published in May of 2016 by HarperAudio. Read by Kaleo Griffith Duration: 5 hours, 44 minutes Unabridged Besides being a Law Professor at Harvard and a former member of the Obama Administration, Cass R. Sunstein is a massive fan of all things Star Wars.  In a wide-ranging and mostly interesting discussion, Sunstein uses Star Wars as a way to explain aspects of the American and world political scene, economics and family dynamics.  He starts with a little history of how Star Wars came to be, including George Lucas's struggles in writing the screenplay, the way the actors all thought they were acting in an interesting movie that was certain to be a big flop and the reluctance by the studios to really push the movie. But, despite the odds, Star Wars became a massive phenomenon - the series is the all-time leader in multiple categories and the hits just keep on coming. Sunstein explores why it became a big hit, looking at the timing of its release, what was going on ...

Published by Random House Audio in 2009 Read by the author, Tom Bodett Duration: 2 hours, 15 minutes. Abridged This book focuses on town celebrations, thus the references to "Grand Occasions" in the title. The quirky town of End of the Road, Alaska puts its own twist on everything. If you follow this series, that is no surprise. If you have not followed this series, do not start with this one. It is excellent but it depends on the listener actually knowing who the characters are beforehand. Adolescent Norman Tuttle struggles with being treated like a kid when at Thanksgiving and in other family activities. Meanwhile, the town gets a town Christmas tree thanks to finally getting a public park and, of course, this somehow becomes controversial. New Year's celebrations become more than a bit weird due to the weather.  Perhaps the funniest story is about how the town tries to open a safe that was used as a time capsule. Why? In their excitement to put important doc...

Originally published in 1989. Audio edition published in 1999 by Bantam Doubleday Dell Audio Read by the author, Tom Bodett Duration: 2 hours, 30 minutes Abridged This is the first of Tom Bodett's excellent "End of the Road" series and it is a joy to meet the quirky people who live in this small town in Alaska. It starts with the annual town parade and festival in the local quarry (it's easier to clean up a quarry, at least that's the theory), complete with fish tossing and a pistol shooting contest and ends up with a great story of two friends who travel from Alaska to Florida to pick up a brand new fire truck and then drive it back to Seattle to ship to Alaska by ship. It is the road trip of a lifetime. Great quotes from the book: "Men share some of their most intimate moments leaning against vehicles with their arms crossed, looking at anything but each other."  "I don't think there's a man in America who didn't spend at lea...

Published in 2014 by Spectrum Literary Agency William R. Fortschen notes in his introduction to Dies Irae: Day of Wrath that he felt compelled to write the story after a long discussion with a couple of friends about ISIS and the porous nature of America's southern border. What he came up with is this novella that is jam-packed full of action and very short on things like character development and a real resolution. But, it was written as a warning more than anything else. The main characters are Bob Peterson and his wife Kathy who live in Maine. Bob is a middle school teacher. ISIS-backed terrorists have invaded America to launch a series of attacks on schools in smaller towns across the country, including Bob's. Bob breaks school rules and state laws by carrying a pistol on his person in the school, and on this day that is a good thing... Fortschen's descriptions of the ensuing death and mayhem are over the top but effective. To be honest, this book reminded me of Step...

Published in 2015 by G.P. Putnam's Sons Technically, this is a Joe Pickett and Nate Romanowski novel but they have no interaction throughout the book. Nate has been released from prison because of a complex deal between the feds and Joe Pickett's boss, the Governor of Wyoming. But, one of the conditions of his release is that he cannot have any contact with Joe Pickett - a part of the deal that was tossed in out of spite by the FBI agent that negotiated the deal. Romanowski agrees and heads off to a new life with his new love interest.  They have opened a business in which he will use his hunting falcons to clear out smaller birds from barns and the like. But, Romanowski soon discovers that he was mostly let out of prison to become bait for the people that he testified against in prison so that the FBI can have a chance to nab them - maybe before they kill Nate, maybe not. Meanwhile, Wyoming Game Warden Joe Pickett is dealing with troubles of his own. His adopted daughter...

Published by Random House Audio in April of 2011. Read by Dick Hill Duration: 13 Hours, 43 Minutes Unabridged Jack Reacher is on a tour bus with a lot of retired folks who took advantage of a discounted tour price to tour South Dakota in the winter time. Reacher paid the driver to hop on and skip the tour. They are on their way to Mount Rushmore when the bus skids on an icy patch on the interstate and gets hung up. Normally, that is not such a big deal, but a massive series of snowstorms is coming in and the temperature is dropping in a hurry. Photo by DWD The tourists, the driver and Reacher are evacuated to a small town with a big problem. A little old lady witnessed a local biker gang member selling meth to a big-time dealer and the trial is quickly approaching. But, the old lady has been threatened and the local police are expecting an outside hit-man to come to town and kill her so she can't testify and they suspect Reacher just may be that man. Meanwhile, the s...