DWD's Reviews

This book was originally published on paper in 1998. Re-mastered audiobook version published in 2015 by Pottermore Publishing. Read by Jim Dale. Duration: 9 hours, 3 minutes. Unabridged. Harry Potter returns for his second year at Hogwarts. Volume 2 follows a similar pattern as the first one in that we begin with Harry enduring a summer with his horrible muggle (non-magical) family, going off to Diagon Alley to shop for back-to-school shopping and then having an eventful trip to school with his supplies. We hear about his classes, quidditch, his teachers, his friends and some foul goings on at the school that threaten everything. But, there are plenty of differences and that make this book much more enjoyable than the first book. There is much less macro "world building" going on because the general parameters have already been set. Instead, interesting details are fleshed out. For me, as an adult first-time reader, the relationship between those who can do magic and

Published by Hachette Audio in 2018. Read by Dion Graham. Duration: 7 hours, 44 minutes. Unabridged. Joe King Oliver is a private detective in New York City. He used to be one of the best detectives in the NYPD, but he was set up for a crime he did not commit. He had a consensual sexual encounter with a woman he was supposed to arrest, but it was videotaped and made to look like a rape (a sexual favor in exchange for not being arrested). He lost his job, he lost his wife and he lost his daughter. He spent a 90 days in the lock up at Rikers Island and it broke him. Oliver gets his life together with the help of a friend on the force and builds a respectable business. His daughter is in high school now and works as his receptionist in the afternoons. One day a case comes in his door that changes everything and might offer a chance at redemption... This is my first Walter Mosley book. You can't be a fan of detective books and not know his name - he is a staple. But, I didn't l

Originally published in 2004. Winston Groom is best known as the author of  Forrest Gump . He is also the author of 14 different non-fiction books and shows a real talent for writing narrative history. This book focuses on the year that Groom considers to be the crisis year for the Allies and America in particular in World War II - 1942.  He starts his story just before World War II with the attack of Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941 and ends it in February of 1943 with the ending of the fighting on Guadalcanal. This was a bad time, especially early in 1942 when Japan conquered one territory after another and American forces were seemingly caught off guard or under-prepared everywhere. Groom focuses primarily on the Pacific Theater in this book (75 % or more), although he does offer a decent look at the North African campaign. His look at the fall of the Philippines and the Bataan Death March was very compelling. Groom has no problem pointing out incompetent leadership when he sees i

Published in 2018 by Delacorte Press. In this 26 page short story, Reacher is near Barstow, California. He always heads south for the winter and he assumed that Barstow would be south enough to avoid the winter cold. But, a once-in-a-lifetime blizzard hits the area, the power is cut off, the phones are down and Reacher is walking through three feet of snow along an impassable highway (to cars, at least). He stumbles upon a bar and inside finds a bartender an older couple and two British soldiers... The Christmas Scorpion is exclusively published as an e-book. Lee Child was a prolific author (he has since retired) and it is not uncommon for him to generate additional short stories featuring Jack Reacher. These short stories are a mixed bag, at best. I don't know Lee Child's writing process. Some authors plan out every detail meticulously before they start writing, others claim to make up the entire story as they go along - they are finding out what happens as they write

Published in 2017 by Listening Library. Read by Mozhan Marno. Duration: 11 hours, 56 minutes. Unabridged. D.C. Comics' DC ICONS series creates a new YA version of their flagships character's origin stories. DC went out and found established YA authors and let them do their thing. Leigh Bardugo is an established YA fantasy author and she brings that vibe to the story of Princess Diana of Themyscira, the character who will eventually be better known as Wonder Woman. Diana is a teen that lives on the island of the Amazons - female warriors who died in battle but were reborn on Themyscira, where they can no longer intervene in the lives of mortals. Her mother is the queen of the island. Diana witnesses an explosion of a ship off the coast of Themyscira and breaks the rule of non-intervention by rescuing the sole survivor, a teenage girl and brings her back to the island. And then everything started to fall apart... This book borrows a lot on themes of Greek mythology with

Published in 2019 by HarperAudio. Read by Eric Jason Martin and Jeff Harding. Duration: 2 hours, 4 minutes. Unabridged. The title says this is a short story, but its print version is 129 pages and I would call that a novella. Karin Slaughter's Will Trent character works with the Georgia Bureau of Investigation. He is working on a cold case murder based on the activities of the very first Jack Reacher novel, The Killing Floor . Trent is looking for Jack Reacher based on a 20 year old DNA sample. Reacher is working in Fort Knox and Trent assumes an undercover identity to Pallets of gold in Fort Knox - they are featured in the audiobook. find him... The book is all written in third person with Slaughter writing the Will Trent sections and Child writing the Reacher sections. Lee Child is one of my favorites, but Karin Slaughter is certainly not. In fact, she's one of the few authors I refuse to read any longer. Just to compare, including this review I have reviewed 26 Jack Reac

Published in 1999 by Wiley and Sons. Roger Mudd, formerly of CBS and NBC news, interviewed five historians about their special topics of expertise. They are all solid interviews that allow the historians to tell why their topics are important. Mudd does a great job of letting the interviews flow along a natural conversational path, but he does interrupt with questions that ask for clarification or challenge a point. The historians are: Gordon Wood discussing the American Revolution; James McPherson discussing the Civil War; Richard White discussing Westward Expansion; David McCullough discussing the Industrial Era; and Stephen Ambrose discussing World War II/Eisenhower/Nixon. This was a lot like sitting down with a talented professor in a coffee shop and letting him/her go on about their favorite topic. They weren't lectures, but more like a conversation. I know the work of four of these five historians and have read quite a bit of McCullough, Ambrose and McPherson. McPherson is

Published in 2010 by Virago Press. Natasha Walter is an English feminist who is looking at how modern culture treats women. She has two main points. I will reverse the order of their presentation in my review. Her second main point is the new belief in biological determinism, meaning men and women have areas that they are naturally better at - and that fact overrides everything. She notes that the scientific studies that this belief is based on have never really The author, Natasha Walter been scientifically proven, meaning that they were limited and not replicated on a regular basis. Some have never been replicated even once. The danger is that people just assume things like "girls aren't good at math" and "men can't take care of babies or children" and they become reality. I see it in the classroom all the time - parents tell their kid they struggled with a certain class and they understand if the kid struggles and the kid struggles. It's a sel

Originally published in 1961. According to the price tag on this book, I picked it up at a souvenir store in The Great Smoky Mountains National Park. I couldn't tell you when for sure, but my best guess is that it was about 45 years ago. This is a small book, almost like a large children's book, so it just moved along with me wherever I went and I never read it until now. The cover of the book is deceiving. The cover looks like it was written for small children (that is most certainly how I acquired it) but the pictures in the book are much more detailed and complicated, much more like those found in an old-fashioned encyclopedia or an old-style museum. The text is certainly not written for small children, although it does have a slightly paternalistic tone. It feels dated. The one really strong feature to this book is a seven page testimony about the Trail of Tears from Private John Burnett. Burnett was ordered to accompany the Cherokee because he could speak their language

Originally published in 2003. Note: Lee Child wrote his books out of chronological order. In chronological order, this would be book #10. This book starts out with a very different sort of introduction. I don't want to spoil it so I will skip ahead a bit. Reacher is out to get a man who he thought he killed years before. He has some The author, Lee Child. sort of business arrangement with a family with underworld connections in Maine that lives in a castle-like mansion on the coast. Reacher works his way inside the organization and waits for his opportunity. Also, he is on the lookout for a missing DEA agent who is thought to have been kidnapped by the organization and is being held somewhere. Reacher is not sure who he can trust as he tries to figure out what is really going on... This story is more complicated than most Reacher stories. The action is ridiculous, as always - but that's one of the reasons you read a Jack Reacher book. I rate this book 4 stars out of 5.