DWD's Reviews

  Originally published as a paperback book by Pocket Books in 1978. Published by Marvel as an audiobook in 2019. Read by Tristan Wright. Duration: 4 hours, 9 minutes. Unabridged. Spider-Man is busy being "your friendly neighborhood Spider-Man" when he encounters a dead body thrown out of a New York City luxury high-rise apartment onto the street below. While he is investigating, two beat cops stumble upon them and a rookie cop on his first night shift tour takes a shot at Spider-Man. Worse than that, they make Spider-Man the prime suspect for the murder and Daily Bugle publisher J. Jonah Jameson starts yet another media campaign against Spider-Man.  Can things get worse?  Spidey finds out that they certainly can as he begins an investigation to clear his name... ****** This book was kind of a tedious listen. Clearly, this book re-published as an audiobook in response to the Spider-Man craze that has come along since Spider-Man was added to the Marvel Cinematic Universe and no

  Published by Macmillan Audio in 2019. Originally published by Tor Books in 2011. Read by P.J. Ochlan. Duration: 47 minutes. Unabridged. When the President notices that he can't force his head to go underwater during his morning swim and he complains of being lightheaded, his aides take him off for a medical checkup.  The author, John Scalzi During the checkup, the President's doctor determines that the President does indeed have a major medical problem - his brain is missing but he continues to walk and talk like normal. His aides scramble to try to figure out what may have caused this and what they should do. ****** First things first in this hyper-political time: This audiobook is not a commentary on either President Trump or President Biden since the story was originally published during the first term of the Obama's presidency. In a way, this is very much a piece of throwback science fiction, like a Twilight Zone story. It takes a weird premise and runs with it for a

  Published by Macmillan Audio in 2021. Read by Mark Williams. Duration: 24 hours, 2 minutes. Unabridged . In my professional life I am a high school teacher. I don't teach it now, but in the past when I taught world history I taught that the origins of civilization in the traditional way and it always goes something like this: -At first there were wandering groups of people, probably based around 1 or 2 families. Things were fairly democratic because these groups had to talk things out to make decisions. -Somebody along the way figured out how to domesticate a few animals. -Somebody along the way figured out how to domesticate plants. Some small fields were started and left mostly on their own while the wandering continued with scheduled returns to the fields. -Eventually, the fields were so productive that it made no sense to leave them. -Populations grew, towns were developed and simple authoritarian government led by almost always by a man who served as an all-powerful king of

  Published in 2005. Winner of the 2006 Alex Award from the American Library Association. Winner of the 2006 New Visions Nonfiction Book Award from the Quality Paperback Book Club. Note: I read because it is on a list of books that Republicans have asked to be banned in one way or another. I call it the  GOP Censorship List . More about that down below.  Julia Scheeres grew up in around Lafayette, Indiana. She grew up in a fundamentalist household. When she begins this memoir, she has older brothers and sisters who have moved out of the house and lives with her parents and two adopted brothers out in the country outside of Lafayette. Her family is unique in that her two adopted brothers are black and the rest of the family is white. The first part of the book deals with her horrible home and school life. At home, her father is mostly a distant figure. He returns home from work and dispenses discipline - often with great physical violence. These are not spankings - these are beatings wi