DWD's Reviews

  Published in 2022 by Hourly History This was a very odd choice for me to read for a couple of reasons: 1) I don't normally enjoy the gossip magazine type of stories. 2) I don't follow the modern English royal family - I find them to be annoying. 3) I don't really follow the English royal family in the history books, either. Here's how we got here.  Hourly History offers several free e-books every weekend and I picked up the book on Princess Diana for some unknown reason. And, six months later I accidentally picked the Princess Diana book with my fat thumb while using my e-reader app on my phone. I could have removed the download, but I decided to just go with it. Turns out, this was a happy accident. I am not going to go over Diana's life story in this review. I will just say that this rather short biography (the publisher intends that its books take about an hour to read) was interesting and pleasant to read. A lot of it was information I remember just from bei...

Published by Insight Kids in 2022. Synopsis: Teenager Alex Riley and her older sister Elizabeth are very different kinds of people. They are the daughters of a adventurous married couple who turned their adventures as archaeologists into a TV action adventure cartoon. Think of them as the archaeologist versions of Steve Irwin (the Crocodile Hunter) and his wife. Their mother passed away a while back and their father recently died in mysterious circumstances working on a secret project in the subway tunnels under New York City. Now they are having to depend on each other. The good guys sneaking into the network of tunnels and sewers under New York City When Mafia-type thugs show up to their place and try to steal notes their father had written while working on his secret project in the subway they know someone has been lying to them about their father's project... My review: I liked Wonder City well enough, especially at first. There are strong characters, interesting art, and Ther...

Published by Penguin Audio in 2021. Read by Stephen Mendel. Duration: 12 hours, 10 minutes. Unabridged. Synopsis Fugitive good guy Peter Ash is hiding out in the open in the city where his adventures began in book number one of the series - Milwaukee. In The Breaker Peter Ash has an assumed identity with very good fake papers. His girlfriend June has joined him, resuming her career as a reporter with the local Milwaukee big city paper. Of course, his friend Lewis is around as well. In the previous books Peter Ash is dealing with untreated PTSD from his time as a soldier in Iraq and Afghanistan. Too many searches in too many small confined areas has left him with severe claustrophobia. Peter is working on the claustrophobia, though. Peter, Lewis, and June are at the Milwaukee Public Market for lunch. It is indoors, but it is very open concept with a lot of open space above. He's been eating there to get used to being inside.  The Milwaukee Public Market Lewis and Peter notice a fig...

Published in 2023 by ChristianAudio.com. Read by the author, Kaitlyn Schiess. Duration: 6 hours, 27 minutes. Unabridged. I first heard about Kaitlyn Schiess on one of my favorite podcasts: The Holy Post . She is one of the three regular hosts of the show and often serves as their in-house theologian. She is well-suited for this role because she offers well-considered answers and she thinks them through before she answers, rather than just shooting her mouth off - all the more impressive when one considers that she is by far the youngest member of the podcast. I was drawn to The Ballot and the Bible because: 1) I am concerned the rise of Christian Nationalism in America and the damage it does to the Christian witness; 2) I knew that Schiess would give thoughtful answers. The intermingling of Christianity and politics is not a new phenomenon in the United States (or in the rest of the world - but that is not the focus of this book.) Schiess looks at the intermingling of faith and politi...