DWD's Reviews

Awful. I give it an 'F' Published by HarperAudio in 1994 Abridged Audiobook. Duration: About 3 hours. Let Us Prey gets some pretty decent reviews on Amazon.com so...maybe it is pretty decent IF you are a fan of gratuitous, super-detailed rape scenes, splattering mists of blood and brains, barely fleshed-out government plots and revenge-driven soldiers who insanely act without cause. Admittedly, I listened to it as an abridged book on tape, however, Brannon's book is in serious need of more detail explaining the connections between the characters, including what some of these characters are doing in this plot in the first place. I was irritated at the lack of detail, but yet even more irritated at the insane amount of detail devoted to these items: 1) a visit of a 'John' to a hooker in Las Vegas; 2) an unnecessary rape and genital mutilation scene and similar descriptions of violence. In an abridgment, you should abridge the unnecessary parts

B-o-o-o-r-i-i-i-n-g I found this 3 1/2 hour audiobook and figured I'd come across a hidden gem. A book about kids by the Berenstains! Who would know more than those folks that have created books, videos, a TV show with lots of wholesome values and fun? What Your Parents Never Told You About Being A Mom Or Dad is full of wholesome values. It offers practical advice on raising kids and a bit of an introduction to the Berenstain's experiences in raising a family. But... It's a tedious listen. Extraordinarily tedious. After the general introduction (20 minutes or so) the book gets bogged down in attempts at pithy humor, quips and puns than just don't work. I forced myself to listen to an hour and a half of the meat of this book and finally couldn't go any longer. While full of good advice, I have to give any book that I cannot finish a one star. This thing should have been edited down to about one hour and it would have had much more impact.

A political thriller for people that don't know much about politics Read by Robert Petkoff 11 hours, 42 minutes. The premise behind A Heartbeat Away is simple and brilliant:  What if terrorists released a biological weapon into the House chamber during the President's State of the Union Address - the one time when just about everybody who is anybody in the Federal government is all in one room together? The follow through, however, is not so hot. Palmer's characterization of how a President would deal with this sort of problem shows that Palmer does not understand the one thing that all presidents are - they are politicians. They know how to collaborate, get things done, work with people they cannot stand to get their programs enacted. Even the most difficult President can schmooze and get people to work with them.  The president in A Heartbeat Away , James Allaire is the most politically tone deaf character I have ever seen. He manages to make the whole thi

Duration: approximately 3 hours Read by Gillian Anderson   So, how can I say this succinctly and clearly? The abridged audiobook of The X-Files: Ground Zero is not good. It is bad. It is not well read. It has few of the best qualities of the TV show. Gillian Anderson Read by Gillian Anderson, the abridged audiobook clocks in at about 3 hours and read unenthusiastically by Gillian Anderson. One of the reasons I picked this one up is that I figured she'd read it well. It says it was recorded in Vancouver in 1995 (where the show was filmed) and it sounds like she read it between takes. She sounds tired and completely uninterested in the text. Then again, when you look at what she was reading, I cannot blame her for being uninterested. This book has none of the zip of the show. Mulder's lines are almost non-existent. No smart-alack lines or observation. No wry sense of humor that makes even the weakest of the TV shows watchable (I love the X-Files but let

YIKES! (NOTE: this is a review of the 1st re-cutting of this movie. Stone has since re-cut it into "The Final Cut.") Alexander the Great (356-323 B.C.) 20 minutes into this movie I was thinking that it had real potential. We get to see the ugly details of Alexander's childhood. We get an understanding of his need to conquer, the need to achieve more than his father and his fascination for the non-Greek world (thanks to his mother). An hour into the movie I was confused and disappointed. Confused because of the incessant flashbacks. I knew what was going only because I teach this stuff for a living. How could the average movie-goer possibly understand why Alexander invaded the Persian Empire based on the feeble information supplied by Stone? Stone has an oblique reference to Phillip's murder, but the average movie-viewer does not know even know who Alexander the Great is, let alone that his father was murdered(he shows it in detail in a flashback

Pretentious and unfocused This meandering, self-important book meanders from north Florida to south Florida in search of a plot and in search of a theme. Is it justice denied? Is the theme the importance of family? Is it the value of good journalism? Yes, no and maybe. The Paperboy is about three newspapermen - two brothers (one with no personality and one that can't figure out what he wants to do except hang around the newspaper for a lack of anyplace else to go) and their father (he's just as annoying as his sons - maybe more so - because at one point he has a personality but by the end of the book he's faded, too). It's also about corrupt local politics that, in the end, did the right thing when they stuck a man in jail with inconclusive evidence. It even includes a sexism, racism, class-bias and even gay-bashing. Dexter tries to write the "Great American Novel" and it shows. He tries too hard and, in the end, he gets nowhere because

This will be unpopular - but I just couldn't finish it! I know Johnstone's Mountain Man series is extremely popular - I used to work in a used bookstore and we had a hard time even keeping them on the shelf! So, I was really looking forward to delving into this new series of books. I was really disappointed. Not because Pursuit of the Mountain Man was not readable - it was. But, because I quickly lost interest in the main character. I did not see the point in reading about him. So, I stopped after 65 pages since... He is unstoppable - he cannot be outdrawn in a gunfight. He can't be outfought in a fistfight. No one hunts better than him. No one rides better than him. No one tracks better than him. No one shoots better than him. No one is smarter than him. No one can beat him. In fact, no one is even a challenge to him at all. Well, if that's the case, why even read the book? I would compare it to watching Superman take on a 3rd

Wow! Was this book bad! This is one of those humorous fantasy books, in which everything is sweetly parodied and lots of puns are thrown in, etc. A Prince in search of a princess finds a castle in which all of the inhabitants are asleep due to the spell of a fairy godmother (as in Disney's Sleeping Beauty ), including the girl of his dreams. However, he needs to wake up 3 princes before he wakes up his love so he enlists the help of his tomboy cousin (a princess) and his boyhood friend, who happens to be a newly graduated wizard and they all go back to the castle for adventure, treasure and love. Along the way, Rumpelstiltskin (yes, that one) gets involved. My review: This book was so irritating that I got to page 85 and called it quits. The author seems to be more bent on being cute than she is on advancing the story (which had gone nearly nowhere in the last 25-30 pages I did read). I was afraid that if I read it any longer, I would somehow be sucked in and trapped like

Wow! What a Stinker! When I saw this title I was thrilled to pick this book up. I am a high school history teacher that loves classical history. I was eager to see what someone had to say about these 5 world class cities. What I got was a poorly written mishmash of ideas that sort of worked themselves into some kind of theme that sort of held together to make a vague point from time to time. In other words, it read like one of my high school student's research papers. I am a fan of Thomas Nelson publishing - they are a religious publisher that generally holds themselves to high standards. This book, however, makes me doubt my previous impression. Five Cities has a clever premise, an interesting cover but has no real substance and is full of too much supposition and theory rather than solid history. What do I mean? To be specific, on pages 8-9 he asserts that the Phoenicians, as part of a trade alliance with King Solomon, set across the Indian and Pacific Oceans (coloni

Disappointed. Sorely disappointed. I was perusing my local bookshop and I found Terry Jones' Barbarians: An Alternative Roman History . I was excited by the endorsement on the back cover from a historian that said, "I wish all historical books written by non-historians were so informed and all books by historians so well written." Good enough for me - I grabbed it up and eagerly started reading, looking forward to reading this work by the creator/host of one of my favorite history-based documentaries, The Story of 1 . Boy, was I disappointed. First of all, neither Jones nor his co-author Alan Ereira are trained historians (neither am I, but I have an appreciation for expertise in an area and how that makes the commentary more accurate) and it clearly shows. Right off the bat (p. 13) they attack Julius Caesar and belittle Romans in general for falsely describing the true nature of the elk (Romans were told of exotic animals by natives and they duly recorded the de

Wow - I really disliked this book! Robert E. Howard (1906-1936) I had previously read Poul Anderson's take on Conan ( Conan the Rebel - posted just below this review) and found it irritating - Conan is overdone and overblown in the extreme. To my disappointment, I found that the original Conan has every feature to his character that I disliked magnified by a factor of 10 ! But, to be honest, what has turned me off with both books is both authors' use of language - it is as if they both sat with a thesaurus and looked for the macho words to substitute for the regular ones. That's okay for some scenes but for every single action Conan takes? The phrase that made me put the book down was when Conan "laughed gustily". I did too, and then I put this book down and picked up anything else. This book can be found on Amazon.com here: People of the Black Circle . Check out what the fans say. I rate this book 1 star out of 5.

A tedious listen. Published by Tantor Audio in 2008. Duration: 10 hours, 25 minutes. Read by Alan Sklar. Unabridged. I am an avid reader of history. I also enjoy listening to histories as part of my daily commute. I thought Patriot Pirates would be a fantastic diversion since I knew relatively little about the naval history of the Revolutionary War besides the story of Bonhomme Richard and the fact that the Continental Congress authorized the use of privateers. Unfortunately, Patton's dry, overly wordy text coupled with Alan Sklar's (the narrator) ironic, almost mocking tone made me both both bored and irritated at the same time. If it can be said in 50 words, Patton uses 500. He tells the same stories over and over again. After listening to 5 of 9 discs I refused to force myself to slog through another chapter - partially because it was so poorly narrated, partially because I was becoming a public safety hazard - I was literally nodding off. I listen to CDs to make

It is bad on so many levels I bought this book for my dad to read and he brought it back to me and I read it and I had to apologize to him for giving it to him - this is, without a doubt, the worst Western I have ever read. What makes it so bad? When I read a Western, I expect a certain amount of realism. I am not talking about the picky, picky details like the amount of gunpowder grains in a bullet. These are the things I am talking about: -The book is set in 1857. They constantly refer to the sheriff of Gila County. There was no Gila County in 1857 - it was not formed until the year 1881. -They refer to the town of Globe. It was a mining town formed in 1878 (as Globe City). -Uncle Henry (Hoss) has a cabin on Saguaro Lake. Saguaro Lake was not formed until a hydroelectric dam was installed in 1930. -Characters camp along creekbeds in the mountains during massive thunderstorms. I am not a mountain climber but I do know that you avoid creekbeds due to flash floods.