DWD's Reviews

Published in 2017 by Scholastic Synopsis The DC Comics Secret Hero Society series s a re-imagining of the DC universe with a comic twist.  The first book in this series featured a Hogwarts-type school where only children with special talents are invited. Young Bruce Wayne suspects that there is more going on in the school than meets the eye and his new friends Clark Kent and Diana Prince join him to investigate. Fort Solitude is book 2 in the series. The trio are invited to a special summer camp. They notice that this camp has an off vibe. Then, campers start to disappear. And, there are constant warnings about a scarecrow that stalks the woods at night. The trio adds in a kid that runs really, really fast, a kid that wins every target shooting contest, and a kid with robotic implants - Flash, Green Arrow, and Cyborg. Clark also finds a journal with detailed notes from a girl that attended a previous session of this same summer camp - Lois Lane. Using the clues from Lois' no...

Published in January of 2026 by Hourly History. John Belushi has always known as a cautionary tale for me - an amazing talent that quickly rose to national prominence and then died of a drug overdose just when things really got going. Hourly History specializes in short histories and biographies that take about an hour to read. In this case, this biography gives a lot of details about his early life, but simply fails to give the reader a sense of what Belushi or the characters he created on Saturday Night Live was like.  It does no better with any of the four movies. Belushi only made 4 movies, but two of them are classics -  The Blues Brothers and Animal House. You would think that there would have been a lot more about those movies and a lot less about his first really run-down apartment in New York City. I rate this e-book 3 stars out of 5. This e-book can be found on Amazon.com here: John Belushi: A Life from Beginning to End .

Published in 2024 by Little, Brown Ink. An NPR Best Book of the Year. K is a 10-12 year old boy living in an unknown European city in what appears to be the late 1800s. K Is in Trouble is a graphic novel that tells of his misadventures.  In a series of stories, K runs into trouble with a talking fish, he meets a talking insect, and finds an intelligent crow. But, his real difficulties are with adults who don't listen. The adults at school don't listen, the police don't listen, the mayor doesn't listen, and his parents especially don't listen.  I liked the art, but the stories were so-so. The last story is the best by far.  I rate this graphic novel 3 stars out of 5. Not bad, not great. This book can be found on Amazon.com here: K Is in Trouble by Gark Klement . 

Originally Published in 2006. Audiobook edition published in 2008 by Brilliance Audio. Read by Christopher Graybill Duration: 9 hours, 23 minutes. Unabridged. Named Best Crime Novel of the Year by the London Evening Standard. Named one of the Top Ten Crime Novels of the Year by The New York Sun and the Fort Lauderdale Sun Sentinel. Audiobook version named a finalist for the Audie Award. Veteran writer Robert Crais is mostly famous for his Elvis Cole/Joe Pike novels. The Two Minute Rule is on of his few stand alone novels. It features a former bank robber named Max Holman.  Synopsis Holman has a son that he barely knows because of Holman's life of crime and his subsequent prison term. All he really knows about his son is that he has become a policeman in LAPD - and Holman couldn't be more proud. That pride turns into sorrow on the day of Holman's release from prison. As he is packing up, he gets a message that tells him his son has died as a result of a shooting along with ...

Originally published in 1968. Audiobook published in 2016 by Random House Audio. Read by Erik Singer. Duration: 4 hours, 3 minutes. Unabridged. Synopsis Major James Brionne is a Virginian and a confidante of President Ulysses S. Grant. He helped pacify the region immediately after the war, including hanging a criminal named Allard. The rest of the Allard family gang, bushwackers from the brutal Missouri theater of the Civil War, comes to Virginia to kill Brionne. They don't find Brionne, but they do find his wife and son at Brionne's plantation house. She takes out one of the Allard gang and then kills herself rather than be brutalized by them. The Allard gang never finds Brionne's son, who had hidden himself in a little cave nearby. Brionne decides he needs a massive change of scenery. He takes his son out West on a train, to a region he had explored as part of a military mission years earlier. He wants to find a place to start over with his son - Utah. But, Briolle gets t...

Published by Hourly History in 2023. Hourly History specializes in producing little histories and biographies that can be read in about an hour.  If you are pretty well-versed in the basics of 1920's America, this short history offers nothing new. If you remember the basics from your U.S. history textbook or if you watched a documentary on the topic, this e-book ill offer nothing new. The e-book repeats some of its main themes multiple times, sometimes within a few paragraphs of each other. I kept wondering if they were trying to fill space, which seems kind of ridiculous in a book with literal space limits (able to be read in just an hour). It also made me wonder if this book were written by an AI. As an example of what I was talking about, the e-book mentioned that people grew more accepting of LBTQ+ people in the 1920's. That is undoubtedly true, but it was mentioned so many times that it might persuade some readers that the 1920's were a very accepting time. I think it ...

Originally published in 2019. Witchy started out as a highly acclaimed webcomic that has since been printed as a graphic novel on high quality paper.  Witchy is set in a world where magic exists and the length on a person's hair determines the power of the magic user. The kingdom of Hyalin uses magic users to enforce its regime. They train young users in an academy with the goal of providing magic users as soldiers in the elite Witch Guard. The Witch Guard fights external enemies and tamps down internal dissent with brutal, often lethal force. The graphic novel has a lot of positive things: -The drawings are clean, crisp, and very clear. The art is great. -The characters all easy to differentiate from one another (sometimes artists makes a lot of characters that look alike). -There are several great characters, especially the raven familiar. But, there are negative things as well: -The ground rules of the universe are not explained well. This graphic novel deserved an written in...

Published in 1988 by Pocket Books I used to be a gigantic reader of Star Trek books. In the mid-80's I had a rather large collection. In fact, my cousin and I had a complete collection if we put ours together (we would share back and forth so we wouldn't miss any book). I was quite the fan. I ran across this book when I was picking through the stacks of a used book store that had lost its lease and picked it up for old times sake. I don't remember the plot of Timetrap at all so this must have been published after I had stopped making sure I had EVERY Star Trek that was printed. Synopsis: The story occurs in the same region of space as The Original Series episode " The Tholian Web ." The Tholians had the ability to make an area of space phase in and out of alternate universes. Or, maybe it was natural - who knows? After all, the Tholians are a mysterious species and no one knows much about them. In that show, a federation ship was trapped and phasing back and fort...

Published in 1971 by Fawcett Publications, Inc. This book was part of a series intended to be a supplement to a history curriculum as part of a classroom library or in a school library. It is part of a multi-volume series. When I was a kid, I would see books like this used for extra credit (outline chapter X, etc.) when I was a kid. Positives: The pictures are great. The book title says it is illustrated and it does not lie. There are pictures on almost every page and many of them are the most famous photos, paintings, and drawings of the war. There is an "Encyclopedic Section" at the end of the book. It has biographies of prominent people of the war and explanations of some of the big ideas, and events of the war. Before the internet, these little encyclopedias about a dedicated topic were extremely helpful. There is an essay from Bruce Catton between the regular text and the Encyclopedic Section. It is excellent. Negatives: There is literally no explanation of the events th...

Published in 2014 by DC Comics. Written by Charles Soule. Art by Tony S. Daniel Synopsis In the New 52 reboot of the DC universes we have a world where Superman and Wonder Woman are secretly dating. They are working through their relationship, dealing with cultural differences, a massive age difference, and the fact that a lot of her Greek god family basically hates him because he is a commoner, despite his extraordinary powers. As part of larger plot to escape from the Phantom Zone, General Zod released Doomsday. Doomsday, you may remember, is the creature that killed Superman in the "Death of Superman" series back in 1992.  This is one of  the first appearances of Doomsday in the New 52 reboot and he is as fearsome as ever.  Meanwhile, Clark Kent's partner in an online publishing venture (Cat Grant) publishes an exclusive video that she received from an anonymous source. It shows Superman and Wonder Woman making out and suddenly they are the "it" couple around...

Published in 2019 by Random House Audio. Read by the authors, Jon Meacham and Tim McGraw. Duration: 7 hours, 40 minutes. Unabridged. It turn out that historian Jon Meacham and country music star Tim McGraw are neighbors. They decided to work together on Songs of America , a book that looks at the role of music in American politics. They start with songs of the Revolution and work their way forward, hitting songs you've heard of such as The National Anthem (War of 1812) and The Battle Hymn of the Republic (Civil War) and songs you've most likely never heard of.  Not every song is war related. For example, the anti-lynching song Strange Fruit by Billie Holiday. There is a nicely done section comparing two still-popular songs from the 1980s - Born in the USA by Bruce Springsteen and Proud to Be an American by Lee Greenwood.  I particularly liked the juxtaposition of two Vietnam era songs: The Ballad of the Green Berets by Sgt Barry Sadler (1966) and Fortunate Son by Creeden...

Originally published in 1976. Synopsis In the essay that serves as the prologue to Slapstick , Kurt Vonnegut writes about family, connection, and acceptance. He spends a lot of time talking about his older brother - more than he usually does in his essays. He also talks about his sister - a topic of frequent discussion in his essays. She and her husband both died with days of one another, one of an accident and the other of cancer. Kurt Vonnegut and his wife adopted three of their four children.  In his essays Vonnegut makes frequent mention of the lack of family connection in our modern world and he thinks we are far the worse off for it. This novel is all about family connection, featuring two physically deformed twins who who are psychically connected. The twins were kept apart from society in an old mansion on a large estate in order to protect them from society and to protect the reputations of their elite, ultra-rich parents. After all, the "right sort of people" don...

Originally published in 1935 by the magazine "Five Novels" Re-published in 2013 by Galaxy Press . Long before L. Ron Hubbard (1911-1986) became the creator of Scientology, he was a pulp fiction writer. He did this for nearly 20 years, with his first writing credit coming in 1932. The Red Dragon was originally written for a monthly publication called Five Novels. Synopsis The Red Dragon starts out very much like an Indiana Jones movie - an American damsel in distress is in China looking for the archaeological find her father had told her about. He has left clues to its location and she is seeking someone to help her. The site is located in Manchuria - a disputed zone under Japanese control in what would eventually become the beginnings of World War II in Asia (unknown to Hubbard at the time because Pearl Harbor attack was more than six years away). The mysterious Michael Stuart has stepped up to help. His nickname is The Red Dragon because he is audacious and because he had r...

Published by Harper Audio. Read by the author, Fergus Bordewich. Duration: 5 hours, 29 minutes. Abridged. The abridged version of Bound for Canaan hits the highlights of the Underground Railroad movement, but leaves quite a bit out. This is a radically abridged audiobook - fourteen hours of a nineteen hour audiobook were cut out - more than 70% of the book. I did not realize how much it had been abridged until I had already listened to it. What remains is solid, but more of traditional hero study. The reader learns about the Quakers, Levi Coffin and Harriet Tubman and a few other stalwarts of the movement. Frederick Douglass shows up as an example of the Underground Railroad in action. There is a nod to the importance of women in the movement and how that led to the Women's Suffrage movement.  The book goes off track a bit when it comes to John Brown of Bleeding Kansas fame. Brown did participate in the Underground Railroad movement, but the book follows him to the Kansas and the ...

Published in 2023 by DC Comics Written by Tom Taylor Art by Ivan Reis, Danny Miki, and Brad Anderson Synopsis The One Bad Day series looks at individual top level Batman villains (If you are a fan of Bootface, sorry) and gives them a comic that focuses on just that villain.  In Batman - One Bad Day: Ra's al Ghul we encounter a newly brought back to life Ra's al Ghul. He looks at the current state of the world - a world with just a few corporate oligarchs controlling the media, manufacturing, shipping, etc. and decides to take action.  When Batman notices the odd string of deaths Bruce Wayne's corporate peers, he decides to start investigating (the "World's Greatest Detective" actually does some detecting!). Ra's al Ghul lashes out to deter the investigation, and he goes after what Batman values most... My Review As I write this review, I want to be clear that I am not a fan of the Ra's al Ghul character, but his goals in this graphic novel made for a...

Published by Licensed Publishing in 2019. Written by Charles Soule. Art by Guiseppe Camuncoli, Daniele Orlandini, Terry Pallot, David Curiel, Dono Sanchez-Almara, and Erick Arciniega. Synopsis This series tells the story of the completion of the training that turned Anakin Skywalker into Darth Vader. The Emperor is, at best, an emotionally and physically abusive teacher. In Fortress Vader , Darth Vader is granted a planet to use as a home base to complete his studies and perhaps learn how to bring his beloved Padme back from the dead. But, he needs a temple to focus the power of the force and a relic from the Emperor promises to provide what he needs... My Review Soule really likes this relic. It also appears in his Lando comic where it is much creepier. In this comic the relic picks up a comic quality that I don't think was intended. The construction and reconstruction of this temple was not at all interesting to me. This collection was the worst of the series. I rate this graphi...

Published in 2023 by DC Comics. Written by Mariko Tamaki. Art by Javier Fernandez and Jordie Bellaire. Synopsis The One Bad Day series looks at individual top level Batman villains (If you are a fan of Polka-Dot Man, sorry) and gives them a comic that focuses on just that villain.  Batman - One Bad Day: Two-Face begins with a flashback of a hostage situation on the roof of a tall building. One of the cops on duty down below is Patrolman Christopher Nakano. Flash forward to the present day, for some inexplicable reason, Mayor Christopher Nakano offers Two-Face the chance to resume his job as the District Attorney of Gotham City. Batman goes along and is determined to reform Two-Face so he can just be Harvey Dent Why? Why? Why? Is Two-Face the only attorney in the city? So, things go really well and Two-Face retires a hero. Yeah right. My Review If you can get past the weirdness of responsible adults offering a violent felon with serious mental health issues an important job like D...

Written by Tom Taylor. Art by Leonard Kirk, Cory Hamscher, and Guru eFX. Published in 2019. Issued during the build up to to the theater release Star Wars: Episode IX: The Rise of Skywalker , Star Wars: Age of Resistance - Villains offers four separate stories about four different villains featured in the sequel trilogy.  The four villains are Captain Phasma, General Hux, Snoke, and Kylo Ren. Each story tells is set before Episode VIII and demonstrates the true nature of each of them. Since these are all villains, there are lots of instances of betrayal and backstabbing.  The art work was great, but the stories do not do anything to really illuminate the characters. Three of them involve fighting on some planet of the edges of the Empire when things go bad and the villains commit villainy to survive to be villainous on another day. Following each story there is an essay about the character. It includes comments from the actors that play these characters in the movies. I rate...

Published in 2016 by Marvel Enterprises. Written by Charles Soule. Art by Alex Maleev and Paul Mounts. Synopsis Lando Calrissian is in financial trouble - he has debts and he is working them off by pulling off "jobs" for the people he owes money to. He makes a deal to pull off one big heist for Papa Toren in exchange for all of his debt being cleared and the possibility of making of making a lot of profit for himself. Lando and his sidekick Lobot (see picture below) build a team and pull off the heist - stealing a space yacht from an imperial shipyard. Everything looks great until they find a Sith artifact onboard and realize that they've just stolen the Emperor's yacht! My review This is the fifth Star Wars graphic novel that I've read written by Charles Soule, and it was the weakest of the bunch. It wasn't bad, but it just wasn't great like the others. The plot had a lot of zip at first but moved from a heist story to a horror story and it slowed down so...

Published by Simon and Schuster Audio / TED Read by A.J. Jacobs. Duration: 3 hours, 12 minutes. Unabridged. A.J. Jacobs had been doing some reading and thinking about the concept of gratitude when it occurred to him that he really should be grateful for a lot of things that no one every expresses any gratitude for. He settled on his morning cup of coffee that he buys at a the corner coffee shop.  On his quest to thank a thousand people for his daily cup of coffee, he starts with the clerk, the barista, and the management of the small coffee chain. He moves on to the people that make the cup lids, the cups, and even the metal of the coffee makers. Eventually, he gets to the guy that chooses the coffee beans that make up his favorite brew. That guy takes him to the farm in Colombia that grows his favorite beans and the bemused and confused Colombians host them for a little get together.  The whole book is mildly amusing and somewhat interesting, but is not riveting in any way. I...