DWD's Reviews

  Book originally published in 1981. Audiobook edition published in 2019 by Tantor Audio. Read by L.J. Ganser. Duration: 7 hours, 36 minutes. Unabridged. This book is the inspiration for the much-celebrated Disney movie Who Framed Roger Rabbit? but readers should know that it is not much like the movie. Three of the main characters are the same - Private Investigator Eddie Valiant, Toon movie star Roger Rabbit and his Toon wife Jessica Rabbit. But, the world they inhabit is different than the world in the movie. In the movie, Toons make cartoon movies. They are filmed like regular movies. In the book, Toons don't make movies, they make comic books and comic strips. Toons in the book have the little voice bubbles that appear over their heads just like you see in comic books and comic strips. The actors pose for the comic strip pictures and photographers take their pictures. A quote from the book. Also, a very true statement. In the book, Roger Rabbit is actually killed and Eddie Va

  Published September of 2022 by Pandamoon Publishing. Synopsis: Dee Rommel has decided to leave the Portland, Maine police force due to physical disability. She lost part of her leg and has to wear a prosthetic. She gets around very well but she just doesn't have it in her to go back on the police force. Instead, she is working with a private detective and (very slowly) working on her own private investigator license.  The mother of a wealthy local family with a generations-long history of being town benefactors and being more than a little quirky has confessed to murdering her gardener in her own backyard. The police think it is an open and shut case. However, her youngest child, a twelve year old who is a genius by anyone's standards thinks otherwise. He has hired the detective agency Rommel works for and Rommel is assigned the case. While the police seem to think it is a cut and dried case of murder, Rommel keeps finding evidence that things may not be as simple as they see

  Published in 2018 by Simon and Schuster Audio. Read by the author, Stephen King Duration: 3 hours, 46 minutes. Unabridged. Stephen King has a long history of publishing collections of short stories. I am usually not a fan of short stories, but I have no problem with a Stephen King short story. I think King is so good at making characters that the reader can identify with in such a short amount of time. This collection is pretty short - just two short stories. Both feature older men. The author In one, we have a man living in Maine with a supernatural problem and also a misunderstanding with his neighbors. This one really feels like two stories, but it was pretty touching. In the second story, a desperately lonely widower living in the Florida Keys is brought a gift by his older sister to get him up and moving again - a puppy. These are both good stories - very enjoyable and always with a twist. They were read by Stephen King. It was neither a good thing nor a bad thing - his accent w

  E-book published in October of 2022 by Lake Union. Synopsis: Jack Parker is a stay-at-home dad - but not really by choice. He used to be a big executive in a growing company, but a series of mishaps one Saturday morning led to him being fired and ending up in a humiliating viral video. So, he is at home taking care of a toddler and a kindergartner while his wife is moving up the corporate ladder (different corporation, thank goodness.) He is nervous about his kindergartner starting school and is contemplating going back out in the job market because he can see that the need for a full time stay at home dad during the day is coming close to its end. When he meets his high school bully and nemesis at a local park, he is dismayed. He is more upset to find out that his bully also has a student entering kindergarten at the the same school as his daughter. He decides he has to act when he finds out that the bully is running to be the president of the parent council and is proposing policie

  Published by Listening Library in 2018. Read by Will Damron. Duration: 8 hours, 39 minutes. Unabridged. The books in the D.C. Icons series are a re-writing of the origin stories of D.C. Comics' iconic characters. To be fair, these YA stories are not complete re-writes. Instead, they are basically about the largely unexplored teen years of these characters (the exception being the 10 year run of the  Smallville TV show featuring a teenaged Superman.)  In this book we meet Bruce Wayne in the 12th grade and he is turning 18 - the age where he inherits the Wayne family fortune and the family business. He may be a legal adult, but he is still an impulsive teen. Bruce joins in on a police chase with a high-tech car created by Wayne Industries. He helps catch the bad guy but he gets arrested for getting in the middle of a police chase. Wayne gets assigned community service in, of all places, Arkham Asylum. Can you imagine why anyone would assign anyone community service at Arkham Asylu

  Published in 2020 by Seven Stories Press. Edited by Dan Wakefield. Introduction by Dan Wakefield. Many of the well-known quotes from Kurt Vonnegut (1922-2007) were not actually in his novels - they came from speeches he gave (mostly) in the latter half of his career. Vonnegut became quite a popular deliverer of graduation speeches. And why not? He was witty, irreverent and sometimes came up with a great quote like this one: "Another flaw in the human character is that everybody wants to build and nobody want to maintain it." (p. 230) The title of this book comes from a story that Vonnegut has included in other essays. Vonnegut had two uncles who responded very differently to his World War II experiences. His Uncle Dan congratulated Vonnegut for having gone to war as a boy and come back as a man.  His Uncle Alex was a different sort of man. The kind of man who encouraged everyone to notice the good things of life as they happen around us. "...when life was most agreeabl

  Published by Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Company in October of 2022. Read by Shamaan Casey. Duration: 10 hours, 57 minutes. Unabridged. Jackie Robinson.  He is an icon of sports. And politics. And American history. All fans of baseball know at least the broad strokes of the story of Jackie Robinson (1919-1972) and how he integrated baseball. This book offers a detailed re-telling of that story with a twist - a look at how Jackie Robinson's faith led him to this path and helped sustain him. Robinson's early life, his time in service during World War II and his college sports career and his relationship with his wife are all covered. The biggest single part of the book is, appropriately, the story of how he and Branch Rickey (the head of the Brooklyn Dodgers) worked together to integrate Major League Baseball in 1947. The book also looks at how Rickey's faith led him to act to make the world a more just place by acting in such a symbolic manner. Jackie Robinson stealing hom

  Published in November of 2022. Read by Titus Welliver, Christine Lakin, and Peter Giles. Duration: 9 hours, 37 minutes. Unabridged. Synopsis: The latest Harry Bosch novel has Bosch returning to work with LAPD as a retired volunteer. Renee Ballard was offered a chance to "write her own ticket" because of her work (and very ugly internal politics) in the last novel. With the help of a sponsor on the city council, she re-established the cold case unit. It has a shoestring of budget and she is the only full time officer in the unit. Everyone else is a volunteer with different skills - a former prosecutor who helps with search warrants, a former FBI field agent, an expert in making family connections with DNA results, an officer who retired early due to health reasons are part of the team. But, Ballard's biggest catch for the team is her sometime unofficial partner - retired LAPD homicide detective Harry Bosch. Bosch may be old (70+) but he is up on the current technology an

Published by Hourly History in 2019. Hourly History is a series of histories and biographies that a reader can read in about an hour. Sometimes, that works out quite well. Sometimes, the topic is just too big to cover in an hour. I am an avid reader of history, but I have areas of weakness that I am perfectly willing to shore up a bit, but I don't want to invest a ton of time. I want to know a bit more, not become an expert. The British Royal Family is just one of those areas for me. I know more than most people, but I can see the glaringly empty areas of my own ignorance. King Henry VII of England (1457-1509) Henry VII was the king that ended the a civil war between competing royal families - The War of the Roses. It was not a sure thing, though. It was a long shot for him to even survive, let alone make it to the throne. Normally, these complicated royal stories bore me, but this one had a lot of dramatic elements - murder of children, escapes, battles, betrayal, the death of a k

  Published in 2021 by Pushkin Industries. Read by the author, Malcolm Gladwell. Duration: 5 hours, 14 minutes. Unabridged. Before there was a U.S. Air Force, there was the U.S. Army Air Corps. Before the Army Air Corps (re-organized as the U.S. Army Air Forces in 1942) built the largest collection of flying fighting machines to relentlessly bomb the Axis Powers in World War II, they had a tiny budget and a few air bases. One of these was Maxwell Field, a training facility in Alabama. That facility became the intellectual home of a group of pilots who espoused the concept of precision bombing. They were known as The Bomber Mafia. Precision bombing is the theory that teaches that you don't have to blow an enemy's entire military to pieces, you can just hit certain key industries and choke out their ability to produce more weapons/feed their people/move soldiers and so on. This was intended to be a more humane way to wage war - an antidote to the mass slaughter the world saw in W

  Originally published in 1987. Mattie Rigsbee is a 78 year old widow whose primary activities are cooking great meals, mowing the yard and going to church on Sundays. Lately, she has been pondering Matthew 25:40-45 and Jesus' command to help "the least of these". 40  “The King will reply, ‘Truly I tell you, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me.’ 41  “Then he will say to those on his left, ‘Depart from me, you who are cursed, into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels.   42  For I was hungry and you gave me nothing to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me nothing to drink,   43  I was a stranger and you did not invite me in, I needed clothes and you did not clothe me, I was sick and in prison and you did not look after me.’ 44  “They also will answer, ‘Lord, when did we see you hungry or thirsty or a stranger or needing clothes or sick or in prison, and did not help you?  45  “He will reply, ‘Truly I tel

  Published by Spello Press in 2019. Brian Zahnd is a pastor in Missouri and he is concerned with American Christianity. American Christianity is in trouble because it has stopped doing what it is supposed to do. For so many Christians, Christianity has stopped being a counter-cultural force preaching love and grace. Instead, it has become, at best indifferent to the flaws in American culture. At worst, it is a cheerleader for American culture, as though Jesus was born in America, drank Coca-Cola and ate Chick-fil-A at least twice a week. Zahnd points out on page 34 that this is not a new thing - it has happened over and over again in history. "Rome. Byzantium, Russia, Spain, France, England and Germany have all done it. Seventeen centuries ago the Roman church got tangled up in imperial purple. In the 1930s, the German evangelical church got tangled up in Nazi red and black." A Christian flag at the January 6 riot. Is the place for a symbol of Christ on the side of rioters w

  Published by Tantor Audio in 2019. Read by Rebecca Gibel. Duration: 5 hours, 57 minutes. Unabridged . Lilliana Mason is an associate research professor at Johns Hopkins University. She collects, analyzes and breaks down the raw data that tells us what we already know about American politics right now - we are polarized. For me, the most interesting part in when she looks at what that means and who is actually being polarized here. If you are a true political junkie - the type of person that reads a lot of news, watches the Sunday morning talking head shows and the has clearly identifiable ideological positions you can be very partisan, but are unlikely to be truly polarized.  The true insight in this book came from a deep look at the most polarized people - the people that truly believe that the other party is a clear and present danger to the country and that all Republicans are clearly Nazis or all Democrats are clearly communists. You run across the people in the comment sections

  Published by Macmillan Audio in 2021. Read by the author, Dax-Devlon Ross. Duration: 5 hours, 4 minutes. Unabridged. Dax-Devlon Ross makes a simple observation that it is entirely possible to participate in a racist system and not be racist. Not only is it possible, it is quite common. A person can participate in a system that looks fair on the surface, but somehow always results in the same kinds of people and the same kinds of people at the bottom.  He notes that this is not a particularly popular idea among white Americans, especially white male Americans. But, he also noted that the death of George Floyd caused a lot of white people to reconsider what they thought they knew.  This book offers an explanation of structural racism and gives concrete examples from the author's life and recent American history and offers some suggestions as to how to identify structural racism and break it up. That is good. On the other hand, there is some Human Resources jargon that I had to look

  Published in 2010 by Hachette Audio. Read by Robert Petkoff. Duration: 13 hours, 33 minutes. Unabridged. Synopsis: Eric Shaw is a down on his luck film maker who has moved back to Chicago from Hollywood. His marriage is on the rocks, he feels sorry for himself and he is making ends meet by making little movies out of family photos for funerals. He is good at his job - so good at it that he is offered a special job. A woman asks him to travel to French Lick, Indiana and research the early years of her father-in-law, an eccentric billionaire. The only clue he has is a strange bottle of Pluto brand mineral water, bottled in French decades earlier. The bottle seems to be forever cold and the water inside looks strange. Once Shaw arrives in French Lick the water is not the only strange thing he encounters... ******* My Review: This is good supernatural thriller. I did not realize this when I started listening because I had picked out this book because it was set in the French Lick area. I

Originally Published by The Great Courses in 2012. This version published by The Great Courses in 2013. Read by the author, John McWhorter. Unabridged. Linguist John McWhorter takes a look at the history of the English language in this 24 lecture presentation. He includes the origins of some of our more unique features and also the origins of some of our "rules" that aren't really rules at all. The author, John McWhorter McWhorter takes a long view, going all of the way back to English's roots in proto-Indo-European. Proto-Indo-European language from the Caucus mountains region that spread all over the place and eventually became lots and lots of modern languages, including English. For me, the most interesting theory was based on English's relative lack of verb endings. If you have ever studied Spanish, like me, than you remember the endless verb charts and verb endings. The same goes with French and German. Why doesn't English have all of those endings? We u

Published by Hourly History in 2022 The Hourly History series features e-book histories and biographies that can be read in about an hour. They are great if you want to know a little more about a topic, but you don't want to read a regular-sized book or biography. Plus, they offer a set of free books every weekend so you can explore without spending a dime. I already knew the bare outlines of Johnny Cash's life, but this small biography filled it out a little more. It would have been great if there had been embedded links to the songs that are discussed throughout, but since this is an e-book it's not particularly hard to minimized the Kindle app and open up YouTube and find the song. I did this exact thing with the original version of Cash's classic hit Ring of Fire. Here is the original version , performed by one of June Carter's relatives. I had no idea that Cash didn't write this song himself. Johnny Cash (1932-2003) I was struck by the fact that Cash cont

  Published in 2019 by Simon and Schuster Audio. Voice work by various historians hosted by David M. Rubinstein. Duration: 9 hours, 52 minutes. Unabridged . David M. Rubinstein is an avid amateur historian and financial supporter of history-related projects. He organized a series of 16 interviews of historians by the Library of Congress with the intended audience to be actual members of Congress with invited guests.  He picked historians who have written popular and professionally respected histories and biographies of famous Americans such as Ron Chernow (Alexander Hamilton), David McCullough (Adams and Truman), Cokie Roberts (Abigail Adams) and Doris Kearns Goodwin (Lincoln) and just let them discuss the person they studied. Doris Kearns Goodwin The audiobook consists of the actual audio of these interviews with a little introduction The interviews were all solid, but could have been better if Rubinstein had not insisted on inserting himself in the middle of them so often. So many ti

  Published by HarperAudio in June of 2022. Read by Josh Bloomberg. Duration: 8 hours, 14 minutes. Unabridged. Tim Miller is a Republican political operative. He previously worked on the presidential campaigns for John McCain (2008), Jon Huntsman (2012) and Jeb Bush (2016), worked for the Republican party as a liaison to the Romney campaign (2012), created "gotcha" content for websites and traditional media, helped run a Political Action Committee (PAC) and writes regularly for Rolling Stone magazine and political websites. He's connected. He knows someone on every campaign. He knew people all over the Trump administration.  He is also a "Never Trumper". He once made a list compiled by the Washington Post of the top ten Never Trumpers. Miller talks about the motivations of people that joined the Trump White House after they swore that they never would because he was simply not an acceptable candidate or president. He talked with several people and he got the s