DWD's Reviews

Published in 2020 by Listening Library. Read by the author, Peter Mercurio. Duration: 7 minutes. Unabridged. I first heard about this story and the book Our Subway Baby in a social media post so I searched out the book. I didn't realize it was a book for children when I started searching, but it's a sweet little book. The book starts with Danny Stewart spotting a newborn infant boy that was abandoned in the corner of a New York subway station. Stewart contacts the police, but also his boyfriend, Peter Mercurio, wondering if this was somehow fate. After all, they could never have children, but here is a child in need. The couple keeps tabs of the baby and eventually adopt him. Their families and friends help them gather all of the things parents would need and baby Kevin finally joins his family. The story is told from the point of view of Peter, as if he were talking to a young Kevin and telling him how Kevin found his way to his home. The language is simplified and the tricky...

Published in 2023 by DC Comics. Written by Gerry Duggan Art by Matteo Scalera and Deron Bennett. Synopsis Inspired by the "spirit of Christmas," Batman, Robin, and Alfred discuss the possibility that a hardened criminal can actually reform. Batman and Robin decide to reach out to Mr. Freeze and offer to fund his research.  Mr. Freeze has always justifies his crime sprees with the rationalization that he needs the things he steals for his research. He put his wife in a frozen stasis in order to stop the progression of a fatal disease and the research to fight this disease is incredibly expensive and sometimes requires exotic materials.  Now, Batman has provided everything Mr. Freeze needs in an old LexCorp lab. T heoretically, this should put an end to Mr. Freeze's criminal career, right? It turns out that Mr. Freeze is far more complicated and far more creepy than anyone knew... My Review I read all of the graphic novels in the One Bad Day Series this summer and I think ...

Published in 2022 by DC Comics. Written by Robert Venditti. Art by Wilfredo Torres and Jordie Bellaire. Synopsis Superman '78 is a short series (sadly) based on the Christopher Reeves movies that were released from the late 1970s through the mid-1980s. Like the movies, the plot is pretty simple and everything follows a very traditional Superman storyline - red shorts, sassy Lois Lane, bald Lex Luthor, and so on. That's fine by me - I really like traditional Superman. Brainiac saves the city of Superman's Kryptonian home from ultimate destruction when Krypton explodes by shrinking them and storing them safely on his ship in a glass jar. He keeps them stored away because they are the remnants of "a careless, dangerous civilization." When Brainiac discovers that Earth has a Kryptonian (Superman), he seeks to save Earth by eradicating Superman because he is an infestation of an alien civilization that has already destroyed their own world. Kryptonians are dangerous a...

Published in 2018 by Seven Stories Press. Written by Noam Chomsky and Jeffrey Wilson. Art by Eliseu Gouveia. Jeffrey Wilson interviewed Noam Chomsky for The Instinct for Cooperation and the results probably would have been a typical interview with Chomsky. The interview was about the Occupy Wall Street Movement and the little groups that organically formed within the protests, such as the food tent, the medical tent, and the library.  Wilson wove in interviews that he had done with people who participated in the Occupy Movement, students and teachers who had bad interactions with education "reform" movements, and other topics like student loan debt.  This could have easily been a mess, but Wilson does a very good job of weaving together all of the interviews so that it felt more like a natural free-flowing conversation. The illustrations helped move everything along to make this very digestible. There is a lot of food for thought. Well done. 5 out of 5 stars. This graphic no...

Published in 1976 by the Indiana State Museum Society. 1976 was the bicentennial celebration of the Declaration of Independence and if you were not alive in 1976, you have no idea how much went into that recognition. Every store had special decorations, every town had commemorations, everyone had red, white, and blue clothing and this went on for a long time - not just on the Fourth of July in 1976. Part of this ongoing celebration took place in museums. The Indiana State Museum had a 3 year exhibit on Indiana's role in the American Revolution. People remember the original thirteen colonies and correctly note that Indiana was not one of those colonies. None of Indiana's immediate neighbors were, either. But, the modern states of Kentucky, Ohio, Indiana, Michigan, and Illinois were on the front line of a different kind of war zone during the American Revolution. There were no great ships, no massed armies, and precious few soldiers even wearing an actual uniform - but there were...

Originally published in book form in 1993. Published as an audiobook in 2008 by Brilliance Audio. Read by Mel Foster. Duration: 8 hours, 13 minutes. Unabridged. I found the Elvis Cole novels years ago, but somehow I have been reading them as a I found them rather than trying to trying to read them in chronological order. So, here I am going back more than thirty years to book 4 out of a 20+ book series, depending on how you count some of Crais' other books. Synopsis Like all classic detective novels, in Free Fall we find our intrepid main character in his office when a beautiful young lady enters looking for help with a desperate problem.  This young woman is concerned about her fiance. He is a relatively young member of LAPD and part of a rapid reaction team because he is a promising young officer. When crime pops up in a neighborhood - such as new gang activity or more drug sales or a series of home invasions, this team is sent out to supplement regular officers in the neighborho...

Book originally published in 1992. Audiobook published by Brilliance Audio in 2008. Read by Mel Foster. Duration: 8 hours, 33 minutes. Unabridged. Anthony Award Nominee for Best Novel (1993) Shamus Award Nominee for Best PI Hardcover (1993) Synopsis Elvis Cole is hired by a very successful young Hollywood director in Lullaby Town to find his divorced wife and his son that he hasn't seen since he was an infant. It has been ten years since the divorce. His ex-wife hasn't been kidnapped or gone missing - she just moved away and the director has lost track of her. Now, he'd like to meet his son.  The director has to be the single most annoying client that Elvis Cole has ever had. He is pushy, obnoxious, and completely self-absorbed. Elvis notes early on that almost every sentence the man utters starts with "I" as in "I think this" and "I did that." It's pretty obvious why the ex-wife left him and just kept on going with no forwarding address...

Written by G. Willow Wilson Art by Jamie McKelvie Synopsis The One Bad Day series is a look at some of the biggest Batman villains in a book just dedicated to that villain. A lot of them, but certainly not all of them, take a sympathetic look at that villain. Batman - One Bad Day: Catwoman is one of the more sympathetic takes.  Catwoman is looking through an auction catalog for high end jewelry when she finds an unusual listing for a piece of post-World War II French jewelry that commemorates the end of Nazi occupation. It is a rare piece with a message of a return to freedom for France's artists its reserve price is $30,000. It is also a piece her mother sold to a pawn shop for only $200 when Catwoman was a child in order to attempt to make her rent money that month. Catwoman decides to take back the jewelry and right a wrong... My Review This one was interesting because the stakes, in reality, are really pretty low - a piece of jewelry that is worth thousands instead of millions...

Published by DC Comics in 2023. Story by John Ridley. Art by Giuseppe Camuncoli, Cam Smith, and Arif Prianto. Synopsis Batman - One Bad Day: Penguin finds the hero (!) of the story, Batman's infamous foe Penguin, completely down and out. He has $20 and is sitting on a park bench in the rain. He is taped and bandaged up from a beating. He is unshaven and disheveled. He is waiting for a is waiting to meet a young person to sell him a gun. He has been pushed out of his role of crime boss of Gotham by a former subordinate. He plans to go into the city and take back his organization - but all he has is one little snub-nosed pistol, one bullet, and no friends. Turns out he didn't really need to pistol or the bullet - it's your friends that count. My Review I truly liked this comic. The way the story went surprised me and I really enjoyed it. Penguin can be a surprisingly sympathetic figure for a super-villain. His origin story isn't the roughest, but just about everyone has ...

Winner of the Anthony Award for Best Paperback Original. Winner of the McAvity Award for Best First Novel. Originally published in 1987. Published in 2008 by Brilliance Audio. Read by Patrick Lawlor. Duration: 8 hours, 9 minutes. Unabridged. I have been reading Robert Crais' Elvis Cole novels for 15 years and I just assumed that I had already read all of the early ones years ago. But, when I checked my blog I found that I had not read 7 of them - that is more than a third of the series!  The Monkey's Raincoat is the first in this 20 book series.  Synopsis Two women come to meet Elvis Cole in his office. Cole is a decorated Vietnam veteran turned private detective. The women want Cole to find the Mort, the husband of one of the women and their son. Mort picked the boy up from school, but they never came home. Elvis starts to dig around and quickly discovers that Mort's talent agency is in trouble. The more he uncovers, the more it becomes obvious that Mort has been hiding m...

Published in 2017 by Licensed Publishing. Written by Charles Soule. Art by Giuseppe Camuncoli and Cam Smith Synopsis Imperial Machine is the first entry in a four-part series about Star Wars' most iconic character: Darth Vader.  The series starts with the last scene of Episode III - the moment where Anakin Skywalker truly becomes the infamous Darth Vader. But is he really and truly Darth Vader at this point? No, he has only started his long trip to being a Sith Lord and the Emperor is ready to train him. The Emperor's training mostly consists of Vader going out to figure it out the hard way. For example, Vader has lost his light saber and Palpatine sends him out to take the light saber of a Jedi in combat. Then, Vader must corrupt the crystal inside, which makes it glow red.  The problem is, there are hardly any Jedi left thanks to Order 66 and the other events at the end of Star Wars: Episode III. My review This was an engrossing story. Palpatine is abusive as a teacher - so...

Published in 2021 by Hourly History Note: Hourly History specializes in short histories and biographies that take about an hour to read. Generally, I read them to learn more about topics that I would never read about in a full sized history. Topics like the Swedish Empire, for example. As a history buff, I see references to the Swedish Empire from time to time - an empire of Lutherans coming out of the far north, fighting in several wars, and then retreating back to Sweden. I also recognized the name of one of its kings, Adolphus Gustavus because, let's face it, it's a heckuva name. This short history does a pretty good job of explaining the pretty short history of the Swedish Empire (1611-1721). It explains how the Swedes raised troops, fought in wars against its neighbors, reforms that were undertaken by the king, the Swedes' brief foray into building a North American colony, and the end of the Swedish Empire. I rate this e-book 5 stars out of 5. It can be found on Amazon...

Published in 2025 by Bloomsbury Publishing. Read by Patricia Rodriguez. Duration: 11 hours, 36 minutes. Unabridged. In Money, Lies, and God ,  Katherine Stewart takes a hard look at the intertwined worlds of MAGA, Christian Nationalists, big money backers (old money and new tech money), the Claremont Institute , White Replacement Theory folks, militias, and groups like Moms for Liberty.  It looks like a lot to connect but, in reality, it's not too hard. Think of your stereotypical Christian Nationalist mega-church. They're going to be MAGA voters. They are exposed to materials produced by think tanks like the Claremont Institute or Focus on the Family that are financially supported by big money backers. Moms for Liberty will already be there, hyping up the dangers of public schools and certain reading materials. Some megachurches host faith and freedom conferences that are strong on the politics and feature a bit of Christianity. The author, Katherine Stewart I was distressed...

Originally published in 1973. Breakfast of Champions , to me, is the second most well-known Vonnegut novel after Slaughterhouse-Five .  The plot of this story is deceptively simple and the writing style is not complicated - but this story has a lot going on. There are three main characters. One is Dwayne Hoover, a very successful owner of a Pontiac car dealership from Midland, Ohio and numerous other small businesses. He is by far the most successful man in town. He helps bankroll a fine arts festival that the town helps will make them known as a cultural center. He is also going crazy. The fine arts festival has invited Kilgore Trout, a recurring character from other Vonnegut novels, to be the star of the arts festival. Trout is a prolific, but unsuccessful author. He is published, but only by publishers of porn novels. They use his books as a way to make their books seem more legit, kind of like Playboy used "the articles" to make the magazine seem classier. Trout iis so un...

Published in 2024 by Penguin Audio. Read by Stephen Mendel. Duration: 13 hours, 18 minutes, Unabridged. Almost every book of this series follows this model: 1) Peter Ash, a retired Marine, travels the backroads of America in an effort to deal with his PTSD from his service in Iraq and Afghanistan. Peter is more than competent in a fight and he is much smarter than the average wandering do-gooder. Despite these advantages, he eventually runs into a person that needs so much help that even Peter can't take care of it.  2) At that point he calls his friend and business partner Lewis for backup.  Lewis is also a former soldier, but his post-Army life is much more checkered. The details have always been been kept shrouded in mystery, but everyone knows that it was a criminal enterprise.  3) Lewis shows up with a whole lot of guns and his special talents for mayhem and destruction. Peter and Lewis save the day going forth and kicking butt. ***** It's a formula, but I like the f...

Adapted by Ryan North. Illustrated by Albert Monteys. Graphic novel published in 2020 by Archaia.  Original novel published in 1969. This is my third review of Slaughterhouse-Five. I've reviewed the audiobook , the written novel , and now the graphic novel.  All are different, of course. I've given 5 out of 5 stars to every version, but the graphic novel is the weakest of the three. It's a good graphic novel, but it seemed a little thin when compared to the novel. It's good for its medium. I'm not going to review the plot of one of the most famous anti-war books of the last century - it's too well-known for that. Vonnegut can be weird, but he's always approachable. He writes in an friendly, easy to follow style, no matter if it is the audiobook, the written novel, or this graphic novel. But, if the very idea of reading this book intimidates you, read the graphic novel. It hits the main plot points and it would certainly support you if you went ahead and read...

Published by Brilliance Audio in 2025. Read by Luke Daniels. Duration: 8 hours, 25 minutes. Unabridged. My synopsis: Elvis Cole is back on the case in The Big Empty . This time around he is working for a social media personality that specializes in making muffins and making people who watch the videos feel included, like they are talking to the girl next door.  This social media star wants to hire Cole to figure out why her dad went missing about 10 years before. She hired an quality Private Investigations firm earlier, but the results were inconclusive. Her handlers are not enthused about reopening old wounds, but she overrules them. Cole heads out to the small town (by L.A. standards) where her father disappeared and finds lots of stuff - including people who are determined to keep the secrets of the past buried in the past... My review: This was a complicated mystery with an ending that leaves a lot of moral questions about what is best for just a few people vs. what is best for...

Published by Hourly History in 2024. Brian Epstein was a record store owner from Liverpool that heard the Beatles play in a local club and decided that they were going to be really big and he knew how to make that happen. He asked for a meeting to discuss being their manager and about two months later they had an official deal. The young Beatles were impressed by Epstein. He dressed well, had polished mannerisms, drove a nice car, and had the most successful record store in Liverpool.  Not much about Epstein's earlier ventures would have indicated that Epstein would have had any success at managing the Beatles. He was a college dropout and had bounced around from one thing to another until his father let him use part of the family store to sell records. He parlayed that into a stand-alone store and became well-known in the Liverpool music scene.  To be fair, this was a different music scene than what followed from the 1970s. It was very much a bottom up industry - a band could...

Originally published by Knopf in 2009. Winston Groom will always be best known as the author of Forrest Gump , but he should be equally well known as the author of a series of well-told American histories. Included in those histories is a trilogy of Civil War histories that focus on the Western Theater of the war. Vicksburg 1863 is the second book in the trilogy, but it can be easily read as a stand-alone history. After a short introduction to the war itself, it follows Grant's campaign to take the Mississippi River away from the Confederacy, beginning with a mess of a battle in Missouri that proved nothing of any importance except that Grant was game to fight and push forward, even if the conditions were not perfect. That, it turns out, was pretty much the key to Grant's eventual success in this campaign and in the war. From there, we follow Grant through Kentucky, into Tennessee and the terrible Battle of Shiloh. Although ultimately successful, this marked a low point for Gra...

Published in 2024 by 3 Girls Jumping. Read by the author, Michael Jamin. Duration: 9 hours, 39 minutes. Unabridged. Michael Jamin is a professional Hollywood screenplay writer. He works in television, working on comedy shows like King of the Hill, Just Shoot Me, and Tacoma FD . In the afterword he talked about his desire to write something more than TV shows. He wasn't unhappy with writing screenplays, but he wanted to branch out.  The stories in A Paper Orchestra are from Jamin's life. Some are funny, some wistful, some very sad. As a group, they all have the feel of NPR's Moth Radio Hour  - but instead of having a variety of performers, it is all from the same man. Jamin read the audiobook. In the afterword, he and his wife talked about how they worked together so that he could perform these stories live on stage. She is an actress and she helped him with presentation style - and I think she was successful at it. I worked my way through this audiobook rather slowly. At ...