DWD's Reviews

Audio Version a real treat Read by John Ritter Duration: 2 hours, 33 minutes Dave Barry Dave Barry's Greatest Hits was read by John Ritter who was one of the few people who could actually read Dave Barry correctly - he put the emphasis in the right places and pauses to make the jokes work perfectly. On to the material - Pulled from Barry's earlier material in the early 1990s, it was a bit up and down, but mostly up (even the downs weren't down very far). His time-share condo essay is a gem that should be printed off and handed out to people before they go into any time-share condo presentation. His "Diplodocus" essay was funny and touching all at the same time. One of his best ever. The "Can New York Save Itself?" essay was a prime example of Dave taking a joke and running it into the ground. It was mildly amusing but it kept going and going and going and going and ... you get the point. I rate this audiobook 4 stars out of...

As an adult fan of both Barry and Pearson I couldn't resist picking this one up... Dave Barry Dave Barry has long been a favorite of mine and Ridley Pearson is on my list of writers to look for as well so when I saw that they had taken on the Peter Pan storyline and created a prequel,  I knew that I just had to read it. Happily, I was not disappointed. This is fun, escapist fiction at its best. The book works on multiple levels - adults will understand several double entendres while kids will love the quick pace and high adventure. Ridley Pearson The plot revolves around a group of people called Starcatchers, people who collect starstuff , glowing magical stuff that falls from the sky and makes the people that use it superhuman. Michelangelo, Attila the Hun and Zeus are all historical figures that have found and used starstuff. The Starcatchers try to capture it to keep it out of the hands of evil people. I am more than happy to recommend this one to reader...

Funny, but the book on tape format begged the question - "why not include parts of the actual songs?" Published by HighBridge in 1999. Read by Mike Dodge. Duration: 1 hour, 30 minutes. Abridged. Yes, I realize it would be a publishing nightmare - trying to convince someone to let you use their song just so you could make fun of it, but it would have been so much more effective! Dave Barry Oh well, what might have been! Dave Barry's Book of Bad Songs really is a funny book. Dave's quirky sense of humor was effective, as always. I thoroughly enjoyed Dave's list of bad songs and his analytical dissection of the lyrics, especially when I also intensely disliked the song. However, I liked it even more when I actually loved the song ('American Pie' comes to mind)! I rate this book 4 stars out of 5. Reviewed on October 20, 2004.

Very, very, very good. 5 discs. 6 hours. Read by Dick Hill Boogers Are My Beat: More Lies, But Some Actual Journalism  is a collection of Dave Barry's columns from the summer of 2000 through September of 2002. They are read expertly by veteran narrator Dick Hill. I usually hear Hill reading crime novels and the like but I was pleased to hear that he has expert comic timing and turns out to be a perfect narrator for Barry's offbeat sense of humor. Veteran reader Dick Hill Topics include: *The 2000 Democrat and Republican political conventions; *The 2002 Salt Lake Winter Games; *The Census; *Camping in a Wal-Mart parking lot; *and the silly tips in Cosmo magazine on how women can drive men wild. Dave ends with two long essays about 9/11. One was published on 9/12 and does a great job of summing up the raw feelings and shock of the time. The second essay is much longer - by far the longest of the book. It was published on the one year anniversary of 9...