DWD's Reviews

Published by Brilliance Audio in September of 2012. Read by the author, Penny Marshall Duration: 8 hours, 30 minutes. Unabridged. Penny Marshall, best known as Laverne DeFazio on the TV show Laverne and Shirley , tells all (or at least a lot) in this name-dropping memoir. If you are offended by frequent use of curse words and references to drug use, My Mother Was Nuts is not your book. Let me begin with an important point in my review: I listened to it as an audiobook that was read by Penny Marshall. This is important because I think it added immensely to the experience despite Marshall's relatively poor reading style. She mumbles, slurs words throughout and pauses at weird moments to take a breath but that is part of Penny Marshall's style. On top of that, at emotional moments, such as the death of her mother and discussing the 9/11 attacks the listener can hear the emotion in her voice. Add to that her famed New York accent, her great impersonation of her brother Garry ...

Can't Miss for Fans of Garrison Keillor Published in February of 2013 by HighBridge Audio. Duration: 1 hour, 9 minutes Multi-cast Performance NPR's "A Prairie Home Companion" has an extensive collection of audio CDs based on lots of different themes, including skits that highlight certain regular actors on the show. This CD focuses on Sue Scott , an actress with a versatile voice and an admirable repertoire of characters to draw upon. She has been a member of the cast since 1992 and is the only female member so she gets a real workout. This CD has 14 different tracks. Some are laugh-out-loud funny, some are merely amusing.  Altogether, this is a very solid hour of listening and a sure thing for any fan of Garrison Keillor. Disclosure: I was sent a complimentary copy of this CD by the publisher in exchange for an honest review. I rate this audiobook 4 stars out of 5. This audiobook can be found on Amazon.com here: Sue Scott: Seriously Silly . Reviewed o...

Fantastic Narration by Jonathan Davis Published by Harper Audio in April of 2013 Performed by Jonathan Davis Unabridged Duration: 8 hours, 10 minutes Phillip Margolin I have been a fan of Phillip Margolin for years but I have been disappointed with some of his newer books. Sleight of Hand started out fairly weak but the second half was much stronger. There are two plots at work in this novel. Dana Cutler, appearing in her fourth novel is hired for a bizarre cross country case involving a 500-year-old scepter from the Ottoman Empire. The other story involves fashionable couple Horace and Carrie Blair. Horace Blair is a multi-millionaire international businessman and Carrie is much younger and is a career-focused prosecutor. When Carrie disappears, Horace is charged with her murder and eventually these two stories come together with a true sociopath and that's when the book starts to move. The best part of this audiobook was the performance of the reader, Jonathan...

Published by HighBridge Audio in May of 2013 Read by Scott Brick Duration: 1 hour, 2 minutes Nelson DeMille's gripping short story Rendezvous is set in the Vietnam War and made more authentic by DeMille's own real-life experiences during the war. A group of 10 American soldiers are on patrol in a no-man's land near the Vietnam-Laotian border. They are supposed to be make contact with the enemy, radio in what they find and move on to one of three rendezvous locations where they will be evacuated by helicopter. Everyone on the patrol is a little more than 30 days from being rotated out of Vietnam. This is important because the group has lots of experience but everyone has a sense of foreboding because this is their last patrol (there is a tradition of not sending guys out with less than one month to go). While on patrol they encounter a female sniper who shoots the radio man and both radios. As the patrol decides to head out for the first of three pre-determined rend...

Book Marred By The Author's Insistence On Including Everything and Analyzing Nothing Published by Harper Audio in February of 2013 Read by Terence Aselford Duration: 21 hours, 8 minutes Amity Shlaes' previous book was a history of the Great Depression called The Forgotten Man. In his own way Calvin Coolidge is also a forgotten man. He sits midway between two presidential giants (Wilson and FDR) who vigorously expanded the power of the federal government and the executive branch. His term was not marked by wars, but rather by a general rise in America's prosperity. Coolidge is not remembered as a great president but as an oddity - Silent Cal who took naps every afternoon. Calvin Coolidge (1872-1933),  president from 1923-1929 This is unfortunate. While hardly a perfect president, Coolidge has some important lessons to offer. I feel that I have to offer some bona fides at this point. I am not a fan of this book but I do find Coolidge interesting, On my blog you wi...

Published by Mind Wings Audio in 2012 Read by Joe Barrett Duration: 1 hour, 9 minutes The Adventures of Cal Haskell Continue Cal Haskell is the main character of a western series with a twist. He is the new Sheriff of Sorrow, Michigan. Westerns, of course, should take place in the West. But, this is Michigan's frontier and there are plenty of similarities to make it work. I reviewed the first book in the series in December of 2012. You can read my review by clicking here . Sorrow is a troubled town. Cal Haskell and his motley crew of deputies keep an eye on things but sometimes things get out of control. Just recently, a jury has quickly found a black man guilty of killing a white prostitute. But, Cal is told by one of the town's most respected citizens that the wrong man was convicted. Once Cal starts to look into it things start to get real dangerous. Clearly, someone does not want him to look into this and they are willing to do anything to keep their secrets hidden....

My new favorite Stephen King short story Published by Simon and Schuster in 2010 Read by Holter Graham Duration: 2 hours, 20 minutes Normally, I am not a fan of short stories - they end just about the time I get comfortable with the story. But, Stephen King has a gift for short stories. He is able to get the reader comfortable with the characters very quickly and pack in a lot of weirdness very quickly. I can get tired of Stephen King in the novel format, especially in audiobook format where they books can last longer than 50 hours! But, Simon and Schuster's decision to issue his short stories as short audiobooks is perfect for me. UR  is the story of a small college Literature professor named Wesley Smith who decides to buy a Kindle after experimenting with a student's kindle. When this book was written, the only choice in Kindles was the Kindle 2. It came in off white, had no color and 5 years ago it was top of the line cool technology and I have one. The author ...

Published by Macmillan Audio in 2012 Read by Jeff Gurner Duration: 10 hours, 59 minutes Unabridged Mark Sullivan is yet another author who is working with James Patterson as a co-author in the hopes that Patterson's name will serve as a midwife to an ultra-successful career in books. I have not read the Patterson/Sullivan collaboration but I did enjoy the audiobook version of this solo effort by Sullivan. Rogue starts with CIA operative Robin Monarch breaking into a Turkish research lab to steal a series of files called "Green Fields." Green Fields is supposed to be the collected archives of Al-Qaeda, but when Monarch gets curious, goes against his orders and opens a few of the files he discovers that he was being used to steal something altogether different and he decides to walk away from the CIA in mid-operation without saying a word in explanation. Time passes and Monarch uses his skills to become a professional thief (of the Robin Hood persuasion). Eventually...

Great Near-Future Sci-Fi Military Action! Published by The AudioComics Company in 2012. Multicast performance Duration: 1 hour, 28 minutes Unabridged. Titanium Rain  is a near future military adventure story about a group of physically enhanced American and British fighter pilots and their missions against an Imperial Chinese government over mainland China. This AudioComics production of Titanium Rain is an adaptation of the 2010 publication of volume 1 of a graphic novel series of the same name by Josh Finney. Finney adapted the graphic novel for this multicast performance done in the style of the old-time radio show, complete with multiple actors, top-notch special effects and a soundtrack especially written for this production. The listener discovers that China has suffered a military coup thanks to their Communist leader being killed by an Islamic terrorist. The general who took over China has proclaimed himself to be a new Emperor, has started a de-Westernizatio...

Published by Macmillan Audio in 2013. Read by Edoardo Ballerini Duration: 13 hours, 45 minutes Unabridged. Most history books mention the plot to kill Lincoln as he was travelling to Washington, D.C. for his inauguration in February of 1861 with just a sentence or two, if they mention it at all. This is unfortunate because a more in-depth look like this book provides can give the reader a real feel for the fluidity of the situation when Lincoln took office. Daniel Stashower's The Hour of Peril begins with a solid biography of Pinkerton's life (about 2 hours or so) that may just be the most interesting part of the book. The book eventually moves into a discussion of the Presidential election of 1860 and the Secession Crisis that Lincoln faced as President-elect, including the danger that both Maryland and Virginia would secede and leave the capital of the United States, Washington, D.C. to be surrounded by two Confederate states. On top of that, Lincoln almost had to t...

Published by Simon and Schuster Audio in 2006 Read by Ron McClarty Duration: 1 hour, 30 minutes I am not sure who the person was at Simon and Schuster Audio that decided to record Stephen King's short stories, like  Stationary Bike   as separately packaged stories, but I think it was a stroke of brilliance. I am leery of listening to a 30-40 hour audiobook for a taste of King's special brand of story-telling and I am equally leery of a short story collection - I get tired of mentally shifting gears so often. In this short story, Richard Sifkitz is an overweight graphic artist (he specializes in book covers and advertisements) who was told by his doctor that he needs to lose a little weight and eat better because his cholesterol is too high. The doctor compares his cardiovascular system to a road maintenance crew and says that Sifkitz is working his crew to death and soon enough it will start to fail. Sifkitz resolves to work out and buys a stationary bike. He ...

Adapted from the graphic novel series by Mark Millar and Steve McNiven Published by GraphicAudio in 2013 Multicast performance Duration: Approximately 6 hours. NOTE: This review was written before the Marvel Studios movie of the same name was released. Clearly, this comic series inspired the movie. For me, this novelization is superior to the movie. I am a huge fan of the work that GraphicAudio has done over the years with its adaptations of DC Comics graphic novels. They promise “A movie in your mind” and they have never failed to produce high quality audio dramas that sound like old-fashioned radio plays with better sound effects, special music and usually more than twenty actors plus a narrator. The fight scenes are amazing, the sound effects are always top notch. Two or three years ago, I was asked on a message board if GraphicAudio ever performed anything by Marvel Comics. I confidently said that they did not and probably never would because DC and Marvel are like P...

"That's the trouble with a situation like this - you just don't know who is who." Published by Highbridge Audio in 2012 Read by Ray Chase Duration: 11 hours, 35 minutes. Unabridged. Thomas H. Cook's Streets of Fire is set in Birmingham, Alabama in the spring of 1963 during Martin Luther King's famed "Birmingham Campaign" that featured the Children's March, "Bull" Connor, boycotts and fire hoses being turned on demonstrators. Sergeant Ben Wellman is called away from taking detailed notes on Martin Luther King's speeches at the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church (one of many policemen that were used as spies who filled notebooks and turned them in to their superiors) to investigate a dead body found in a shallow grave in an abandoned ball field in Bearmatch, a black neighborhood. Generally, the all white Birmingham police department didn't do much investigating into murders in this working class Black neighborhood - they ar...

Published by Simon and Schuster Audio  Published February 5, 2013 Read by Jason Culp Duration: 9 hours, 11 minutes As the title says,  Iscariot: A Novel of Judas  tells the the story of one of the most infamous people in history - Judas, the disciple that betrayed Jesus. Tosca Lee tells the story in a very sympathetic manner. At no point in the story is Judas an evil man. In fact, he is the opposite - he is an exceptionally good man who lives an upright life, tries his very best and truly loves Jesus, the man he calls "teacher." A close up of Judas Iscariot (front) in Leonardo da Vinci's "The Last Supper" Tosca Lee creates a sympathetic back story for Judas involving a life full of loss, pain and a tragic multi-generational search for the messiah. Judas has decided that searching for a messiah is the surest way to get hurt. Instead, he has joined a secret society that is working to push the Romans out of Judea. But, things radically change when Jud...

Published February 5, 2013 by HighBridge Audio Read by R.C. Bray Duration: 8 hours, 10 minutes Lachlan Smith's debut novel is set in 1999 San Francisco. Leo Maxwell is a newly minted lawyer (less than a week) who was been helping around his brother's law office for the last few months. Teddy  Maxwell is one of the most controversial and most successful defense attorneys in San Francisco. His specialty is not high profile clients, but hookers, drug dealers and the like. He is thoroughly hated by the police department, the prosecutor's office and any number of people who were unhappy about cases that he won. This matters because Teddy is shot in the head in the middle of a restaurant by an unknown assailant right over Leo's shoulder and the list of possible suspects is enormous. The police think that one of Teddy's clients did it, or maybe an unhappy victim of one of his clients. Teddy's friends and clients think that the police did it.  All Leo knows is tha...

Published in 2013 by HarperCollins Read by Peter Ganim Duration: 11 hours, 11 minutes. Unabridged. Dick Wolf is best known as the producer and creator of the many different TV series in the Law and Order franchise. The Intercept is his first attempt at fictional book writing (he has considerable experience at screenplay writing). So, how was this first attempt? I liked it. I liked it a lot. The story revolves around Jeremy Fisk, a detective with NYPD's counter-terrorism squad. New York City has an extensive counter-terrorism unit because New York City has been such a frequent target of terrorism. Fisk is fluent in Arabic and is frequently a contact person between NYPD and the FBI or CIA. A terrorist tries to commandeer an airplane headed to America from Sweden by holding a stewardess hostage. Five passengers rise up to fight the terrorist and they succeed in saving the stewardess with only the one of the rescuers suffering the relatively minor injury of a broken forear...

Published by Simon and Schuster Audio in 2012 Read by Keith Nobbs Duration: 2 hours, 33 minutes Based on the  William Joyce book series Guardians of Childhood , Rise of the Guardians was a very pleasant surprise when we took the kids to go see it a few months ago. I was not expecting much and came away very impressed with a complex story with plenty for adults to think about but light enough for kids to be entertained. It also has a balance of scary and funny and avoids the all too easy bodily function-type jokes. The premise of the story is that the Guardians are defending the children of the world against an onslaught by the Boogeyman, who goes by the name Pitch Black. Pitch Black revels in causing fear and nightmares and destroying the best aspects of childhood. The Guardians are the Sandman (Guardian of Dreams), the Easter Bunny (Guardian of Hope), Santa Claus (Guardian of Wonder) and the Tooth Fairy (Guardian of Precious Memories). They have been called together by T...