DWD's Reviews

B-o-o-o-r-i-i-i-n-g I found this 3 1/2 hour audiobook and figured I'd come across a hidden gem. A book about kids by the Berenstains! Who would know more than those folks that have created books, videos, a TV show with lots of wholesome values and fun? What Your Parents Never Told You About Being A Mom Or Dad is full of wholesome values. It offers practical advice on raising kids and a bit of an introduction to the Berenstain's experiences in raising a family. But... It's a tedious listen. Extraordinarily tedious. After the general introduction (20 minutes or so) the book gets bogged down in attempts at pithy humor, quips and puns than just don't work. I forced myself to listen to an hour and a half of the meat of this book and finally couldn't go any longer. While full of good advice, I have to give any book that I cannot finish a one star. This thing should have been edited down to about one hour and it would have had much more impact. ...

Truly Unique Mystery Duration: 3 hours, 1 minute Mind Slash Matter is a unique entry into the world of mystery thrillers. The hero is a 2-time Oscar-winning screenwriter, Rush Lightbody, who is now a shell of his former self due to Alzheimer's. However, he is able to function due to a wonderful computer that he pre-programmed before the Alzheimer's set in that interacts with him by way of speakers, microphones, video cameras and pagers. Thus, Rush Lightbody is able to convince the outside world that he is still okay by way of a series prompts and firm instructions that come from the computer. Rene Auberjonois At times, it is reminiscent of Peter Sellers' movie Being There in that the people Lightbody interacts with over-interpret his incorrect responses as exceedingly wise responses. Often funny, often sad, this book causes the reader to enter the mind of an Alzheimer's victim and get a taste of that alternate reality. It never degrades Alzheimer...

Disappointed in the abridged audiobook I've seen Josh McDowell speak many times and I know that he can be a strong speaker and I do wish that he had read this book. This book has strong attributes, but when combined with the reader (Greg Wheatley) it can be tedious. The audiobook seems poorly put together at times but I suppose that is due to a poor abridgement. The reader is very poor, which is surprising since the cover notes note that he has a wealth of radio experience. He fails to do basic things like pause. For example, most readers would read like this: Chapter One (pause) It was a dark and stormy night... This book is more like this (in a monotone): ChapterOneItwasadarkandstormynight. Other negatives: McDowell includes a fictional story of friends at college that are struggling with their faith. Those stories are stilted and read like they were written for ...well, like they were written for a Sunday school book. The people don't talk like ...

If this were baseball, Halperin would be swinging for the fence, but coming up short. Published by Blackstone Audio in 2011. Read by Sean Runnette. Duration: 10 hours, 36 minutes. Unabridged. David Halperin's Journal of a UFO Investigator is a semi-autobiographical novel. It ties together UFOs, death, growing up, family dynamics and religion in general (and Judaism in particular) in the story of Daniel Shapiro, a schoolboy growing up in the 60s in far suburban Philadelphia. Halperin is a former professor of religious studies at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill with a special focus on Judaism and what he calls "religious traditions of heavenly ascent." Already an established author of non-fictional academic works, this is Halperin's first novel.  Danny Shapiro's world is crashing down around him. His mother is slowly dying from heart disease. His father does not understand him. He is Jewish in the heavily Christian suburbs and, as he gets o...

Up and down quality. So, here's the scoop on the audiobook The Bold West: Edition 4 . There are 3 unabridged stories read by three different readers. The stories are: 'Death Rides This Trail' by Steve Frazee. It is the longest and definitely the best of the three stories. It concerns a family of settlers and the struggles they have after the father is killed in a senseless gunfight. Good character development and an entertaining story. Often funny and often sad. It was originally published in 1953. I give this story 4 out of 5 stars. Zane Grey (1872-1939) 'Yaqui' by Zane Grey. Originally published in 1920, this is the story of Yaqui, the young chief of the Yaqui Indians of Western Mexico. The Yaqui were hunted down and killed or moved to the Yucatan Peninsula to be enslaved in the Sisal plantations to make rope. This is the worst story of the three by far. The writing was stilted and overly formal and the reader was the worst of the three. The...

The original short story that the movie is based on. Length: 58 minutes (1 CD) Read by Phil Gigante Originally written in 1954 and titled The Adjustment Team , this audiobook was  renamed so that it can be tied in with the movie that is very loosely based on this short story by famed science fiction writer Philip K. Dick. The one hour length and subject matter put me in mind of an episode of the Twilight Zone - one of the really good ones where we find out the world does not work quite the way we thought it did. Philip K. Dick (1928-1982) The premise of the short story is that real estate agent Ed Fletcher is not where he is supposed to be when the adjustment team comes to adjust his office. Instead, due to a bureaucratic mix-up on the supernatural level, Ed comes in to work a few minutes late and finds an adjustment team at work. The team has frozen the regular world and drained it of all of its life while they make adjustments to all the things and inhabitants. ...

19 hours, 34 minutes Read by John Lee Published by Tantor Audio Unabridged. Alastair Reynolds’ The Prefect is a hard-boiled detective novel set in a future in which mankind has moved to new worlds far away from Earth and created any number of new technologies. But, people still find themselves confronted by age-old problems that come from within humanity itself. In the end, despite the all of the glitz of spaceships and high tech weaponry, this is really a book about freedom vs. tyranny, redemption, revenge, justice, revenge and honor. Set in the year 2427, The Prefect is the fifth novel in the Revelation Space series. Chronologically, it is the first novel (there are short stories and novellas in the series as well) and it can be read as a stand-alone novel. The Prefect takes place in the Glitter Band, a group of 10,000 space stations (called habitats) with a total population of 100 million all in orbit around a planet called Yellowstone about 10 light years from Earth....

A political thriller for people that don't know much about politics Read by Robert Petkoff 11 hours, 42 minutes. The premise behind A Heartbeat Away is simple and brilliant:  What if terrorists released a biological weapon into the House chamber during the President's State of the Union Address - the one time when just about everybody who is anybody in the Federal government is all in one room together? The follow through, however, is not so hot. Palmer's characterization of how a President would deal with this sort of problem shows that Palmer does not understand the one thing that all presidents are - they are politicians. They know how to collaborate, get things done, work with people they cannot stand to get their programs enacted. Even the most difficult President can schmooze and get people to work with them.  The president in A Heartbeat Away , James Allaire is the most politically tone deaf character I have ever seen. He manages to make the whole thi...

Published by Blackstone Audio Duration: 6 hours, 36 minutes Narrated by Barrett Whitener Unabridged Robert A. Heinlein’s Time for the Stars is a true bit of science fiction history and, in a way, embodies all of the “cool” stuff that made me such a fan – a bit of physics, adventure, young people off to explore unseen worlds, and some newfangled technology. Heinlein (1907-1988) first published Time for the Stars in 1956, during a time period when he had a contract with Scribner’s to produce books that were young people friendly. They were aimed at young adults, although I enjoyed it as well. It is the memoir of the space travels of Tom Bartlett, who is also one half of a very talented set of twins. The premise of the book is simple enough. The Earth is too crowded and a research corporation called the Long Range Foundation has invested in several ships to seek out new planets that humans can inhabit. There are already colonies throughout the solar system but they ar...

Published in 2010 by Tantor audio Read by Todd McLaren Duration: 14 hours, 4 minutes. Unabridged. Called a “Master of Alternate History” by Publishers Weekly, Harry Turtledove continues on that track in Atlantis and Other Places with a set of 12 short stories. Topics and eras range from pre-history to the Peloponnesian War to the Byzantine Empire to World War II and two stories set in modern times. All of these stories have appeared in other publications. This collection begins and ends with two stories about Atlantis, a topic he has explored more deeply in a trilogy. “Audubon in Atlantis” is the first story that Turtledove published about Atlantis. The famed 19 th century naturalist John James Audubon has traveled to Atlantis to catalog some of its unique wildlife. Turtledove introduces his alternate world, including basics of the history of Atlantis and he introduces the House of Universal Devotion, a religion that is most analogous to the Mormon Church in regular histor...

The unabridged audiobook is excellent Published by Bantam Doubleday Audio in 2001 Duration: 12 hours, 7 minutes Read by David Lansbury Unabridged I am not a giant fan of Grisham's latest legal thrillers but I am becoming a fan of his non-lawyer books, such as Bleachers and A Painted House . Grisham's non-legal novels are wonderful "slice of life" views of rural/small town America. A Painted House is a rite of passage novel about a 7 year old boy (Luke Chandler) growing up on an Arkansas cotton farm in 1952 with his parents and grandparents. His uncle is off fighting the war in Korea. It is the beginning of the two month long picking season and his family hires some hired hands to help pick the cotton. They hire a combination of "hill people" (poor whites from up in the Arkansas hills) and Mexicans who are literally trucked into Arkansas in the trailer of a semi as if they were cattle. Luke learns a lot during this season, including abou...

Duration: approximately 3 hours Read by Gillian Anderson   So, how can I say this succinctly and clearly? The abridged audiobook of The X-Files: Ground Zero is not good. It is bad. It is not well read. It has few of the best qualities of the TV show. Gillian Anderson Read by Gillian Anderson, the abridged audiobook clocks in at about 3 hours and read unenthusiastically by Gillian Anderson. One of the reasons I picked this one up is that I figured she'd read it well. It says it was recorded in Vancouver in 1995 (where the show was filmed) and it sounds like she read it between takes. She sounds tired and completely uninterested in the text. Then again, when you look at what she was reading, I cannot blame her for being uninterested. This book has none of the zip of the show. Mulder's lines are almost non-existent. No smart-alack lines or observation. No wry sense of humor that makes even the weakest of the TV shows watchable (I love the X-Files but let...

David Morrell's Black Evening: Tales of Dark Suspense is a collection of horror short stories. This is a change of pace from Morrell's normal fare of action/suspense/thriller novels, but this is a strong collection that is a great read and will be especially rewarding for Morrell's fans. David Morrell There are 7 short stories in this collection. The weakest by far is the first one, "The Dripping". I'd rate it 3 stars. But the rest are 4 or 5 star short stories which is high praise from me since I am not normally a fan of the short story format. Of especially high quality are "But At My Back I Always Hear" and "Orange Is For Anguish, Blue For Insanity." Those stand up with the best short format horror stories that you can put against them, from Poe to King. Each story is introduced by the author who includes plenty of details about how he started writing, what was going on in his life when he wrote the stories. Th...

A literary phenomenon Published in 2006 Read by Kerry Beyer Duration: 4.5 hours Unabridged I teach high school Spanish and history but even if you don't have much interaction with young people, you'd have to live in a cave not to have noted the literary phenomenon that is the novel Holes . Although my students don't read Holes in my class, they have mentioned it so I decided to listen to it as an audiobook during my drive to and from school. The plot itself is fairly unique in that there are literally no loose ends. Nothing is introduced that does not have a consequence later on, be it the prison guard quitting smoking and chewing sunflower seeds instead or the references to peach preserves, it all ties together. All of that makes the story less believable, more like a dark fairy tale but all of the more enjoyable. Louis Sachar The story itself is pretty solid. There's a mystery, a sense of camaraderie and an awful tale of injustice in the flashbacks. It i...

A sci-fi book for lovers of history Published in 2010 by Audible Studios. 23 hours, 56 minutes. Read by Katherine Kellgren. Unabridged. 43 hours of audio listening later (read wonderfully by Katherine Kellgren who handled a wide variety of accents and aging characters with real skill), I am finally done with the Blackout/All Clear saga. These books are intended to be one giant book, not a series, although you would never. ever know that from the audiobook's cover. To her credit, the author, Hugo and Nebula Award winning author Connie Willis introduces the second half of this audiobook with a warning that you had better listen to the first half first. Indeed you should and you should listen to the second installment as soon as you can after hearing the first one because there is no review, no scenes where the characters re-hash everything for the benefit of the listener. This is literally the second half of a very large book and she starts out exactly where she left off. See m...

A prototype of the current crop of approachable books on economics Originally published in 1980. Duration:12 hours, 15 minutes Read by James Adams Unabridged. Free To Choose: A Personal Statement is the manifesto on the power of capitalism and freedom (and how they go hand in hand) that was designed to be read, digested and discussed by the common man, not the economist. In fact, this is the book that was designed as a follow-up companion to a 10 part PBS mini-series that fleshed out the ideas in the series and addressed issues and further questions that came up in the making of the television program. Milton Friedman won the Nobel Prize for economics in 1976 (he always credited his wife for helping develop his theories so I would imagine he considered it a shared prize). The audiobook follows the lead of the mini-series and has 10 broad areas that it covers, including: -The Power of the Market; -The Anatomy of a Crisis (an in-depth study of the Great Depress...