DWD's Reviews

Although it is a collaboration, it reads remarkably like a typical Crichton novel Published 2011 by Harper Audio Read by John Bedford Lloyd Duration: 14 hours Unabridged. Michael Crichton died in 2008 and left Micro as an unfinished manuscript. I have no idea how much of this book is actually Crichton's and how much belongs to Richard Preston . To me it felt like a typical Crichton novel. A typical Crichton novel for me is a mixed bag. It has grand themes - truly big, big ideas with foundations in real science. Grand themes about the dangers of too much innovation without enough ethical considerations, lots of Gee Whiz stuff (think of the movie Jurassic Park where the paleontologists are mesmerized when they first see the dinosaurs) and laughable plot lines with sketch characters (the worst for me was State of Fear in which the big menacing bad guys were wedging themselves into Toyota Priuses as they stalked their opponents - yes, the Prius, the ultimate pursuit car!)...

Surprised and impressed! Performed by Johnny Heller Duration: 11 hours, 15 minutes Published 2011 by Hyperion Audio I freely admit that when I got this audiobook I was not expecting much. The premise behind the whole series is an inside joke to begin with since this is supposed to be the books written by an author in the fictional television series Castle . So, I am reading about a fictional character in the books of a fictional author based upon the life of another fictional character in a TV show. It pretty much hurts my brain to think about it - like an Escher painting gone bad. So, I got the audiobook and figured that, if nothing else, this could be good for a laugh. My original instincts were reinforced when I noted that the main character is named Nikki Heat (like a character in a bad 80's Stallone movie or something) and, of course, she is physically stunning as well as being the best detective in her squad. Actor Nathan Fillion as fictional  author Richard C...

Read by Michael Prichard Duration: 13 hours, 5 minutes Published August 23, 2011 by AudioGo As an avid reader of mysteries, I am sorry to say that I waited so long to check out Nero Wolfe and all of his valuable and useful assistants. If you are not familiar with Nero Wolfe, let me introduce you. Nero Wolfe is an obese genius who solves mysteries but rarely leaves his New York City Brownstone home. His true passions are meticulously prepared meals, orchids and keeping to his routine. Instead of leaving his home and doing the legwork himself, he has several trusted and talented investigators who serve as his eyes and ears. The Nero Wolfe stories are told by Archie Goodwin, Wolfe's number one employee. Goodwin is an interesting character himself. He is Wolfe's employee, but not a toady. He speaks his mind, sometimes too freely. He is flippant, clever, tough and quite the ladies man. When I heard these stories, I realized how much a debt the late Robert B. Parker owes to Rex...

Creepy Change of Pace for Heinlein Read by Tom Weiner Approximately 4 hours Blackstone Audio Multiple Hugo Award winning author Robert A. Heinlein (1907-1988) changes his tone with the novella The Unpleasant Profession of Jonathan Hoag. This audiobook seems much more like a Philip K. Dick story than a Heinlein story since it features none of the themes that Heinlein is well known for, like space travel, alien contact or time travel. Instead, we get an extra helping of creepy with a surprise ending that truly demonstrates Heinlein’s ability to master a variety of styles. First published under a pseudonym in the now-defunct magazine Unknown in 1942, The Unpleasant Profession of Jonathan Hoag features Ted and Cynthia Randall, a husband and wife private detective team based in Chicago. They are approached by a fastidious little man with a topcoat and silk gloves named Jonathan Hoag. He has an odd proposition – he offers them a preposterously large retainer to help him...

Absolutely Fantastic Original Radio Broadcast by NPR Duration: 3 hours Published 2011 by HighBridge Audio NPR's American Chronicles: World War II is a 3 hour collection of 27 stories broadcast over the radio network from 1982 to 2010 around the topic of World War II. Atomic mushroom cloud over Nagasaki This collection is not designed to introduce the reader to the war or to its causes - it assumes the listener has a basic grasp of the facts. But, what it does do is delve deeply into certain topics that are associated with the war, such as the life of Londoners during the Blitz, the story of a young Japanese man who was in an internment camp, the Doolittle Raid, Bill Millin - the "Mad Piper" who played the bagpipe for his Scottish regiment as they landed at Normandy (because tradition demanded it), women on the home front, artists who may have used their skills to help the Americans to trick the Germans and an interview with one of the pilots of the plane ...

Ambitious idea but it tends to drag. Read by Tom Weiner. Duration: 20 hours, 16 minutes. Published by Blackstone Audio, Inc. Unabridged. Multiple award winner and science fiction legend Poul Anderson’s The Boat of a Million Years did something that science fiction all-too-rarely does when it was published in 1989 – it got the attention of the mainstream literature critics. The New York Times named it a “ New York Times Notable Book.” Besides mainstream recognition, it was also nominated for multiple science fiction awards as well. The Boat of Million Years follows a group of immortal people through their lives. These are regular people in every respect except that they never age. They were not all born at the same time – some were born earlier (as early as 5,000 years ago), some later but there seems to be no pattern that explains their immortality. Their ancestors are not necessarily long-lived, their descendents do not inherit their immortality. They recover quickly...

A story of a man and his dog and so much more Read by the author, Tom Ryan Duration: 9 and 1/2 hours. Published: 2011 by Harper Audio Unabridged At first glance, Following Atticus is a simple book: A man gets a dog and the dog changes his life. This is true, but this book is so much more than that. Tom Ryan has written a deep, thoughtful book about a man and his dog, but also about a man and his work, fathers and sons, the relationship between man and nature and men and women. In short, this book about a little dog and a lot of hikes in the woods is also a book about life itself. Tom Ryan is the editor of the upstart newspaper the Undertoad in Newburyport, Massachusetts. He has a full life with plenty of friends, a fulfilling job and all of the challenges of a small business. An exceptional elderly dog comes into his life and he realizes he has been missing some things, especially companionship and love. When that dog passes away, Ryan quickly buys another and he and h...

Three solid adventure stories Multicast Performance with music and sound effects Duration: 2 hours, 2 minutes. Published by Galaxy Press Tomb of the Ten Thousand Dead is part of a large series of books and stories that are being re-published by Galaxy Press as part of their Golden Age Stories series. In reality, they are a collection of L. Ron Hubbard's early works that were published in magazines and as pulp fiction books. Hubbard was a prolific writer and he wrote a lot of action stories that translate quite well into the multicast performance audiobook format. This edition features 3 short stories. The first is Tomb of the Ten Thousand Dead , the story of a team of freelance archaeologists that are searching for a lost treasure of Alexander the Great in what is now southern Pakistan. When a down on his luck pilot and a local guide find the map, well, who knows what they will find? The second story, Price of a Hat , is the weakest. It is set in Siberia at ...

A glimpse behind the veil in Taliban-held Afghanistan Read by Sarah Zimmerman Duration: 6 hours, 16 minutes Publisher: Harper Audio, 2011 Unabridged. Gayle Tzemach Lemmon had an interest in how women survive in male-dominated war zones. In the modern world, the war zone is, all too often, not a distant battlefield, but instead includes cities, small towns and plenty of women and children. She was interested in the types of businesses women might open in order to feed their families and she was given the name of Kamila Sidiqi, a college-educated woman who lived through the Taliban invasion of Kabul. Kamila Sidiqi (right) Kamila Sidiqi considered fleeing to Pakistan or Iran but decided that she would stay in Kabul with most of her family. Women were mostly confined to their homes, unless accompanied by a male "minder" to do the shopping. They were certainly not supposed to attend school, have a job or own a business. Kamila Sidiqi does all of these things during the...

A different kind of book Read by Linda Emond Duration: 10 hours, 45 minutes Published by Harper Audio. Unabridged. Laura Lippman's The Most Dangerous Thing is a superbly deep character study that looks into the lives of 5 suburban children in the 1970s and follows them into the present. These kids are the best of friends for a couple of summers. They consist of three brothers, a beautiful tomboy and a chubby girl who blossoms. They come from three different families, go to three different schools but all live in the suburban neighborhood of Dickeyville, near Baltimore. They spend hours exploring the woods near their neighborhood and what they find there becomes part of a secret that eventually drives the least stable member of their quintet to commit suicide as an adult decades later. Laura Lippman As the friends gather for the funeral the secret is slowly drawn out for the reader through a series of flashbacks (through the eyes of all five of the friends and their pa...

Lots of Fun! Duration: 1 hour, 50 minutes Multicast Performance Published by Galaxy Press First published in 1936, Sky Birds Dare! is part of a large series of books and stories that are being re-published by Galaxy Press as part of their Golden Age Stories series. In reality, they are a collection of L. Ron Hubbard's early works that were published in magazines and as pulp fiction books. Hubbard was a prolific writer and he wrote a lot of action stories that translate quite well into the multicast performance audiobook format. Sky Birds Dare! is the story of Breeze Callahan, a young glider pilot who is convinced that the U.S. military's pilots could learn a lot from learning how to pilot gliders before they fly motorized aircraft. A glider is like a small plane that has no engine and is towed into the air by a motorized plane or by a car with a rope (much like a person running with a kite trailing behind). Callahan and his mentor Pop Donegon are thwarted over and ...

Wow! Read by Donald Corren Duration: Approximately 9 hours. Published by Blackstone Audio, 2011. Unabridged. T.C. McCarthy ’s Germline is a non-stop military techno-adventure set in the middle of a war in Central Asia in the 22 nd century. Russia and the United States are fighting over the resources of Kazakhstan. It turns out that Kazakhstan is rich in rare metals that are needed for the 22 nd century’s technological devices. They have to be mined deep in the mountains of Kazakhstan and the mines, countryside, little villages and cities of Central Asia become battlefields. Oscar Wendell is a washed-up, drug-addicted reporter for Stars and Stripes . He is the only reporter in the entire theater of war and he is not quite sure how he was picked over better-known reporters. But, he is determined to make the best of his opportunity, already envisioning the Pulitzer Prize as the world’s biggest story unfolds in his lap. He is given some very basic training sent to the fr...

An interesting history that has been told plenty of times before. Read by the author, Bill O'Reilly Duration: 8 hours Published by Macmillan Audio Probably no figure in American history has received more attention than Abraham Lincoln. Political commentator Bill O'Reilly was, in the early 1970s, a high school history teacher. He wrote this book out of a true passion for Abraham Lincoln. It is clearly not a professional work since it does contain many simple mistakes (for instance, he refers to the Oval Office when it was not actually added to the White House until the early 1900s). I listened to the audio version of this book. To be honest, I was reluctant to listen to it since it is narrated by O'Reilly and I am not a huge fan of his work as a political commentator. In fact, O'Reilly's rather odd style of speech both made the read more interesting. John Wilkes Booth (1838-1865) The book tells the story of the last few days of Lincoln's life, in...

Fun and you just might learn something. Narrated by Tom and Ray Maggliozzi Duration: 3.5 hours. Publisher: HighBridge Audio Tom and Ray Maggliozzi's car repair show, Car Talk , has been a NPR staple for years now. The show features the two wise-cracking brothers as they field questions about cars and car repairs from all over the country. Car Talk Classics: The Pinkwater Files features four complete shows from the mid-1990s that featured phone calls from author and NPR commentator Daniel Pinkwater. Pinkwater's sense of humor is different than the Maggliozzi brothers, but they roll with him quite well and those four phone calls are the highlight of the collection. Pinkwater never really has a question for the brothers but instead offers his observations concerning his struggles with getting a car that fits his stocky build, how to know when your dog is going to throw up in your car and the Theory of Displaced Misery (this theory states that a person can only have so m...

A smart spy thriller Read by Simon Vance Duration: 12 hours, 15 minutes Daniel Silva 's Portrait of a Spy features Israeli master spy Gabriel Allon, now semi-retired and living and working in rural England as a restorer of paintings. Europe is suffering a wave a suicide bombings. While in London on business he spots a suicide bomber on his way to blow himself up in a London open-air area of markets and restaurants. He steps in with his weapon but is stopped by UK agents that think that he is the threat and the bomber detonates himself. Allon is told to walk away but he is haunted by his failure. When he is approached with the chance to infiltrate the financial network of the same terror network he leaps at the chance. This is a joint CIA/Israeli operation and the muddled politics of our current administration (make grand overtures, continue the rendition program, bomb some dictators, not others) are mirrored in this fictional administration. Silva has brought the "A...

                                      Not good. Published by MacMillan Audio in 2011 Read by Scott Sowers Duration: 15 hours, 1 minutes Unabridged Multiple Edgar Award-winning author John Hart delivers a dud with Iron House , a book with too many disparate themes, too many stereotypical storylines and characters that might have been stolen from central casting at any Hollywood B movie and with too much detail about the scenery. Combine it with an overly dramatic reading by Scott Sowers and it makes for an altogether unsatisfying audiobook experience. In Iron House we have a mafia crime boss on his death bed. His adopted son, Michael, has asked to be released from his obligations to the family business so that he might pursue a normal life with his pregnant girlfriend. But, as everyone knows, you cannot just walk away from the mafia, especially if you are known as the most effective h...

One of Hillerman's best Originally published as a traditional book in 1980. Read by George Guidall Duration: 7 hours, 2 minutes Unabridged. People of Darkness is one of Hillerman's best and happens to be the first of the Jim Chee novels. It is set, like most of Hillerman's mysteries, in the Navajo reservation in the Four Corners Area. In this case, Jim Chee is working in the southeast corner of the reservation, in an area commonly called the "Checkerboard" because it consists of a series of parcels of reservation and privately-held land parcels that are interspersed with one another. Even though he is an officer with the Navajo Tribal Police, Chee is contacted to do some work as a private citizen who lives off of the reservation using his vacation time. It seems a multi-millionaire's wife wants Chee to investigate the theft of some of her husband's private "momentos." Chee starts to look into it and his curiosity draws him to ...