DWD's Reviews

  Originally published in 1994. Audiobook version published in 2016 by HarperAudio. Read by Teri Schnaubelt. Duration: 9 hours, 5 minutes. Unabridged. Back in the 1990's, I worked at a used book store. A copy of Everywhere That Mary Went came in. I was intrigued so I read it.  After that, whenever a fan of legal thrillers would come in and ask if we had anything new or a little different I'd hand them that book. Soon enough, we were sold out and we kept on selling them whenever they came in. I even talked a group of ladies to use it for their book discussion group and they loved it. I sort of feel like I had a part in promoting Lisa Scottoline when she was starting out. Eventually, this one book grew into a series of eleven books and I read most of them (maybe all of them - it's been a while).  While I was scrolling through my possible choices of my next audiobook, I decided to go back and revisit this series.  Mary DiNunzio is a lawyer from a working class backgrou...

  Book originally published in 2016. Audiobook published by Harper Audio. Read by Grover Gardner. Duration: 6 hours, 17 minutes. Unabridged. News of the World is a pretty simple book - on the surface. Set in 1870 Texas, a 70+ year-old veteran of the War of 1812 and the Mexican War is asked to travel more than 300 miles to deliver a 10-year old girl to her extended family near San Antonio, Texas. When she was 6, she was adopted by the Kiowa after they killed immediate family in a frontier attack. Their journey starts in Wichita Falls (near the Oklahoma-Texas border) and faces a lot of difficulties.  The author Jefferson Kyle Kidd goes by the name Captain Kidd because that was his rank in the Mexican War, where he served as a messenger. That is appropriate since his true love is bringing news to others. He worked on newspapers, he owned newspapers, he edited newspapers and now he is out of the newspaper business completely due to post-Civil War Reconstruction rules.  Kidd ...

  Published in 2020 by Random House Audio. Read by the author, Karla Cornejo Villavicencio. Duration: 4 hours, 53 minutes. Unabridged. Villavicencio is a "Dreamer", also known as a DACA kid. DACA is the program started by President Obama to deal with immigrants who came to the United States illegally as children. Generally speaking, the only country they've ever known is the United States and they had no say in immigrating to the United States. Congress refused to deal with this situation so President Obama created a program through executive orders. This meant that when President Trump came to office he was able to undo a lot of this plan with another executive order.  Villavicencio's very personal look at the DACA program and the general mess of our immigration policy in The Undocumented Americans was inspired by the election of Donald Trump, but it was not what I was hoping for when I started listening to this audiobook. I was really hoping for policy analysis wit...

Originally published in 2007. Audiobook re-mastered and re-published in 2015 by Pottermore Publishing. Read by Jim Dale. Duration 21 hours, 37 minutes. Unabridged. Ten months ago I started to listen to the Harry Potter books. I had never read them before and only watched the first movie so I came to the party quite late. But, with Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows , I have finished the series. What did I think? The series is quite good. There are plenty of great themes and memorable themes throughout. It is well worth the time to read (or listen, like I did). The last book is an up and down affair. It certainly drags in the middle of the book. This was the part I heard my oldest daughter complaining about years ago when she said it was just three people sitting in the middle of a field talking for way too long. I agree. But, the book does bring the series to a satisfying conclusion with plenty of surprises (that I will not reveal).  So, in the interest of not providing any spoil...

Published in September of 2020 by Macmillan Audio. Read by Kevin Stillwell. Duration: 4 hours, 18 minutes. Unabridged. MacWilliams is a sociologist who studies authoritarianism. He has done a number of surveys over American attitudes towards the Constitution and the freedoms of their fellow citizens and there are areas of concern that he outlines in On Fascism . For example, "31% of Americans agree that having a strong leader who does not have to bother with Congress and elections is a good way of governing the United States" and "30% of Americans agree with the statement 'I often find myself fearful of other people of other races.'" Other stats of concern are: "44% of Americans agree that increasing racial, religious and ethnic diversity represents a threat to the security of the United States" When you break down the numbers about "18 percent of Americans are highly disposed to authoritarianism. Another 23 percent or so are attitudinally jus...

  Originally published in 1953. Digital Audiobook version published in 2008 by Blackstone Audio, Inc. Read by Paul Michael Garcia. Duration: 8 hours, 29 minutes. Unabridged. Legendary science fiction author Robert A. Heinlein (1907-1988) wrote a set of novels for the Scribner's publishing house early in his career as a novelist starting in 1947. Scribner's published 12 of them. One of his most famous works, Starship Troopers , was rejected as a volume in this series, but it was fully intended to be a part of it.  A 14th and final book featuring a female lead character was also rejected.  They all share a theme of space exploration moving roughly from humanity's first steps away from Earth to contact with massive alien empires in far and distant places. Robert A. Heinlein (1907-1988) Starman Jones falls right in the middle. It is the seventh novel in the series and humanity can travel to far and distant places and has met alien species, but it is exceedingly tricky. ...

  Originally published in 2009. Published by Pottermore Publishing in 2015. Read by Jim Dale. Duration: 18 hours, 32 minutes. Unabridged. The Half-Blood Prince is the book that one of my daughters complained about several years ago when she read it. She said it was too much talking and not enough action. Certainly when compared to the previous two books, there is a lot less action and a whole lot more talking. Rowling changed up the narrative and tells the back story of the villain of the series, Lord Voldemort, by way of an investigation by Dumbledore and Harry. The pace is certainly slower, but the information was valuable. Perhaps it might have been delivered differently, but I was glad to have it.  The last two hours of the audiobook were full of nothing but action and consequential moments.  Jim Dale continued to do a great job with the book, with the exception of the voice of Hermione.  This is my favorite cover of the entire series. Once you get done wit...

  Published in 2019 by Macmillan Audio. Read by Christian Delaine. Duration: 9 hours, 49 minutes. Unabridged. In The Bitterroots , Cassie Dewell has left her career in law enforcement and is now a private investigator in Montana. This is perhaps the first series featuring a private investigator in Montana because there can't be that many private investigators in Montana. Box notes that she is actually doing quite well for herself because there are so few private investigators in Montana. A lawyer who is also the daughter of a man she owed a favor to contacted her to do some investigating work. The attorney had been hired to defend a man who was accused of raping his niece. His case had been moved away from his home county due to pre-trial publicity and Cassie Dewell soon discovers that his home country. That county, despite being physically large, feels like small because everyone knows everyone else and one family runs everything through a combination of physical and financial int...

  Published by Simon and Schuster Audio in October of 2020. Read by the author, Pete Buttigeig. Duration: 4 hours, 46 minutes. Unabridged.   Pete Buttigeig was, for me, the most interesting Democrat that sought the 2020 nomination. The first I ever heard of was a lengthy interview he gave on NPR when no one on the national level had ever heard of him. I found him to be thoughtful and serious and open to new ideas and discussion.  This book is a short discussion on how politics (and life in general) depends on a certain level of trust to proceed. There is nothing really new here, but it is a worthwhile discussion and it is good to hear it reiterated in a time when trust is so short. To his credit, Pete Buttigeig doesn't feel the need just to stretch out a book just to pad the number of pages. At the end of the audiobook is a recording of Mayor Pete's speech where he announces that he is ending his Presidential campaign. I rate this audiobook 4 stars out of 5. It can be fou...

  Published in 2014 by The Great Courses. Read by the author, Steven L. Tuck Duration: 11 hours, 48 minutes. Unabridged. The publishers of The Great Courses offer college level lecture classes (100 or 200 level) as audiobooks and/or videos.  Cities of the Ancient Word begins with a discussion of the earliest cities and then moves on to significant cities that came along later. To be a significant city it had to start a new pattern - cities built on rivers, cities built on defensive hills, cities built to take advantage of sea trade, cities with a clear plan, cities built with a plan to mix to allow people of different ethnicities to live together (separately) and so on. The Roman Colosseum I very much enjoyed the first part of these lectures. But, once we got to Tuck's specific areas of expertise (Greek, Hellenistic, Roman) the audiobook got bogged down. His last lecture about some of the lessons of ancient cities that have been adopted by modern cities or are becoming p...

  Originally published in 2002. Published in 2010 by Recorded Books. Read by David Chandler. Duration: 8 hours, 48 minutes. Unabridged. I have been reading the Joe Pickett series for the last 10 years and I have been reading them all out of order. I started with book number one, went on to number thirteen and so on... So, here I am ten years later with a review of Savage Run (book number two.) The book starts out from the perspective of a radical environmentalist who leads a national organization. However, he is tired of using lawsuits to fight for the environment. He likes to get his hands dirty by spiking trees and cutting fences. While he is out doing that he gets blown up by a bomb that was strapped to a cow.  Photo by DWD Joe Pickett gets called out to the explosion site because there may have been wildlife injured or killed. He finds a horrible mess and soon enough gets sucked into another, much larger situation... This is Box's sophomore effort and there is evidence of...

Published by Macmillan Audio in 2019. Read by Stephen Graybill. Duration: 11 hours, 5 minutes. Unabridged. City of Windows features Lucas Page, a certified genius (an astrophysicist) with a special talent - he can envision the relations between the stars as they rotate in the sky above and predict where they will go mathematically. It is a natural talent, one he's had since he was a little boy. He can apply this skill to crime scenes as well. He can eyeball a crime scene and tell from what direction and angle a shot came from without having to take all of the steps that Crime Scene Investigators usually have to take.  But, he was seriously injured while on the job with the FBI several years ago. The incident took an eye, a hand and part of a leg. He gladly walked away from the FBI and became a college professor. But, when his old partner is killed by a sniper with a very long-range shot on a busy road in New York City in the middle of a snowstorm, Lucas Page is reluctantly called ...

  Originally published in 2003. Published by Pottermore Publishing. Read by Jim Dale. Duration: 26 hours, 29 minutes. Unabridged. Harry Potter has verified that the Lord Voldemort has returned - but the Ministry of Magic (the UK government for the Wizarding World) officially denies it. A team of wizards and witches have secretly formed a group called The Order of the Phoenix featuring a mixture of characters from the other books. Their purpose in Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix is to protect Harry Potter and try to figure out what Voldemort intends to do next.  At Hogwarts, things are going poorly. The Ministry of Magic has created a new position (the High Inquisitor) and her job is to root out anyone who disagrees with the official Ministry of Magic position on Lord Voldemort (meaning that he has not returned) and end the independent nature of the Hogwarts teaching staff.  The reader, Jim Dale Jim Dale's reading is always a mixed bag for me because his charact...

  Published in 2020 by Highbridge, a division of Recorded Books. Read by James Patrick Cronin. Duration: 9 hours, 15 minutes. Unabridged . In The Good Killer , Sean Tennant and Molly Winter are living under assumed names around Houston, Texas. They are in hiding (the story eventually lets the reader know why) and live off of the grid as much as possible.  Tennant is a retired soldier who served a very rough tour in Iraq. He still has the skills that helped him survive: he is hyper-vigilant and always carries a weapon and tourniquet. On a trip to the mall to buy a new pair of boots a man attracts his attention. When he moves away, Tennant is relieved. When the man opens fire in a clothing store, Tennant leaps into action. He kills the shooter and saves a mother's life with his tourniquet.  And he runs because he knows he will be on the news and the people who desperately want to find Sean and Molly will be coming... I am a big fan of what I call "the chase book." That is a...

Published in October of 2020 by Random House Audio. Read by the author, Matthew McConaughey. Duration: 6 hours, 42 minutes. Unabridged, Oscar-winning actor Matthew McConaughey's memoirs are a unique blend of life lessons, reminiscing and bumper stickers that he admired. The title, Greenlights , refers to life giving you opportunities to move forward that you need to take. The life lessons and bumper stickers are laid out as he tells his life story. He decided to acknowledge his 50th birthday by going through his diaries and notebooks full of observations that he has kept for decades. It is not a true biography, but it is not a true philosophical discussion. What he ends up with is a rambling, yet endearing story. Some observations: -His childhood was more than a little concerning. -I loved his decision to go on the road for a year.  -John Mellencamp. He's a fan - he quotes his songs several times. I get it.  I rate this audiobook 4 stars out of 5. It can be found on Amazon.com...

  Published in 2004 by The Great Courses. Lectures delivered by the author, John McWhorter. Duration: 18 hours, 15 minutes. Unabridged.   The idea behind The Great Courses is a simple one - take a college lecture course given by an expert that knows how to give an interesting lecture and package it up as an audiobook that anyone can listen to. John McWhorter is probably the most famous linguist in America after Noam Chomsky. He takes the listeners on a very thorough introduction to the topic of human language. We learn about proto-languages, language families, tonal languages, sounds that are likely to disappear over time, and how English became the interesting mess that it is and why it's actually easier to learn than most English speakers think. I come at this being sort of a language nerd - I teach Spanish. McWhorter's lectures were usually informative and entertaining. But, editing out or consolidating 5 or 6 lectures out of this 35+ lecture series would have improved it....

Published in November of 2020 by Little, Brown and Company. Read by Peter Giles. Duration: 12 hours, 27 minutes. Unabridged. I am an enthusiastic fan of Michael Connelly's books, but to me the Mickey Haller/Lincoln Lawyer series has always been a lesser series than the related Harry Bosch series. It is never bad - just not quite as good. I am pleased to say that The Law of Innocence is much better than the typical offering in this series. In fact, this is one of the best fiction audiobooks I have listened to in quite a while. Mickey Haller is known to many as The Lincoln Lawyer. He has that nickname because he works out of the back of his car (always a Lincoln) rather than have an actual office in traffic-plagued Los Angeles. He has wi-fi, a printer and access to his digital files. His office manager works from her home office and sort of acts as his "air traffic controller" by setting up his schedule and arranging places to meet his next appointment. His drivers are typ...

  Published in September of 2020 by Recorded Books. Read by Julia Whelan. Duration: 3 hours, 30 minutes. Unabridged. Brandon Sanderson is one of the go-to names in science fiction and fantasy in the 21st Century. He has been nominated for or has won just about all of the major awards. Mary Robinette Kowal has similar credentials. Together, they created this audiobook-exclusive novella. This audiobook clocks in at 3 hours and 30 minutes, but it is an action-packed 3 hours and 30 minutes that takes the listener into an all-too-plausible (mostly) and creepy world. Mary Robinette Kowal The Original begins with Holly Winseed waking up in a hospital. She has no idea why she is there and gets very confusing answers from the staff. Soon, she realizes that she is a cloned copy of herself. Winseed lives in a future filled with nano-technology, including in the human bloodstream. The tiny robots keep people healthy and young.  It also allows the government to access your mind. Then, th...

  Published in 2017 by Random House Audio. Read by P.J. Ochlan. Duration: 4 hours, 21 minutes. Unabridged. Alan Jacobs is a professor and expert on the human mind. This short work is essentially a treatise on how to keep an open mind and not get stuck in a mental rut - meaning not simply rejecting new ideas out of hand. He also addresses the concept of how to reach out to people to make new ideas more appealing to them. Alan Jacobs Jacobs fills the book with a lot of anecdotes - they were usually interesting in and of themselves, but not particularly enlightening. For me the last part of that sentence pretty much describes the book. It was pleasant enough but it really didn't teach me anything and a lot of the time I was wondering where the author was going with yet another story. I rate this audiobook 3 stars out of 5. It can be found on Amazon.com here:  HOW to THINK: A SURVIVAL GUIDE for a WORLD at ODDS by Alan Jacobs.

  Originally published in 2006. Published by Recorded Books in 2007. Read by George Guidall. Duration: 9 hours, 48 minutes. Unabridged Walt Longmire's mentor as the Sheriff of Absaroka County is Lucian, a long-retired and extra-cranky one-legged man. Lucian lives in an assisted living home and he calls in Walt when a resident passes away. Nursing home residents passing away isn't normally an event that draws a lot of suspicion, but Lucian insists it was murder. Longmire decides to listen to Lucian and soon enough Walt uncovers a lot more than anyone was expecting... I am coming to the Longmire book series after seeing the entire Longmire TV series. This is technically my third book. I listened to number 3, the first book and now the second book.  And...I am going to give this series a rest for a while. I liked the interesting characters, but the book has serious pacing issues. As I said, I watched the series. My least favorite part of the series was the sequences when Wal...