DWD's Reviews

Originally published in 1962. Winner of the 1963 Newberry Medal. Published by Listening Library in 2012 Read by Hope Davis Duration: 6 hours, 26 minutes Unabridged Way back in the 1970's I read A Wrinkle in Time as an elementary school student in small town Indiana. I was a voracious reader (I won the library's summer reading contest several years in a row - the only thing that ended my reign was moving away) and I remember that I attached great importance to this book. It must have been handed to me by a teacher or a librarian. But, I also remember that I was indifferent to the book itself. My impression of the book was that it was unique but rather vague and cerebral. With the new movie version coming out, I was inspired to re-read the book. Also, I must admit that I was curious to see if the book affected me any differently more than 40 years later. Madeline L'Engle (1918-2007) This time around I listened to it as an audiobook. Hope Davis read the book and she ...

Published in 2016 by Audible Studios Read by Jacob York Duration: 1 hour, 18 minutes Unabridged Harris Sockel graduated from college and was convinced that he should join Teach for America (TFA) by a dedicated recruiter. He wasn't particularly interested in being a teacher before TFA, but he liked the idea of making a difference. So, he enrolled in their crash course designed to teach a recent college graduate how to be a teacher and, in just a few weeks, he is certified by TFA and heads off to New York City to be a middle school teacher in a charter school. I teach in an urban public school in the Midwest, so I completely understood much of his commentary - the struggle to get papers graded, the struggle to copy papers (apparently an epic struggle in his school) and trying to keep everything moving forward. I particularly enjoyed his discussion of the ubiquitous SWBAT - a fairly new thing in my school. In the end, Sockel's audiobook left this listener a little confused. Is ...

Published in 2014 by HighBridge, a division of Recorded Books Multicast performance Duration: 2 hours, 5 minutes The idea behind NPR's "Driveway Moments" series is that each of these stories is so good that if you were listening to them when they were originally broadcast on NPR you would stay in the car to hear the end of the story rather than turn off the car and head on in to the house. That is a pretty high standard, when you think about it. The good news is that many of these stories are that good. I enjoyed the story of the couple that fell in love while eyeing one another on a commuter flight and a conversation with author John Green about reactions to his book The Fault in Our Stars . My favorite may have been the story in which a divorced couple fell back in love after the husband became ill with Alzheimer's. He had literally forgotten the woman who came to visit him and re-discovered what he liked about her. But, there were some real clunkers in the c...

Originally published in book form in 2000. Published by Penguin Audio in 2013 Read by Johnathan McClain Duration: 13 hours, 45 minutes Unabridged In Running Blind  Jack Reacher is a suspect in an FBI investigation of several bizarre murders of women that were involved in sexual harassment and/or rape investigations that he conducted while he served as a military policeman. But, as the investigation moves forward, it becomes clear that he is not the suspect. Instead, he is drawn into the case to serve as a liaison between the Army and the FBI so that they can solve the case before the serial killer strikes again. This is one of the weaker entries into the strong Jack Reacher series. There is one really cool scene at the midway point book that I will not discuss because I hate spoilers but, on the whole, Running Blind just didn't have "it". With three stars, Running Blind just has too many leaps of logic, even for this Jack Reacher fan (this is my 15th Reacher book...

A Review of the Audiobook Published by Books in Motion in 2015 Read by Beth Richmond Duration: 11 hours, 40 minutes Unabridged Blood Sweep is my eleventh Posadas County/Bill Gastner mystery. I have been with Bill Gastner when he was on patrol, when he was being lowered into a mine to find a kidnapper, when he was fighting a man in a little plane and through a whole lot of extra-spicy burritos. Sadly, Bill is a minor character in this book. I understand why - when the series started out he was already old for a sheriff. Now, he's retired and really can't go out and fight bad guys so much. Estelle Reyes-Guzman and Bob Torres carry the load in this book. I enjoyed the Torres story line, but found the Reyes-Guzman story line to be poorly paced and exceptionally wordy (never a problem with Torres since he famously says as little as possible). The Reyes-Guzman story line features a former resident of a Mexican border town that has spent most of his adult life in prison. This...

A Review of the Audiobook. Published by HarperAudio in 2017. Read by Bahni Turpin Duration: 11 hours, 40 minutes Unabridged Starr Carter lives two lives in The Hate U Give . She is an African American high school junior that lives in a rough African American neighborhood. Her best friend was killed in front of her, accidentally caught up in a drive-by shooting, so Starr's parents drive her 45 minutes (one way) out to a "white" school out in the suburbs for her own safety.  She works in her neighborhood, at her father's store, on the weekends but she feels like she doesn't really live there. Most people don't even know her real name - they know here as "King's daughter that works in the store." She feels like no one at her school knows her either - she speaks differently, acts differently and cares about different pop culture things. She has a white boyfriend - a fact she hides from her father. On a Friday night Starr goes to a massive par...

Published by Macmillan Audio in 2017 Read by the author, Gail Saltz Duration: 8 hours, 18 minutes Unabridged Psychiatrist Gail Saltz looks at the larger categories of "brain differences", such as dyslexia, depression and ADD in this interesting audiobook. This is a surface-level look at these brain differences (it comes out to a little more than an hour per difference she discusses - you can't expect any more than surface-level discussion), but informative nonetheless. Considering that the average person probably has no knowledge of any of these differences or, at best, a great deal of knowledge of one or two of the seven she discusses, this book serves as an excellent introduction. Dr. Gail Saltz. Photo by Sigrid Estrada Each chapter starts with a description of each of the brain differences including physical differences, if any. Saltz also introduces the reader to two or three high-achieving people with these differences. Some are celebrities, some are not. ...

Published by Gildan Media, LLC in 2012 Read by Sean Pratt Duration: 18 hours, 54 minutes Unabridged James Oakes takes a unique look at the Civil War in Freedom National - through the lens of the anti-slavery movement. I have read more than 200 Civil War histories and almost all of them cover this part of the story - but, just in bits and pieces. Oakes looks at the anti-slavery movement from its roots in the Revolutionary War era and moves forward with the different Abolitionist arguments until they finally stumbled upon the concept of "freedom national". The argument is over the standard, default setting of the slavery issue. Was slavery legal everywhere, except where it was specifically abolished, or was it illegal everywhere, except for where it was specifically made legal? Or, in shorthand - was it "freedom national" or "slavery national"? This book puts the lie to the idea that the Civil War was over taxes, tariffs or anything else but slavery....

Published by Hachette Audio in 2017 Read by Titus Welliver Duration: 9 hours, 54 minutes Unabridged Harry Bosch returns in his twentieth outing, more or less (there are a lot of overlapping characters from other series in Michael Connelly's newer books). Although Bosch is primarily known as an LAPD detective, he is now retired and is working as a volunteer detective for the comparatively tiny San Fernando Police Department. He clears cold cases because San Fernando hasn't had an actual murder in years. But, the opioid crisis has hit San Fernando and the owners of a family-owned pharmacy in one of San Fernando's main shopping districts are killed in an obvious hit by two gunmen. Bosch and the three full-time detectives swing into action. Bosch is also distracted by a case from the 1980's that has come back to haunt him. A death row inmate has new evidence that exonerates him and he is blaming Harry Bosch for framing him in the first place and Bosch may be held financ...

Originally published in hardback book form in 1991. Published by Simon and Schuster Audio. Read by the author, David McCullough Duration: 11 hours, 19 minutes Unabridged Brave Companions: Portraits in History  is a collection of previously published articles and speeches. It's a smattering of this and that - sometimes it's about art, sometimes about scientists, sometimes about politicians and sometimes it's just some musings from McCullough about history. It doesn't matter, almost all of it is interesting and well-told. McCullough understands the value of telling history as a story - as always he is very approachable. My favorite entry was the story of the railroad that preceded the Panama Canal. It was an amazing story of the power of human will against nature. McCullough reads this audiobook, which is great because McCullough has a fantastic speaking voice and is well known for his voice work. I envy both his writing ability and his talents as a speaker. My fav...

Published by Listening Library in 2004. Read by Dick Cavett Duration: 3 hours, 36 minutes. Unabridged A lot of people aren't aware that the plot for the classic Christmas movie A Christmas Story was not written as a coherent novel but was actually a collection of short stories that the author had written about his childhood in northwestern Indiana during the Great Depression over the years that were then skillfully edited into a movie. These stories don't follow the plot of the movie exactly, but all of the high points are here, including the infamous lamp, the bully, the BB gun, the visit to Santa and the Bumpus hounds.  Jean Shepherd (1921-1999) Interestingly, this audiobook was not read by Jean Shepherd, who was a professional radio personality and told most of these stories over the air (he is also the narrator in the movie). Instead, it is read by television host Dick Cavett. At first, I was disappointed - but Cavett did a great job. This audiobook was a lot of...

Published in 2013 by Random House Audio Read by the author, Jim Gaffigan Duration: 5 hours, 26 minutes Unabridged Despite the title, stand up comic Jim Gaffigan's first book is not about weight or food. No, Dad Is Fat is about being a parent and raising 5 little kids in a small New York City apartment. Jim Gaffigan If you are not a parent, there is probably not much about this book that would appeal to you. This is a point that Gaffigan makes at the beginning of the book in a story early on about when he and his wife traveled with parents of a new baby. True, those parents were obsessive to the extreme, but just about any parent could look at that extreme and think to themselves, "Yeah. That's nutty...but it's not crazy nutty. For me, the best part was when Jim talked about his own parents and growing up in northern Indiana. His impersonation of his father and his constant throat clearing (something that Jim never points out but always does) was funny and e...

Published in 2012 by Random House Audio Duration: 26 hours, 59 minutes Read by Sam Dastor Unabridged For most people, Salman Rushdie is, and will always be, that author that the Iranians tried to have killed all of those years ago. I freely admit that this is an accurate description of me. Although I am an avid reader, this is the first Salman Rushdie book that I have even contemplated reading.  Rushdie narrates this autobiography in the third person, which is a little weird and gave me the impression that he is trying to distance himself a bit from his own story. The biggest chunk of Joseph Anton: A Memoir  tells about how Rushdie dealt with the fatwa , or ruling against him and his book The Satanic Verses by the leader of the Iranian Revolution himself, the Ayatollah Khomeini. Khomeini ruled that the author, the publishers and the editors of the book should die for blasphemy and that anyone who died in an attempt to kill them would be considered a martyr. This cau...

Published by Blackstone Audio in 2014 Read by Wil Wheaton Duration: 6 hours, 36 minutes Unabridged Randall Munroe is the writer and illustrator of the web-based comic strip xkcd . On his website, he has a place where people can leave "What if..." science-based questions and he tries to answer them. Why would they leave science questions on a comic strip website? Well, it turns out that Munroe is also a physicist - with a sense of humor. Munroe has collected the best questions and put them into this book: What If? Serious Scientific Answers to Absurd Hypothetical Questions . The questions include things like what would happen if the earth kept growing and when would you notice a change in gravity? What would happen if you fired in an arrow in a zero-gravity environment? How does all of the computing power of all of humanity stack up against all of the actual computers? What would happen if you opened up a giant drain in the lowest part of the ocean and drained it all a...

Published by Tantor Audio in 2017 Read by David Colacci Duration: 8 hours, 17 minutes Unabridged The Corps Justice series continues its tales of SSI (Stokes Security International), a private security firm that sometimes doubles as the President's personal private paramilitary army that acts when he just can't do things politically. In National Burden , the President is in political trouble. There is a plot to frame the President and a very connected contact of SSI is concerned about strange movements in the stock market. So, he contacts his friends at SSI to give him a hand. And, they soon discover that things are much worse than they had ever imagined... Politics, as portrayed in this book, are just not realistic. For example, the President appoints a new Vice President (it was a vacant position) and he just goes to work as the VP. No hearings. No fuss. No muss. No Congressional approval (as required by the 25th Amendment). Imagine all of the squabbling and all of the ...

I Blasted Through this Audiobook. Published by Random House Audio in 2010. Read by the author, Wes Moore. Duration: 6 hours, 12 minutes Unabridged Wes Moore, the author of The Other Wes Moore , is originally from a tough Baltimore neighborhood. His family struggled with loss, poverty, his neglect of his own education and rebellious flirtation with crime. But, he "made it", eventually becoming a Rhodes Scholar, have a career in international finance (which was interrupted when he volunteered to serve as a paratrooper in Afghanistan), and now heads two educational foundations, writes articles and makes political commentary. One day, Moore was sent an article about another young man from Baltimore also named Wes Moore. The other Wes Moore is a convicted murderer and is serving time in prison. This prompted the author to reach out to the other Wes Moore and eventually write this dual biography about how they both ended up in two very different places. It is not a judgment...

Published by Random House Audio in 2009 Read by Don Leslie Duration: 13 hours Unabridged I am an avid reader of Civil War era histories (I own more than 100 and who knows how many that I have read from the library) and it is rare for me to find a book that covers new territory for me. This book did. I knew as an abstract fact that there were thousands of white Union soldiers that came from the Confederacy. They are mentioned in many histories, but they are rarely a focus. The State of Jones focuses on the family of Newton Knight, an unwilling Confederate soldier who was forcibly drafted, fought in multiple battles and eventually went AWOL.  Newton Knight was not afraid to fight and kill for what he believed in. When the government tried to force him back into the military he  started an anti-Confederate insurgency movement centered in Jones County, Mississippi. Those renegades tied up Confederate military assets and virtually stopped in-kind tax collections that were ne...

Published in 2012 by Tantor Audio Duration: 5 hours, 2 minutes Read by the author, Ken Jennings Unabridged In Because I Said So , Ken Jennings takes his famous encyclopedic knowledge of trivia that served him so well on Jeopardy and applies it to 125 bits of folk wisdom that we've all heard of the years that we all know but never really think about, let alone question. Do you really need to wait an hour after eating before you swim? Will your eyes really freeze that way? Do you really need to drink 8 glasses of water or will you ruin your eyesight if you read in low light? Ken Jennings does the research and finds the answers in a short, succinct and sometimes snarky fashion. I am only rating this audiobook 4 stars rather than 5 for one reason - the narrator. The author, Ken Jennings, read the book himself and there is always a danger when an author reads his or her own book rather than hiring a professional.  It must be great to keep it all "in house" but there...

Published by Macmillan Audio in July of 2017 Read by Christina Delaine Duration: 10 hours, 6 minutes Unabridged Cassie Dewell moved to North Dakota in her last book, one of the few experienced police officers in an oil boom town. In Paradise Valley the oil boom has mostly died down due to a drop of petroleum prices - but the town is still a much busier place than it was before the boom. The local sheriff is pondering retirement and wants Cassie Dewell to replace her. But, Dewell has other goals - and one of them is the pursuit of the serial killer known as the Lizard King. He is a long haul trucker who specializes in killing truck stop prostitutes (known as "lot lizards", thus the serial killer's nickname). He was also part of a conspiracy that resulted in the death of her mentor and partner, Cody Hoyt and nearly killed her. Dewell has a plan to capture this serial killer - a plan that is not officially on the books with the department. But, when the trap is finally...

Published by Simon and Schuster Audio in 2016 Read by Robert Petkoff Duration: 9 hours, 40 minutes Unabridged This book is part of a series marking the 50th anniversary of Star Trek. Captain to Captain features Captain Una, better known as Number One in the original pilot episode of the Original Series ("The Cage") and the regular cast of the Original Series. Captain Una, a legendary Starfleet officer, comes to the Enterprise on a surprise visit for vague reasons and promptly steals a secret object that captains of the Enterprise keep hidden away from even the Federation. Kirk isn't even sure what it is exactly, but he knows it can't fall into the hands of the Klingons, the Romulans and maybe not even the Federation because what he does know is that it is the key to more power than anyone should be able to control.  Number One from the original pilot of Star Trek Now Kirk has two questions: Why did Captain Una steal the object? Why is Captain Una heading t...