DWD's Reviews

Published by Dreamscape Media in 2023. Read by Cady Zuckerman. Duration: 9 hours, 26 minutes. Unabridged. Synopsis: Forgotten Trail is the third book featuring Felicity Harland of the Investigative Services Branch. If you are not familiar with the ISB, join the club - I had no idea that it was the "FBI" of the National Parks Service. If the local park can't deal with it, they call in the ISB. That always include murders. Harland is partners with a park ranger nicknamed Hux. He is a big, strong guy. Harland is a short (but very tough and determined) lady. There is always of undercurrent of romantic attraction between the two, but there is caution about acting on this attraction for fear of messing up their friendship and very strong working relationship. Her dog rounds out the trio. In this series, ISB is called out to a different park for each book. It lets the reader get a feel for a new park in every book. In this book, a brutal murder has taken place in a room at a br...

Published in 2024 by Hourly History. Betty White was a staple of the American entertainment scene for literal decades. She was on multiple highly-rated TV shows, was a regular on several classic game shows, guested on dozens of TV shows, and even made one of the most popular Super Bowl commercials of all time.  This short e-book gives the outline of her nearly 70 year career. It's pretty much a "just the facts" sort of book due to the limitations of this book series. Eech history and biography published by Hourly History is designed to be read in about an hour and the sheer length of Betty White's career means that the depth of this biography is fairly limited.  Even if it is limited, I still found this biography to be enjoyable. I rate this e-book 4 stars our of 5. It can be found on Amazon.com here: Betty White: A Life from Beginning to End .

Published by Brilliance Audio in 2025. Read by Luke Daniels. Duration: 8 hours, 25 minutes. Unabridged. My synopsis: Elvis Cole is back on the case in The Big Empty . This time around he is working for a social media personality that specializes in making muffins and making people who watch the videos feel included, like they are talking to the girl next door.  This social media star wants to hire Cole to figure out why her dad went missing about 10 years before. She hired an quality Private Investigations firm earlier, but the results were inconclusive. Her handlers are not enthused about reopening old wounds, but she overrules them. Cole heads out to the small town (by L.A. standards) where her father disappeared and finds lots of stuff - including people who are determined to keep the secrets of the past buried in the past... My review: This was a complicated mystery with an ending that leaves a lot of moral questions about what is best for just a few people vs. what is best for...

Published in January of 2025 by Hourly History. Hourly History specializes in biographies and histories that take about an hour to read.  In this case, Hourly History has a history of a favorite in my household as I grew up - John Denver. The book gives a good accounting of his early life, his early struggles as a musician, and his impressive drive that just kept pushing him forward until he made it. Once he made it, there was no one bigger than John Denver - He had a series of number one songs, number one albums, multiple awards, and movies and TV show appearances. But, it all seemed to come at the expense of his personal life. This little biography covers the timeline of his life pretty well, but skimps on any sort of analysis on his uneasy position as a Country Music artist. For example, he won their official awards, but many mainstay country music artists considered him an interloper - a folk artist who was sort of assigned the title of "country artist." Still, this was a...

Published in 2024 by 3 Girls Jumping. Read by the author, Michael Jamin. Duration: 9 hours, 39 minutes. Unabridged. Michael Jamin is a professional Hollywood screenplay writer. He works in television, working on comedy shows like King of the Hill, Just Shoot Me, and Tacoma FD . In the afterword he talked about his desire to write something more than TV shows. He wasn't unhappy with writing screenplays, but he wanted to branch out.  The stories in A Paper Orchestra are from Jamin's life. Some are funny, some wistful, some very sad. As a group, they all have the feel of NPR's Moth Radio Hour  - but instead of having a variety of performers, it is all from the same man. Jamin read the audiobook. In the afterword, he and his wife talked about how they worked together so that he could perform these stories live on stage. She is an actress and she helped him with presentation style - and I think she was successful at it. I worked my way through this audiobook rather slowly. At ...

Published by HarperAudio in November of 2024. Read by Jim O'Heir, George Newbern, Eva Kaminsky, Janina Edwards, Roger Wayne, Jim Meskimen, and Adam Verner. Duration: 6 hours, 24 minutes. Unabridged. Jim O'Heir has been knocking around Hollywood for years as a journeyman actor. He has had roles in dozens and dozens of TV shows and movies - good stuff and bad stuff - but always regular stuff. He was well on his way to becoming one of those character actors that you see so often that you say, "Oh! There's that guy! He was on that one show." Then in 2009, he showed up on the new NBC show Parks and Recreation playing the bumbling and often befuddled lovable loser Jerry Gergrich. He kept playing this character for all 123 episodes of the show. This book is a dual biography of sorts. It is the story of Jim O'Heir and how he came to the show, but it's also the story of the show itself. Jim interviews producers, writers, directors, and other actors to give us the s...

Published in October of 2024 by Little, Brown, and Company. Read by Christine Lakin, Titus Welliver, and Madison Lintz. Duration: 10 hours, 50 minutes. Unabridged. LAPD Detective Harry Bosch first showed up in a novel in 1992. The Waiting is the 25th book in the series, but he has appeared in more than 30 books and short stories. Bosch is aging. He has aged right along with the series. He would be about 74 years old in this book and he is no longer the detective that goes out and finds the bad guys, but he does contribute from time to time. His protégé Renee Ballard is in charge of the cold case unit of LAPD.  Her unit is almost entirely made up of volunteers and they go through unsolved serious crimes and see if modern technology (like DNA comparison) can help to solve them. This book is mostly a Ballard novel, but Bosch does play a critical role in one of the three mysteries that are dealt with in this novel. I have a feeling that the "Bosch" in the Ballard and Bosch books...

Published in 2024 by Nine Innings Press. Cost of Malice is the third novel featuring attorney Jake Clearwater. Jake is an on-again off-again law professor who is often tempted to trade the classroom for the courtroom.   Clearwater is offered a chance to sit on an informal council of leaders in the prosecutor's office. Cases that may be tough to win are brought to this council and they brainstorm possible strategies and determine if they are even worth the effort. The book deals with three of these cases.  Case one is a murder case in which the two primary witnesses are jailhouse snitches. Case two is a horrific child abuse case in which one spouse literally beat a child to death at the direction of the other spouse. Clearwater wants to convict them both equally despite the fact that one of them literally never laid a finger on the victim. Case three is a school shooting case modeled heavily on the Oxford, Michigan case that ended in April of 2024. It feels right that Cl...

Highly Recommended. Published in 2021 by HarperAudio. Read by Ron Howard, Clint Howard, and Bryce Dallas Howard. Duration: 13 hours, 18 minutes. Unabridged. Ron Howard and his brother Clint Howard practically grew up on America's television screens. Ron Howard starred in the  The Andy Griffith Show and Happy Days for a combined 15 years of his early life. Ron has since gone on to become a prolific director. His credits include Cocoon , Willow , Cinderella Man , and Solo: A Star Wars Movie . His movies have won 9 Academy Awards. Clint Howard starred in the TV show Gentle Ben when was a little kid and has since gone on to become the quintessential model of a working actor. He has more than 200 acting credits, including the original Star Trek series, Austin Powers , The Waterboy , and a recurring role on the soap opera The Bold and the Beautiful . The Howard brothers are the sons of a working Hollywood actor named Rance Howard. Rance's credits look a lot like his son Clint'...

Published by Marvel Universe in 2021. Hawkeye: The Saga of Barton and Bishop is actually two collections in one. The first half of the collection is the text from Hawkeye Volume 1: My Life as a Weapon . To be honest, the first collection is much better than the newer second half.  In the second volume, Hawkeye and Bishop are working separately. At the end of Volume 1 she left for California to be an independent Avenger. That's not really a thing, but she's young and hadn't really thought it through. I found the art and storyline to be convoluted, especially with the main storyline - the Bishop storyline. The shorter Barton storyline is a simple continuation of the actions in Volume 1. Even though it is the shorter part of the story, it feels like it is stretched out and padded while the much longer Bishop story arc feels rushed and poorly explained. I gave a rating of 4 stars for Volume 1. I give a rating of 2 stars for Volume 2. That makes for a total score of 3 stars.  T...

Published in 2019 by Top Shelf Productions. Illustrated by Harmony Becker. Winner of the 2020 Eisner Award for Best Reality-Based Work. Winner of the 2020 American Book Award. George Takei is most famous for his part in the the original Star Trek series and the subsequent movies. But, over the last 20 years or so, Takei has been on a personal crusade to make sure that the  Japanese Internment Camps are not forgotten.  President Franklin D. Roosevelt issued an executive order in February of 1942 to place all of the Japanese on the west coast of the United States into camps because they could not be trusted not to help the Empire of Japan. This order applied to all Japanese, even if there was absolutely no reason to suspect them of doing anything at all to help Japan. Takei's family was included in this round up and this graphic novel is that story. The graphic novel format is ideal for the story of a young man caught up in a situation he cannot possibly understand. Takei does ...

Published in 2024 by Amazon Original Stories. The premise of Tiger Chair is that it is a frank letter from a mid-level Chinese officer to a friend back home. World War III has been going on for a while. It started over the invasion of Taiwan and has now spread around the world. Chinese forces are active on many fronts, including India. China has also attacked the United States in the mistaken belief that America's racial diversity and political animosities would cause American resolve to crumble and it would be a short war. This has turned out to be wrong and the invasion has turned into occupation duty and occupation duty has always been terrible.  I think Brooks has an actual agenda with this book and it is a warning. It is not a warning about China. It is a warning about over-dependence on technology and the foolishness of war. On top of that, it is so easy for one country to think that they have a realistic take on another country's internal politics and culture when they ...

Published by Dreamscape Media, LLC in 2021. Read by Natalie Naudus. Duration: 9 hours, 13 minutes. Unabridged. Synopsis: Felicity Harland is a former FBI agent just turned investigator for the Investigative Services Branch (ISB.) ISB is the criminal investigation unit for the National Park Services. They investigate serious crimes that happen in National Parks.  Harland has been called to Sequoia National Park because 2 customers of an ultra-glamping camping service has disappeared in a remote mountainous location called Emerald Lake. No one knows if they are dead, have intentionally gone missing, or have simply wandered off into the wilderness. No one will say anything about who the supposed victims are because this service is ultra-exclusive and treats the names of its customers like its a national secret. Harland, along with an old crusty park ranger, and an ex-Navy SEAL who has just joined the park service search for the missing pair. What they discover next leads them to one...

  Published in November of 2023 by Little, Brown and Company. Read by Peter Giles, Titus Welliver, and Christine Lakin. Duration: 10 hours, 30 minutes. Unabridged. Synopsis: The seventh book in the Lincoln Lawyer series is also a crossover with the more prolific Harry Bosch series.  Mickey Haller is known as "the Lincoln Lawyer" because, at one point, he didn't actually have an office and he used the backseat of a Lincoln automobile as his office while he rode through LA's infamous traffic. Haller is a high profile defense attorney known for his antics and willingness to make any argument for the defense. But, lately, Haller has started his own version of the Innocence Project - he is looking for cases of truly innocent people who were mistakenly convicted. Harry Bosch is Haller's older half brother (by 15 years.) Bosch is a retired LAPD detective and has always looked at defense attorneys as slimy characters that use tricks to get the guilty people that he arres...

  Originally published in book format in 2000. Published by Listening Library in 2003. Read by Trini Alvarado Duration: 4 hours, 42 minutes. Unabridged. Synopsis: Esperanza is the main character in a fictionalized version of the author's grandmother's adolescence.  In Mexico, Esperanza is the daughter of a wealthy landowner in Aguascalientes. On this ranch, life is wonderful. She has servants and attends a private school. But, life in Mexico in 1930 is fraught with danger. It is only 10 years after the 10 year long Mexican Revolution and armed bands still roam the countryside. One of these groups kills Esperanza's father and her conniving uncles take the ranch and burn the house down to make sure they keep the land.  The author, Pam Muñoz Ryan Esperanza and her mother join a family of their servants (the ranch manager, the household manager, and their son) and flee to America (California) with false paperwork. They hope to work on American farms and re-establish themselve...

  Published in 2010 by Indiana Historical Society Press. Alex Vraciu (1918-2015) was a World War II flying ace, ranking fourth in the U.S. Navy in World War II. He destroyed 19 Japanese planes in the air and 21 on the ground.  This short book is very approachable and tells the story of Vraciu's childhood during the Great Depression in Northwest Indiana (now commonly known as "The Region") and his college years at DePauw University in Greencastle, Indiana.  Vraciu took advantage of a U.S. government program that trained civilians to be pilots with the understanding that if the U.S. went to war those pilots would become military pilots. He trained in Muncie, Indiana and immediately joined the U.S. Navy after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941. Vraciu had a remarkable military career over the next 23 years. Besides destroying 40 Japanese planes, he lost multiple planes, including being shot down over the Philippines and leading a group of guerrilla figh...

  Originally published in 1995 by Brilliance Audio. Read by the author, Tom Bodett. Duration: 15 hours, 43 minutes. Unabridged. The author and narrator. I think Tom Bodett's End of the Road series of short stories is just one of the best audiobook experiences out there. Technically, this book is part of that series even though almost none of it takes places in that oddball community of End of the Road, Alaska (it earned its name by being, well, the place where the road ends.) Bodett is well-known as a frequent panelist on the NPR show Wait Wait...Don't Tell Me!   but he is most well-known for his voiceovers for Motel 6 in which he promised in his folksy way, " We'll leave the light on for you ." I say all of this just to say that this book was a major disappointment.  Everything about this book seems like it should work. It has a grounding in his Alaska stories. It consists of a series of short stories - his area of expertise. But, there is just way too much goi...

  Originally Published in 1939. Audiobook version published in 2011 by Penguin Audio. Performed by Dylan Baker. Duration: 21 hours, 1 minute. Unabridged. Winner of the National Book Award. Winner of the Pulitzer Prize. Declared to be the best-selling book of 1939 by the New York Times. I last read The Grapes of Wrath when I was in high school, nearly 40 years ago. It was assigned reading for my English class and all I really remembered about it was a couple of scenes. I remembered the last scene, with the flood and starving man. And I remembered and early scene where the tractor operator is plowing up the farms, the farmyards and even intentionally damaging homes in Oklahoma. Besides that, I had nothing but a pervasive memory of sorrow and injustice. I've always thought of this book and Of Mice and Men as kind of a set of books about migrant farm workers during the Great Depression. I've read Of Mice and Men  5 or 6 times, though - a fact that I can one hundred percent attrib...

  Published by Bloomsbury Publishing LLC. Read by Tosca Hoskins. Duration: 11 hours, 26 minutes. Unabridged. The book is a detailed look at the Christian Nationalist movement in America. The strength of the book is its meticulous research. It ties together famous names and organizations with less famous names pulling the strings through not-for-profits and political action committees across the country. The author, Katherine Stewart I come to this book as a lifelong, politically aware Christian. I vote, I read about politics and religion, I post about politics and religion and I listen to podcasts that discuss politics and religion. That being said, I am all for keeping politics and religion separate because politics taints and corrupts religion every time and twists it into something it is not meant to be. The book does have its weaknesses, though. One is that the author, Katherine Stewart, does have some degree of anti-religious bias. She is really bothered by religious groups re...

  Published in 2019 by Zest Books. Illustrated by the author, Shing Yin Khor. In another recent review I wrote this: I have a real weakness for oddball travel books. I have read a memoir about a man that hitchhiked throughout Europe and North Africa, a book about a man's bicycle trip from the UK to India, a book about a man who walked across Afghanistan, a book about a man who rode a motorcycle around the edges of Afghanistan, a book about two women who biked from Turkey to China, a book about a man who walked the length of the Nile, a man who walked the Appalachian Trail with his deeply irresponsible friend from high school...and more. And more. And more. This book continues that tradition with a twist - it is done in comic book style. Usually, this is called a graphic novel, but this book is not a novel because it is not fiction. The author calls it a "graphic memoir." Illustration from the back cover The author/illustrator is an immigrant from Malaysia. She came over ...