DWD's Reviews

  Illustrated by the author. Published in 2021 by Graphix. Winner of the British Fantasy Award for Best Comic/Graphic Novel (2022) Synopsis: Morgan Kwon's parents have recently divorced. 15 year old Morgan, her annoying little brother and her mom have moved away from the city to an island just off of mainland Canada. Morgan seems to be doing pretty well. After all, she has a great group of friends. But, there are struggles. Her little brother has become extra annoying, she misses her dad and she can't wait to get off of this island and go to college and be her true self.  You see, Morgan has a secret that she is afraid to share with anyone - she's gay and she's afraid her friends and family will reject her if they find out. It all comes to a head when she meets a very cute girl while swimming one day. There is a more than a spark of romance, but it turns out that this new girl has a secret that dwarfs Morgan's secret! My review: This is an absolutely enjoyable comin...

  Published in 2022 by Macmillan Audio. Read by Eric Jason Martin. Duration: 6 hours, 39 minutes. Unabridged. McKibben looks back at his life in the suburbs in the 1960s and the 1970s and modern America and compares the two. In certain circles this is an invitation to complain about the modern world with comments like, "When I was a kid, we didn't have all of this blah, blah, blah foolishness." This is not that sort of book. McKibben looks at three general areas: 1) The way that history was taught and the ways that he perceived that his country acted ("The Flag"). He grew up in Lexington, Massachusetts and was a tour guide as a young man for tourists who came to celebrate the bicentennial in 1976. The more he has learned, the more he knows that he was taught a simplistic, feel-good version of American history in school; 2) The things that his church taught him and how churches have fared over the intervening years ("The Cross"). He grew up and was very...

Published by HarperCollins Publishers Limited in 2016. Read by Mike Grady. Duration: 7 hours, 33 minutes. Unabridged. Peter Wohlleben is a forester in Germany, meaning that he manages a commercial forest in Germany. Even though he manages a commercial forest, he is a real fan of true "old growth" forests. Over the years he has gone out of his way to really study the way forests work as a complete unit.  In The Hidden Life of Trees , his observations and research combine to tell an active, but very slow story of trees. Compared to people, many trees live a much slower life (centuries vs. decades), but a forest of trees is more than just an accidental accumulation of trees whose seeds all landed in the same place.  In many ways, a healthy forest is a lot like a giant organism - it shores up its weak parts, it sustains itself, it is extraordinarily complicated and if one part is out of whack, the whole thing can suffer. Wohlleben explores these themes in some detail with a lot o...

  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 Blackstone Audio in 2016. Read by Andrew Elden. Duration: 7 hours, 44 minutes. Unabridged. In 2012, Ken Ilgunas embarked on a 1,900 mile hike from the beginning of the proposed Keystone XL pipeline in Alberta, Canada to its terminus on the Gulf Coast of Texas.  He did this because he is opposed to the pipeline and is very concerned about the expanded use of fossil fuels, the environmental damage caused by the mining of oil sands and the potential for spillage from the pipeline. Along the way, he blogs about his experiences with his iPad in the hopes of creating a little buzz about the topic. He was inspired to do this by a series of conversations he and a friend had during a stint in the kitchen at a Prudhoe Bay oil drilling site. They were going to hike the entire length together, but his friend begged off and fell into a support role, occasionally mailing him food and replacement pieces of equipment and boots (he went through 3 pairs of boots on this hike). Ilgun...

Published by Scholastic in 2018 What Would She Do? is collection of very readable short biographies of women - which, after being factually correct, is the most important thing. As David McCullough said,  " No harm's done to history by making it something someone would want to read."  Woodward writes in an informal, approachable style that I enjoyed quite a bit. Each biography is accompanied by a full page illustration of the woman and a little chart with basic biographical information. There is also a large pullout quote from or about her. For example, for Emma Watson there is this quote: "The saddest thing for a girl to do is to dumb herself down for a guy." Generally, I did not like the "What Would _____ Do?" section that was included at the end of each biography. The author was clearly trying to make a connection between the women in the book and the typical American student with typical American student problems. But, trying to connect Cleopatra...

Published in 2009 by G.P. Putnam's Sons. Years ago, person who left a comment on one of my Amazon reviews told me about C.J. Box and gave me the title to his first book featuring Joe Pickett. I found it at the library and I was hooked. If you like Michael Connelly or Robert Crais, you will love C.J. Box. If you like Tony Hillerman's Navajo Tribal Police books than I am sure that you will enjoy Box's descriptions of the local landscape and the people of Wyoming. In Below Zero  Wyoming Game Warden Joe Pickett is working on two cases. The first case (and the minor one in the story) concern's Joe's pursuit of the Mad Archer, a poacher that likes to shoot his arrows at just about anything. Besides out of season game, the Mad Archer has shot a bald eagle and Tube, the ultra-friendly Corgi-Labrador mix that Pickett has adopted. Joe arrests him and he promptly skips town while out on bail and Joe goes back on the hunt for him. The main story concerns a dying Chic...

   Gritty Realism and Eco-Terrorists in This Firefighter Adventure Published in August of 2014 by MCM Publishing Over the years I have read a ton of books about police officers of all sorts: cops on the beat, homicide detectives, FBI agents, Secret Service and more. But, Kurt Kamm specializes in writing very detailed, authentic feeling books (as far as this high school teacher can tell, anyway) about an equally visible group of first responders that I have rarely read any books about: firefighters.  In Tunnel Visions  fire captain Nick Carter, an expert in underground search and rescue missions, is called in to a task force that is investigating a possible terror attack on a gigantic underground tunnel that helps supply the water for Los Angeles. His fiancee, an ATF Special Agent, is on the ground looking for the same eco-terrorists. The book uses a series of flashbacks to go back and forth from the current day story of the terrorists to Nick's childhood and...

Bad news: your father-in-law has been murdered. Worse news: Your mother-in-law is suspect #1 Published in 2011 by G.P. Putnam's Sons A person who left a comment on one of my Amazon reviews told me about C.J. Box and gave me the title to his first book featuring Joe Pickett. I found it at the library and I was hooked. If you like Michael Connelly or Robert Crais you will love C.J. Box. If you like Tony Hillerman, you will enjoy Box's descriptions of the local landscape and the people of Wyoming. Cold Wind features Joe Pickett, a Wyoming game warden. Joe loves the great outdoors, loves being a game warden, loves his wife, loves his family, hates bureaucracy and hates his mother-in-law. His mother-in-law is a real piece of work and is almost universally despised. She has clawed and married her way to a fortune and has no problem using people and tricks of divorce law to take more money.  Joe Pickett's current father-in-law. Earl Alden, is one of Wyoming's biggest ...

Published by CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform in 2010. Entirely composed of a "best of" compilation of blog posts from the author's blog and tied together with quotes and thoughts from the Star Wars movies, The Force is Middling In This One is a fun bit of reading designed to be read exactly as it was written: in small doses. This book is perfectly constructed for reading while standing in line (which I did with my smart phone and my kindle app) or any other time when you just have about 5 minutes to read. The topics are all over the place, covering topics such as Star Wars, motorcycle riding on the freeway, the author's brain and its lack of focus, the construction of an addition to his house, his life in the least livable city in the United States (Modesto, CA - and yes, it was named that by a survey), Home Improvement Store employees, why gophers are literally evil and a whole lot more. Nearly every posting is interrupted by a totally different ver...

The first of a set - "Guns, Germs and Steel" and "Collapse" Published by  W. W. Norton and Company (April 1, 1999) Most readers of those two books read Guns, Germs and Steel before Collapse in the order in which they were published. I, however, read them in reverse order of publication. Many were critical of Collapse because it was too close to Guns, Germs and Steel in theme and topics covered. I suppose that I am a bit disappointed as well, but not too much. Yes, they cover some of the same material, but really they are the twin sides of the same coin - the rise of societies and the fall of societies. With a little bit of editing, Jared Diamond could have merged these two books into one and created one monster-sized tome (800 plus pages) on the rise and fall of societies around the world. Diamond's theses are cogent, coherent and clear. Really, it is a wonderful volume for the student of world history who wishes to take some steps into the...

"Even if the theory of global warming is wrong, we will be doing the right thing." Published in 2007 by Regnery Publishing 366 pages I am a former environmentalist. Quotes like the one in my title (from Tim Wirth, a former Senator and Clinton State Department official) pushed me to be a FORMER environmentalist. Now I am a conservationist. I do believe some wild spaces should be saved. I recycle (A lot!). I coordinate my school's paper recycling program. I own several of those little fluorescent bulbs and I use them every day. I don't spray chemicals all over my yard. I don't dump motor oil down the drain. I pick up garbage when I walk the dog. I go camping. I go to the Earth Day celebration in downtown Indianapolis because it's a great place to get information on clean-up events and they give away free trees! I also love it when they assume that I must be an ultra-liberal just to be there! Now that I've said all of this, let me say ...

A wonderful science debate cradled in a hard-to-swallow action story Published in 2004 by Harper Collins. State of Fear is really two books. One is by Crichton the science essayist. Crichton's scientific comments about the environmentalist movement are most interesting and well-put. This is the only work of fiction that I've read with actual footnotes in it! Crichton throws down the gauntlet in this one and wants you to look into it for yourself. If only Dan Brown had done the same with The DaVinci Code ! Michael Crichton (1942-2008) Crichton the story-teller is not at his best here. The plot is, for all practical purposes, merely a shallow medium to carry forth Crichton's scientific arguments. It does that but it is not, in and of itself, terribly interesting. If the scientific debates were removed from the book, the action could not carry the book on its own merit. Read it for the different perspective on global warming, not for the plot. I give the...

Entertaining, not terribly deep Much like a typical day on Glenn's show, An Inconvenient Book: Real Solutions to the World's Biggest Problems is fun, easy to digest, all over the place and sometimes a bit kooky. Glenn starts out with a bang with his anti-Al Gore chapter and it is strong. In the middle he gets off track with chapters like the one about chick flcks and guy movies, blind dates and the one about aging (I fail to see how wearing a toupee or not is one of the world's biggest problems). His constant cheap shots on overweight people is not endearing, either. However, his chapters on the United Nations, political correctness, college education and the minimum wage are all very strong. He ends up with his pet theory that America is being led towards a Mexican-American-Canadian united country. He discusses this from time to time on his show. He makes a weak case in his book and it is a dud of a chapter to end with. Not having footnotes, endnotes o...

From a former environmentalist teacher, now a conservationist steward I once proudly called myself an environmentalist. Now I am a conservationist and a steward. I believe some wild spaces should be saved. I recycle (A lot!). I coordinate my school's paper recycling program. I own several of those little fluorescent bulbs and I use them every day. I don't spray chemicals all over my yard. I don't dump motor oil down the drain. I pick up garbage when I walk the dog. I go camping. I go to the Earth Day celebration in downtown Indianapolis because it's a great place to get information on clean-up events and they give away free trees! I also love it when they assume that I must be an ultra-liberal just to be there! Now that I've said all of this, let me say that I am not an environmentalist. I used to be. Way back when, when I first started teaching, I showed movies to my kids in world geography that said the world as we know it is going to end by the year 2000....

The Thirteen American Arguments offers a lot of potential but doesn't deliver Howard Fineman I heard Howard Fineman on the radio discussing The Thirteen American Arguments: Enduring Debates That Define and Inspire Our Country one day and scribbled the book title down in my little notepad as I was driving down the road. The idea behind this book is truly great - find 13 central arguments that have been passed down over time and look how different eras of Americans have addressed them. Fineman's 13 arguments are: 1. Who is a person? 2. Who is an American? 3. The role of faith 4. What can we know and say? 5. The limits of Individualism 6. Who judges the law? 7. Debt and the Dollar 8. Local v. National Authority 9. Presidential Power 10. The terms of trade 11. War and Diplomacy 12. The environment 13. A fair, "more perfect" union He adds to these by noting 5 groups that often have competing visions about what to do with each of these: the St...

Neat idea but bad follow through Published in 2006 by Three Rivers Press. I grabbed Crunchy Cons: The New Conservative Counterculture and Its Return to Roots on impulse as I was leaving the local purveyor of books. You see, I am a "Crunchy Con" of sorts, being an avid recycler. But, this book really failed to reach me. In fact, I felt like I was being preached at with certain topics being outright hammered into my skull due to their repetitive re-occurrence. Pluses: -The book addresses the fact that the conservative movement is not monolithic and their are a variety of reasons for people to espouse conservatism. -Embraces a belief in buying local - something I try to do when I go out to eat or shop whenever reasonably possible. -Points out how silly it is to apply big business agricultural regulations to family farms. Negatives: -What the heck is "crunchy"? Search the internet and you may get a reference to "Crunchy granola", which bas...