DWD's Reviews

This one is tricky to review When reviewing a piece of children's literature, especially a piece by a world-famous author and one that was originally created, not for the general public but to console his young son on the loss of a beloved toy, how can you be fair? Do you let the reputation of the author boost the score? Do you judge this book by the standard of his other books? J.R.R. Tolkien Since I have two small children, I decided to judge Roverandom by comparing it to the other children books that I have been reading lately. By that standard, Roverandom comes off as a solid 3 star book. There is little character development - the emphasis is on a fast-moving plot and plenty of inside family references that are covered in the introduction. This is not a prequel to The Hobbit , but it is a quick, fun read with lots of emphasis on fantasy. This book can be found on Amazon.com here:  The Pocket Roverandom I rate this one 3 stars out of 5. Reviewed on Novemb...

Mostly interesting set of essays The theme of this book is, clearly, threats to our freedom. This can be interpreted as America's freedom, Western freedom in general of the freedom of all people throughout the world. Depending on the reader's sensitivities, some of these freedoms may seem trivial (the freedom of ice cream vendors in New York City to sell their wares near city parks, for example) or may seem monumental (back to those same vendors - can you really ban a licensed business from selling his wares just because you don't want to hear your kids whine all day about ice cream?) The writing is generally high quality but there are a wide variety of styles, themes and issues that make this an uneven read. For example, Stephen Schwartz's essay "Shariah in the West" is mostly an essay about how Shariah is not a threat, but just a media-hyped bogeyman,  followed by a few paragraphs about how it might still be a threat. The "Illusion of Innocence...

     A wonderful gift for an owner of Jack Russel Terriers We just got a Jack Russell Terrier from a pet rescue about three weeks ago. My wife found  101 Uses for a Jack Russell  yesterday and the whole family (even the three year old) enjoyed looking through it. Lovely photos and a sense of humor with the captions, such as "#13 - Someone who takes you on a walk". There's also a lot of captions that get the real characteristics of the breed, such as "#79 - Sentry, "41 - Explorer" and "#35 - Hurdler." Enjoyable. Great gift for the Jack Russell lover.   I rated this book 5 stars out of 5. This book can be found on Amazon.com here: 101 Uses for a Jack Russell   Reviewed on July 17, 2009.

Excellent, for what it is Published in 2004 by Arcadia Publishing. The "Images of Sports" series is intended to be a scrapbook history of a team, or in this case of an event. The Indy 500: 1956-1965 is a 127 page book mostly comprised of photographs taken by Ben Lawrence, a photographer for the now-defunct Indianapolis Times from 1956-1965. This book is not a comprehensive history of the Indy 500, but rather a photographic scrapbook, a yearbook, if you will. In a way, it was also a Golden Era for the Speedway with the new (also now defunct) scoring tower and the arrival of mainstays such as A.J. Foyt, Parnelli Jones and the Unsers. There are captions for all pictures and a few introductory paragraphs for each new section. Not only does the reader get pictures from the race but also from the first 500 Festival parades, shots of the fans, candid shots of the drivers, track workers and even celebrities (the Jayne Mansfield shot is something else!). The race is more tha...

A history teacher's review When this first came out on PBS I started watching it and never got into the flow of it. I hated the fact that they used actors to play real people rather than using the tried and true (and fantastic) Ken Burns style. Ironically, I absolutely loved the book Liberty ! : The American Revolution by Thomas Fleming by - it is, hands down, the best single-volume comprehensive history of the American Revolution that I have found. So, I was pretty much bashing the series because it was not something else. So, here I am years later and I decided to give it a second try. I am glad that I did. Liberty! is much better than I remembered. It is not as good as the book but it the best documentary on the American Revolution I have seen. It is as thorough as one can be in the limited time that this format will allow. "The Boston Massacre" by Paul Revere As for the actor thing - this time around I really liked it. The actors are really good and th...

Not as good as other Linwood Barclay books Published in 2009 by Bantam. I am an enthusiastic fan of Never Look Away and Fear the Worst my first two Linwood Barclay books. This book continues in the tradition of many film noir thrillers - the regular guy who gets his whole life overturned by some sort of crime and how he reacts to it. Unfortunately, Too Close to Home was not the equal of those two books. In T oo Close to Home we meet the Cutter family, a mom, dad and a teenage son. The neighbors are brutally murdered one night and the family skeletons start to come out of the closet in a big, big way as the police begin to investigate everyone who even might be connected to the victims. Linwood Barclay This was precisely the problem with the book, in my opinion. This family has too many skeletons. Every few pages there is a major plot twist with a "sit down, I've got to tell you something" moment. I am still giving the book 3 stars out of 5 because Barclay...

An enjoyable, short read I had just ended a book and was casting about for something to read in my big pile of books in the closet. I came up with "God Came Near" more as a "Why not?" choice than anything else. I've seen different versions of this book around for years, but I'd never picked it up. I soon found myself drawn in. Lucado revels in the "God in the small things moments." He also focuses his readers on Jesus the man - not the movie version of Jesus, the untouchable, above it all Holy Man. Instead, as the title of this book reminds the readers, "God Came Near" - Jesus was God becoming one of us - a walking, talking human being with sore feet, who got thirsty, who took naps and who was known almost exclusively by his first name by everyone, and a fairly common first name, at that. He came as nobody special and became the most written about and talked about figure in history. I was especially struck by a passage in Chapter...