DWD's Reviews

A Disappointing Adaptation Published in 1988 by Bantam Audio Publishing  Performed by a full cast Duration: 3 hours, 42 minutes Abridged and edited for the radio drama format. Way back in 1968, the BBC created a radio play version of The Hobbit to air in eight 30 minute segments with a full cast, original music and special effects. Due to a dispute between the Tolkien estate and the BBC the original tapes were to have been destroyed. But, the issues were resolved, copies resurfaced and since the late 1980s the BBC has re-issued this version of The Hobbit  in various formats. I listened to a 1988 audio cassette version. J.R.R. Tolkien (1892-1973) Now, I truly love the story The Hobbit  - it is a true classic and I listened to this version to give myself a little reminder of the story before the movie comes out at the end of this year. However, this audio version has some serious troubles. First, the positives. The narrator (a character created for this...

Originally published in 2006. Years ago I worked at a used book store and I was introduced to William Berhnardt's Ben Kincaid series by a co-worker. Pretty soon, all of us were reading the series and recommending it to others and they were moving off the shelf pretty briskly. Ben Kincaid does that to you - he is a likable guy with a rumpled suit and no ego that just wants to do what is best for his friends, family and, of course, his clients. I haven't read a Ben Kincaid novel in a long time (8 years according to the other Ben Kincaid review by me: Murder One ). The good and the bad thing is that William Bernhardt's Ben Kincaid is a lot like Janet Evanovich' s Stephanie Plum. Despite all of the different adventures and experiences, the characters just do not change. Read book 5, book 10, book 14 - it does not matter. Just jump right in. Of course, this is a mixed blessing. It is an invitation to being stale, but also a recognition that people like comfortable char...

An Over-The-Top Satire About College Published by  CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform in 2012. We all know that going to college is a major life event. Everything changes in a student's daily life - new place to live, new routines, new friends, new responsibilities and, of course, being exposed to new ideas.  But, those of us who have gone to college know that the happy brochures that prospective parents pore over with their teenagers are not quite reality. Despite the promises to support young academics in their quest for truth and knowledge, incompetent administration, petty professors and arbitrary decisions often act to make college less of a quest for knowledge and more a test of a young per son's ability to bend and twist to the whims of a bureaucratic system. Can you go along to get along? If so, step forward and get your diploma. David Stag's Bill Smith Goes to College is a satire, somewhat in the vein of Jonathan Swift's famed essay, A Mo...

Hard-boiled detective mysteries at their best Published by Highbridge Audio in 2012 Duration: 6 hours, 31 minutes. Narrated by Peter Ganim, Richard Ferrone, Jeff Gurner, David Ledoux Black Mask magazine was a classic of the era of the pulp magazines. It's specialty was detective stories. If you love the movies with the hard-boiled detective in a trench coat with a smart mouth, a quick gun and even quicker fists who gets hired by some "dame" then this is your series. Erle Stanley Gardner (1889-1970) In the seventh release of the series, Highbridge Audio brings us five stories of varying lengths read by four different narrators. Every story begins with a short introduction to each author that includes a mini-biography of their career and of the characters featured. Many of these characters that made their way to the Hollywood big screen and the title story ( The Shrieking Skeleton ) is written by Charles M. Green, a pseudonym of Erle Stanley Gardner, a prolif...

A Fine Introduction to New Testament History Published in 2012 by Gospel Light Henrietta C. Mears (1890-1963) Part of a larger series of Bible studies based on Henrietta C. Mears' larger book that looks at every book in the Bible,  What the Bible Is All About. This series takes her commentaries and uses them as the springboard for a Bible study. Personally, I did not do the Bible study. I saw the book and thought it would be an interesting look at the early history of the church. I used it as a history and read it the way the original text was intended to be read, although I did glance at some of the Bible study questions from time to time. The text is easy to read and very approachable. The author is good about noting when some areas are a little unsure and gives the reader the most probable answer (for example, it is not entirely clear if Paul worked when he went to a new city to preach, but he probably did based on some of his comments). If there are references to ...

Middle of the Road Addition to the Series Published by Vision (Hatchette Book Group) in 2011 While I am a devoted and enthusiastic fan of Connelly's Harry Bosch series, I am merely a fan of the Mickey Haller Lincoln Lawyer series. On the whole, it just lacks the same brooding intensity of the Bosch series - that sense that the world is not right and Harry Bosch is on the case to sort out at least one little part of it. In The Fifth Witness , hot shot defense lawyer Mickey Haller has fallen on rough times during a recession and he is forced to take foreclosure defense cases to keep his practice healthy. Fortunately for Haller, the Los Angeles area has plenty of foreclosures and not all of them were done "by the book" so there is a way for a talented lawyer to earn a living. Michael Connelly When one of Haller's foreclosure clients is accused of killing the bank officer who has been in charge of foreclosing on her home. She loudly insists that she is innocen...

A Great Start to a New Civil War Trilogy Published by Ballantine Books in May of 2012 Jeff Shaara returns to the familiar topic of the Civil War after writing two books about the Revolutionary War, one book about the Mexican War, one book about World War I and four books about World War II. Fans of Jeff Shaara and his father Michael know that they have a special feel for the Civil War and this book shows that Jeff's talents as a writer have only grown. I don't know if Jeff Shaara could have written about just one battle (like his father did about Gettysburg in the Pulitzer Prize-winning book The Killer Angels ) when he wrote the first and third books that completed the Civil War trilogy about the war in the Eastern Theater. However, he pulls it off magnificently in A Blaze of Glory. Shaara notes in his introduction that his previous books focused on the generals and he has since learned the value of seeing the battle from multiple perspectives. He does it very well here...