DWD's Reviews

  Originally published in 2004. Published by Recorded Books in 2007. Read by George Guidall. Duration: 13 hours, 17 minutes. Unabridged. The Longmire book series is the definition of a successful franchise with 16 novels and a six season television series. I watched the series and I enjoyed it immensely, so I decided to give the books a go. There are obvious differences in characters (The Ferg is a massive change, for example), but they are not deal-breakers. I prefer to look at them as another interpretation of the characters.  The main mystery in The Cold Dish was highly adapted for the TV series, so much so that it was basically a whole new mystery. A few years earlier 4 white high school boys sexually assaulted a fellow student. She was Native American who suffered from fetal alcohol syndrome and didn't really understand what had happened. The trial that followed was rough on the local white and Native American communities and ended with minimal punishments for the boys....

  Originally published in 1995. Published in 1998 by Pelican Publishing Company. The answer to one of the more popular Civil War trivia questions is: Stand Watie. The question is: Who was the last Confederate General to surrender at the end of the Civil War? Stand Watie is unique because he is the only Native American to become a general during the Civil War. The Cherokee and other Indian Nations living in Oklahoma were drawn into the Civil War and fought in more than 30 engagements - some relatively small and some quite large.  Slavery was a factor (Watie had slaves and a plantation), but there were also local political issues that were probably more influential.  Like most of the fighting in the West, the battles were not large by Civil War standards, but the fighting was usually pretty personal. Villages were burned out, refugees fled by the thousands and it was not uncommon for soldiers to know the people they were fighting personally. Also, this front was one of the ...

  Published by Octane Press in September of 2020. I thoroughly enjoyed this autobiography because John Andretti was my favorite race car driver - period.  I have watched auto racing for as long as I can remember. Some of my earliest memories are going to qualifications for the Indy 500. I have Janet Guthrie's autograph - not realizing when I got it that it was actually an amazing autograph to have. The sound of a single car circling the track with the roar and whine of the engine (it has both sounds at the same time) echoing off of the stands makes the hair on the back of my neck stand up. The history at that track cannot be topped by any other venue in the world. I attended my first NASCAR race at Michigan in 1981 with my father. The spectacle of the whole thing was amazing. It was won by my favorite driver at the time, Richard Petty. In 1986, we went to our first Indy 500 and haven't missed one since (the 2020 race doesn't count since no spectators were allowed due to Cov...

  Originally published in 2011. Set in a future America where the world has been invaded by inter-dimensional space aliens that are a living bio/tech hybrid, this dystopian series is full of action and does not offer much in the way of subtlety. The world has been overrun by strangelets - the cutesy nickname for creatures that can rip apart a human being in seconds. This was accidentally caused by a supercollider that opened up a rift that released an electromagnetic pulse (EMP) that destroyed electronic systems across the world. I received this book for free way back in 2011 and it was quickly buried under hundreds of free Kindle book offers that I've found over the years. I was flipping through the list of books that I have not read and the title caught my attention. I have no idea how Spam is involved. I found this book to be intriguing, even if it was simplistic. The only real problem I have is this: 49% of the book is the story I picked and 51% of it is a sample of another nov...

  Published in 2019 by Listening Library. Duration; 9 hours, 10 minutes. Read by Oliver Wyman. Unabridged. The eternal issue with Loki in the Marvel Universe is the sibling rivalry between Loki and Thor that is encouraged by their father Odin who dangles the possibility of inheriting the throne in front of both of them. Odin encourages Thor to be "The Hero" and Thor responds too enthusiastically and Odin disapproves. Odin encourages Loki to try and keep up with Thor, but Loki can't keep up physically so he is forced to act using magic and/or tricks and Odin disapproves.  This book is built on this tension. It's an okay book, but not a great one. There are three main settings for the novel - Odin's court, on Alfheim and in London in the late 1800's. For me, the best part was the part in London, but it just never really grabbed me.  In this novel, the brothers are in their late teens or early twenties (or the equivalent to that for Asgardians.)  There was a grea...

  Published by The Great Courses in 2013. Read by the author, Robert Garland. Duration: 24 hours, 28 minutes. Unabridged. Robert Garland Robert Garland gives his listeners a look at the "other side of history" - meaning from the point of view of the lower and middle classes, slaves, regular soldiers, women and children from the Stone Age through Medieval Europe. Occasionally, he looks at the rich, but not quite famous as well. He also explores how religion worked in every day life, family life, marriage ceremonies, how many jobs were performed and funeral rites in Mesopotamia, Ancient Egypt, Ancient Greece, the Persian Empire, the Roman Empire and Medieval Europe, particularly England. Garland is a lecturer at Colgate University in New York State so he delivers this information through a series of 48 half-hour lectures. Asking for all 48 lectures to be 5 star quality is asking too much, but I found this to be an enjoyable and educational listen. Highly recommended. I rate thi...

Published in 2019 by Fortress Press Lenny Duncan, as noted in the title, is a black pastor in a very white church body - the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA). I belong to a different Lutheran denomination, but I recognize the congregations and the issues he is talking about. I found out about Dear Church from an interview on the morning news on NPR. Duncan took a unique route to becoming a pastor. He was a homeless teen, he was a prostitute, he served time in jail and he was seeking something spiritual when he attended an ELCA church and heard the Lutheran teachings on God's grace and his life was changed. Now, he is a pastor telling this church that he loves that it must do better. To be fair to the ELCA, this letter is not just applicable to that denomination, it is applicable to most of the mostly white mainline protestant denominations. But, comments like this one are more than fair for all Lutheran churches: " People are deciding not to come to our churche...