DWD's Reviews

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 in 2021 by Hourly History. Hourly History has a series of short histories and biographies. As the name implies, they are designed to be read in about an hour. Some of the best offerings in this series are the biographies and this biography of Saint Peter was no exception. Saint Peter, of course, is one of the main figures in the New Testament, probably tied with Saint Paul for the second most important after Jesus himself. But, he's kind of a mystery in many ways because the references to Peter are scattered. This biography gathers together all of those scattered references and puts them in a narrative format so that it reads like a traditional biography. It takes care to note when stories are from the Bible and when they come from tradition (the description of how Peter was executed comes to mind.) The general outlines of Peter's life are laid out with only a token discussion of the implications of his theology, such as the decision to not require converts to Christ...

Published by Zondervan in April of 2024. Read by the author, Nancy French. Duration: 9 hours, 56 minutes. Unabridged. My synopsis: Ghosted is an autobiography of Nancy French. Nancy French had a career as a Conservative political columnist and ghost-writing for people in Conservative circles. She helped Conservative politicians write opinion pieces, helped them come up with clever lines for radio and TV interviews, and even books. She worked with such Conservative stars as Sarah Palin and Ben Sasse. She even worked with the Romney campaign.  The book starts with her childhood in Kentucky, including an awful story of sexual abuse at the hands of a manipulative youth pastor and how that sent her life into a spiral into she met her future husband while she was in college. Nancy French is married to David French, a well-known Conservative political columnist, commentator, and attorney. He worked for two organizations that defended the rights of Christian groups and Conservatives on co...

Published in 2023 by Hourly History. Aretha Franklin (1942-2018) was a true music legend. Nicknamed the Queen of Soul, she dominated the charts in the late 1960s and early 1970s and popped in and out of the charts for the rest of her life. She appeared on television, in movies, and, of course, in concert. Hourly History specializes in short biographies and histories that most readers can complete in about an hour. The reader is not going to get a super-detailed biography, but the reader will get a decent overview. Some of these biographies are quite good, some read like a well-written Wikipedia page. This book was much more like the latter than the former. It went through the Franklin's life and told all of the details, but you never get a sense of what she was like as a person.  I was pleased to see that they mentioned her small but outstanding role in The Blues Brothers . I think it is one of the major highlights in a movie full of highlights. I rate this e-book 3 stars out of 5...

Published in 2020 by ChristianAudio. Read by Neil Shah. Duration: 8 hours, 5 minutes. Unabridged. I heard about The Other Side of the Wall on The Holy Post podcast . I knew that there were Palestinian Christians in Gaza, but I hadn't given it much thought. Generally, I find the Palestinian/Israeli conflict too intractable to think about. It's not that I don't care, it's that simple solutions (or even insanely complicated solutions) don't even seem to be on the horizon at all and in a world with so many problems close at hand, it's easy not to think about problems half a world away. My bandwidth is just not that big. But, the interview was good - it came from an unexpected source in this conflict. The podcast host interviewed Munther Isaac, a Lutheran pastor and teacher. He is also a Palestinian from Gaza. There has been a continual Christian presence in Gaza as long as anyone can tell, although it is dwindling as Palestinian Christians opt out of the conflict z...

Published by Amazon Original Stories in 2023. Synopsis: There has been a murder in one of the newest and most exclusive high rise apartments in London. The night security guard in the lobby was found dead by his girlfriend (she used to sneak in for a little romancing in the middle of the night.) His head was smashed into the corner of the counter and a fancy electronic door key is missing from the collection of spare keys in the office. When detectives start asking around it looks like just about everyone in the apartment building could have killed the guard, including the girlfriend. My review: The first half of this story was pretty tedious. The way the crime was finally solved was kind of obvious - and I missed it! I rate this short story 3 stars out of 5. It can be found on Amazon.com here: T he Rise: A Short Story by Ian Rankin .

Published by Penguin Audio in 2022. Read by Stephen Mendel. Duration: 11 hours, 35 minutes. Unabridged. The Runaway is the seventh book in the Peter Ash series. Ash is a retired Marine with PTSD issues and an intense desire to help people in need. Sometimes he settles down, sometimes he wanders. In this book, Ash is crossing the country and is near the border of South Dakota and Nebraska. He comes across a broken down car and a very pregnant young lady. She is desperate to get going down the road so he takes her.  They get a few miles down the road when they come across a truck blocking the road. They turn around and find another truck blocking the road and leaving them nowhere to go. The hitchhiker tells Ash that he is in very grave danger and he should flee... My review: For a book full of action, thrills, and mayhem, this book was often tedious.  ********Spoilers******** The pregnant young lady is a victim of gaslighting and, eventually, kidnapping. The process was long an...