DWD's Reviews

Published by HighBridge Audio in 2009. Performed by the guests and cast of  Wait Wait...Don't Tell Me! Duration: 2 hours and 29 minutes. If you have not discovered NPR's weekly radio show  Wait Wait...Don't Tell Me!   ,  then I pity you. This clever show is truly one of the funniest shows on radio or television or just about anywhere and this collection is promoted as a distillation of 12 of the best visits from a very funny crop of celebrity visits. They truly are all funny. Even the people who I had never heard of like Philippe Petit and Michael Pollan were funny and interesting. Other, more well known personalities (at least to me), like Carrie Fisher ( Star Wars ), Jane Curtin ( Saturday Night Live, 3rd Rock from the Sun ) , Neal Patrick Harris ( Doogie Howser, How I Met Your Mother ), and Leonard Nimoy ( Star Trek ) were as funny or funnier than I expected. This audiobook focuses on a part of the show - the "Not my job" segment. In this segment a cele...

Published by HighBridge Audio in 2012. Performed by the guests and cast of Wait Wait...Don't Tell Me! Duration: about 2 hours. If you have not discovered NPR's weekly radio show  Wait Wait...Don't Tell Me!  , then I pity you. This clever show is truly one of the funniest shows on radio or television or just about anywhere and this collection is promoted as a distillation of the best of a very funny crop. The question is, is it truly "More of the Best"? Yes. It lives up to its own hype. They truly are all funny. Even the people who I had never heard of like Neko Case and Tavi Gevinson were funny and interesting. Other, more well known personalities (at least to me), like Henry Winkler, Jane Goodall, Vince Gill and Brian Williams were as funny or funnier than I expected. This audiobook focuses on a part of the show - the "Not my job" segment. In this segment a celebrity is asked 3 questions about a topic about which they may not have any pa...

Published by HighBridge Company/NPR in 2008. Multiple Performers Duration: 2 hours, 11 minutes. If you are familiar with the NPR radio show Wait Wait...Don´t Tell Me then you know what this collection is all about. Clever people playing silly games with news stories. This collection comes from 2006-2008 so the news is a little old. But, then again, you don´t listen to this show for the news - you listen to it for the funny takes on the news by the guests and the panel. Guests include Michael Moore (note: I am not a big fan of Michael Moore but he was very funny), Ted Koppel, Drew Carey and NBA star Chris Paul. Besides the guests, there is just a lot of silly news and even better commentary on it. Regular panelist Paula Poundstone was hilarious as was P.J. O´Rourke, Roy Blount Jr, Mo Rocca and Tom Bodett. If you love this radio show, this is a must-listen. I rate this audiobook 5 stars out of 5. This audiobook can be found on Amazon.com here: The Best of Wait Wait...Don´t Tel...

Should be called "Funny People in Rather Boring Interviews"   Published by HighBridge Audio in 2010 Multicast Performance Duration: 2 hours, 12 minutes This collection of performances from NPR's vast radio library is the second volume of "Funniest Driveway Moments." They are called Driveway Moments because the idea is supposed that the stories are so good that the listener sits in the driveway and listens to the end of the story when he/she gets home rather than just turning off the car and going on into the house. But, most of this 2 CD set should be called "Funny People in Rather Boring Interviews."  The collection starts out with a run-of-the-mill interview with Joan Rivers (Sorry NPR but discussing her husband's suicide is just not funny) and the most boring interview with Harry Shearer that I have ever heard. There was an interview with Harold Ramis about how to write comedy that was vaguely humorous and I was really beginning to w...

Published by HighBridge Audio in 2009. Performed by the guests and cast of  Wait Wait...Don't Tell Me! Duration: Approximately 2 hours and 15 minutes. If you have not discovered NPR's weekly radio show  Wait Wait...Don't Tell Me!   ,  then I pity you. This clever show is truly one of the funniest shows on radio or television or just about anywhere. This collection has 12 of the best visits from celebrity visits from 2001-2006. Most of these are funny or at least interesting. Then Senator Barack Obama starts off the collection with possibly the funniest visit of the bunch (and I am not a fan of Mr. Obama, but funny is funny). Tom Hanks ( Saving Private Ryan ) and Tom and Ray Magliozzi (NPR's Car Talk ) are also funny throughout their segments.  This audiobook focuses on a part of the show - the "Not my job" segment. In this segment a celebrity is asked 3 questions about a topic about which they may not have any particular expertise  and if they ge...

Originally published in 1964. This book is Martin Luther King's well-written defense of the Civil Rights Movement. As the title suggests, it is the argument detailing why African-Americans could no longer wait for the rights that they were guaranteed by the Constitution to be eventually given to them and the best way to do that was the application of nonviolent direct action.  Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. (1929-1968) The strongest part of the argument is the middle third - the entire text of his famed Letter from Birmingham Jail .  I think Letter from Birmingham Jail is one of the most profound documents in American history. Its arguments pull from multiple points and authors in history, the very documents and history that white Americans prided themselves as the roots of their own country while King sat in a jail - and shows that those roots were being ignored in defense of the indefensible when it came to African-Americans. It is truly a brilliant piece of writing ...

An interesting look at the experiences of a London paramedic Tom Reynolds (a pseudonym) is the writer of a blog about his experiences as a paramedic in London. There are 212 entries that read like they were lifted from his blog, perhaps given a little editing and some re-arranging and then printed. If you like the television show Cops than this format may be of particular interest to you. There are things to be gleaned from the book: You learn that a blanket is the most important tool in an ambulance. You learn that, like on the show COPS, alcohol creates a lot of trouble. You learn that Britain's NHS is seriously overburdened. Reynolds discusses hospitals filled to capacity, ambulance services that make people wait for over an hour (not always but it does happen), hospitals without basic supplies like pillows and blankets, a boy with a history of collapsing waiting for weeks for an MRI scan (I have had two on an emergency basis in the last 3 years for one I had to wai...

  Originally published in 1995 by Brilliance Audio. Read by the author, Tom Bodett. Duration: 15 hours, 43 minutes. Unabridged. The author and narrator. I think Tom Bodett's End of the Road series of short stories is just one of the best audiobook experiences out there. Technically, this book is part of that series even though almost none of it takes places in that oddball community of End of the Road, Alaska (it earned its name by being, well, the place where the road ends.) Bodett is well-known as a frequent panelist on the NPR show Wait Wait...Don't Tell Me!   but he is most well-known for his voiceovers for Motel 6 in which he promised in his folksy way, " We'll leave the light on for you ." I say all of this just to say that this book was a major disappointment.  Everything about this book seems like it should work. It has a grounding in his Alaska stories. It consists of a series of short stories - his area of expertise. But, there is just way too much goi...

This is a list of the best of the best of the 101 books and short stories that I read or listened to in 2013. They did not have to be released in 2013. I broke the books into several categories. The reviews are linked.  * indicates the best book in that category. Fiction books: * Breaking Point (Joe Pickett #13) by C.J. Box His Majesty's Dragon (Temeriare #1) by Naomi Novak Suspect by Robert Crais Unthinkable (Jane Candiotti and Kenny Marks #4) by Clyde Phillips Short Story: * That Leviathan, Whom Thou Hast Made by Eric James Stone Overtime in the Woods by Ryan Sean O'Reilly Sledge by Ernie Lindsey Cage Life by Karin Cox Non-Fiction books: * Under the Wire: Bestselling World War II of an American Spitfire Pilot and Legendary POW Escape Artist  by William Ash and Brendan Foley A Dream So Big: Our Unlikely Journey to End the Tears of Hunger by Steve Peiffer with Gregg Lewis A Portrait of Jesus  by Joseph F. Girzone Blood and Smok...

I saw the ads for the Inkheart DVD and decided to read the book first because, as everyone knows, the book is almost always better than the movie. Anyway, the book in built upon a fairly unique premise - the people and characters from a fantasy novel come to life. I say fairly unique because both Dean Koontz and Stephen King explored this idea 20 years ago and several movies have jumped on this same idea in the last year. I do not give the book 5 stars. The book is a dark piece of fiction - relentlessly so. The mood is nearly always somber and I found the book compelling but often depressing. Cornelia Funke The plot is fairly simple and the bad men in the book do a lot more threatening than real evil, but they do evil things - mutilations, burning people out of their homes, kidnappings, blackmail, and so on. I have no problem with books that depict that evil exists in the world. As C.S. Lewis noted: "Those who say that children must not be frightened...

  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...

Originally published in 1933. The dust jacket from the original hardcover printing in 1933. Lost Horizon was the first novel published under the label Pocket Books (Pocket Book #1) and was one of the best-selling novels of the 20th century. My copy of this book was published in 1966 and it says it is part of the 62nd printing by Pocket Books. The story starts in Afghanistan where a local rebellion has caused the British government to evacuate all 80 of the white residents via airplane. The last airplane out is a high performance luxury airplane carrying just 4 passengers. Turns out, their pilot is a hijacker armed with a pistol and he takes them far off course into modern-day Tibet. They have a very rough landing on a high mountain glacier and the hijacker dies. The four survivors start to walk across the glacier but are soon discovered by a party from a nearby monastery called Shangri-La. They are escorted back the monastery and settle in for a long wait for the next supply p...

YIKES! (NOTE: this is a review of the 1st re-cutting of this movie. Stone has since re-cut it into "The Final Cut.") Alexander the Great (356-323 B.C.) 20 minutes into this movie I was thinking that it had real potential. We get to see the ugly details of Alexander's childhood. We get an understanding of his need to conquer, the need to achieve more than his father and his fascination for the non-Greek world (thanks to his mother). An hour into the movie I was confused and disappointed. Confused because of the incessant flashbacks. I knew what was going only because I teach this stuff for a living. How could the average movie-goer possibly understand why Alexander invaded the Persian Empire based on the feeble information supplied by Stone? Stone has an oblique reference to Phillip's murder, but the average movie-viewer does not know even know who Alexander the Great is, let alone that his father was murdered(he shows it in detail in a flashback...

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...

  Originally published in 1999. Version with Neil Gaiman foreword published in 2010 by Seven Stories Press . Synopsis: In the late 1990's Kurt Vonnegut made a series of 90 second recordings for WNYC, the local NPR station for New York City. The premise of each spot was simple enough - Vonnegut travels to the afterlife to conduct a very short interview with someone (some famous, some not) and then he brings word back to the land of the living to tell us the wisdom he has learned. How does he get to afterlife? Dr. Jack Kevorkian , the creator of the assisted suicide machine works with Vonnegut to render him about 3/4 dead in the very room and on the very bed where the state of Texas administers the death penalty via lethal injection. One of the people he interviews is a murderer who had just been executed - Karla Faye Tucker, although Vonnegut misspells her first name as Carla. The Vonnegut mural in his hometown of Indianapolis. Photo by DWD. Since he is 3/4 dead, Vonnegut is ab...

A Fascinating Story. Published by University Press Audiobooks in 2015 Read by Andrew L. Barnes Duration: 6 hours, 36 minutes Unabridged In 1928 a sports promoter named Charles C. Pyle had an interesting idea: a footrace across America - from Los Angeles to New York City. This race would be run in timed stages (like the Tour de France) with pre-planned stops along the way. The winner would get $10,000 and the first two-thirds of the race would highlight Route 66. Pyle brought in legendary football player Red Grange as a celebrity promoter and made grand plans for each stop, including a travelling carnival.  199 men paid the $100 entrance fee and started the race. 55 made it to the end. Along the way they ran, walked and even crawled through searing heat, snow, rain, dust storms, sleet and more. They also faced dog attacks, surges of crowds and the African-American runners faced racist threats in some states. A surprising number of runners were struck by cars. ...

Paul Madriani continues fighting terrorists and never enters the courtroom Published by Harper Audio in 2011. Read by Dan Woren. Duration: 10 hours, 57 minutes. Unabridged. Steve Martini completes a trilogy within his Paul Madriani series that does not have attorneys Paul Madriani and his partner Harry Hinds even enter a courtroom. Instead, Madriani finishes a three book fight against terrorists (both foreign and domestic) in Trader of Secrets . If you are looking for a good courtroom drama, this book will surely disappoint. However, if you are looking for an international chase over 3 different continents, traitors, spies, secret agents, international assassins, a good and loyal dog, secret government agencies and a conspiracy that may kill millions...well this is your book. What are Madriani's qualifications for chasing international terror plots? Hardly any. He is too old, too slow and doesn't really carry a weapon. However, he has a good sense of right and wrong...

Takes Too Long to Get Started Published in 2013 by Bantam Janet Evanovich, the famed author of the fun and sexy Stephanie Plum series, and Lee Goldberg, successful author and screenwriter of the fun and quirky television series Monk  (and too many other shows to list here) team up in a new series.  The premise of The Heist is fairly simple. A super-slick con-man, Nicolas Fox, creates elaborate ruses involving teams of like-minded criminals are successful over and over again in stealing prestigious pieces of art and the like. They are being pursued by a beautiful FBI agent, Kate O'Hare, has literally dedicated her life to the capture of Fox. Once Fox is captured he quickly escapes and Fox uses her personal time (saved up over the years of dedicated pursuit) to track him down. She discovers that Fox has cut a deal with the government and is going to use his talents to help the government take down bigger and badder bad guys than himself in order to stay out of prison. A...