DWD's Reviews

Painted Ladies is Robert B. Parker's latest offering in the long-running Spenser series. Parker died in January 2010 and this book was already in the pipeline waiting to be published (he has one more coming out called Sixkill ) . According to my count, this is number 37 in the Spenser series. Painted Ladies  is a solid novel. It is nowhere near as good as the best of the series (in my opinion, that would be Looking for Rachel Wallace and the ones created at about the same time in the late 1970s and early 1980s) but it is not an embarassment like Potshot , either. The plot revolves around the theft of a piece of art called Lady with a Finch . Someone has called with an offer to return the painting for a ransom and Spenser is hired to protect Ashton Prince, the art expert who will deliver the ransom to the kidnappers during the exchange. Spenser ultimately fails as a bodyguard as the painting is booby-trapped with a bomb and Ashton Prince is vaporized right in front of Spense

Better than the first book. 6 Discs 7 hours, 30 minutes Read by: Stephen J. Dubner, one of the authors SuperFreakonomics: Global Cooling, Patriotic Prostitutes, and Why Suicide Bombers Should Buy Life Insurance is the sequel to the wildly popular book by the same authors, Freakomonics the movie and a newspaper column . One author is the economics talent - the man with all of the questions who knows where to find the answers. The other is the writing talent (who is learning a good bits of economics along the way, no doubt) who takes these interesting topics and puts them on paper in an interesting way. The goal of these books and the newspaper column is to get people to look at the world in a different way - an economic way of thinking. I find these works to be fascinating, eye-opening and always entertaining, even if I don't always agree with their conclusions (sometimes I think they are asking the wrong questions or have not gathered in enough information). Thei

Enjoyable - offbeat, funny, informative, thought-provoking 9 CDs approximately 11 hours Read by Sandra Burr  NASA Artist's conception of a Mars rover The point of Mary Roach's Packing for Mars: The Curious Science of Life in the Void is not the technical challenges of sending an object to Mars. We have demonstrated that we can send a probe to Mars, operate it and do a bit of exploring. No, this is about sending a human to Mars, a much more difficult proposition. Mary Roach deals with the following (and more) in her Packing for Mars : -We eat, drink, and create bodily waste. How do we store enough food to make the trip to Mars? -How do we deal with expelling bodily waste in a zero gravity environment (no toilets - everything would just float out!) -What do we do with the waste? Can you recycle it back into food? Who would want to eat that? -Can people actually live together in cramped quarters for months at a time with no break and not kill

I love this series   I teach history in a public school so using this Drive Thru History: East Meets West  in my classroom is not a viable option due to the contemporary religious references. However, if you are in a Christian school or homeschool with a Christian emphasis I can enthusiastically recommend this series. East Meets West has two 30 minute plus programs about Turkey and Asia Minor. Turkey is literally where the Middle East meets the West. In episode 1, Dave Stotts takes us to Cappadocia, a unique area with an underground city and roots in the Old Testament and in the post-Biblical era as a scene of anti-Christian persecution by both the Romans and the Muslims. Episode 2 is the stronger of the two. It covers the Emperor Constantine, the controversy that caused the creation of the Nicene Creed, the fall of Constantinople and the wonderful Hagia Sofia church turned to mosque now museum. Episode 3 is a "best of" for the first 4 volumes with a blooper reel

An entertaining read W. Hodding Carter covers plumbing from the Ancient Indians, Greeks and Romans to modern day Japanese badet toilet in  Flushed: How the Plumber Saved Civilization , a meandering romp through sewers, both past and present. Carter's light-hearted writing style makes it a fun read. He meanders all over the world of bathrooms, pipes and open-pit sewers but the trip is a fun one. There are a lot of detours, but it's fun and informative. W. Hodding Carter That being said, there are a couple of stumbles. On page 30 he claims the Hellenistic Age is named for Helen of Troy, which is ridiculous. Chapter 8 "Blame It On the Christians" is an equally ridiculous attempt to blame all of the Western world's issues with defecation and urination (mostly cutesy names like poo-poo and the desire to defecate alone) on Christianity. He quotes Francis of Assisi to make his case that Christianity made using the bathroom and being physically clean a "d

Starts out strong, ends up tiresome Read by one of the authors, Allan Pease 3 discs 3 hours Why Men Don't Have a Clue and Women Always Need More Shoes starts out with a bang, delving into a lot of the differences that drive men and women crazy. These are mostly humorous and mostly full of good advice. But, we never do find out about women and shoes, nor do we find the answers to some of the questions posed in the opening section, such as, "Why don't women initiate sex more often?" Barbara and Allan Pease There is interesting commentary on the reactions of men and women to retirement, why men switch the channels so often and the comments on men's behaviors in public restrooms is dead on accurate. However, I felt cheated that so much of the book (about 1/3 by my estimate as a listener) is about the physical characteristics that of the opposite sex that interest men and women. I felt that this was not germane to the topic at hand and really offered no