DWD's Reviews

'It's not about golf,' said the student to this teacher. Steven Pressfield The Legend of Bagger Vance: A Novel of Golf and the Game of Life was on the shelf in my classroom. I hadn't read it yet and was discussing it with one of my students who was looking for something to read. I had suggested it to him since he is a fan of many sports. He said he'd already read it. I told him I had not, since I am not a fan of golf. He looked at me like I was a small, silly child and said, 'It's not about golf.' At that moment, I determined to read this book. So, this was my first free choice of a book this summer and I enjoyed it. First things first. You do not have to understand golf to understand the book. The golf match is merely the vehicle to move the story forward. When Bagger Vance encourages his pupil to find his 'authentic swing' I simply inserted my own experiences with baseball to understand the feeling. Secondly, the book

An interesting look at the 1850s in the Kansas Territory through the eyes of a young woman . Read by Mare Winningham. Lasts about 5 hours. Abridged. John Brown I purchased the abridged version of The All-True Travels and Adventures of Lidie Newton on tape (5 hours) and found it to be quite enjoyable. The listener is treated to a ground level view of the politics of slavery in the 1850s and how violence based on the 'goose question' (code for the slavery issue) swept through households, towns and eventually the entire Kansas Territory. Smiley's characters are not simple cardboard cutouts - some of the pro-slavery people are quite nice, some of the anti-slavery people are quite insane (she mentions 'Old Brown' and his atrocities and his actions cause some dissent in Liddie Newton's household). Many readers have complained of the plodding pace. Although my version was abridged, there were still some plodding moments. However, the superb

Revealing. Fascinating. Educational. A valuable experience. A+++ Have you ever wondered what it might be like to see the world through the perspective of someone whose mind works much different than your own? How different? Do you want to visit a mind that has different opinions and points of view? What about someone whose mind works in a fundamentally different way than yours? How about someone whose mind perceives the world differently than almost everyone you have met in your entire life? The wonderful thing about a work of fiction is that the reader can be transported into the mind of anyone and see the world as it might be seen from another's point of view. There are no constraints. Elizabeth Moon has done just that in her novel The Speed of Dark . Elizabeth Moon As it proceeds, The Speed of Dark does bring up many important themes and holds its own on matters such as the rights of the individual to be the person he or she wants to be, tolerance and

Grisham continues with a trend previously established Published by Random House Audio in 2003. Read by Michael Beck Duration: 11 hours, 43 minutes. Unabridged. Grisham's The King of Torts continues the trend that he started in other books such as The Chamber and The Runaway Jury . The book isn't really about the characters or the plot. Instead, it's a easy to swallow education into how the legal system actually works. In The Chamber the reader sees how death penalty cases work in detail. In The Runaway Jury the readers sees how a civil jury trial works in detail - from selection of the court venue to clothing worn by the attorneys to jury selection specialists. In The King of Torts we learn all about how the class action lawsuit works. Ever wonder how former presidential candidate John Edwards made his money? This book well give you a good idea. Grisham argues all sides of the class action lawsuit as he tells the story. It can help and hurt the

An enjoyable read but does it do what it claims to do? Malcolm Gladwell's Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking is an enjoyable read - I breezed right through it and found it to be a book that I would look forward to opening up. Gladwell does a masterful job of weaving together 3 or more points at the same time without losing the reader and frequently leaving me amazed at his organizational skills. Malcolm Gladwell That being said, does Blink get the job done? Does he prove his thesis about "The power of thinking without thinking"? Yes and no. He starts out with a great example of a supposed piece of Greek art that may or may not be a real piece of ancient art. His thesis plays out well there, with his comments on why certain musicians make it and others don't and his comments on police and the need to think quickly are all strong. His arguments about Paul Van Riper and the war game he won, however, were more about the power of de-cent

Hits the spot So, here I am reviewing an 18 year old Sue Grafton novel. What does this tell me? It could be telling me that I need to find more current things to read, but I remember 1993 just fine so this book did not feel old to me. What it really tells me is that I have not come anywhere near reading this series in alphabetical order and have never went out of my way to find them. Not that I don't like them - I have liked all but a couple. It is more like they have been my backup books when I'm needing something that I know is going to be solidly written and interesting. In this case, I am knee deep in my summer reading marathon in which I feel I need to catch up on a bit of some of my more difficult reads in my to-be-read pile. Now, wait. I know that the Kinsey Millhone series hardly qualifies as difficult reading. This book was an easy one in the middle - dessert, so to speak. Sue Grafton "J" is for Judgment features Kinsey Millhone's search for a