DWD's Reviews

"Focus" lacks focus Published in 2013 by HarperCollins. Read by the author, Daniel Goleman. Duration: 8 hours, 8 minutes. Unabridged Dr. Daniel Goleman is best known as the author of Emotional Intelligence . In many ways this book is less of a book about the importance of focus and more of a sequel to Emotional Intelligence . It is also a anti-global warming manifesto, an education reform book, a self-help book for business leaders who want to be the real leaders in their offices and there is a little bit about how people are able to focus their attentions a bit more and get better results. That, of course, is the problem with the book called Focus . The primary topic should be the ability of people to focus and some hints to help you focus better. The book starts out with exactly this...well, focus. We learn how a store detective is able to focus on a crowded room full of bustling and sort out the normal shopping behaviors from the actions of a shoplifter. Gol

Originally published in 1971. Audiobook edition published by HighBridge Audio in 2013. Read by Brian Holsopple  Duration: 6 hours, 1 minute. Ross Thomas (1926-1995) is a multiple Edgar Award winner. HighBridge Audio is going back and re-releasing a number of his books as audiobooks.  The Backup Men is #3 in the four part Mac McCorkle series. I had not read or listened to any books by Ross Thomas before this one and, to his credit, Thomas did an extraordinary job of getting this newbie listener up to speed rather quickly. Mac McCorkle is a part owner of a rather fancy restaurant in Washington, D.C. that he calls a "saloon." His partner is Mike Padillo who used to work for the CIA or a similar government entity (he is never quite clear about this) and is well-known in the professional hitman/bodyguard/spy community.  Padillo is approached by a couple of well-known members of his professional community, a set of nearly identical male and female twins, the Gothars

First published in November of 2012. To celebrate the 20th anniversary of the first Harry Bosch book, Michael Connelly has Harry re-visit a case from twenty years ago in The Black Box . The book starts with a flashback to the Rodney King Riots in 1992. There were so many questionable deaths during the riots (more than 50) that LAPD put out rolling homicide teams that documented scenes as well as possible until they were called out to yet another death. Harry Bosch and this then-partner Jerry Edgar made up one was on one of those teams.  Most of the victims they dealt with were people local to the neighborhoods where they were found so Anneke Jespersen, a foreign press photographer from Denmark stuck out and Harry Bosch always remembered her and felt guilty because he knew that he did not do a good job of starting the investigation into her murder due to the chaos of the riot - the investigation was barely started when they were called to another scene and by the time a true form

I thought this was cute. It comes from Random House in Canada.

Wow. I Was So Primed to Like This Book... Published in 2002 by Perennial (HarperCollins) But...I should have read the back cover a little better. Right at the top is the Ring around the rosies children's nonsense song: Ring-a-round the rosie, A pocket full of posies, Ashes! Ashes! We all fall down. This is followed by the assertion: "a children's rhyme about the Black Death." Sadly, this is not true and I have known this since the late 1980s when I was doing my undergraduate studies at Indiana University. Why sadly? Because this would have been such a cool fact! I am a high school history teacher and it would be great to able to say, "Look! Here's a children's rhyme we all know and it has this collection to the Black Plague - see how this historical event reverberates through time and even touches our lives now?" Yeah. That would have been cool. And it is a fact that Norman F. Cantor (1929-2004), a leading medievalist shoul

Originally published in the magazine Astounding Science Fiction in 1938. Re-published in e-book format by Galaxy Press in 2010. On the internet you can find rumors that this was L. Ron Hubbard's first science fiction story. Purportedly, the editor was looking for something that was breezy, funny and easy-to-read. I have no idea if this really true, but this short story is certainly all of those things. Sadly, it's just not a very good short story. Dr. Henry Mudge has worked out the mathematics of how to transport oneself instantly from one place to another just by imagining that place. He calls this formula Equation C. But, controlling your mind enough to use this technique is difficult. Try not to think of a place when you hear someone talk about it. So, when someone says a place to Dr. Mudge he goes there, including the moon and Mars. Meanwhile, he is supposed to be giving a major presentation at his university to a group of professors if he can just get there