DWD's Reviews

  Published in July of 2021 by HarperAudio. Read by the author, Gary John Bishop. Duration: 1 hour, 34 minutes. Unabridged. Gary John Bishop is a life coach/motivational speaker from Scotland. He calls himself a Personal Development expert.  His topics include how to deal with the pandemic, conspiracy theories that we may believe in and how to deal with conspiracy theories that loved ones may hold dear. He talks about mask mandates and the wildly varied response to them, especially in the United States. He also talks about how we hate the changes to our lives that were brought on by the pandemic, even if we weren't happy with our pre-pandemic lives because the human mind both craves change and loves stability and those are not compatible goals.  The author, Gary John Bishop He gives practical advice. For example, don't argue with advocates of conspiracy theories and welcome them back if they come back to reailty because you've had your crazy moments yourself. He also advise

  Originally published in October of 1987. The premise of this book is that it is the autobiography of a has been artist named Rabo Karabekian. Karabekian also appears in an earlier Vonnegut book ( Breakfast of Champions ). Karabekian is an abstract expressionist, like the real-life famed artist  Jackson Pollock , who is in this novel as a friend of Karabekian. Karabekian's paintings are basically canvases covered with a coat of house paint and then some strips of tape. They were popular for a while. Karabekian's paintings are really a way for him to deal with his PTSD from World War II. He doesn't want to deal with the details so he basically paints pictures of nothing. A self portrait of Kurt Vonnegut. Karabkeian tells about how he got started in the art business, kind of hints around at his World War II experience and intersperses the whole thing with talk about what is going on in his life as he is writing.  I read the book with Karabekian and his author friend Paul Sla

  Published in 2008 by Books In Motion. Originally published in 1999. Read by Rusty Nelson. Duration: 8 hours, 56 minutes. Unabridged. Things are not going well for Undersheriff Bill Gastner, the second in command of the Posadas County Sheriff Department in southern New Mexico. He is planning to retire in a few months and the person he had hoped he woudl succeed him is moving out of state. He found out another officer has applied to a much larger department where there are more opportunities.  Things get even worse, though. A woman that most would consider more than a little mentally off balance calls the department and says that she has seen a struggling small plane disappear behind a mesa near her home. She says that it must have crashed. When a deputy checks it out, he spots wreckage. When they finally get close they find two bodies - and one of them is the Sheriff, a man who notoriously hates to ride in planes. When Gastner and the department start to dig into what happened, they f

  Published in 2008 by Random House Audio. Read by John H. Mayer. Duration: 17 hours, 16 minutes. Unabridged. A reconstruction of what the Viking village in Newfoundland may have looked like Tony Horwitz set out to fill in a big gap in his understanding of American history. He vaguely knew that the Vikings arrived in the New World and did something or other and he knew about Columbus' voyage in 1492 and he knew about the Pilgrims and Plymouth Rock and the First Thanksgiving in 1621, but what happened in between? Also, what about the people that were already here? Horwitz decided to find out what he didn't know and this book is a combined travelogue and history lesson. He starts with the small failed Viking settlement in Newfoundland, Canada, moves on to the Dominican Republic to learn about Columbus and comes to the United States to look at the first Spanish explorers and settlements in New Mexico and Florida. He also looks at the epic and eventually tragic expeditions of explo

Published in August of 2015 by Tantor Audio. Read by the author, Brant Hansen. Duration: 4 hours, 21 minutes. Unabridged. Brant Hansen came to a realization that righteous anger, an emotion that a lot of my fellow Christians seem to adore should not actually be a tool in the Christian toolbox. It's on display all over social media and at public events like the current spate of contentious school board meetings. For example, recently a former member of 2 Contemporary Christian bands was seen at the forefront of a mob that was menacing people in the parking lot after a school board meeting. He yelling, "You can live freely, but we will find you!" at medical personnel who testified in favor of masks. He became the story and all Christians got a black eye as Taliban-type extremists.  The author, Brant Hansen Instead, Hansen is trying his best to take the words of God seriously when he says  to avoid anger. Here are 20 verses that give that counsel. He describes the change

  Published by Pandamoon Publishing in August of 2021. Synopsis: Waterfront in Portland, Maine Dee Rommel is at a crossroads of her life. She is on leave from the police department of Portland, Maine because she lost half of one of her legs on duty. After months of diligent physical therapy (and less then diligent psychiatric therapy) she is being pushed to decide if she is coming back to work or not. She has been helping her godfather Gordy, her deceased father's best friend. He is a private detective and she feels very comfortable with the paperwork and the billing. When Gordy takes some time off to donate a kidney in Florida, a situation arises. One of Gordy's lifelong friends urgently needs help now and Dee is asked to step in and do some investigating while Gordy is down and out from the surgery. The friend is a famous billionaire named Claren - Maine's version of Bill Gates. A local boy who made it big in the tech business. Claren's twenty-something daughter is al

  Published in 2019 by Random House Audio. Performed by multiple readers. Duration: 6 hours, 21 minutes. Unabridged . Part of the new Disney "canon" books, Dooku: Jedi Lost is a look at the origins of one of the characters of the Star Wars prequels - Count Dooku. It is part of a series of "stand alone" books. For me, Dooku just shows up in the movies with a minimum of explanation - not nearly enough.  We learn a lot more about him in the Star Wars: Clone Wars cartoon show but not enough for me. Dooku is interesting as the original model for Anakin Skywalker - the talented Jedi who often argues with the Jedi Council and eventually falls to the Dark Side. This book tells little about Dooku's activities during the Clone Wars. Even though it is set in the first half of the Clone Wars cartoon series, that is mostly a frame that is used to lead the reader through a series of flashbacks that tell about Dooku's early life. The use of all of the flashbacks was anno