DWD's Reviews

Originally published in 1884 (U.K.) and 1885 (U.S.) This audiobook version published in 2008 by Tantor Audio. Read by William Dufris. Duration: 9 hours, 44 minutes. Unabridged. I would feel silly writing a synopsis of this book. This is the book that Ernest Hemingway said is the source of all modern American literature. It is almost universally recognized as not only "a" Great American Novel, but is oftentimes acclaimed as "THE" Great American Novel. So, I will skip all of that discussion and just move on to a review of the audiobook presentation and what I thought of the book. The audiobook reader was William Dufris (1958-2020),  a celebrated voice over actor and the reader of dozens and dozens of audiobooks. He did a fantastic job of creating voice after voice after voice. It was quite impressive. An original illustration by E.W. Kemble from the 1884 printing of this book As for the novel, well that was less impressive than I remembered. I read this book in eleme

Published in September of 2022 by Blackstone Publishing. Read by the author, Richard V. Reeves. Duration: 6 hours, 55 minutes. Unabridged. Men, as a group, are struggling in today's economy. The average male's income has falling in inflation-adjusted terms, especially so when you factor out upper class and upper middle class men. Men are more likely to be arrested, be addicts, be homeless, and more likely to succeed at killing themselves. Boys are struggling in today's educational system. They are far more likely to be suspended, expelled or placed in a special education program. They are far less likely to graduate from high school. They far less likely to attempt any sort of post-secondary education (a majority of all college students are female) or training and far less likely to complete that training or degree - even in the rare situations where the post-secondary training and/or education are essentially free. Reeves, an economist with the Brookings Institutions, sees

Published in 2012 by Amazon Publishing. Amazon collected 6 short stories, 1 essay and 1 unfinished sci-fi story and added yet another collection to the Vonnegut library. Kurt Vonnegut (1922-2007) started writing during the Golden Age of sci-fi, when magazines were filling their pages with short stories. Some of these are sci-fi, some are just little human stories.  Indianapolis native quoting fellow Hoosier author  James Whitcomb Riley's poem "Little Orphan Annie" I particularly enjoyed the first story, called "Between Timid and Timbuktu." It is a "Twilight Zone" type of story that I found satisfying in a gruesome sort of way. I also enjoyed the title story. It actually had a surprise twist that was pretty much out of character for a Vonnegut story.  The seventh entry is an essay from 1992. Vonnegut was a prodigious writer of essays in the latter half of his career. I generally am more of a fan of his caustic and insightful essays than his fiction and

  Published in 2022 by Recorded Books. Read by David Chandler. Duration: 9 hours, 4 minutes. Unabridged. Synopsis: Game Warden Joe Pickett investigates a report of a dead elk. Fearing that it is the victim of a botched attempt at poaching, he investigates. Instead, he finds a burned corpse and falls headlong into another murder investigation. Meanwhile, Joe's wife Marybeth, the director of the local library discovers an odd package left at the library with connections to a prominent Nazi from World War II. And...Nate Romanowski is in Denver hunting down an old enemy during the midst of an Antifa/BLM riot. My review: This is a book series about a game warden. Oftentimes, he is joined by a former special forces guy who is so into nature that he used to stand naked in a stream of water for hours at a time to get the feel of a river and its entire ecosystem - from the slime at the bottom to the fish to the birds that swoop down to the beavers that dam it up. Antifa protest in Denver Th

Published by Hourly History in January of 2023. Hourly History  publishes histories and biographies that you can read in about an hour. That can be a tough job for big topics in history like "The Industrial Revolution" or "The Roman Empire" but it is just about right for a short biography.  Little Richard (1932-2020) was an early rock and roll singer with a series of top 40 hits from 1956-1958, including songs like "Tutti Frutti", "Lucille," and "Long Tall Sally." His style was raucous and loud compared to most singers, except maybe for Jerry Lee Lewis. He also was one of the first black artists to cross over to white audiences.   Unlike most singers from that era, Little Richard never really disappeared from the public eye. He had a series of comebacks and kept on showing up with comeback tours, songs on movie soundtracks, live greatest hits albums and TV and movie appearances.  Little Richard was known as a flamboyant showman. He wore

  Published by Penguin Audio in 2017. Read by Stephen Mendel. Duration: 11 hours, 55 minutes. Unabridged. Synopsis: Peter Ash is a veteran of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. He has had trouble settling in to civilian life. Specifically, he has a fear of enclosed places. He is good with his hands and restored an old pickup truck. He drives the truck all over the place and explores America by hiking and camping. The author, Nick Petrie Ash is hiking in a forest of giant redwoods and stumbles upon a bear, climbs a tree, meets a girl in the trees, finds out she is being hunted by a professional hit team and that's when everything starts to really get interesting... My Review: I like this series, even though it suffers a bit of a sophomore slump in my opinion. This is not to say that it is a bad book - it's not. I am rating this book 4 stars out of 5. I flew through the first half of the book, but the second half of the book was just a bit too ridiculous in my opinion. That being

  Published by Hourly History in December of 2022. The short histories produced by  Hourly History  are designed to read in about an hour. In some cases the size limit makes for a very incomplete history. In this case, I thought that topic and the size limit matched up pretty well. The Gallipoli Campaign was an unmitigated disaster during World War I. Winston Churchill (yes, the famous one from World War II) was the head of British navy and thought up a plan to do three things: 1) relieve the pressure on Russia from the Germans and the Ottomans; 2) possibly knock the Ottoman Empire out of the war; 3) encourage the Germans to divert more troops away from the French front to support the Ottoman Empire. The plan Churchill came up with was to land thousands of soldiers from France, Britain, Australia and New Zealand on the Gallipoli Peninsula at the edge of the Aegean Sea in a quick and bold attack. Troops from Australia and New Zealand landing at  Gallipoli - April 25, 1915. What actually