jaspersu

Could have been a short story

Reviewed: 07-13-23

I like Connie Willis books and short stories. This one was not my favorite. It starts to feel too much like actually driving aimlessly back and forth across arid landscapes in the 4 corners area without making it to any destination. I checked at one point when it seemed to be dragging and saw I still had 10+ hours of the story to go. The characters are fairly flat tools for keeping the road trip going.
The narrator has what seems like a tough assignment of voicing an alien who doesn’t actually talk through the voice she has used to portray the main character. It ends up with the alien’s dialogue coming out as a young woman speaking baby talk, when that seems unlikely to be the way the communications would have registered for the characters or maybe even readers with physical books.

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1 person found this helpful

Stories within

Reviewed: 04-12-23

I found the stories within the main story to be the most compelling part of this book. The unicorn story of the opening is a jolt that lets you know things are not going to go according to standard expectations.

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1 person found this helpful

Great audio version

Reviewed: 10-21-21

I read The Bird’s Nest years ago, as a fan of Shirley Jackson, but it was never my favorite of her works. I loved it this time. It is really great as an audiobook. Both narrators captured/delivered Shirley Jackson’s humor in their portrayal of the doctor and aunt. It’s dated enough at this point to be a period piece by now, but the topics of mental illness and trauma are as relevant as ever.

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9 people found this helpful

Not sure what I was expecting

Reviewed: 05-10-21

Read a lot of glowing reviews, so I thought there would be more to this. I couldn’t stay interested enough to keep the different librarians sorted- the women of the town ran together for me. The story sort of crumbled when it got into the crime ahd courtroom section. Oddly, one librarian character is a singer, but the narratorjust reads the songs- except for one song, which had me wondering if she just didn’t know the tunes for the others.

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Not sure I am brave enough

Reviewed: 11-15-17

I am not sure I am brave enough for this. I am an hour in and still waiting for a character to latch on to. I think Michael York is a good narrator, but I last listened to him reading a Narnia book, and I keep getting the impression he is reading to that same children’s book audience here, which adds to the queasiness of this narrative.

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Not put off by narration

Reviewed: 11-13-17

I read the reviews before buying so I guess I was forewarned and ready for the accents of the changing narrators. I didn’t find this distracting. It just seemed like they were trying to use the speaking style of the person and time period that was the focus of their section of the book.

The topic is really affecting. I knew l little about it from a high school history class, but iI found it so incomprehensible back then that I hardly believed it. After reading this, the part I find hard to believe is that those in power didn’t know exactly what they were setting up when they created the guardian system.

AUDIBLE 20 REVIEW SWEEPSTAKES ENTRY

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112 people found this helpful

Echo

Reviewed: 06-30-16

I am a few chapters in. Interesting. This recording has a weird background echo.

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3 people found this helpful

Quaint

Reviewed: 08-06-15

The stories definitly feel over a century old, and that's part of the fun of reading it now.

I chose this because The Phoenix and the Carpet is read by a character in another book that I love. That character is reading aloud to children, but stops. I always wondered if the children were left hanging, but now I know that the books are episodic, so just reading to the end of a chapter would be satisfying.

Cathy Dobson's narration is nice. It isn't always easy to tell one child character's voice from the next, but it almost doesn't matter. They do sound different from the adults, the magic creatures and the baby, Lamb.

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5 people found this helpful

I enjoy this, but. . .

Reviewed: 07-17-14

If you could sum up A Game of Thrones in three words, what would they be?

Blood, Betrayal, Lies

Who was your favorite character and why?

I liked Syrio Forel the best because he kicked ass and didn't waste words.

Did Roy Dotrice do a good job differentiating all the characters? How?

They all sound different from each other, with regional accents assigned to families, but they all sound like old men. This book has characters of multiple generations and (not having viewed the HBO series) I could not keep the generations sorted the first time through. The Stark children's dialog makes them sound like children, but it gets confusing when young knights sound like old maesters.

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All talk, no action?

Reviewed: 12-14-13

I have listened to a number of Heyer books. This one seems really heavy on expository talk, and light on action or events. The narrator or characters are tell us about background information and off stage events, and that seems to make up the bulk of the book.

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