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Lawrence

  • 6
  • reviews
  • 5
  • helpful votes
  • 82
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Narrator Horribilis

Overall
2 out of 5 stars
Performance
1 out of 5 stars
Story
5 out of 5 stars

Reviewed: 10-18-17

The narration of this book is the worst I've heard in hundreds of audiobooks I've listened to and I had to warn others not to purchase this.

With an odd rhythm and mismatched accent (some almost offensive), the narrator completely undermines the substance of this important work.

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3 people found this helpful

Don't Be Fooled By the High Ratings

Overall
2 out of 5 stars

Reviewed: 05-04-05

While I was listening to this book, I returned to this page to read the earlier reviews and confirm the customer ratings that had convinced me to listen to it. Perhaps I'd made a mistake and the high ratings were for another book. 5-Stars for this?

This mediocre book tries so hard to be both irreverent and profound, but is just an overwritten psuedo-catcher-in-the-rye-for-the-1980s. Although this book doesn't deserve to be compared to the Salinger classic, the author is so heavy handed in his attempt to model his protagonist after Holden Caulfield that it's impossible to ignore. Just to be sure that the reader doesn't miss this, the book includes a passage in which the protagonist openly compares himself to Caulfield. At that, I laughed out loud, but not for any reason that the author had intended.

I expect we will see "How I paid For College" as a TV movie of the week or a straight to video feature, but I don't plan to waste another 2 hours with this.

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5 people found this helpful

Underworld Audiobook By Don DeLillo cover art

Incomprehensible

Overall
1 out of 5 stars

Reviewed: 11-09-04

I got the feeling that this book was written in some sort of code or new language that I just couldn't understand. Perhaps this is one of those books that doesn't translate well into audiobook format.

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5 people found this helpful

Preposterous Plot; Moronic Characters

Overall
1 out of 5 stars

Reviewed: 05-29-04

One of the worst books I've ever read or heard. I could not get beyond the rediculous premise that the author seems to believe creates some great moral dilemna. Does the author expect readers to believe that an erroneous 6 month old $500 tax delinquency would result in eviction of the owner from a house worth $170K and foreclosure sale of that house for $45K on the same day? What about legal due process requirements? What happened to the sale proceeds and why weren't they given to the evicted homeowner? For those who can get past that, the story proceeds with a series of moronic and irrational actions by virtually every character in the book leading to the predictable ending. A complete waste of time.

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9 people found this helpful

Great, but what's with the musical interludes?

Overall
5 out of 5 stars

Reviewed: 06-03-03

The book is very good, but it is the reader's performance that makes this one of my favorite audiobooks ever. Mr. Tabori gives each character their unique voice and makes the story come to life. I lost myself in their world as the West Side Highway traffic crawled each day and was sad to reach the end of the book. I just don't understand who decided to include the unrelated music at the end of certain chapters (and why).

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4 people found this helpful

A fine listening experience

Overall
4 out of 5 stars

Reviewed: 03-07-03

This reading made the charaters live and the story move. Ms. Glass writes about ordinary people, living complex contemporary lives. There are no black and white problems, nor simplistic representations of good vs evil. Just real folks narrating the events of their lives in voices (captured perfectly by the reader) that rang true to me. Because of the great narration and the slower pace of the story, this might be a book that is better to listen to than to read.

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1 person found this helpful