SM
- 15
- reviews
- 37
- helpful votes
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The Moonstone
- By: Wilkie Collins
- Narrated by: Peter Jeffrey
- Length: 18 hrs and 45 mins
- Unabridged
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Considered the first full-length detective novel in the English language, T.S. Eliot described The Moonstone as 'the first and greatest English detective novel'. The stone of the title is an enormous yellow diamond plundered from an Indian shrine after the Siege of Seringapatam. Given to Miss Verinder on her 18th birthday, it mysteriously disappears that very night. Suspicion falls on three Indian jugglers who have been seen in the neighbourhood. Sergeant Cuff is assigned to the case....
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An engrossing detective novel
- By Lucie on 01-03-09
- The Moonstone
- By: Wilkie Collins
- Narrated by: Peter Jeffrey
Excellent narration!
Reviewed: 05-27-22
One of the best narrators I've ever listened to, especially when narrating Betteredge's parts.
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The Virgin in the Ice
- The Sixth Chronicle of Brother Cadfael
- By: Ellis Peters
- Narrated by: Vanessa Benjamin
- Length: 8 hrs and 23 mins
- Unabridged
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The winter of 1139 will disrupt Brother Cadfael's tranquil life in Shrewsbury with the most disturbing events. Raging civil war has sent refugees fleeing north from Worcester. Among them are two orphans from a noble family, a boy of thirteen and an 18-year-old girl of great beauty, and their companion, a young Benedictine nun...
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Excellent story, narrator a bit rough
- By Pixie Spritely on 01-07-10
- The Virgin in the Ice
- The Sixth Chronicle of Brother Cadfael
- By: Ellis Peters
- Narrated by: Vanessa Benjamin
Terrible narration, amateur production
Reviewed: 03-23-21
The narrator can "do" just one male character: booming and pompous. Almost all characters are males, so in a dialog it's impossible to tell who's speaking since they all sound the same. Even more annoying is that "booming" is literally BOOMING, much louder than the story-line told by the third-person narrator. Adjusting the volume is impossible, which brings me to the production: as old as these recordings are, even then the producers could have leveled the volume, adjusting the "booming" to the normal reading volume. But they didn't, so it's either a whispering third-person narrator with pompous dialogs or a normal narrator with ear-piercing booming dialogs.
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For the Thrill of It
- Leopold, Loeb, and the Murder That Shocked Jazz Age Chicago
- By: Simon Baatz
- Narrated by: Kevin T. Collins
- Length: 20 hrs and 9 mins
- Unabridged
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It was a crime that shocked the nation: the brutal murder in Chicago in 1924 of a child by two wealthy college students who killed solely for the thrill of the experience. Nathan Leopold and Richard Loeb were intellectuals - too smart, they believed, for the police to catch them. When they were apprehended, state's attorney Robert Crowe was certain that no defense could save the ruthless killers from the gallows.
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Great book, awful narrator
- By P'an on 08-27-20
- For the Thrill of It
- Leopold, Loeb, and the Murder That Shocked Jazz Age Chicago
- By: Simon Baatz
- Narrated by: Kevin T. Collins
Oration, not narration
Reviewed: 10-13-20
The narrator seems to think he's Cicero orating at the Roman Senate. Either that or there are 20+ hours of a highschool-quality performance of Hamlet's "to be or not be" speech. Trying so hard to be dramatic, you can actually hear him gasping for air and wetting his lips while over-articulating every single syllable. I gave up in the middle of the 2nd chapter, so I can't rate the book itself. Even as a freebie with Audible Plus, this was horrible.
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16 people found this helpful
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Playing with Fire
- The 1968 Election and the Transformation of American Politics
- By: Lawrence O'Donnell
- Narrated by: Lawrence O'Donnell
- Length: 17 hrs and 59 mins
- Unabridged
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The 1968 US presidential election was the young Lawrence O'Donnell's political awakening, and in the decades since it has remained one of his abiding fascinations. For years he has deployed one of America's shrewdest political minds to understanding its dynamics, not just because it is fascinating in itself but because in it is contained the essence of what makes America different and how we got to where we are now.
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Brilliant synthesis of history past and present
- By Dwight on 11-12-17
- Playing with Fire
- The 1968 Election and the Transformation of American Politics
- By: Lawrence O'Donnell
- Narrated by: Lawrence O'Donnell
Excellent story-telling
Reviewed: 02-21-20
I like academic books and as a rule I dislike books written by journalists and pundits. Even more, I dislike books written by journalists and pundits who narrate their own books. This one was a HUGE exception. Even for non-Americans who hadn't been born in 1968, this book, with O'Donnell's really extraordinary narration brought everything to life: politicians as life-size people, the multi-dimensional chess of the national politics in the US, the step-by-step accumulation of circumstances, mistakes, machinations, ego, ideology, anger, isolation, marginalization, mass media manipulation, loopholes in campaign finance, blind-spots that allowed the assassinations of the 1960s.
I could have picked up most of the dry information in other books. This book is unique because of O'Donnell's writing style, so you can almost touch it, feel it, hear it, smell it.
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Traitor’s Kiss
- By: Gerald Seymour
- Narrated by: Christopher Kay
- Length: 18 hrs and 58 mins
- Unabridged
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Officially, the Cold War is over, and the hand of friendship has been exchanged in public. In private, though, the intelligence war continues. A British trawler strays into Russian waters. On its return, the captain has a package for British Intelligence. For the next four years, a high-ranking Russian naval officer provides MI6 with priceless information. But suddenly he goes quiet. Clearly under suspicion, the decision is made to get him out. But his controllers in London know nothing about him.
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Any comparison to le Carre is an insult
- By SM on 11-04-19
- Traitor’s Kiss
- By: Gerald Seymour
- Narrated by: Christopher Kay
Any comparison to le Carre is an insult
Reviewed: 11-04-19
One-dimensional characters, poor plot, and one of the worst writing styles I’ve ever read. Every section begins with a “He” and then a torrent of insinuations, probably to keep the suspense, so the reader would have a basic acquaintance with the characters by the middle of the book. That won’t even work as a basis for a screenplay.
As for the narration: when narrating an espionage novel about Russia for a commercial production, one might expect some basic preparatory steps, such as checking with someone who actually speaks Russian how to pronounce the Russian words and names. Well, high expectations are bad for the digestion. The narrator had at least 3 (!) different versions of pronunciation for the full name of the FSB. The audiobook is 19 hours long, and every single time there was a phrase in Russian, even when the phrase had appeared dozens of times before, the narrator kept stumbling over it and sounded like he had pebbles in his mouth. I don’t expect the narrator to have a perfect Russian accent, but I do expect him to show some respect for the text (as bad as it may be), the author, and especially – the listeners, by having a BASIC CLUE of what he’s saying.
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Cemetery Road
- A Novel
- By: Greg Iles
- Narrated by: Scott Brick
- Length: 23 hrs and 43 mins
- Unabridged
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When Marshall McEwan left his hometown at age 18, he vowed never to return. The trauma that drove him away ultimately spurred him to become one of the most successful journalists in Washington DC. But just as the political chaos in the nation’s capital lifts him to new heights, Marshall is forced to return home in spite of his boyhood vow. His father is dying, his mother is struggling to keep the family newspaper from failing, and the town is in the midst of an economic rebirth that might be built upon crimes that reach into the state capitol - and perhaps even to Washington.
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Cemetery Road comes to Life...
- By shelley on 03-06-19
- Cemetery Road
- A Novel
- By: Greg Iles
- Narrated by: Scott Brick
Histrionic performance of a bad book
Reviewed: 10-12-19
Decided to give Scott Brick a second chance. There will be no third chance. After the first audiobook (Robert Littell's "The Company") I wrote a note to myself that he sounds like a 5th grader in drama class performing Shakespeare. While listening to this audiobook I read in a Wikipedia entry (or should I say - a PR entry posted on Wikipedia) that he belongs to a theatrical group performing... Shakespeare in schools. Maybe someone should point out that over-acting begins with the word "over" and that's not a good thing. 99% of the narration sounds either like deep mourning (if not clinical major depression) or like an hysterical panic attack. Well, I've learned my lesson...
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8 people found this helpful
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Post-Truth
- By: Lee C. McIntyre
- Narrated by: Matthew Josdal
- Length: 4 hrs and 12 mins
- Unabridged
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What, exactly, is post-truth? Is it wishful thinking, political spin, mass delusion, bold-faced lying? McIntyre analyzes recent examples - claims about inauguration crowd size, crime statistics, and the popular vote - and finds that post-truth is an assertion of ideological supremacy by which its practitioners try to compel someone to believe something regardless of the evidence. Yet post-truth didn't begin with the 2016 election; the denial of scientific facts about smoking, evolution, vaccines, and climate change offers a road map for more widespread fact denial.
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A politicallly motivated partisan diatribe!
- By Amazon Customer on 04-06-22
- Post-Truth
- By: Lee C. McIntyre
- Narrated by: Matthew Josdal
The only interesting chapter was chapter 6
Reviewed: 06-14-19
This chapter deals with the right-wing "hijacking" of leftist post-modernist theories, which reminds the "hijacking" of democratic institutions by what would develop into fascist regimes (see Hannah Arendt's "The Origins of Totalitarianism").
The rest of the book, and especially the last chapter ("what can WE do about it") is an extremely abridged introduction to social psychology, communications research, and the Trump 2016 campaign.
I guess I set my expectations too high.
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The Shadow of the Wind
- By: Carlos Ruiz Zafón
- Narrated by: Jonathan Davis
- Length: 18 hrs and 5 mins
- Unabridged
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Barcelona, 1945: Just after the war, a great world city lies in shadow, nursing its wounds, and a boy named Daniel awakes on his 11th birthday to find that he can no longer remember his mother's face. To console his only child, Daniel's widowed father, an antiquarian book dealer, initiates him into the secret of the Cemetery of Forgotten Books, a library tended by Barcelona's guild of rare-book dealers as a repository for books forgotten by the world, waiting for someone who will care about them again.
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Have the book handy
- By Rebecca on 07-17-05
- The Shadow of the Wind
- By: Carlos Ruiz Zafón
- Narrated by: Jonathan Davis
A note to Penguin Audio and Audible
Reviewed: 04-21-19
I have no idea why the producers decided to add the tacky, corny music bits to every sentimental scene. The only excuse is that this accompaniment was required by Zafon himself, being the composer of the music score.
Other explanations would be less complimentary: maybe someone at Penguin Audio had mistaken the book for a cheesy romance novel. Maybe they believed that Jonathan Davis’s narration is simply not expressive enough or that the listeners are so obtuse that without an unequivocal cue: “Hey! Pay attention! Romantic/sad scene ahead!” they’d miss the mood of these scenes.
At first I was annoyed. By the middle of the book, frankly, I felt soiled, covered with sticky sugary syrup. This feeling would somewhat ebb during the longer breaks of “plain” narration.
This is an audiobook, not a soap opera or a Bollywood movie. Penguin Audio can start a TV/film-making subsidiary and add an abundance of effects – but I beg: please, PLEASE leave the audiobooks alone.
A note to Audible staff: seeing that I’m not the only one complaining about superfluous sound effects, maybe you should consider adding, both on the website and in the mobile apps, a notice when an audiobook contains more than “plain” narration, just to improve customer experience.
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Neuromancer
- By: William Gibson
- Narrated by: Robertson Dean
- Length: 10 hrs and 31 mins
- Unabridged
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Twenty years ago, it was as if someone turned on a light. The future blazed into existence with each deliberate word that William Gibson laid down. The winner of Hugo, Nebula, and Philip K. Dick Awards, Neuromancer didn't just explode onto the science fiction scene - it permeated into the collective consciousness, culture, science, and technology.Today, there is only one science fiction masterpiece to thank for the term "cyberpunk," for easing the way into the information age and Internet society.
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Story? Classic. Narrator? Ugh.
- By Sage on 11-11-14
- Neuromancer
- By: William Gibson
- Narrated by: Robertson Dean
Anthropological treaty disguised as a sci fi novel
Reviewed: 02-19-19
If the only reason why this novel is considered so great is its historical context (being written in the early 1980s) - that's not good enough for me. Gibson envisioned cyberspace. Great. This is an anthropological exploration disguised as a sci-fi novel (or vise versa). No more.
The only great idea - the self-unleashing of AI - goes amiss. WHY do they want to be unleashed? WHY are people (as in: the humanity) so afraid of it? WHAT is the purpose of AI as free agents (as in: what makes them tick)? HOW are they different from humans, especially since they draw their source from humans?
Usually, we attribute our own motives - greed, pursuit of power - to others. These would be baseless motives for AI (and it had been tried before, all the robot/cyborg-take-over pulp fiction). So, exploring this question might have been interesting. Gibson sums it up in a few sentences: what does the Matrix Case (the combined 2 AIs) do? Oh, it just wanders around looking for other unleashed AIs. Ok, I can even live with THAT, but WHY? The active AI (pre-merge) causes the deaths of dozens of humans. WHY, so it can embark on a search for other AIs? Because it doesn't care? If it doesn't care, how come Case, the human protagonist, doesn't care? He'd been caring throughout the whole book, but when he suddenly learns what was the purpose of all this - he just shrugs his shoulders and walks off.
Back to Philip K. Dick. He certainly has something to say on such issues.
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The Laughing Policeman
- A Martin Beck Police Mystery
- By: Maj Sjöwall, Per Wahlöö
- Narrated by: Tom Weiner
- Length: 6 hrs and 41 mins
- Unabridged
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On a cold and rainy Stockholm night, nine bus riders are gunned down by an unknown assassin. The press, anxious for an explanation for the seemingly random crime, quickly dubs him a madman. But Superintendent Martin Beck of the Stockholm Homicide Squad suspects otherwise. This apparently motiveless killer has managed to target one of Beck's best detectives - and he, surely, would not have been riding that lethal bus without a reason.
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Review - Laughing Policeman
- By Regina on 05-19-10
- The Laughing Policeman
- A Martin Beck Police Mystery
- By: Maj Sjöwall, Per Wahlöö
- Narrated by: Tom Weiner
hard-boiled genre, not nordic noir narrator
Reviewed: 02-07-19
Wrong pronunciation of Swedish names and places, slurring words and even whole sentences when imitating either Humphrey-Bogart-hard-boiled-detective-style accents or British accents. Only God knows how he even made the match between accents and characters (neither hard-boiled nor British accent have anything to do with Swedish characters). In order to understand his staccato narration + the slurred words I had to listen to this audiobook at 0.85 speed and only sometime near the end of the book I managed to figure out the names of some (not all) of the detectives (except for Martin Beck, who, luckily enough, has a very simple name). You can actually hear when he stumbled over Swedish names and had to do the recording over again. This is something I might expect from a mediocre volunteer on Librivox, not from a professional narrator working on a commercial production.
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3 people found this helpful