Lauren E. Taylor
- 8
- reviews
- 5
- helpful votes
- 41
- ratings
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How Should a Person Be?
- By: Sheila Heti
- Narrated by: Allyson Ryan
- Length: 5 hrs and 48 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall3.5 out of 5 stars 108
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Performance4 out of 5 stars 93
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Story3.5 out of 5 stars 95
Reeling from a failed marriage, Sheila, a 20-something playwright, finds herself unsure of how to live and create. When Margaux, a talented painter and free spirit, and Israel, a sexy and depraved artist, enter her life, Sheila hopes that through close - sometimes too close - observation of her new friend, her new lover, and herself, she might regain her footing in art and life.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Heti Succeeds by Writing What She Knows
- By Buyer009 on 10-07-16
- How Should a Person Be?
- By: Sheila Heti
- Narrated by: Allyson Ryan
Self-conscious, indulgent and humdrum - author is a hack?
Reviewed: 05-23-24
There’s something very forced about this book. I usually love this genre and I’m a huge Miranda July fan, and this just misses it all. I couldn’t care less about this author or her play. Her writing is mediocre, nothing insightful, unlike July where every other sentence is unexpected and life altering. This just feels forced or contrived or…unnatural? Not sure… but when she begins describing sex with Isreal she really lost me. It felt like a poorly written performance, gratuitous, not relatable. This is a person trying to describe fucking when she’s probably not getting laid at all, so it feels all wrong and off the mark. Hate to say it but despite her obvious success, my first impression is she’s a hack. Also as long as I’m on a rant I should mention I don’t love the narration.
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The House on the Water
- A Novella
- By: Margot Hunt
- Narrated by: Taylor Schilling
- Length: 2 hrs and 47 mins
- Original Recording
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 16,511
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 15,206
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 15,158
Every year, Caroline Reed takes a trip with her best friend, Esme Lamont. They’re usually accompanied by their spouses - but this year, everything’s changed. Esme has just gone through a bitter divorce, and Caroline's wondering if her own marriage is reaching its breaking point as she and her husband, John, cope with the discovery that their son has been abusing drugs. Still, the inseparable duo books a weeklong stay at a beach-front home in Shoreham, Florida, inviting Esme’s brother, Nick, and his new husband. After a blissful first night in the vacation home, tragedy strikes.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Wonderful Story
- By David M. Wilcox on 12-04-20
- The House on the Water
- A Novella
- By: Margot Hunt
- Narrated by: Taylor Schilling
Stupid
Reviewed: 02-07-23
Boring - lacking creativity, not worth the time or energy, no depth & unlikable characters. That’s all
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Just the Nicest Couple
- By: Mary Kubica
- Narrated by: Brittany Pressley, Gary Tiedemann
- Length: 10 hrs and 32 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 3,273
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Performance4 out of 5 stars 3,060
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Story4 out of 5 stars 3,062
Jake Hayes is missing. This much is certain. At first, his wife, Nina, thinks he is blowing off steam at a friend’s house after their heated fight the night before. But then a day goes by. Two days. Five. And Jake is still nowhere to be found. Lily Scott, Nina’s friend and coworker, thinks she may have been the last to see Jake before he went missing. After Lily confesses everything to her husband, Christian, the two decide that nobody can find out what happened leading up to Jake’s disappearance, especially not Nina.
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3 out of 5 stars
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Kubica Die hard
- By Drew S. on 01-13-23
- Just the Nicest Couple
- By: Mary Kubica
- Narrated by: Brittany Pressley, Gary Tiedemann
Terrible & cringey
Reviewed: 01-18-23
So bad. The male narrator is the worst! Ridiculous story, twist is stupid, unlikable & un relatable characters. It amazes me this was published and made into an audible tbh.
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See What Can Be Done
- Essays, Criticism, and Commentary
- By: Lorrie Moore
- Narrated by: Bernadette Dunne
- Length: 16 hrs and 33 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 20
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Performance4 out of 5 stars 18
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 18
A welcome surprise: more than 50 prose pieces, gathered together for the first time, by one of America's most revered and admired novelists and short-story writers, whose articles, essays, and cultural commentary - appearing in the New York Review of Books, the New York Times Book Review, The New Yorker, The Atlantic, The Guardian, Harper's Magazine, and elsewhere - have been parsing the political, artistic, and media idiom for the last three decades.
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5 out of 5 stars
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I love this
- By Lauren E. Taylor on 04-19-22
- See What Can Be Done
- Essays, Criticism, and Commentary
- By: Lorrie Moore
- Narrated by: Bernadette Dunne
I love this
Reviewed: 04-19-22
One of my all time favorite writers and I really love her POV and voice. Subtly funny, incisive, & intelligent. I wish I could write half as well. Her review of The Wire is so good. I found a lot of content in here that I’m now interested in reading/watching/listening to.
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2 people found this helpful
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Sad Sacked
- A Memoir
- By: Liz Alterman
- Narrated by: Liz Alterman
- Length: 6 hrs and 44 mins
- Original Recording
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 367
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 334
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Story4 out of 5 stars 332
The last person Liz Alterman expects to hear from during her Thanksgiving prep is her husband, Rich. He never calls from his job at a busy Manhattan newsroom. And he never will again, because he's just been laid off. Two months later, Liz is downsized, too. At first, Rich is enchanted with his new leisurely lifestyle. But when he's still unemployed six months later, his euphoric mood devolves into depression and despair.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Feels like I'm talking to a friend
- By kpfeif on 11-24-21
- Sad Sacked
- A Memoir
- By: Liz Alterman
- Narrated by: Liz Alterman
Boring!
Reviewed: 11-17-21
Wow, boring. Don’t care. Really bland. Another story about an extremely confortable life experiencing a little hiccup that leads to a bit of growth…eventually. I guess? Really? Plus A book about it? Feels like a long drawn out Christmas/New Years letter summarizing the year. I would imagine even if I knew the author personally I wouldn’t be interested.
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One Mind
- How Our Individual Mind is Part of a Greater Consciousness and Why it Matters
- By: Larry Dossey
- Narrated by: Tom Weiner
- Length: 9 hrs and 49 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 734
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 629
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 630
Imagine a united consciousness, an awareness of which all of our minds are a part - and a potential way out of the division, greed, and destruction that threaten to engulf our world. In the twentieth century, we were introduced to several subdivisions of the mind: the conscious, unconscious, subconscious, preconscious, and so on. But what we didn't know was that there was another level of consciousness, an all-encompassing, infinite dimension of shared intelligence: the One Mind.
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1 out of 5 stars
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Wrong format
- By athena on 09-05-20
- One Mind
- How Our Individual Mind is Part of a Greater Consciousness and Why it Matters
- By: Larry Dossey
- Narrated by: Tom Weiner
This is so beautiful
Reviewed: 10-18-21
I listened to this in 2 days and I’m
Literally starting it over just as I finished it. I really want to absorb this information and let it inform my actions, relationships and creativity. So grateful I “gave it a chance.”
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Don’t Cry
- Stories
- By: Mary Gaitskill
- Narrated by: Mary Gaitskill
- Length: 8 hrs and 24 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall3.5 out of 5 stars 64
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Performance3.5 out of 5 stars 54
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Story3.5 out of 5 stars 55
In "College Town 1980", young people adrift in Ann Arbor, Michigan, debate the meaning of personal strength at the start of the Reagan era; in the urban fairy tale "Mirror Ball", a young man steals a girl's soul during a one-night stand; and in "The Little Boy", a woman haunted by the death of her husband is finally able to grieve through a mysterious encounter with a needy child.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Brilliant and unnerving
- By K Martin on 12-07-20
- Don’t Cry
- Stories
- By: Mary Gaitskill
- Narrated by: Mary Gaitskill
Just awful, AWFUL
Reviewed: 09-29-21
The writing! The NARRATOR (read by the author)
This may go down in history as the the most uncomfortably bad writing and narration I’ve ever come across.
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2 people found this helpful
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Emerald City
- By: Jennifer Egan
- Narrated by: Charlie Thurston, Madeleine Lambert, Richard Waterhouse
- Length: 5 hrs and 31 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 176
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Performance4 out of 5 stars 157
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Story4 out of 5 stars 154
These 11 masterful stories - the first collection from Pulitzer Prize-winning author Jennifer Egan - deal with loneliness and longing, regret and desire. Egan’s characters - models and housewives, bankers and schoolgirls - are united by their search for something outside their own realm of experience. They set out from locations as exotic as China and Bora Bora, as cosmopolitan as downtown Manhattan, or as familiar as suburban Illinois to seek their own transformations.
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4 out of 5 stars
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Awful narrator
- By carrieann on 10-12-19
- Emerald City
- By: Jennifer Egan
- Narrated by: Charlie Thurston, Madeleine Lambert, Richard Waterhouse
Kind of boring, hard t tell if it’s the writing or narration. Probably both.
Reviewed: 09-29-21
Kind of boring, hard t tell if it’s the writing or narration. Probably both.
To be fair I didn’t get past the first story with the male narrator
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1 person found this helpful