Tenley

Tempted to Return

Reviewed: 07-29-23

I was so excited for this focus on YA and pre-ordered the audiobook. But as another reviewer said, this is *exactly* like her Save the Cat Writes a Novel, with the exception being that she uses YA novels in the examples section. I mean even the accompanying text — it’s the same Save the Cat beat sheets, everything, with one slide on word counts for popular YA novels and then the examples again using YA titles. (This is an aside, but even before knowing any of this, I was disappointed to start the audiobook and hear her narrating again.)

I am leaving this review partly because I’m more than half afraid that she’s now going to do this with every popular conventional genre — and it is not worth buying it over and over again, this is lazy and not new material.

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5 people found this helpful

Nah

Reviewed: 10-18-21

This is the second SNL alum's audiobook written for the money only -- there's places near the end of this where Norm flat-out says he's just writing words words words to get to the magic number that makes it a book so he can get paid (which also explains some of the subplots). I mean he's great, I would have listened to him just doing his routines. This isn't that.

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Way Too Long

Reviewed: 08-30-21

Okay I’m 12 hours in and still have 7 hours to go, and am probably not going to bother; I put it at 1.25X the speed 4 hours ago but I’m sorry, this is now feeling interminable. It started off as an interesting idea but seriously, this should have already wrapped up, it’s not THAT compelling.

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1 person found this helpful

“Social Network” Screenplay Was Based on This

Reviewed: 08-15-21

It’s funny seeing all the 1-star reviews of this calling it “like out of a bad screenplay” — many pre-date the 2010 release of “The Social Network,” which flat-out advertises Aaron Sorkin basing his screenplay on this book. The writing styles are different of course, but the events and the way they are depicted in the movie keep pretty close to the book’s presentation, far closer than I was expecting, actually. That goes all the way to the mid-point introduction of Sean Parker.

I don’t know why there isn’t some type of pronunciation fact-check with certain audiobooks, especially when there are real-life names/people places. Here Peter Thiel’s name is mispronounced repeatedly, for example (it’s pronounced Teal). Even if he were not as well known when this was produced (the audio looks to have been recorded before his lawsuit against Gawker, though PayPal had been around quite a while) he was in the book because he was the first outside investor in Facebook and is still on its board.

The only other thing I would say is it’s always been eye-rolling to see both the movie and, especially, the book presenting Mark Zuckerberg just coincidentally renting the summer intern house a couple houses down from the family of Sean Parker’s girlfriend. Please. It wasn’t coincidence. There was always another darker movie/book right in that scene. It’s not just that both are exceptional programmers and hackers. Facebook from the start collected personal data — we know this because Zuckerberg bragged about people voluntarily giving it to him and offered up to his friends whatever information they wanted on someone. The book is especially naive in presenting Zuckerberg’s choice of location as purely this wild coincidence even as the author writes in an aside that Parker never believed such things are coincidence.

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Awful

Reviewed: 04-08-21

You almost could not come up with a more passive serial killer — Joe does pretty much nothing in this book, including having no leading or even active role in most of the deaths (which take place almost entirely off scene). The narrator is the only reason this is worth a listen.

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17 people found this helpful

Awesome

Reviewed: 10-11-20

It's a fantastic treat and such a comforting thing hearing Jerry joke about things post-Seinfeld like texting and Uber and Siri and infomercials and married life and kids. I don't know how to put it exactly, but it's almost like you can't believe it -- it feels like almost a secret stash or alternate timeline to be laughing at 2020 Seinfeld material you've never heard before.

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Coincidences Galore

Reviewed: 02-16-20

This novel relies almost entirely on far-fetched coincidences for its structure, to drive its plot, and to build the very identity of its main characters. It's not BAD, but it's not good either and I can't really recommend it.

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Whew what a Mess

Reviewed: 12-29-19

This book starts with one mystery, which draws you in. But then suddenly, about a quarter of the way in, in a few paragraphs dumps out of nowhere an entire super-heavy background of one of the characters -- everything is just stated too, no action, but this background has elements that must be resolvex too of course. And coincidentally it's all connected! Throw in a washed up out rock star for good measure so they can podcast about their sleuthing and have the author give readers the finger in the last sentence, and you're all set!

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Try a New Narrator

Reviewed: 05-14-19

I understand that an author might want to be the one to read the audiobook -- or that the publisher might think this is a plus. But there are times, like here, where it would greatly enhance the book if a professional narrator read it. I have tried multiple times to listen to this -- it's a great subject, and the content seems interesting. But I can't do it.

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5 people found this helpful

FUBAR

Reviewed: 04-06-19

Starts out near-incomprensible: It sounds like the setting is the Old West, with rattlesnake sounds, and brothers talking about crickets and "real coffee from the bean" -- and one is working by candlelight. But then a radio? TV? newscast is briefly clicked on then off. The adult brothers, who haven't seen each other in five years, are in their mother's house while she's on a trip. They talk with drawls, or they shout.

It's the next day: Old time radio music is in the background while the brothers talk of coyotes keeping one of them awake. Then it's dropped into the conversation that one of them went to an Ivy League school. WHERE ARE WE AND WHAT YEAR IS THIS? In the next sequence, one brother talks about looking into the windows of a neighbor's house -- "suburban silence," and the house is "paradise" where copper pots are hung over the stove like in magazine photo spreads. One brother talks about dog fights and staying in the Mojave for three months, and the other says he's got someone coming to the house in a few hours -- a Hollywood producer. JFC.

This was just the start of the story and by far the most listenable part of the performance, which deteriorates to mostly shouting and general awfulness.

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1 person found this helpful