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Trajectory
- Stories
- Narrated by: Amanda Carlin, Arthur Morey, Fred Sanders, Mark Bramhall
- Length: 8 hrs and 5 mins
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Publisher's summary
Russo's characters in these four expansive stories bear little similarity to the blue-collar citizens we're familiar with from many of his novels. In "Horseman", a professor confronts a young plagiarist as well as her own weaknesses as the Thanksgiving holiday looms closer and closer: "And after that, who knew?" In "Intervention", a realtor facing an ominous medical prognosis finds himself in his father's shadow while he presses forward - or not. In "Voice", a semiretired academic is conned by his increasingly estranged brother into coming along on a group tour of the Venice Biennale, fleeing a mortifying incident with a traumatized student back in Massachusetts but encountering further complications in the maze of Venice. And in "Milton and Marcus", a lapsed novelist struggles with his wife's illness and tries to rekindle his screenwriting career, only to be stymied by the pratfalls of that trade when he's called to an aging iconic star's mountaintop retreat in Wyoming.
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The tragicomedy of a young man in New York City, a writer, never named, who works as a fact-checker for a prestigious magazine. He struggles with the reality of his mother's death, alienation, and the seductive pull of drugs and a vibrant nightlife.
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Curiously, mundanely real
- By Amber on 01-07-12
By: Jay McInerney
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The Book of Air and Shadows
- A Novel
- By: Michael Gruber
- Narrated by: Stephen Hoye
- Length: 18 hrs and 52 mins
- Unabridged
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Jake Mishkin's seemingly innocent job as an intellectual property lawyer has put him at the center of a deadly conspiracy and a chase to find a priceless treasure involving William Shakespeare. As he awaits a killer (or killers) unknown, Jake writes an account of the events that led to this deadly endgame, a frantic chase that began when a fire in an antiquarian bookstore revealed the hiding place of letters containing a shocking secret, concealed for 400 years.
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Not your average story.
- By Nicholas Winn on 06-02-07
By: Michael Gruber
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The Road Home
- By: Ford Michael Thomas Ford
- Narrated by: Blake Somerset
- Length: 9 hrs and 5 mins
- Unabridged
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When a car accident leaves photographer Burke Crenshaw in need of temporary full-time care, he finds himself back in the one place no forty-year-old chooses to be--his childhood bedroom. There, in the Vermont home where he grew up, Burke begins the long process of recuperation, and watches as his widowed father finds happiness in a new relationship that's a constant reminder of everything Burke wants and lacks. Exploring local history, Burke discovers an intriguing series of letters from a Civil War soldier to his fianc.
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No need to check your scepticism at the door!
- By Orlando on 08-23-13
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The Accidental Bestseller
- By: Wendy Wax
- Narrated by: Khristine Hvam
- Length: 14 hrs and 15 mins
- Unabridged
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Once upon a time four aspiring authors met at their very first writers' conference. Ten years later they're still friends, survivors of the ultra-competitive New York publishing world. Mallory St. James is a workaholic whose best sellers support a lavish lifestyle. Tanya Mason is a single mother juggling two jobs, two kids, and too many deadlines. Faye Truett is the wife of a famous televangelist and the author of inspirational romances: No one would ever guess her explosive secret.
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Meh....just okay.
- By S on 02-19-13
By: Wendy Wax
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Finale
- A Novel of the Reagan Years
- By: Thomas Mallon
- Narrated by: Christopher Lane
- Length: 17 hrs and 17 mins
- Unabridged
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From the author of the acclaimed novel Watergate comes a galvanizing new novel about the tumultuous administration of the most consequential and enigmatic president of modern times - Ronald Reagan. Finale takes listeners to the political gridiron of Washington in 1986, the wealthiest enclaves of Southern California, and the volcanic landscape of Iceland, where the president engages in two almost apocalyptic days of negotiation with Mikhail Gorbachev.
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Gore Vidal for the 21st Century
- By philip on 10-31-15
By: Thomas Mallon
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What Is Not Yours Is Not Yours
- Stories
- By: Helen Oyeyemi
- Narrated by: Ann Marie Gideon, Piter Marek, Bahni Turpin
- Length: 7 hrs and 42 mins
- Unabridged
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In "Books and Roses", one special key opens a library, a garden, and clues to at least two lovers' fates. In "Is Your Blood as Red as This?", an unlikely key opens the heart of a student at a puppeteering school. "'Sorry' Doesn't Sweeten Her Tea" involves a "house of locks", where doors can be closed only with a key - with surprising unobservable developments. And in "If a Book Is Locked There's Probably a Good Reason for That Don't You Think", a key keeps a mystical diary locked (for good reason).
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clever
- By jared rogerson on 03-15-18
By: Helen Oyeyemi
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The President’s Daughter
- By: Mariah Stewart
- Narrated by: Marguerite Gavin
- Length: 10 hrs and 35 mins
- Unabridged
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Dina McDermott is on top of the world. Attractive and independent at 30, she runs her own business, funded by a generous inheritance. But an explosive chain of events will soon be set into motion—and her perfect life will spin out of control. A journalist with a fearless instinct, Simon Keller believes he’s struck gold when he unearths an unsettling story about former president Graham Hayward, one that started with a secret affair and ended in tragedy. The trail leads Simon to Dina McDermott’s front door—and threatens to expose a parentage that would rock the political world.
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Highly Recommended!
- By Johnsondv8 on 05-18-22
By: Mariah Stewart
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The Wrong Sister
- By: T. E. Woods
- Narrated by: Angela Dawe
- Length: 8 hrs and 47 mins
- Unabridged
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From behind the wheel of her car, Tess Kincaid glimpses a woman walking down a Madison, Wisconsin, street. They've never met, but Tess sees the same features every time she looks in the mirror. Tess introduces herself and discovers that she and her doppelganger, Mimi, have more than appearance in common. They even share the same birthday. Mimi - confident and outgoing where Tess is understated and shy - is convinced they're twins, separated shortly after birth. When a body is discovered in a local marsh, Tess is entangled in a search for the truth....
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Nothing like anything T E Woods has written B4!!!
- By shelley on 03-01-18
By: T. E. Woods
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Full Circle
- By: Michael Thomas Ford
- Narrated by: Blake Somerset
- Length: 17 hrs and 24 mins
- Unabridged
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History professor Ned Brummel is living happily with his partner of 12 years in small-town Maine when he receives a phone call from his estranged friend - Jack - telling him that another friend - Andy - is very ill and possibly near death. As Ned boards a plane to Chicago on his way to his friend's bedside, he embarks on another journey into memory, examining the major events and small moments that have shaped his world and his relationships with these two very different, very important men.
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To Every Season...
- By Donald on 10-01-13
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Sex, Murder, and a Double Latte
- By: Kyra Davis
- Narrated by: Gabra Zackman
- Length: 8 hrs and 16 mins
- Unabridged
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Thriller scribe Sophie Katz is as hard-boiled as a woman who drinks Grande Caramel Brownie Frappuccionos can be. So Sophie knows it's not paranoia, or post-divorce, living-alone-again jitters, when she becomes convinced that a crazed reader is sneaking into her apartment to reenact scenes from her books. The police, however, can't tell a good plot from an unmarked grave.
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Disappointing
- By Autumn on 01-01-06
By: Kyra Davis
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The Rising
- Before They Were Left Behind
- By: Tim LaHaye, Jerry B. Jenkins
- Narrated by: Richard Ferrone
- Length: 10 hrs and 20 mins
- Unabridged
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New York Times best-selling authors Tim LaHaye and Jerry B. Jenkins have sold more than 60 million copies of their Left Behind series, the fastest-selling adult fiction series of all time. Now these extraordinarily popular writers unveil the hotly anticipated Countdown to Rapture series, the thrilling saga that leads to the events of the Left Behind books.
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Great Prequel
- By Colleena on 04-02-05
By: Tim LaHaye, and others
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Daughter of Darkness
- By: V. C. Andrews
- Narrated by: Marguerite Gavin
- Length: 10 hrs and 33 mins
- Unabridged
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Seventeen-year-old Lorelei Patio is the adopted daughter of 200-year-old vampire Sergio Patio. She never realized why her family has had to move so often or why she is not permitted to get too friendly with other young people. In fact, except for one shocking moment that seemed more like a dream, Lorelei never fully realized who and what her father was nor what her sisters were brought up to do for him. But one day, that all changed.
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not the usual vc andrews book
- By Janae on 09-14-13
By: V. C. Andrews
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Babylon Sisters
- By: Pearl Cleage
- Narrated by: Pearl Cleage
- Length: 8 hrs and 7 mins
- Unabridged
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Catherine, busy working with refugee and immigrant women through her small firm, Babylon Sisters, has taken on a powerful new client. She doesn't have much time for Phoebe's complicated questions of paternity - that is, until Phoebe's real father, B. J., a renowned investigative reporter, shows up in town to work on a story connected to Catherine.
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Sister Love
- By Florence Graydon on 03-26-21
By: Pearl Cleage
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One beautiful September day, three men convene on Martha's Vineyard, friends ever since meeting in college circa the 60s. They couldn't have been more different then, or even today - Lincoln's a commercial real estate broker, Teddy a tiny-press publisher, and Mickey a musician beyond his rockin' age. But each man holds his own secrets, in addition to the monumental mystery that none of them has ever stopped puzzling over since a Memorial Day weekend right here on the Vineyard in 1971: the disappearance of the woman each of them loved - Jacy Calloway.
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Worth the Download
- By Delah on 10-31-11
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Elsewhere
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Anyone familiar with Richard Russo's acclaimed novels will recognize Gloversville, once famous for producing that eponymous product and anything else made of leather. This is where the author grew up, the only son of an aspirant mother and a charming, feckless father who were born into this close-knit community. But by the time of his childhood in the 1950s, prosperity was inexorably being replaced by poverty and illness (often tannery-related), with everyone barely scraping by under a very low horizon.
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Elsewhere---but not far enough
- By William on 12-08-12
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Bridge of Sighs
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Louis Charles ("Lucy") Lynch has spent all his 60 years in upstate Thomaston, New York, married to the same woman, Sarah, for 40 of them, their son now a grown man. Like his late, beloved father, Lucy is an optimist, though he's had plenty of reasons not to be: chief among them his mother, still indomitably alive.
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Wonderful
- By Victoria Wright on 10-08-07
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The Destiny Thief
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In these nine essays, Richard Russo provides insight into his life as a writer, teacher, friend, and reader. From a commencement speech he gave at Colby College, to the story of how an oddly placed toilet made him reevaluate the purpose of humor in art and life, to a comprehensive analysis of Mark Twain's value, to his harrowing journey accompanying a dear friend as she pursued gender-reassignment surgery, The Destiny Thief reflects the broad interests and experiences of one of America's most beloved authors.
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The Destiny Thief
- By anne on 08-22-18
By: Richard Russo
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That Old Cape Magic
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Griffin has been tooling around for nearly a year with his father’s ashes in the trunk, but his mother is very much alive and not shy about calling on his cell phone. She does so as he drives down to Cape Cod, where he and his wife, Joy, will celebrate the marriage of their daughter Laura’s best friend. For Griffin this is akin to driving into the past, since he took his childhood summer vacations here, his parents’ respite from the hated Midwest.
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Instantly-recognizable Richard Russo book
- By Fred Pike on 10-04-09
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Incredibly Disappointing
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A cynical Hollywood moviemaker confronts his dead wife’s lover and abruptly realizes the depth of his own passion. As his parents’ marriage disintegrates, a precocious fifth-grader distracts himself with meditations on baseball, spaghetti, and his place in the universe. And in the title story, an elderly nun enters a college creative writing class and plays havoc with its tidy notions of fact and fiction. The Whore’s Child is further proof that Russo is one of the finest writers we have.
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Worth the Download
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Wonderful
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The Destiny Thief
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The Destiny Thief
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A first novel with all the assurance of a mature writer at the peak of form and ambition, Mohawk is set in upstate New York and chronicles more than a dozen lives in a leather town, long after the tanneries have started closing down. Ranging over three generations - and clustered mainly in two clans, the Grouses and the Gaffneys - these remarkably various lives share only the common human dilemmas and the awesome physical and emotional presence of Mohawk itself.
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Narrator sounds like a computer
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Empire Falls
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Dexter County, Maine, and specifically the town of Empire Falls, has seen better days, and for decades, in fact, only a succession from bad to worse. One by one, its logging and textile enterprises have gone belly-up, and the once vast holdings of the Whiting clan (presided over by the last scion’s widow) now mostly amount to decrepit real estate. The working classes, meanwhile, continue to eke out whatever meager promise isn’t already boarded up. Miles Roby gazes over this ruined kingdom from the Empire Grill, an opportunity of his youth that has become the albatross of his life.
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Hugely Enjoyable
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Straight Man
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William Henry Devereaux, Jr., spiritually suited to playing left field but forced by a bad hamstring to try first base, is the unlikely chairman of the English department at West Central Pennsylvania University. Over the course of a single convoluted week, he threatens to execute a duck, has his nose slashed by a feminist poet, discovers that his secretary writes better fiction than he does, suspects his wife of having an affair with his dean, and finally confronts his philandering elderly father, the one-time king of American Literary Theory, at an abandoned amusement park.
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Straight Man
- By Holly Abery-Wetstone on 10-17-03
By: Richard Russo
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Nobody's Fool
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Divorced from his own wife and carrying on halfheartedly with another man's, saddled with a bum knee and friends who make enemies redundant, Sully now has one new problem to cope with: a long-estranged son who is in imminent danger of following in his father's footsteps. With its uproarious humor and a heart that embraces humanity's follies as well as its triumphs, Nobody's Fool, from Pulitzer Prize-winning author, Richard Russo, is storytelling at its most generous. Nobody’s Fool was made into a movie starring Paul Newman, Bruce Willis, Jessica Tandy, and Melody Griffith.
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Wonderful Book Fabulous Narrator
- By Marsha on 04-27-05
By: Richard Russo
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Sh*tshow
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David and Ellie didn’t realize how much they have missed their friends, two other couples who had moved out of their modest neighborhood in a desert city for the comforts of the suburbs, until the day of Donald Trump’s election. Separated also from their daughter who lived hours away in California, they were in a funk. But, when Ellie discovers a repellent offering floating in the small Jacuzzi in their backyard, David is blindsided. Little does he know this is but the first in a chain of grisly events that would play out in their lives with devastating consequences.
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Should have paid more attention to the title
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By: Richard Russo
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The Remains of the Day
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This is Kazuo Ishiguro's profoundly compelling portrait of a butler named Stevens. Stevens, at the end of three decades of service at Darlington Hall, spending a day on a country drive, embarks as well on a journey through the past in an effort to reassure himself that he has served humanity by serving the "great gentleman," Lord Darlington. But lurking in his memory are doubts about the true nature of Lord Darlington's "greatness," and much graver doubts about the nature of his own life.
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Beautiful and ever relevant
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What listeners say about Trajectory
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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- John 'n Austin
- 08-31-17
A Great Collection from Richard Russo
Richard Russo is one of the very best writers of his generation, and this collection of novella-length stories is simply outstanding. The stories themselves are highly original, with characters one does not want to leave, and the writing is beautiful and insightful. The narrators do an excellent job with great material.
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- Barbara
- 05-20-19
Pretty good; not Russo’s best
Four stories, featuring familiar Russo themes: middle-aged men, death, sibling relationships, marriage, friendship, fathers and sons, betrayal. The performances were all good, and the ability of the author to create a credible inner life for characters as diverse as a female professor with a child “on the spectrum” whom she could not reach and a broke washed up screenwriter whose wife is dying is impressive. Generally I like short stories a lot, but having enjoyed Russo’s BIG novels, like Nobody’s Fool, I found these to be a little unsatisfying.
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1 person found this helpful
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- David
- 07-08-17
Melancholy but Rewarding
The four stories in Trajectory are linked, perhaps, by the disappointments of their middle-aged narrators. Romance has faded or failed; jobs (if any) are less rewarding than expected. The protagonists—two professors, a real estate broker and a novelist/screenwriter—are good company, self-aware and friendly enough. They try to get along with the difficult people around them.
My favorite story was “Voice,” the second and longest. A retired professor takes a group art tour of Venice during the Biennale with his condescending older brother. Rather than exploring the art, he obsesses over his well-meaning but intolerable behavior in a Jane Austen seminar during his final semester of teaching. The story shifts back and forth between the final semester and the current tour, where he finds opportunities both for romance and for rapprochement with his brother. Well told and even suspenseful.
The final story, “Milton and Marcus,” is a perceptive take on Hollywood megastars. A screenwriter is called from New England to Jackson Hole to work with an aging star named William Nolan, clearly modeled on Robert Redford. The star, who wants to be called “Regular Bill,” has the confidence and narcissism not to regret his own selfish behavior. An entertaining portrait.
The narrators were all strong, low-key and not getting in the way of these well-written tales.
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5 people found this helpful
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- ReallyNelie
- 12-08-19
Good stories but issue with audiobook format
I have become a huge fan of Russia writing and I also love short stories in audible because there are times of my life such as the end of the academic semester when I dint want to get sucked into a book that takes a full couple of days reading or listening to finish. I will note that I’m reviewing this before finishing only because I want to warn others bout the annoying formatting of the smaller audible segments. There are no visible labels on them to show where each new story begins and there are no subheadings although it sounds from the reading like these do exist in the printed version. Recently I finished another audible book with short stories and there were definitely labels with the titles of each story in the collection as well as subtitles/ subheadings I believe.in ither audible short story collections since they were short stories they were not chunked into shorter segments. ( several were over an hour). I understand these stories may be too lengthy for just one chunk but there should at least be some visible way of finding where one ends and another begins in the Audible index. It’s so frustrating!
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2 people found this helpful