Mike

Narrator was awful

Revisado: 12-22-23

I can’t speak to the authenticity of the accent, as other reviews have, but the narrator read the material as though she didn’t understand what was written. Truly terrible, and really prevented me from connecting with the work.

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Unbelievably poor narration

Revisado: 10-19-23

This review is not about the story.

I’m 39 minutes in and this has to be an all new low for Audible. The narrator’s accent is extremely difficult to understand, but worse than that, she sounds like she doesn’t understand what she’s reading. On top of the terrible narrator, I just hit a point where she flubbed a phrase and re-read it, and it wasn’t edited out. I honestly believe no one listened to this between recording and putting it out into the world. Embarrassingly low quality.

What’s frustrating is how this impacts my enjoyment of the underlying work. Someone put years of effort into writing this book, and treating it this way as an audiobook is so disrespectful.

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Great book. Horrific narration.

Revisado: 06-08-23

The book is an incredible recap of the history of semiconductors and why they’re important to the world today. The narration is possibly the worst I’ve ever encountered on Audible. Flat, no-affect reading with constant mispronunciations. I honestly googled the narrator to see if he was real or AI. Truly terrible. Can’t believe I paid for this.

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Awful narration

Revisado: 08-21-22

It seems that there are two schools of thought on book narration: a reading, or a performance. Personally, I can’t stand the performers. I find them distracting, and more often than not, awful. In this case, the narrator’s accents were so bad I had trouble focusing on what he was saying. (Has he ever actually heard an American speak? And did he really mimic the Thai takeout owner THAT way?) Additionally, the number of very famous places and people he mispronounced was shocking. Telluride? DAVID BOWIE!? The narration in this case substantially affected enjoyment of the book.

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What a book!

Revisado: 07-30-21

Amazing, wrenching study of an American family falling apart. And the performance is all-time great.

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Left me wanting more

Revisado: 04-09-21

Beautiful writing and story. Honestly just wish some of the characters were a touch more fleshed out. Too short!

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Bloated, saccharine, uninspired

Revisado: 04-04-21

It’s amazing how little insight Sittenfeld provides into the mind of Hillary, given that a) the book is first person, b) it’s fictional and she could have made up nearly any motivation, and c) there’s an abundance of reference material on the real person’s life to draw from.

Somehow, with all the nearly unlimited possible scope of such a story, this one manages to feel tedious, overlong, and inordinately focused on the type of gossipy details that don’t add much to character development.

I had high hopes, but I truly hated this book - the style, the story, and the failure to do more with a great premise.

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No Substance

Revisado: 10-15-20

This book aimed to create mystery but instead created flimsy character in a not-quite-interesting enough situation. Most characters were intentionally irritating but they felt annoyingly intentional. The writing did nothing to save it. Floundered for a point it never reached.

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