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Scum of the Earth
- De: Alexander C. Kane
- Narrado por: Scott Aiello
- Duración: 8 h y 11 m
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Ezra Barker is a traitor. When the Merg invaded Earth, he didn’t fight or even hide. He cooperated, helping them as they seized control of the planet and began their pillaging of its resources. While others toil away in mines and quarries, Ezra works an office job, helping his boss, The Senator, rule over the swath of territory given to her by the Merg. Sergeant Hayes is a brutal enforcer of the Merg’s rules. As an officer in the Health and Safety Department, he follows Merg orders, arresting, interrogating, and executing at their command.
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Very different from other Kane novels.
- De Jul en 01-23-24
- Scum of the Earth
- De: Alexander C. Kane
- Narrado por: Scott Aiello
Easy Entertainment - Cheap Thrills and Action featuring the traitors and bad guys
Revisado: 02-14-25
Easy to listen to and action packed space invaders story highlights the worst kinds of characters. Everyone is a compromised character. No one really has any pure intentions, altruistic motives, or any kind of goodness. This story assumes the worst about human nature. It started out like a short-story riff on the "banality of evil."
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Dreaming of Babylon
- A Private Eye Novel 1942
- De: Richard Brautigan
- Narrado por: Bronson Pinchot
- Duración: 3 h y 29 m
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It is early 1942. You are in San Francisco, and you need a private eye. Sam Spade is rumored to be in Istanbul. The Continental Op has been drafted and is a sergeant in the Aleutians. Philip Marlowe is up at Little Fawn Lake investigating the disappearance of Mrs. Derace Kingsley. Lew Archer is in the army. Who's left? Nobody but C. Card. You haven't heard of C. Card? That's all right. Nobody has.
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Inane
- De 🔥 Phx17 🔥 en 11-04-23
- Dreaming of Babylon
- A Private Eye Novel 1942
- De: Richard Brautigan
- Narrado por: Bronson Pinchot
This was an enjoyable romp into random absurdities via noir - abrupt and strange
Revisado: 02-05-25
Absurd is the word that comes to mind. Almost Dadaist or surreal slapstick. Truly bizarre. It was fun. It was a good distraction.
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Blindsight
- De: Peter Watts
- Narrado por: T. Ryder Smith
- Duración: 11 h y 47 m
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Set in 2082, Peter Watts' Blindsight is fast-moving, hard SF that pulls readers into a futuristic world where a mind-bending alien encounter is about to unfold. After the Firefall, all eyes are locked heavenward as a team of specialists aboard the self-piloted spaceship Theseus hurtles outbound to intercept an unknown intelligence.
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Gothic Horror Hard Science Fiction
- De Doug D. Eigsti en 06-24-15
- Blindsight
- De: Peter Watts
- Narrado por: T. Ryder Smith
Fantastic Narration of a creepy hard sci-fi masterpiece
Revisado: 11-15-24
Very complex ideas about consciousness, sentience, evolutionary biology, and augmented consciousness. These ideas are all presented through a very strange first contact themed hard sci-fi narrative. Oh, and one of the main characters is a vampire. The way the author brought vampires into a hard sci-fi world was very cool. I liked the overall premise and found that to be far more creepy and scary than anything about the vampires featured in this story. The aliens were frightening with their non-sentient form of super intelligence. The whole premise of the book itself was simply terrifying. The idea that sentience is an evolutionary mistake. The idea that consciousness and self-awareness are some kind of fluke and that our ability to self-identify with the word "I" may not actually be the evolutionary norm. Super weird.
The writting is great, however, there are some super long-winded and deeply introspective passages with the narrator just going over big ideas in his head over and over again. If you want high action and less deep philosophical pondering, then you may grow impatient with this book. I love this kind of writing, but even I found myself reversing and re-listening to some passages. The ideas are big and sort of hard to tease out without a lot of exposition.
The sub-plot of the romantic interest from before the mission served a narrative function, but I found that part of the plot to be a little boring. I do see the narrative function for helping to move the story along and to help humanize the narrator (or more accurately describe his inhuman tendencies related to his altered state of consciousness).
I like the style of this author and look forward to reading more of his books in the future. It's hard to write out such big and complex ideas in an entertaining way and similar authors and books can sometimes lose the narrative or lose their momentum by getting too wrapped up in the exposition. This got close, but never crossed the line for me into boring or "too high" on the ideas it explored. A fine line to walk for any author that indulges exposition in the text I guess.
don't think I've listened to this narrator before and he did an excellent job. I'd gladly listen to other audiobooks read by the same author again.
Last note: The chapters are inappropriately long the way they're broken up for the audiobook production. Having more "chapter breaks" would have been helpful for the overall listening experience as the bulk of the story happens in 2 HUGE sections that are over 3 or 4 hours each (maybe more, but yeah, multi-hour long chapters can be annoying in an audiobook format if you ever lose your place).
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The Unpleasant Profession of Jonathan Hoag
- De: Robert A. Heinlein
- Narrado por: Tom Weiner
- Duración: 3 h y 54 m
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Jonathan Hoag has a curious problem. Every evening, he finds a mysterious reddish substance under his fingernails, with no memory what he was doing during the day to get it there. Jonathan hires the husband and wife detective team of Ted and Cynthia Randall to follow him during the day and find out. But Ted and Cynthia find themselves instantly out of their depth. Jonathan leaves no fingerprints. His few memories about his profession turn out to be false.
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Brilliant Sci-Fi Detective Action!
- De Nils J. Rasmussen en 04-18-14
- The Unpleasant Profession of Jonathan Hoag
- De: Robert A. Heinlein
- Narrado por: Tom Weiner
Very strange story. Unique for early "sci-fi"
Revisado: 07-08-24
Great narration of a really weird story. Very unlike any other "sci-fi" from the 40's and 50's I'd read before. There was almost something magical about the narrative. It was weird. If the alien elements of the story had been played up a little more, I think I would've been more into it.
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The Last Detail
- A Novel
- De: Darryl Ponicsan
- Narrado por: Bronson Pinchot
- Duración: 5 h y 12 m
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Unlike other branches of the armed services, the Navy draws its police force from the ranks as temporary duty - Shore Patrol. In this funny, bawdy, moving audiobook set during the height of the Vietnam War, two career sailors in transit in Norfolk, Virginia - Billy "Bad-Ass" Buddusky and Mule Mulhall - are assigned to escort 18-year-old Larry Meadows from Norfolk to the brig in Portsmouth, New Hampshire, where he is to serve an eight-year sentence for petty theft. It's good duty, until the two old salts realize the injustice of the sentence and are oddly affected by the naive innocence of their young prisoner.
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Surprising ending
- De bella en 09-11-20
- The Last Detail
- A Novel
- De: Darryl Ponicsan
- Narrado por: Bronson Pinchot
Wow! An Excellent Reading of a Unique Trip
Revisado: 07-05-24
The Last Detail kept me entertained and wanting to listen to more. I honestly listened to the whole book over the course of one day. Once Billy and Mule are given their orders, the story really takes off. the first chapter is a slow-ish start but the story really sweeps you into the narrative once they meet Larry and begin their travels with him.
The end of the story was a little unexpected. I haven't seen the movie version starring Jack Nicholson, but the introduction of the book written by the author says the film version has a slightly different ending. I really want to watch the movie now!
Broson Pinchot does an excellent reading. His ability to voice other characters is top notch in this recording. He's generally good in other books I've heard him narrate, but this one was some his best.
I'm not at all surprised that this was turned into a movie. You can clearly picture it as a movie in your head. The dialogue is well written and feels more "real world" than most.
I enjoyed the writing-style and the story so much, that I'm likely to read the sequel as well (but I'm wondering if that's maybe a book sequel to the movie-version of the story).
The epilogue was maybe not the way I would've wanted the story to end. I was sort of surprised by the last few lines, but I can't think of a better way to end it. I feel like, I want to stay in the world of the story. I want to be there, in Charlotte's house with the guys, or at the snowy picnic, or even drunk in a bar with Billy and Mule after they've gone AWOL. The story will stick with me because I didn't want it to end and I didn't want to say goodbye to those characters. I didn't want it to be The Last Detail and I certainly didn't want it to end. And loving the world of a story and not wanting it to end might sometimes be the mark of a good story.
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Ayoade on Top
- De: Richard Ayoade
- Narrado por: Richard Ayoade
- Duración: 4 h y 39 m
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At last, the definitive audiobook about perhaps the best cabin crew dramedy ever filmed: View from the Top starring Gwyneth Paltrow. In Ayoade on Top, Richard Ayoade, perhaps one of the most 'insubstantial' people of our age, takes us on a journey from Peckham to Paris by way of Nevada and other places we don't care about. It's a journey deep within, in a way that's respectful and non-invasive; a journey for which we will all pay a heavy price, even if you've waited for the smaller paperback edition. Ayoade argues for the canonisation of this brutal masterpiece.
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Listened for an hour and a half, didn't laugh once
- De Wesley en 12-13-19
- Ayoade on Top
- De: Richard Ayoade
- Narrado por: Richard Ayoade
Unlike Any Other Book I've Ever Read!
Revisado: 07-04-24
As someone who has seen the movie that this book painstakingly over-analyzes with "over the top" deadpan sincerity, I laughed out loud often during my listening experience. The film, "View From the Top" is a super basic romantic comedy of the early 2000's that honestly doesn't need (or warrant) such in depth and scholarly analysis of this caliber. Thus, the gravitas of this exhaustive film analysis is hilarious from the onset and so unlike anything I've ever read.
It's a grandiose level of "taking the piss." Ayoade uses the structure of this comedic masterwork of a book to critique and mercilessly mock the many absurdities of various topics like sexism, misogyny, pretentious over-analysis, egocentric "scholarly" writing, the shameless need for self-promotion in the modern world, American politics, American cultural blindspots, imperialist prejudice, racism, and a great many other topics. I never knew that I needed to read a parody of overly-academic / pretentious literary analysis. Or a parody of overtly snobbish film analysis. Writing any "high-brow" critiques of any form of art, literature, film, culture itself, etc is littered with a kind of pretentious self-importance that begs to be lampooned. I'm so pleased to have read such an important and absurd book as this! Someone had to poke a little fun at this style of writing and I'm so glad that Richard Ayoade stepped up to the task. Bravo!
Lastly, the narration as read by the author is perfect. I can't imagine a book of his NOT being read in his voice. A truly perfect and over the top comedic achievement!
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Heart of Darkness: A Signature Performance by Kenneth Branagh
- De: Joseph Conrad
- Narrado por: Kenneth Branagh
- Duración: 3 h y 49 m
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A Signature Performance: Kenneth Branagh plays this like a campfire ghost story, told by a haunted, slightly insane Marlow.
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Disgusting Revision
- De Long_Schlong_Silver en 09-27-18
The Horror - The Horror - Darker than I remember
Revisado: 06-23-24
Excellent Narration.
I give the Story only 4 stars merely because writting from that time period (the 1890's into the early 1900's) has a hard time being as "immediate" and as event-based as fiction that came later into the 1900's.
There's a lot of "talking around things" and a really detached and indirect kind of narrative flow to the 3rd section. I found myself wanting more detail and more clarity about the specific events of whatever terrible things Kurtz did. It's all sort of hinted at, which is frustrating. I suppose being intentionally vague about "the horrors" committed by Kurtz in the jungle allows the reader to imagine it all as dark as they can.
I've read this book before over 10 years ago and found myself not remembering anything at all about the 3rd section of the book. When listening to the book this time, it was like I was reading the 3rd section for the first time all over again. The lack of specific detail and the long exposition on the nature of human existence was likely a characteristic of the literary style of the time. Wonderfully written if not a little long-winded.
The inspiration for the film, Apocalypse Now. it's making me want to watch that movie again. The Horror is clear, but nor as clear in the book as I would prefer as a reader. I wonder if modern audiences share that sentiment. Or am I just a sucker for the film inspired by the book? The Horror... the horror!
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Seize the Day
- De: Saul Bellow
- Narrado por: Grover Gardner
- Duración: 3 h y 47 m
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Fading charmer Tommy Wilhelm has reached his day of reckoning and is scared. In his forties, he still retains a boyish impetuousness that has brought him to the brink of chaos: he is separated from his wife and children; at odds with his vain, successful father; failed in his acting career (a Hollywood agent once placed him as “the type that loses the girl”); and in a financial mess.
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Why?
- De Ashraf Abaza en 05-16-19
- Seize the Day
- De: Saul Bellow
- Narrado por: Grover Gardner
Powerfully Moving - Punchy and Concise
Revisado: 05-27-24
A short novel of unexpected tenderness. It gracefully depicts a middle-aged man on the brink of bad times — some of the worst times. It simply follows the internal dialogue of a man who's been down on his luck for a while and things are only getting worse. It follows the man through most of a day in the heat of post WWII New York City. There's something almost Buddhist about this narrative. Attachment leads to suffering. And Life is filled with suffering. The man wants to make things right, but he's always striving to start things over. It doesn't seem like he's living in the here an now. It's like his expectations of others and the love and support that he craves from others prevents him from truly seizing the day.
A moving novel. I feel sorry for the main character and want better for him. But I'm also a little frustrated by his lack of autonomy. This is a tale of modern man in distress. Suffering before enlightenment. No nobility in the suffering. Just sadness and confusion. Despair without the acceptance of Stoicism. Just existence through sorrow and frustration.
This book ends the only way it could have and it didn't end how I expected. Tears and Death at the end, but maybe not in the way that the reader will expect. Beautiful but harsh to define. I'll be thinking about this novel for a while.
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The Old Man and the Sea
- De: Ernest Hemingway
- Narrado por: Donald Sutherland
- Duración: 2 h y 28 m
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The Old Man and the Sea is one of Hemingway's most enduring works. Told in language of great simplicity and power, it is the story of an old Cuban fisherman, down on his luck, and his supreme ordeal, a relentless, agonizing battle with a giant marlin far out in the Gulf Stream. Here Hemingway recasts, in strikingly contemporary style, the classic theme of courage in the face of defeat, of personal triumph won from loss.
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Truly a Classic
- De Dave en 07-01-08
- The Old Man and the Sea
- De: Ernest Hemingway
- Narrado por: Donald Sutherland
Sutherland Brings This Classic to Life
Revisado: 05-24-24
I've read this book before and enjoyed hearing it as read by Donald Sutherland. His narration is perfect.
I thought the same thing during this reading that I thought upon my first reading. I asked myself, "how was Hemmingway able to make a short novel so entertaining with only one character talking to himself for the majority of the story?" I've always been fascinated by how moving and engrossing this story can be while also omitting so many details (like names for the 2 main characters for example).
A fascinating literary study in the art of brevity.
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The Visible Man
- A Novel
- De: Chuck Klosterman
- Narrado por: Annabella Sciorra, Scott Shepherd
- Duración: 8 h
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Therapist Victoria Vick is contacted by a cryptic, unlikable man who insists his situation is unique and unfathomable. Vick becomes convinced that he suffers from a complex set of delusions: Y__, as she refers to him, claims to be a scientist who has stolen cloaking technology from an aborted government project in order to render himself nearly invisible. Unsure of his motives or honesty, Vick becomes obsessed with her patient....
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Hillarious & Disturbing In (almost) Equal Measure
- De Amanda en 11-07-11
- The Visible Man
- A Novel
- De: Chuck Klosterman
- Narrado por: Annabella Sciorra, Scott Shepherd
interesting. Disturbing. Compelling. Decent Story.
Revisado: 10-29-23
The narration from both readers is excellent.
The story only gets 4 out of 5 stars because I just "wanted more" as a reader. Also, the lead female character makes some dumb and extremely unprofessional decisions and her self-awareness of her blunders could be read as a very problematic element of the story. Another reviewer on this app blasts the book for that element of the story primarily and while I'm not as deeply offended by that element of the narration, I do agree that it's a valid criticism. Just like bad TV or crappy horror movies, audiences might find themselves yelling at the protagonist something like, "no! Don't be so stupid! How can you not see how deranged this is!?"
I enjoyed the suspenseful aspects of this story and found myself wanting more back-story and more narrative about unseen elements of the story, which are impossible to convey through the narrative structure.
The whole book is presented as a compiled collection of notes and drafts of a manuscript for a book about a therapist and her patient who can make himself almost impossible to see. Because the book is presented in this first person style and through the retelling of transcripts of counseling sessions, it's impossible to tell what's happening between the counseling sessions unless the therapist tells us through random exposition. It's an interesting narrative choice that builds tension through omission. Is the character of the patient as sinister as implied? Yes! I really think this is a portrait of a deeply disturbed individual, but did he really do all of the things that he claimed to do while he was "invisible?"
The sense of danger implied by an unseen person who may lack empathy for others choosing to stalk people or enter their homes without their knowledge is super creepy. The character of Y chooses to inaccurately paint himself as "an impartial observer" of people when they're totally alone for the sake of trying to better understand the human condition. Y can't understand the emotions of other people and sees all social interactions as pretense or overly constructed performance... and therefore fake or disingenuous. He believes that no one is truly themselves unless they're totally alone. There were some interesting anecdotal passages about the topic of when people are alone and about social norms and the antagonist presents some conflicting views about those topics.
Y is deeply disturbed person who can use his advantages of stealth over others to "impartially observe" but he's not impartial and he does some pretty terrible things to some people if his stories are believed to be true. Not only does he lack empathy or understanding toward the rest of mankind, but he believes in the rightness of his own will for the sake of itself.
I enjoyed the suspenseful, creepy, and thriller-esque elements of this story and wanted more of that but also see how that would be impossible to deliver via the narrative structure.
I enjoyed this somewhat flawed novel for many reasons and would encourage others (even if you're not familiar with Chuck and his other non-fiction writing) to check this out. It's probably not his best writing, but it was a decent (but somewhat frustrating) story with a protagonist that you want to do better, and an antagonist that you love to hate. Lastly, the random riffing on society that this writer is best known for is shown as something deeply despicable, which is such a fascinating thing for this author to have done with this narrative. In a very "meta" kind of way, he paints his own writing style as the villain and that may be the most interesting thing about the whole book.
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