MARK J. PATTON

Horrible narration

Revisado: 03-17-23

I hate to pile on, but the switch from George Wilson to Oliver Wyman was a monumental mistake. I'll be stopping with the series now. Serge is supposed to be 44 years old but sounds like a 15 year old trying to channel Joe Pesci and failing miserably and inconsistently. His sidekick sounds more like one of the Hardy Boys than a boozing drug abuser of long standing. I have listened to well over 75 books, and this is the worst performance I have heard yet.

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Amazing performance

Revisado: 10-27-22

I first read JR when it was published back in 1975 and again a decade or so ago, but when I happened upon some of the rave reviews of the audio book, I dove back in for a third time. Nick Sullivan's reading is truly amazing. The sheer number of characters handled creatively and with nuances of personality leaves me in aw.

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Thumbs up for Prichard

Revisado: 04-04-22

I'm a big fan of Tom Wolfe, but I almost didn't listen to this book since so many reviewers found fault with the narrator. To the contrary, I thought Michael Prichard was a perfect choice. His delivery was a direct and nuanced performance. Definitely worth five stars.

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Dick Hill should return

Revisado: 02-18-21

The story is a typical Harry Bosch mystery, but the narration is awful. Bosch's voice is so raspy that it is annoying, but much worse than that is that he is the only character with any sort of vocal nuance. The rest all sound vaguely the same, a bit like Napoleon Dynamite often. Edgar and Ryder are the worst. In Hill's readings, they come across as distinct characters with distinct voices; now, they are hard to distinguish between and both sound like teenagers rather than adult investigators. It is as though Kojak has teamed up with Nancy Drew and Joe Hardy.

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Where are the mosquitoes? Where is the humidity?

Revisado: 09-30-18

Having lived in Wisconsin my whole life, I really hoped to love this book, but no such luck. Not only is the plot almost non-existent, what there is of it is weighed down by sentimentality, over-writing, and cliches (if we're in a bar, the Packers are on (unless someone is watching Jeopardy, in which case the topic is the Packers); cheese curds appear with regularity; that last beer in the fridge: a Leinenkugels, and so on). In addition, all of the characters sound alike, except for the rodeo guy and his stripper girlfriend, who double and triple their negatives while everyone else is in love with poetic metaphors and rhapsodic praise of the land.

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Kudos to Kate Mulgrew

Revisado: 04-24-18

One of the best readings I've heard. Kate Mulgrew does an amazing job with this book.

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Excellent performance!

Revisado: 01-26-18

There are elements of the plot (romance between 25 year-old and 74 year-old, for example) that I found a bit hard to accept, the reader's performance is excellent! At times during conversations between strikingly different individuals, I would suddenly think, "Wait, I am listening to only one person. How is this possible?"

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Great read(er)!

Revisado: 01-19-18

I really wonder what my thoughts would have been had I read this rather than listened to it. I hope that Molech's voice would have been exactly as Christy Romano portrayed it, but I'll never know. Damn! The story line and character development are sophomoric, but, hey, with a title like this, who would expect anything different. Again, I don't know if it is Wong or Romano who gave me this impression, but I swear that Wong wrote this hoping to sell the movie rights to anyone who could sign Amy Schumer on for the project.

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Excellent!

Revisado: 01-08-18

I read Bonfire of the Vanities back in the 80s when it was first published, and I'm not sure what prompted me to decide on it as an Audible selection, but I'm glad I did. Joe Barrett's performance is superb, making me second guess five-star ratings that I have given some other readers.

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Unlike many reviewers, I read the book

Revisado: 10-02-17

After having read a number of reviews of What Happened, I was a bit leery about the book, but my interest in what Hillary Clinton had to say overrode any concerns, and now, having finished the book and having read dozens more online reviews both on Goodreads and on Amazon, I must say that I am surprised at the number of people who feel free to comment on a book they haven’t read. Some state as much up front, but others, a much more annoying group, are those many who claim to have read it but who clearly have not. They may have dipped in here and there, or more likely used the index to check on their pet issue (“What does she have to say about Bernie?”), and extrapolated from there, but they certainly have not read the entire work or even most of it. The most common negative reaction I’ve seen is to call out HC for blaming everyone but herself. (I saw a political cartoon a few days ago that showed Hillary wailing while rowing a boat as her tears created the flood upon which she was floating.) I offer one quotation: “I go back over my own shortcomings and the mistakes we made. I take responsibility for all of them. You can blame the data, blame the message, blame everything you want, but I was the candidate and it was my campaign. They were my decisions . . . .” Comments such as these can be found throughout the book, and one needn’t read far to find Clinton taking more blame than I believe she deserves. It appears that what these people really want is for HC not to comment at all on any of the obstacles she faced, but solely to bow her head, beat her chest, and repeat again and again, “mea culpa, mea culpa, mea maxima culpa.” This is nonsense. The race was much more complex than this and many elements played or may have played a part in Trump’s victory; all of these deserve analysis, and the candidates certainly should be among those involved in that analysis. I’m sure many more books will be written about the 2016 campaign, and I have a hunch that most will come up with the same conclusions that HC draws in What Happened.
Analysis is especially intriguing regarding the 2016 campaign since so many factors that did not exist in prior campaigns may have had significant impacts on the results. With only a relative handful of votes in a very few states making the difference between victory and defeat, taking a look at each of these is crucial. Was the Russian meddling enough to flip 20,000 votes or so in both WI and MI? Maybe, maybe not. Did the media’s insistence on creating a false equivalency between HC and Trump matter? Probably. Did the hundreds of hours and millions of dollars of free media exposure given to Trump make a difference? Almost certainly. What about voter suppression laws, the obsession with the nonsensical email topic, the Bernie Sanders’ factor, the women’s vote, James Comey, and on and on and on? It may be impossible to determine precisely how much influence any one of these items had on the results, but to pretend that they had no effect and it was simply HC’s very existence as a candidate that matters is absurd. In What Happened, Clinton addresses each of the above as well as other concerns, encapsulating her thoughts and conclusions buttressed, I might add, with recent studies and reports.
My reaction to much of the book is five-starred, but I felt the need to dock the overall work one star for, at times, lack of focus. For no apparent reason, for example, Clinton spends a chunk of space regaling us with tales of Chelsea’s upbringing and other family matters. While I can appreciate any parent’s wanting to take the opportunity to tell everyone how freaking wonderful they feel their kids are, this is far from the purpose of the book. In addition, Clinton falls back into campaign mode, laying out arguments and details of policies as though trying to convince us to vote for her rather than how these positions may have had an effect on what ultimately happened.
Read the book with an understanding that absolutely anyone in Clinton’s place would be interested in examining where things went wrong, evaluating the obstacles that were faced, criticizing much of the media for its abdication of its responsibility and journalistic integrity, and pondering over what could have been had something else happened.

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