Tally

Offensive Accent

Revisado: 10-25-21

The book is ok in its weight class (featherweight). The performance was fine until we got to Shoshana Levin, who is voiced as a stereotypical Jewish American Princess. I am Jewish and I don't speak that way, nor does anyone I know other than Fran Drescher. I don't think any other race or ethnic group would be performed in an analogous manner. I really found it offensive.

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No One's Best Effort

Revisado: 10-31-20

This is not Michael Connelly's best book. Renee Ballard does not act like any woman I've known in my life. If you met her in real life, you would quickly conclude she has serious mental problems. Connelly should probably stick to male characters, as he has a hard time getting into a woman's head. BTW, Stephen King has this problem as well.

The narration is simply awful. I'm sorry to say it, because I'm sure narrators read their reviews! But a good actress does not necessarily make a good narrator. You have to read the material beforehand, and be someone who likes to read aloud. I didn't get the impression these things were true here. The stresses are in the wrong place and many words are mispronounced. Very disappointing.

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Perhaps Should Have Remained Unpublished

Revisado: 04-09-19

This book came to my attention when the alleged Golden State Killer was arrested.

I was interested for several reasons. I grew up in Sacramento as a teenager in the 1970s and do not remember the East Side Rapist ever being mentioned, let alone any mass panic over him. And of course I knew that the author had died before the book was completed, and that she was married to the comedian Patton Oswalt.

I understand the family's impulse to publish, but the book simply was not ready. The writing and narrative are inherently disconnected because of the multiple authorship. Not only were many of the chapters completed by others, but I think that Ms. McNamara herself might have wanted to edit her own work before publication. Some of the writing is awfully purple. The historical scene-setting in the various locations where the GSA committed his crimes surely would have been edited down in the author's final version.

On the other hand, the descriptions of the victims and their lives were compelling. She did her best work with those.

It may be that writing about an unsolved case was simply too difficult, with too many loose ends and theories that could not be tied together. There is a hole at the center of the book because he had not been caught. If Joseph DiAngelo is in fact the GSK (and it seems likely that he is), there is so much that will be explained and filled in. I wish Michelle McNamara had lived to see the case solved and to finish the book with that knowledge.

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Interesting subject, unpleasant narration

Revisado: 12-28-14

Is there anything you would change about this book?

I would have hired a different actress for the narration. Jolene Kim's reading is dreadfully amateurish, and her use of a Chinese-ish accent for direct quotations from the empress is grating.

What did you like best about this story?

Jung Chang does an excellent job providing historical background and context for the constraints and traditions of the monarchy in China.

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An Awful Book About Awful People

Revisado: 05-19-13

Would you try another book from Cécile David-Weill and/or Kate Reading?

No.

Has The Suitors turned you off from other books in this genre?

No.

Who would you have cast as narrator instead of Kate Reading?

I don't know. Kate Reading has a lovely French accent, but her manner of reading is horribly affected.

If you could play editor, what scene or scenes would you have cut from The Suitors?

I would have cut everything involving the characters. The house sounded pretty nice, if it had been empty.

Any additional comments?

I kept waiting for the main character to have an epiphany about her shallow, snobbish life, but in the time I wasted listening, she didn't. So I stopped.

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Northanger Abbey comes to live

Revisado: 12-02-12

What could have made this a 4 or 5-star listening experience for you?

The performance was in the spirit of the book but the book was so slight that the mysterious reading was just silly.

What was most disappointing about Catherine Bailey’s story?

There was nothing at its core. There was no story and no secret. It was like Northanger Abbey without the wit. The author made up a mystery about a frankly very unpleasant and unappealing aristocrat. There was nothing interesting about him except his title.

What does Stephen Rashbrook bring to the story that you wouldn’t experience if you just read the book?

I learned how the English pronounce Belvoir, Drogheda and Buccleuch.

If you could play editor, what scene or scenes would you have cut from The Secret Rooms: A True Gothic Mystery?

I wouldn't have written the book! It wasn't substantive in any way.

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