G Man

Ready Gen-X Comedian One?

Revisado: 04-03-24

What am I reading here? I'm hardly finding a story here. Or at least not a plausible one. It's supposed to be about a 10-11 year old boy... but the book is proving itself to be merely a vessel for this "writer" to express a style of crassness and be lewd. Apparently Kingsolver's shtick is to write about children going through a thing and growing up. But she seems to have taken deep inspiration from Ernest Kline (Ready Player One and Armada) or something here, as she has made that particular type of "attitude" and "wit" the main character of this book. This story is told from the first person perspective, but after hours of listening I still have no idea if it's being told in real time or if it's a retrospective. One page the character is a poor naive and innocent 10-year old and the next he's Andrew Dice Clay.

I really really liked Poisonwood Bible (super clever writing, good setting and story) and personally didn't care so much for Bean Trees (thought story/plot to be uninteresting and boring and not at all original at that, but aware that this could just be me). But no, after this book I am done with Kingsolver.

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Disgusting. Should be banned.

Revisado: 12-12-23

Ken Follett is a sicko; a pervert; probably a child molester and into child porn.

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Terrible in every way

Revisado: 08-17-23

First of all, this is one of the worst narrative performances I've ever heard. Boring and inconsistent. And the narrator frequently comes to points where he. Reads. One. Word. At. A. Time. It's terribly amateurish and disengaging.

RLS is among my top 10 favorite authors. But like every other author (including John Steinbeck; JD Salinger; and even CS Lewis) not everything he writes is great. This story is atypical in that it is unclever, uninspired, and just plain uninteresting. Nothing really happens! Was this really written by Robert Louis Stevenson?!

Skip this one. ...Not even if it's offered for free.

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Terrible

Revisado: 04-13-23

Could be thought provoking, but is poorly written and edited, and is mostly just WRONG or out of touch with its presentation of "facts". Also, this is the only Christian book that I've read that doesn't cite scripture.

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Book ok; narrative performances were a mixed bag.

Revisado: 02-06-23

Many of the readers did a very good job, and I'd say the main narrator was great. The lady reading the exercises at each chapters end was intolerable however. She was soooo slow... she sounded like she was asleep! I hated all those parts of the book.

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esto le resultó útil a 1 persona

Buy the physical book instead

Revisado: 03-01-21

A couple of chapters were ruined by poor readings. The book is a collection of short sermons, speeches, articles, and biographies and whatnot and thus doesn't need to be consumed all at once anyway.

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Rating of narration only...

Revisado: 01-07-21

Note: this is now the fourth time I’ve read the The Divine Comedy. (And fourth translation as well.) It is still my favorite book of all-time. But I struggled to get anything out of this particular version of the book. The narration was so bad!

Now I like when there are multiple narrators, and in this here we even have the translator, Robin Kirkpatrick, lending his voice to the story. Although his voice is not at all the embodiment of Virgil that I would have had in my head I can certainly appreciate him wanting to take up that part, and think it’s cool. He even does a fine job. Likewise, Kristin Atherton who does all the female voices.

No, my problem is with the lead voice actor. I had to speed up the playback to 1.3x just to bring his tempo and enunciation up to normal speed! Yes, this meant the other voices were a little too fast but there are many many moments where the lead actor is too slow! And his performance is akin to one “hamming it up” - except here it’s not done in jest but in all seriousness. It’s so overly dramatic it’s excruciating to listen to. I did not think I would ever want to hear a book read in a droning tone but if presented with that alternative I would have easily chosen it! A hundred times I practically wanted to scream out loud, ‘ Just read the #@&%ing thing!’

Also of note: this is the first version I’ve read/heard that did not have the chapter headings. In previous readings I’d always wondered if they were necessary or even wanted. But I can now say that the answer to both is definitely, “Yes!”. They’re needed to help keep one’s bearings; to help us understand or remind us what circle or plane, etc we are currently on.

The introduction - which was put at the end of the audiobook - makes this translation valuable, but it is my suggestion that buyers get the physical book instead of this audio version.

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Great audiobook except for one thing.

Revisado: 05-05-20

The editing was terrible. It started out with zero spacing between the last word of one chapter and the first word if the next. But later, words and even a sentence at the very end were cut off/interrupted.

Otherwise, great. Great narration. (Although it threw me for the longest while trying to place the readers voice: he makes the main character sound an awful lot like Johnny Depp.)

And of course a great story. Probably my third favorite John Steinbeck book, behind Travels with Charley; and The Pearl.

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Waste!

Revisado: 10-15-19

I should have paid better attention to the reviews. I got this audiobook on sale, and yet still feel ripped off! This is the worst narration I’ve ever heard! The reader seems to be dyslexic when it comes to punctuation marks or something. I too had to stop listening. I gave it about 3 hours but I can’t follow it. Plus I can tell it’s not a good story anyway; Ted Dekker is an amateur. Wasted my time.

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