Caroline

Hastily written or at least not written for the ear

Revisado: 01-23-20

I learned so much I never knew about Aretha Franklin and felt this treatment was pretty even handed.

The performance was lovely and the best part of the book.

But it was not written for the ear. Timelines were wacky. For example we go from a description of a performance in 2016 to the sentence “later albums, in 1998...” for a listener, that’s so distracting.

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Mommy venting nothing more

Revisado: 01-21-20

This was just moms having a vent. There were maybe 4 essays I liked, nothing groundbreaking, no mom hacks or pro tips. It just painted the author in a bad light, but worst of all were the commenters at the start of each chapter. It just goes to show, when it comes to the internet DON’T REAS THE COMMENTS! (This is a review, not a comment😂)

If you read this book and feel like these are your people, awesome. It’s good to know one is not alone. Next I suggest reading “Bringing up Bebe” for some interesting ideas that may get you a little more space and time to get back to your pre-mom self.

I only finished this because I think it’s too late to return or exchange it and because audible have a promotion on - if I finish 3 books by March something I get $20. It’s one way to get a refund on this book. 😂

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I liked the narrator

Revisado: 10-12-16

Is there anything you would change about this book?

I might have the edit a little cleaner (though, I spend a lot of time editing narration myself, so, this is a nit pick). It's a dry subject, treated with dry wit by the authors and delivered in a voice that reminded me of my grandfather, a retired judge. If anything, I'd have a higher quality audio file.

Did The Elements of Style (Recorded Books Edition) inspire you to do anything?

Mostly, so far, it's inspired me to be incredibly self conscious of what I've written here. :)

Any additional comments?

I read reviews that complained bout McCourt's narration. I heard some spots where breaths were poorly edited, but this is not McCourt's fault. I liked his narration. The way he announced each section title reminded me of my grandfather, I could see the look on his face and his finger in the air. It brought back a lot of a great memories, and was comfortable for me. I thought he did a great job at conveying William Strunk's dry wit.

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Only hang up

Revisado: 09-20-16

I got this when it was a daily deal at the time we were considering buying a derelict house and doing a tear down and new build. We changed our minds and so I listened to this during a week of diy projects on our flat. There were laugh out loud moments and my husband thought I'd messed up the paint in our hall when he saw we cringing and wincing. It was a fun read. A little predictable a little unpredictable. The performances were quite good and the story is laid out in an interesting way. My biggest gripe is the narrators both worked in very different rooms and it's a bit jarring (for this audiophile) when it switches. Fortunately they never converse and at one point it kind of works.

Good fun.

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The narrator really is that bad...

Revisado: 10-08-15

Would you try another book from Val McDermid and/or Liz Pearce?

I would definitely try another Val McDermid and have one lined up now, there was only one truly cringe worthy written line about the 'support of supportive friends' in chapter 30 I don't know how that made it all the way through to narration... other than that I felt her writing was fine.

I will tread carefully when it comes to Liz Pearce. It's not the poshy accent that bothered me, living between the US and UK, I've come across it, and I see what they're going for with it and she does a BRILLIANT job making Bella just skin crawlingly awful - but as someone who's lived in Edinburgh, I found her pronunciation of the city name (it was almost like Edingboro instead of Edinburah) grated almost as much as her terrible Scottish accents. I have half a mind to return this one and see if the UK audible version, with a different narrator, is better.

What did you like best about this story?

I thought Val solved some of questions of modernizing this story in clever ways - putting Cat out of touch by making the Abbey a bit of a signal dead spot, phones going inconveniently dead etc. all the texting and tweeting and emailing was handled really well.

How did the narrator detract from the book?

As mentioned before, her terrible Scottish accents distracted from the characters and the story.

Any additional comments?

Val does stick quite closely to the original, but I still found it a fun read, if you'd like to read an Austen Project book that swings around the original more - I recommend Emma by Alexander McCall Smith. I don't feel like Val faithfully hits every paragraph as others have said and there's a couple new scenes she's written in. The narrator's voice I think is a little too formal and clashes a little with the informal voice of the characters. We read this for book club and my audible pal in book club said the accents were just too annoying and she switched to kindle version.

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Brilliant Content - Production Values - Lacking

Revisado: 03-09-15

Would you consider the audio edition of The Secret History of Wonder Woman to be better than the print version?

No, I don't think I would. I haven't seen the print edition, but I imagine it, and hope it is filled with frames from wonder woman comics. Many have complained about Jill Lepore's 'voices' and I understand that comment, I didn't mind them so much, and sometimes thought they were great because they gave that 1930's/1940's comics, newspaper, radio etc announcer 'feel' to the book. Sometimes they were a little over the top... They helped me to imagine frames of wonder woman comics in the print edition. My complaint, as someone with a background in audio production and narration recording - is far more technical.

Jill has an outstanding enthusiasm for her subject - it's why I bought the book - seeing her interview with Jon Stewart got me excited about this book. I think a better performance could've been drawn out of her by the right director and in a better studio environment. There's too much room in the overall sound of this book. She's too far away from the mic, the walls of the room are too hard and the room is probably too big. I perfer readers who feel like they're sitting right next to me. As I said in my good reads review "The recording is too roomy, like the author just set up in her living room, which has no rug, no curtains and a lot of glassware laying about... If the director or engineer were there at all providing direction, they must've nodded off a few times."

The edit is good. I've sat through audio books with glaring edit mistakes ie. "I've sat thr-I've sat through audio books..." that's assuming the editor took all the best takes. It would bring be out of the book a little when I found myself thinking 'why did no one ask for a pick up of that sentence?!' All this said - the content was engaging enough that this fell away most of the time, and I, as a slow reader, and someone with too much going on, never would've been able to read this book so soon after publication without the audio edition, so I will take what I can get.

I do recommend having a listen to the sample so you're prepared for what you're getting into.

Any additional comments?

I loved this book, despite the audio quality and I found it a great gateway into further study of the various feminist movements (I like to point out - all your favorite feminists make an appearance!). I was never a big Wonder Woman fan, but thought this story behind her creation would be fascinating enough - and it was - and now I'm willing to give her a second chance.

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esto le resultó útil a 11 personas

Interestin read - got turned down for book group..

Revisado: 02-01-15

Is there anything you would change about this book?

I would have Jane discuss not just projects she's involved in - I thought the book was well written and showed a breadth and depth, but I started to get tired of hearing about her projects, and would've liked to hear more about projects and games that inspired her (she did talk about some - but,it seemed like deeper into the book - it got to be increasingly focused on her work).

Any additional comments?

I suggested this for a book group and got categorically turned down because 'video games will never be good for the individual or society' - I found the topic interesting and went for it on my own and I feel like the book group really missed out. For one thing - it's not just video games that get discussed - and for another - I found the ideas discussed really interesting and walked away wanting to play more games, video, card and board varieties - in my own household - rather than watching tv together.

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So much great information!!!

Revisado: 02-01-15

What did you like best about this story?

Roberta helped me get motivated to get started on strength training. And so far, combing that with limiting my portion sizes - in the past month, I've had the most success I've had in ages... so...

If you were to make a film of this book, what would the tag line be?

Half your plate should be vegetables, 1/4 lean protein, and 1/4 carbohydrate. 2 days of strength training and 5 days of 1/2 hour of moderate exercise - GET ON IT.

Any additional comments?

I wanted to hold off on reviewing this until I finished, but all along the way I was recommending it to folks.

I learned so much from this - from just the interesting mechanics of how oatmeal lowers cholesterol to confirming what I was doing right and what I was doing wrong.

I really appreciated Roberta's open mind to different diet preferences (pescatarian, vegetarian and vegan) and the format of the lectures personal story, information, data, studies, conclusions, FAQs - though sometimes the anecdote at the start got a little... meh. I see the value of it, but could happily skip them.

For other Audible members complaining that the lecture notes often referred to were not included - for the most part, you can do without them, but occasionally she does say 'you'll find this or that data in the notes' a quick google pulls them up in PDF form.

I have to admit - at the end, I got a little sad during her farewell, after 18+ hours with the lady, you start to feel like she's a friend.

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so much better than the sweedish movie...

Revisado: 11-04-10

i don't agree that it wasn't fast paced enough... i enjoyed the additional character development... now i'm going to go watch the movie again... but after this, my mind is made up... gonna skip the US version of the movie...

wish they hadn't used the "let me in" title over "let the right one in"...

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Loved it!

Revisado: 09-14-10

Picked this up tentatively since it had some negative reviews, but it had me cracking up in the car and giggling in the super market...

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