Protect Democracy

Screams are not whispers!!!

Revisado: 09-24-24

Okay, audiobook readers everywhere, listen:
When one screams, one RAISES their voice. That's how screaming works. Screaming does not mean speaking more quietly!!!

Chattery Teeth - Funny story, terrible reader. She actually would've been fine except that she whispers the lines that are supposed to be raised voices.

My Pretty Pony - It was hard to pay attention to this one. The reader was pretty boring. As a result, I didn't understand the story.

Sneakers - Interesting story. I listened to this one while making some lentil rotini, and now every time I make lentil rotini I have an image in my mind of a man's dirty shoes in a bathroom stall.

Dedication - I couldn't finish this one. The fake southern accent is so ridiculously inaccurate I just couldn't listen to any more of it.

The Doctor's Case - Tim Curry is such an over-the-top reader that he removes all meaning from the words. I couldn't understand any of this.

The Moving Finger - This is the best reader of this audiobook, besides King himself, of course. I could do without the racism, but that's more the fault of the writer than the reader, and this is an old story from a time when people thought that was... well... I still wish it wasn't in there. I think I've seen a movie or a TV show episode based on this story... or maybe I've heard the story before and it was so vivid I remembered it as visuals...

The End of the Whole Mess - Yet another case of whispering lines that are supposed to be screamed. The reader also reads every line like he's physically uncomfortable. He sounds like he has a stomachache and can't wait to get into bed but has to finish this reading first. I couldn't follow the story.

Home Delivery - I usually like when writers read their own audiobooks. Stephen King is one of the good ones. He knows how the people in the stories are supposed to sound because he wrote them, and he's a good storyteller.

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Skip "The Monkey" - the reader is intolerable

Revisado: 01-23-24

The one I always skip is "The Monkey". The reader is some annoying kid who clearly has never seen one of those old money-cymbal dolls. Every time the doll starts clanging its cymbals, the reader WHISPERS a sloooooooooooow "clang...clang...clang...clang..." even while describing the character's concern that the loud noise will wake up the family. It annoys the living bleep out of me when a reader WHISPERS the loud parts! Makes absolutely zero sense to WHISPER the loudest parts!! And those monkeys clang fast - clangclangclangclang!!!!! Not the way the kid who read for this audiobook reads it. That one badly-read line, repeated several times throughout the story, ruins it for me. I can't listen to that one. Add to that the slight annoyance that the kid keeps saying "far in" instead of "foreign", and you have one intolerable reader. Thanks for ruining a good story with your terrible reading, kid.
There are plenty of other stories in this book, but "The Monkey" is the third-longest story, so it's pretty annoying that they used such a bad reader for it.

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Three out of two are good

Revisado: 10-18-22

Zip Code 12345 - Wonderful documentary! I wish it was in video form. It ended way too soon. I'd love more about this!
5 stars

An Aussie Night Before Christmas - boring and just plain stupid
0 stars

The Music Coming from the House - a kind-of-ok story
3 stars

The Signal-Man - Awesome story. (It's frustrating that most people on Audible attack anything Dickens that isn't A Christmas Carol, as if Dickens is allowed to have only one good story.)
5 stars

A Very Improvised Holiday Musical - This is such garbage that they should pay damages to everyone who had to hear any of this for any amount of time.
negative-infinity stars

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All voices sound like a Muppet from The Exorcist

Revisado: 10-16-22

The story is very sweet. The reader is good except for the dialogue. She reads EVERY voice like an elderly demonic Cookie Monster with a sore throat. No matter what the age or gender of the character, they all have the same deep, gruff, scraggly voice. It's hard to get a personality for any character when every single one sounds like a very ill monster.

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Misleading description

Revisado: 08-29-22

The description leads the buyer to believe this is a book about someone's experience with weight loss. That's only a tiny bit of this book. It takes a sudden turn into being an entirely different book. It was so sudden that I stopped what I was doing and came to the computer to check that it hadn't switched to another book or something. After a very small weight loss account, the rest of the book is about the girl's obsession with some actor. She drones on and on and on about how much she loves what's-his-name and how much his movies mean to her and her memories of going to movie theatres to watch the movies. There's not much more boring than hearing someone talk about going to watch a movie. And she drones ooooon and ooooon and ooooon about it. I couldn't finish. I skimmed through the rest, hoping she'd get back to the weight loss story, but it was just more junk about old what's-his-name-actor-man and his movies and blah blah blah blah blah I don't care. Listening to this book is like listening to a 12-year-old girl shrieking over the boy-of-the-month who she has on posters all over her room and who will be enthusiastically replaced by next month's boy she'll be shrieking over. This is not what was described before I bought the book.
I hope Audible lets me return this. I keep having to return books that aren't what they are described to be or that have unlistenable readers or that are without warning full of sex smut (by the way, yes, this book does get into some of that borderline-porn trash). Audible needs to do a better job on these descriptions and warnings about books that are just wannabe-porn marketing themselves as something else. What I've been finding out is that more than half of books that are described as being about eating disorders are actually smutty garbage with very little about eating disorders. I like reading books about eating disorders, whether they're fiction or non-fiction. I have no interest in sex-smut or shrieking fangirls.

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Mediocre story set saved by Winningham (& others)

Revisado: 04-16-22

Mediocre story set saved by Mare Winningham (and others)!

Not a single one of these stories is one that I'd care to read again. The stories themselves just aren't good. The best of them are mediocre. None are worth a second read. Some aren't worth a first read.

This set has, however, some of the best readers I've heard on Audible. And I have a new favorite reader: Mare Winningham! I want more stories read by her!

Since the book description doesn't list who reads which story and which chapters they are, here's that:

Chapter 2 - Willa, read by Holter Graham (predictable Twilight Zone style story, but the reader is good)
Chapter 3 - The Gingerbread Girl, read by Mare Winningham (one of the better stories in this set; best reader!)
Chapter 15 - Harvey's Dream, read by Stephen King (boring, standard, non-unique, predictable; the worst part is the lazy non-ending)
Chapter 16 - Rest Stop, read by Denis O'Hare (not a fan of how the character handled the situation; if this were nonfiction, the girl would be right back in danger)
Chapter 17 - Stationary Bike, read by Ron McLarty (seems to be one of the better stories, but I was distracted and missed some of it because I was coincidentally working out while listening)
Chapter 23 - Graduation Afternoon, read by Jill Eikenberry (boring story; I didn't remember it at all until I checked back again; the reader does pretty well, but the story isn't a memorable or unique one)
Chapter 24 - The Things They Left Behind, read by Ben Shenkman (dull cashing-in kind of story, trying to get that post-911 attention)
Chapter 25 - N., read by Holter Graham, Denis O'Hare, Ben Shenkman, and Karen Ziemba (one of the most interesting stories of this set, and I like that it has multiple readers)
Chapter 32 - The New York Times at Special Bargain Rates, read by Jill Eikenberry (boring story, but the reader does well enough)
Chapter 33 - Mute, read by Skip Saddath (another predictable one, but reader is good)
Chapter 44 - The Cat from Hell, read by Holter Graham (have I seen a TV version of this?)
Chapter 45 - Ayana, read by George Guidall (another meh one, not a unique plot, but the reader does well)
Chapter 46 - A Very Tight Place, read by Ron McLarty (worst story, not worth even one listen)

My favorite reader in this set is Mare Winningham. She's the reason I bought this audiobook, hoping that her reading would be as good as the movie I saw her in. Audible needs more books read by her; she's the best reader I've heard on all of Audible! The story she reads, "Gingerbread Girl", isn't a particularly good story. But she reads it well, and I'd listen to it again just because her reading of it is so good.

Stephen King read one of the stories himself. He isn't a great reader, but I like hearing stories read by the authors so you know exactly how the author meant it to sound. Unfortunately the story itself, "Harvey's Dream", is pretty boring and is one of those lazy no-ending stories.

The other readers are people I'd never heard of outside of this audiobook, but they're all good readers. Eikenberry is the only weak one, but it could be that she just got stuck with the two most boring stories.

The only bad story (bad rather than just mediocre) is the last one, "A Very Tight Place", and it's pretty bad. It's disgusting, and not because it's about poo. It's disgusting because it makes a hero out of Curtis, a man who let his dog run loose in his neighbor's yard and then tried to sue his neighbor when the dog was hurt on the neighbor's fence. Curtis was careless with his own dog's safety and inconsiderate with his neighbors, and HE tried to sue the very neighbor he terrorized with his dog. Sick. Realistic, though. We've all seen it on the news many many times, and likely many of you have suffered through it yourselves, having neighbors who terrorize you with their dog and then blame you when their dog is hurt while they let the dog go illegally into your yard, and then sobbing for the public's sympathy about what a monster you are for having a fence around your own land. The story ends with the dog owner getting a new dog and vowing to continue forever terrorizing the neighbor he'd tried to sue. The reader was good. It's just the story itself that was terrible, making a hero out of selfish, careless bullies like Curtis who use dogs as weapons.

Skip the Curtis story, and the rest of this will be a good audiobook for when you need something on in the background while you work, something with good readers and with story plots that aren't quite good enough to distract you.

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One of the best readers I've heard

Revisado: 04-14-22

Phoebe Strole's performance in this audiobook is one of the best I've heard on Audible. I read this book in print a few years before hearing the audiobook. When I like a book, I worry about listening to the audio version because I don't want my memory of the book to be ruined by a bad reading. Most audiobooks I've heard on Audible have had terrible readers that ruin the story. Strole was nearly perfect. I'm not crazy about the way she made some of the adults sound, reading every line in a mean way, but I guess her interpretation of the book was different than mine when I read it in print.

The only problem with the audiobook is that at one point there are pages filled with "must not eat" repeated over and over. In print, you glance at the pages and don't read every "must not eat" on the page. You just get the idea that the character is repeating that phrase, and you move on. In the audiobook, of course, for the listener to get that point, Strole had to read every "most not eat". It's torture. Of course, that's the point. You're getting inside the head of the character. But that section of the book could replace the Boots thing in military torture training. I usually turn on audiobooks at night very softly while I sleep. When I pick this book, the "must not eat" section always wakes me up, and I have to rush to the computer to click the button to skip to the next chapter. It's not Strole's fault that it drives me crazy; she does put some variety in the way she reads it. Still, it's the same three words repeated for several minutes. Trust me: when you hear "must not eat", go ahead and click skip. Otherwise it will drive you insane.

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Good but predictable story. Bad reader.

Revisado: 04-12-22

I'd expected a Stephen King book to get a better reader than this one. Most of the reading was fine. But the characters' voices -- what was he thinking?! Heyborne reads most of the characters' dialogue in a false-deep, hoarse, scratchy voice that sounds like a demon-possessed carton-of-Camels-a-day asthmatic gasping for breath while stage-whispering every word. It gets even worse when the characters are supposed to be screaming. He does that same ridiculous voice but quieter. Quieter, for screaming. Makes no sense. The only thing worse was the fake southern accent. Why is it that when a Yankee reads that a character has a slight southern accent, they read it in a combination of an exaggerated mix of Colonel Sanders and Blanche Deveroux (neither of whom were even southern at all, with Sanders being from Ohio and Rue McClanahan from Oklahoma)? I've lived all over the south for all of my 40+ years, and there is absolutely no one here who actually talks like that. No one outside of Hollywood, anyway. That fake accent is unrealistic, ignorant, offensive, and distracting. Fortunately the southern character wasn't in the book often.
As for the story, it's a good one, as most of King's books are. However, the ending is predictable, and also the true identity of Stebbins is exactly what you guess it to be in the beginning of the book. No surprises. But it's still a good story.

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Good book, but WORST READER EVER!!!

Revisado: 03-03-22

This is a good book, but the reader, Danielle Ferland, is TERRIBLE!!!! Zero stars for performance!!! I can't even finish it. I made it about half an hour, divided into two days. I wish I could return it, but I've returned two books lately (the yearly limit is only two returns!), and I do like the story, so maybe I'll suffer through the reading at some point in the future? Anyway, I've decided that I will use the print copy to record myself reading it aloud so I can listen to it read in a reasonable way. (I listen to audiobooks while working out, otherwise I'd just read the book.)
Ferland, the reader of this audiobook is an old woman trying to put on a teenager voice, so she sounds squeaky, the way old women tend to talk when they think they're sounding young. That, I could handle, if it were only that. But Ferland also reads EVERY line as though she's cussing out somebody. No matter how mundane it is, like describing what someone is wearing, Ferland says it as though she's very over-dramatically trying to mean-girl the crap out of somebody. It's so unrealistic, so over-the-top, that it's not only annoying but it takes you out of the story, since every line of narration or teen/kid dialogue is exactly the same. But then, when she reads the dialogue of an adult, Ferland puts on the opposite kind of over-dramatic voice, a very sappy over-sensitive voice, which does not fit the dialogue at all. For example, when the mom tells the daughter that she likes A Separate Peace and would like to talk about the book with her, Ferland says it as though the mom is offering to discuss a a fatal diagnosis or something, super super over-sensitive that doesn't fit at all. Ferland very obviously hates teenagers and kids and wants listeners to view all teens and kids as spoiled obnoxious brats. Even as an adult I am offended at her portrayal of teens and kids. I work with teens and kids. I know what they're like. The reader of this book clearly has had zero interaction with teens or kids at any point in her life. Seriously, Ferland must've been home-schooled and then isolated in a cave somewhere and never met anyone under 18 in her entire life. Where on earth do they find these "readers" and why would they pick that old lady to read this book??!!!
The book itself is fine. It's only Ferland's reading that is bad.
I hope Audible will have this book re-read and replace this audiobook with a proper reading, just swap it out so we can listen to it read correctly. I wish I could return this, since Ferland makes it unlistenable. I've returned two books recently, which is the limit for a year, so I can't return this one.

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Nasally reader, several misread words, lazy ending

Revisado: 02-16-22

Most of the story is good. The ending is lazy, the kind of ending you get from a high school kid who can't figure out how to end a story and chooses to go with an old cliche instead of coming up with an actual ending.

The reader is the worst part. The fake accent is inconsistent and unrealistic, and she always sounds like she needs to blow her nose. Listening to her makes me feel like I have a sinus infection. In the intro, when she uses her real accent, she doesn't have the nasally sound. She should've read the whole book in her real accent to avoid that nauseating nasal sound.

In several places she misreads words. For example, instead of reading "tips and tricks" she says "trips and tricks". Sometimes the mistakes are ridiculous, like when she describes the main character as being 1.74 centimeters tall. Her reading mistakes should have been caught at the time and re-recorded. She also mispronounces words in a distracting way. For example, she unprofessionally mispronounces et cetera as "ex cetera".

The sound quality is very inconsistent. In some places it's clear that parts have been re-recorded, probably due to mistakes. For example, every line that includes the name Lela has a very different sound quality from the rest of the section, so she evidently didn't know how to pronounce the name and had to re-record it. She should've re-recorded several other parts, too. Also, at the beginning of one chapter there's some strange background noise before she starts reading. It's distracting enough that I stopped what I was doing to try to see if I'd accidentally started a call or something, but then I figured out that it was a flaw in the book recording.

The reader actually has a nice voice, if only she'd read correctly, use her real voice, and stop the congested sound.

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