Carl

This is a compelling book, but it will offend many. Race is dealt with quite a bit, and is pretty hard on blacks. We get mostly conclusions, and little of the data and methodology. Some conclusions are based on assumptions.


For example, they say that adoption correlates to lower success. If the data proves that, fine. But when they conclude that this must be because "The type of person to give up a baby for adoption tends to have a lower IQ"... I think this is an ASSUMPTION that can't possibly be supported by data, given that most adoptions are closed. How do they know the IQ of the mothers?

The idea that crime fell off precipitously in the 90's because of abortion is compelling but I see some flaws. They ASSUME that the unwanted, aborted babies were the most likely babies to have become criminals. At the same time they fall heavily on the nature side in the nature vs nurture debate (I agree) and imply that intelligent, successful parents tend to produce the same sort of children. So, who is really having all the abortions? Unintelligent and uneducated women, or upwardly mobile women that don't want impediments to careers and education? If the majority are in the latter group, couldn't it be argued that those kids would have been LESS likely to be criminals? Where is the data on this? I'm sure it's out there but not mentioned in the book. Also, what about all the aborted children that were essentially replaced by the children of immigrants? There has been no precipitous drop in population in America, unlike, say Italy, despite abortion and contraception because of immigration, correct? So, they must be saying that there's not a drop in teenagers, but just a drop in BAD teenagers, and I don;t see how this has been proven.

They sometimes cite hypothetical and anecdotal cases which are purely imaginary.

Despite these shortcomings, it was a fun read with interesting ideas. I just wouldn't take some of their conclusions as gospel.

This performances and presentation for this book were very well done.

The storyline will be appealing to "Twilight" crowd but I'm not sure how or why this could have crossover appeal for adults (as, say the Harry Potter series seems to have). I don't know how this got such high ratings. It's so superficial and shallow I could barely get through it.

The plot is basic, the characters are 1-dimentional, the dialogue is inane teenage chatter that never touches on subjects more profound than the desiree to fit in, get a boyfriend, or gain independance. Descriptions of characters are repetitive; each insight or description just reinforces what we already know about the characters and the travails of High School in a rural town.

Overall, this is unrewarding fluff written for a 6th grade reading level. That said, teenagers will probably have fun with it.

Yes, the performance is annoying. Every sentence is overly flamboyant; if you stress every other word than everything loses importance.

John Lee pronounces "Wh" like Stewey on "Family Guy"... Wheat = Hooweat, white = haawhite, weasel = hawweasel

Like Medieval Sopranos

It's long, complex, has multiple story-lines, convincing characters and plot, excellent environmental descriptions, good backstories, and a plot that hangs together perfectly and believably. It's hard to believe one person wrote this.

I have not. But I enjoyed his performance greatly. He has a great, elderly sounding voice that goes well with the subject, and he doesn't try to do (or overdo) female voices, which to me can be quite creepy.

Well, see the HBO series, it's a scene for scene reproduction of the book, and very good.

This book is not so much a historical account. It compares and contrasts the writing style, logical and rhetorical strategies, and their overall ways of seeing the world.

Enjoying the book very much except that it sounds like someone is talking in the background, some kind of compression artifact?

The book was fine but the narrator was not so good.

This narrator was not nearly as good for me as for the first book. At first I thought the book was allot cornier than than the first, and maybe less well written. This may or may not be true, but much of that impression comes from the narrator. His timing and execution is robotic and somehow childish.

The narration for this book was much, much better than for book 2, Sam T is better talent. Overall, a great value if you use credits 1 credit = 35 hours of fun. Even though it's a cheesy fantasy book, it's very well written. Much darker and more violent than the TV series.

Overall, with the Gold plan this series was a great buy, I saved at least $100 over the itunes price and got over 100 hours of listening. Great value.

This, for me, was the worst book in the series. Stephen King writing himself into the series ruined it for me because it messed up my suspension of disbelief. It's hard to care about characters that even the narrative imples are not "real".

It's true, as others have noted, that there is too much introspection in this book, and the plot plods along slowly. I don't mind that so many new types of characters were added.

The last book redeems the latter part of the series somewhat for me, but it was downhill for me as soon as SK added himself to the book.