laurie

I just started this book, and so far I'm enjoying it except for one big distraction: Keith Richards is a Brit, and Johnny Depp is narrating it with his American "accent." When he does dialogue, like a Southern drawl or a British accent, he's great. But with the narrative not sounding like Keith Richards, I feel distanced from the experience of this being a memoir. I'm constantly aware that Johnny Depp is reading it. If the producers had chosen someone with a British accent, I'd be enjoying this experience much, much more.

I opted for this novel because of North Korea's recent threats concerning its nuclear capabilities. Frank's 2005 book begins just before the US and Russia's nuclear holocaust and focuses on a small inland Florida community in the months thereafter.

The carefully thought-out details resulting from devastating shortages--salt and batteries, for example--and how the survivors deal with the loss of communication with other areas of the country are fascinating. Does the United States still exist? How do we feed ourselves and protect our loved ones from roaming highwaymen? What do we do without antibiotics, insulin, and anesthesia? What happens when the town's only doctor is savagely beaten by addicts who steal his meager supplies? How do we keep ourselves warm? On and on.

In a world without fuel-powered transportation, electricity, money, and the comforts we take for granted, the protagonists depend upon their ingenuity, common sense, and courage, and they strengthen the bonds of family and cooperation with neighbors so they can survive.

Effusive praise cannot do justice to Will Patton's narration. He puts you right there with the characters--men, women, black, white, young, and old, of every background. It was amazing.

Listening to this book was an unforgettable experience.

I didn't finish this book. The content was well organized and informative, but its tone ruined it for me. It was sarcastic and snide. The narrator delivered it as the writing demanded, but I could only imagine her smirking and rolling her eyes as she conveyed the author's information, observations, and opinions.

I've always been interested in ancient Egypt, and I wish this had been written and spoken in an intelligent, forthright manner.

Well, one of the few regrets in my life is that I never signed up for John Irving's Creative Writing class at my alma mater. I figured he was too young to know what he was about. AUGH!

This character-driven book is touching and fascinating. Every day its surprises delighted me.

I thought the author used his protagonist as his anti-war mouthpiece more than I liked (not that I'm pro-war!).

All the characters were sharply drawn and three dimensional.

Oh, boy, did the narrator have a challenge before him. The title character had a bizarre, high-pitched voice, but Joe Barrett never missed a beat. He also included a subtle New England accent when appropriate. Kudos! Everyone sounded different--men, women, young, old.

This book is highly imaginative and asks the readers knotty questions. Irving is brilliant, with a huge frame of reference, and an excellent author. If he were giving a class now, I'd definitely register for it!

Another reviewer said the movie was "a trailer for the book," and I can't improve on that description. This book was wonderful. If you loved the film, you will find more complex, more fleshed-out characters and situations that are not as pat as a movie script demands.You'll like the book a lot more, I bet.

The narrator nails the psychiatrist's accent, which was one of the most enjoyable parts of this Audible experience for me. The women's voices weren't as distinguishable--slightly higher and quicker than the men's, but that was OK.

I found this to be a fascinating romance of two troubled individuals and their healing.

I cried at the end of the book when Lincoln died. He had become a living, breathing person to me as a result of reading this incredible book. Last night, a friend of mine told me she had the same welling up of emotion. This book covers Lincoln's whole life, not just his brilliance in selecting his Cabinet, and the backgrounds for his Cabinet members and erstwhile rivals for the presidential nomination are complete and fascinating.

In A Team of Rivals, we get to know Lincoln as a father and husband as well as politician, decision maker, and strategist. He was brilliant and patient. The irony of his assassination by a mad Southerner is that Reconstruction overseen with Lincoln's forgiveness, common sense, and love of the Union would have made things so much less traumatic.

I could not give this book a higher recommendation.

Outliers and Tipping Point were fascinating to me. I found my mind wandering while listening to What the Dog Saw. Of course the topics that appeal are a matter of personal taste. You might prioritize these three books differently.

Gladwell has a wonderful voice, and he reads his material beautifully.

I came to this book by way of Ron Chernow's biography of George Washington, which piqued my interest about Lafayette. Audible had only one short offering about Lafayette, so I opted for this book, which is set against the French Revolution. I found it informative and entertaining. The author has done her research, and she inserted many details that brought the era to life. Her plot positioned her characters very well to be in the midst of the turmoil. The last few chapters lagged a bit, but everything leading up to Marie's imprisonment was wonderful.

But let's talk about this astonishing narrator. She was able to sound like a man, a woman, and a child. She nailed French, German, and English accents. She pronounced everything correctly and had an even pace. She never faltered. I wish all narrators were as amazing as Rosalyn Landor. I'll be looking for her other books.

I knew nothing about John Garfield, but the synopsis intrigued me, so I purchased the book. I am convinced that had he lived, Garfield would have been one of our greatest presidents. He was brilliant and humble, a philosopher and a mediator. His assassination and long, awful death served to unite a country still divided twenty years after the Civil War.

If there was ever an American tragedy, this is it.The presidents at this time had no bodyguards. Garfield's wounds, inflicted by a delusional man, were not life threatening. What killed this president was his egotistical doctor, who refused to consider Lister's warnings about bacteria. Lister's methods had been used with astonishing success in Europe for years, but the US lagged behind.

The political situation of Garfield's time were similar to the paralysis of our Congress today. Will things ever change?!

I studied American History in high school but not in college, and I possessed the general knowledge of aware adults, but this biography taught me much of what I didn't know--such as the enmity between Washington and Jefferson and the unfounded fear among many that Washington's goal was to establish a monarchy. I hadn't known how strapped Washington was for funds or how unwelcome strangers, curious about the general, flocked into Mount Vernon because there was no one to stop them.

The material was very thorough--at times too much so for me, as when Chernow delved into the minutiae of the Washington dinnerware. Other readers might be fascinated by these details, though.

I enjoyed this book, and Scott Brick did a solid job as a narrator. He was smooth if a little slow, but he was pleasant to listen to.

I love Eugenides, and this is the only novel I hadn't listened to. Nick Landrum's reading is so flat and slow, so lacking in emotion and cadence, I had to turn it off after chapter 3. A darned shame--I was really looking forward to this. The narrator for Middlesex was sensational. What could have possessed the powers that be to have given Landrum this job?