Audible

This Audible Original just didn't live up to my expectations. Cynical can be good. Snarky can be good. Rewriting fairytales can be quite entertaining. This failed at all three. It was more mean than cynical. And when it wasn't being mean, it was too often boring. Multiple authors, multiple narrators, a couple of good stories, but for the most part, I wash I'd spent my audio reading time listening to something better.

Gave it a shot under the premise of 1) famous readers, 2) humor, 3) short stories, as I thought all of those things might go well with listening in the car. I listened to the first and the second and was just so turned off by it that not even Sir Patrick Stewart could keep my attention for the second story.

The sound background is awful and allowed to dominate the story telling. The music is artificially dramatic, like in the worst-tv-movies, and the loudness of it interrupts the show more storyteller. In fact, in some instances, the story teller literally pauses to allow for some dumb swell of synthetic music.

The two stories I listened to were pretty close to terrible, one loosely based on the Frog Prince(ess) and one on Mr. Acid Reflux or something. They aren't streamlined and have unclear messaging (female solidarity? rage? unconventional lives?). These aren't funny; they are sad. The Princess mulls on settling for an insufficient love to escape her life; the man in the second story has severe estrangement from his own life. These aren't cynical--these are real and sad.

Alas, Offerman can't save it either. His 'introductions' are rambling and meant to be humorous, but fall quite flat (I think in the second one, he is pretending something-or-other). Thankfully, it was free. I'll be wiping this from my phone immediately.

True story: I stopped and switched to Whispers Underground for the seven thousandth time, just to get the bad taste out of my ears. show less

These interviews were captured just a few months after the event; really while recovery was still happening. There are two first-person accounts from my Northshore area: Covington and Lacomb. It feels like interviews or prompters were present to keep the recollection moving and coherent and were then edited out. The result is compelling, personal oral history about caring for horses, the repugnance of liquefying chicken, house-crushing toppled trees, and more.

I don't know how to rate this any higher than 3.5 stars since the final selection was SO BAD. Ugh. However, in the spirit of the season, I will give it 4 stars. The story, and i assume it is true, of the 12345 zip code for letters to Santa Claus, was quite cute. The Australian version of the Night Before Christmas was charming, especially since the provenance of the story attributed to Samuel Clemmens is in question, anyway. [The Signal Man], written by Charles Dickens, was fabulous. I'm not show more generally too enamored of short stories, but he was at his best (and least wordy!) with this one. But then how sad that the staff at audible couldn't write a better script for their "Very Impromptu" contribution.

This Audible.com presentation was a gift from them, and I feel a bit bad about panning their own efforts, but then, I had to listen to it, so it's only fair to share the pain. show less