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DrHex

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Perfect Literary Geekness.

Overall
5 out of 5 stars
Performance
5 out of 5 stars
Story
5 out of 5 stars

Reviewed: 2024-12-21

If you want to survive out there Atticus, don’t forget your towel! Brilliant shout out to Douglas Adam’s, a mutually cherished gargleblaster. Kevin’s Shakespeare references will bring a mass of Gen Xers into Elizabethan dark fantasy too.

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Shoring up Pamela’s damaged reputation

Overall
4 out of 5 stars
Performance
3 out of 5 stars
Story
4 out of 5 stars

Reviewed: 2024-11-09

The author did an admirable job looking under every rock that had damaged Pamela Harriman’s reputation. As a result I got two books in one — one set of content that tore her down and another that attempted to repair the damage by building her up. I liked the way her behaviour was depicted as a reflection of her wartime courage but I was still confused about why so many eminent family and colleagues detested her. There is a missing link in the book that needs expanding: the dynamics of extravagance v wastefulness? or the psychology of love through the lens of self-centredness? Bias is always an issue with biography of controversial characters, but it’s up to me now, I suppose, to read Brook Hayward and then observe the spin on the moral compass. As for the posh British narration, it sounded unsettlingly detached.

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Sophisticated but flawed

Overall
4 out of 5 stars
Performance
5 out of 5 stars
Story
4 out of 5 stars

Reviewed: 2024-10-11

Great example of taking a small, elegant concept and turning it into a massive exploration of imagination. It takes sophistication and loads of experience to do this. On the downside, and without being a spoiler, the primary conflict of the escalating action of the story is strongly identified, then completely abandoned. That is an unfortunate flaw, as I perceive it.

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Perfect book for napping

Overall
3 out of 5 stars
Performance
3 out of 5 stars
Story
3 out of 5 stars

Reviewed: 2024-08-24

Headshot is the perfect book for napping. The over-the-top character descriptions enable one to listen for a while, then nap for a while, and wake up not having missed a dot of the plot. Because there is no plot. A brilliant book for readers who do not care if anything significant happens. As for the performance, the sip of breath the performer takes before almost every line gets distracting.

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Gary burst open my heart

Overall
5 out of 5 stars
Performance
5 out of 5 stars
Story
5 out of 5 stars

Reviewed: 2024-07-28

I’m in the publishing game and I’m all in with Gary’s manner of confession. He never falters from weaving his ethics into his motivation to win, presenting economic forecasts that expose truckfulls of bad banking behaviour. I wish he was one of my authors. I envy the editors and publisher who got to work with him on this book and audiobook that burst open my heart. I wonder who gets to play Gary on the limited series? Gotta be a young Paul Newman type, eh Gaz?

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Takes the pseudo out of pseudo science

Overall
5 out of 5 stars
Performance
5 out of 5 stars
Story
5 out of 5 stars

Reviewed: 2024-06-24

This book fights the stigma of spiritual pseudoscience with its rigour and dedication to evidence-based research. I could have done without so many case studies, especially the downer stories at the beginning, but unlike many of the other reviewers, I enjoyed the molecular and neurological descriptions of the phenomena, especially the pineal gland. Could well be there is truth in the divine flow, bringing a better world through universal consciousness. Peace.

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Better listeners than me

Overall
2 out of 5 stars
Performance
2 out of 5 stars
Story
2 out of 5 stars

Reviewed: 2024-05-21

Mirroring our hero’s reaction to the robot in chapter 7, this book was not right for me.
I grew weary of listening to them their when we have a singular hero. I grew annoyed with what sounded like a speeded up narration, especially evident in the multiple audio edits throughout where the voice was slower and words better enunciated. Reading the other reviews makes it clear to me that this book has found listeners who were a better fit. To each their own.

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Flawed remembrances from a brilliant actor

Overall
4 out of 5 stars
Performance
5 out of 5 stars
Story
3 out of 5 stars

Reviewed: 2024-05-12

Conveniently Jane leaves out pertinent details. Why for example does the story of her purported $100 million divorce settlement from Ted Turner get usurped by a tear jerker tale of living in her daughter’s guest room? Or how did she manage to do all that loping around the ranch on her Arabian horses despite needing hip and knee surgeries? How did she cure herself of bulimia? How could she rightfully call herself a pioneering feminist when she positioned herself in the shadow of men in her life? Why did self deprecation and insecurity cloud every single chapter (that’s more a question for her editor)? All that said, Cat Ballou remains my favourite movie of all time. Jane Fonda is a brilliant actor.

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Falls Off a Cliff

Overall
2 out of 5 stars
Performance
3 out of 5 stars
Story
2 out of 5 stars

Reviewed: 2024-03-23

These characters are wonderful until they’re not. Listen to the book and see if you too shudder at the chapter of doom. Here we have a fraud on two levels. The lesser one is the AI trying to be a poet. The greater one is a middle-aged author man trying to emulate the life of an old woman “in the style of Margaret Atwood” and not pulling it off. So many layers of disconnect all at the same time. Great premise, but falls off a cliff,

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He said she said messed with the dialogue

Overall
4 out of 5 stars
Performance
4 out of 5 stars
Story
4 out of 5 stars

Reviewed: 2024-03-13

Not a bad book, probably easier to read than listen to though because of the dialogue being hijacked with “he said she said” — Laura said, Daniel said, Susannah said, and so on, instead of letting the excellent narrator just say the dialogue lines in character. I understand when there are many characters in a scene having to identify who is talking but it was a bad directing decision to constantly interrupt the flow of narration with he said she said peppered at the end of each line of dialogue. Besides that, the plot hung together in a decenyly woven short story chapter style. It was amusing to hear the author’s sidebar jabs at the publishing industry throughout. I wonder what her publisher thought of that?

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