brendan f kelly
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How Baseball Happened
- Outrageous Lies Exposed! The True Story Revealed
- By: Thomas W. Gilbert
- Narrated by: George Newbern
- Length: 10 hrs and 38 mins
- Unabridged
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The fascinating, true origin story of baseball - how America’s first great sport developed and how it conquered a nation.
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superb reading. ate it up in 2 days.
- By Bill on 01-13-22
- How Baseball Happened
- Outrageous Lies Exposed! The True Story Revealed
- By: Thomas W. Gilbert
- Narrated by: George Newbern
Great history of early baseball
Reviewed: 04-18-24
First, the narration is first rate. Fantastic. Secondly, the author really knows his stuff. This is a very detailed and interesting story. Sometimes he strays from the topic, sometimes very far from the topic ( Im thinking about waiters strikes, anti Immigrant sentement, and the still unsolved murder of a beautiful and mysterious cigar girl) but even these stories are interesting and colorful. Fantastic book.
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The History of Baseball
- A Short Story
- By: Christie Hodgen
- Narrated by: Courtney Patterson
- Length: 1 hr and 40 mins
- Unabridged
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Has anyone ever told you that baseball is more than a game, that it's really a metaphor for life? Have you ever wondered what they meant? This story imagines the answer. A single mother moves to Kansas City with her young daughter and notices that everyone she meets - her new colleagues, neighbors, even the mailman - can't stop talking about baseball. "It's more than just a game," they tell the mother. "It's so much more. What you need is to come to a game and experience it."
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This is NOT a history of baseball
- By brendan f kelly on 04-16-24
- The History of Baseball
- A Short Story
- By: Christie Hodgen
- Narrated by: Courtney Patterson
This is NOT a history of baseball
Reviewed: 04-16-24
This is yet another whiny self centered screed about an over privlidges recently divorced woman who works at a university and how ,.. oh i dont really care, she has some sort of first world problems, and considers herself interesting and fasciating and put upon simply becase she sucks air. I was looking for a book about, oh you know, a History Of Baseball!!! This is not it
The narrator is delightful and dose such a great job that I almost cared, but even her fantastic work can not overcome the incredibly self involved text.
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The Accidental Time Machine
- By: Joe Haldeman
- Narrated by: Kevin Free
- Length: 7 hrs and 53 mins
- Unabridged
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Joe Haldeman is the esteemed Hugo and Nebula Award-winning author of The Forever War. Things are going nowhere for lowly MIT research assistant Matt Fuller - especially not after his girlfriend drops him for another man. But then while working late one night, he inadvertently stumbles upon what may be the greatest scientific breakthrough ever. His luck, however, runs out when he finds himself wanted for murder - in the future.
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Cool idea. Tediously told.
- By Ted on 12-02-16
- The Accidental Time Machine
- By: Joe Haldeman
- Narrated by: Kevin Free
Definitely at B+, fun in parts.
Reviewed: 03-17-24
I'm a fan of Mr. Haldeman, but this one was a bit of a mixed bag. First of all, without spoiling anything, I thought that the method of time travel used here, as well as the story of its' discovery was among the best Sci Fi I've ever read. The first half of the book is really great.
That being said, the quality drops off a lot in the second half. The inherent limits involved in this particular form of time travel continue to make the story more fun and believable, but the societies that we enter become less and less believable, and the story starts to drag.
One society, which serves mainly as a way for Mr. Haldeman to disapprove of religion, is absolutely self-contradictory. The evil and oppressive totalitarian and tyrannical bad guys, thugs that squash even the slightest signs of heresy or dissent, inexplicably not only give our hero a place to stay and free food for no particular reason, but also our hero wander around freely saying and doing all sorts of things that should be getting him in trouble for far longer than makes any sort of sense. Perhaps this is Mr. Haldeman's way of saying religious believers are inherently stupid, but these folks would have to be dumber than a pile of bricks, and twice as unobservant for them to act the way they do. Their actions simply make no sense. After a rather entertaining escape, our heroes continue their journey through a series of adventures that are distinguished only by the minimal amount of effort and imagination that went into writing them. Eventually, following a visit of the U.S.S. Deus Ex Machina the story comes to an unexpected, (in fact VERY unexpected) but nonetheless highly satisfying and enjoyable conclusion. Sadly this comes at the expense of leaving a key plot point unresolved, which leaves a plot hole big enough to sail the 7th Fleet through. This book reeks of "contractually obligated to finish it". The excellent writing and structure of the first part gave me very high expectations for what was to come, and the second part of the book definitely failed to meet those expectations. Nonetheless most, or at least much, of the book was fun. The method of time travel was innovative, and the explanation was brilliant. Just don't expect to much from the last half of the book, and you will probably enjoy it more than I did.
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The Confession of St. Patrick
- Translated from the Original Latin with an Introduction and Notes
- By: St. Patrick
- Narrated by: Bill Shanks
- Length: 1 hr and 57 mins
- Unabridged
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The source from which the most important evidence has been derived, is the confession, which has been brought out of its obscurity, and many passages of great interest quoted from it, by various writers. But, as these, however accurate they may be, will not supply the place of the work itself nor afford as satisfactory evidence to the inquirer, it cannot but be useful to render it accessible to the general listener, by means of an English translation; and to enable every one to judge for himself of the purity of the faith originally planted in Ireland.
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Patrick speaks for himself
- By jtvoegtle on 02-15-23
- The Confession of St. Patrick
- Translated from the Original Latin with an Introduction and Notes
- By: St. Patrick
- Narrated by: Bill Shanks
Very disappointed
Reviewed: 03-17-24
There are only three things wrong with this. First of all, this translation contains Thomas Olden's extensive, scholarly introduction and all of his notes and commentary. To call them "extensive" is an understatement, as they are longer than the actual Confession of St. Patrick. If I did the math right, the actual part of the book that was written by St. Patrick took up 46 minutes. Considering that this is a one hour and fifty seven minute book, that should tell you exactly how extensive Rev. Olden's notes and commentary are. One gets the impression that Rev. Olden thought somewhat highly of himself.
Secondly, Thomas Olden wrote this in the late 18th Century, and he was a Curate of the Anglican Church of Ireland, which is the Irish branch of the Anglican Communion. Since Irish independence the Church of Ireland has shrunk quite a bit, As of 2016 it has approximately 384,176 total members and 58,000 active baptized members out of an Irish population of approximately 5,281,600.
This is important to note because, given his time and sectarian allegiance, Rev. Olden is decidedly anti-catholic, and it shows. That's just how things were 130 years ago, and as a Catholic I don't see it as anything to get upset or bothered about, That being said, if you decide to spend an hour of your life listening to his VERY, VERY, VERY, extensive notes and commentary (not much of which is actually about St. Patrick himself) you probably want to be aware of Olden's point of view going in. For example, early on Rev. Olden complains that St. Patrick "..was associated, in the popular belief, only with puerile fables and ridiculous miracles" and that "...no one thought of doubting that the doctrines which he taught were those of the modern Church of Rome".
The last complaint I have is about the reader, mainly because there isn't one. This is pretty obviously the product of an A.I. I first noticed that the reading was somehow a little off. It is a very good A.I. and not nearly as monotone as you would expect from a computer, but the pauses seemed unnatural. What finally gave it away was when Rev. Olden used the then popular abbreviation for manuscript, "ms". Apparently this wasn't included in the A.I.'s programming because instead of saying "manuscript" it actually said the letters "m.s.". That took me a bit to figure out. Then when it read out roman numerals by individually pronouncing each letter in "xviii" instead of saying "18" it all came together.
That being said, the "reader' is very clear and understandable, and at no point did I have any difficulty following the story or the action. Also his voice while not pleasant, was far from unpleasant. I know of more than a few human readers of which neither of those things can be accurately said.
Given that this work is in public domain, and they didn't even bother to hire a flesh and blood reader, I can only suppose that the folks who put this edition out are still making bank even at the low $4.76 price I paid. That being said, the "Confession" itself is well worth the low price, especially if you skip all the commentary.
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We Could Do Worse
- A Millennial Collection of Alternate Histories
- By: Larry Niven, Howard Waldrop, Harry Turtledove, and others
- Narrated by: Richard Gilliland, Yancy Butler
- Length: 6 hrs and 15 mins
- Unabridged
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What would the world be like if the space race started during World War II? If Teddy Roosevelt had fought in World War I? If Joseph McCarthy had been elected President? Those and other questions are answered in these nine stories of alternate histories, when the world as we know it might have turned out different than it is today, if only one minor (or major) change had occurred in history.
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Mediocre
- By Gary S. Shogren on 02-13-08
- We Could Do Worse
- A Millennial Collection of Alternate Histories
- By: Larry Niven, Howard Waldrop, Harry Turtledove, Gregory Benford, Mike Resnick, Kristine Kathryn Rusch, Allen Steele, Martin Greenberg - editor
- Narrated by: Richard Gilliland, Yancy Butler
The book is called "We could do worse". No you cant.
Reviewed: 02-19-24
First of all, this is a collection of stories, so your favorite author (in my case Niven) only wrote ONE of the stories, and chances are you've already read it. Secondly, the audio has problems. Every chapter begins with the last line of the story before, and is in turn, missing its' last line. Also some stories seem to be professionally read and audio mixed, others sound like they were done in moms basement by someone with a cassette recorder. The Massachusetts Yankee and Return of William Proxmire were great. Bloodied Ground and Ike at the Mike definitely held my interest, but none of the others did. At that Ike at the Mike, while fun, was a bit long. It was a fun idea, but it really couldn't support a story that long. Except for the above mentioned stories, I lost interest long before the author did. (One suspects that some of these authors were being paid by the word.) The performance of the very last story was excellent, the audio was great, and the reader knocked it out of the park, but sadly the text and plot were pretty bad.
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We Could Do Worse
- A Millennial Collection of Alternate Histories
- By: Martin Greenberg - editor, Howard Waldrop, Gregory Benford, and others
- Narrated by: Richard McGonagle, Gordon Thompson, Stefan Rudnicki, and others
- Length: 6 hrs and 15 mins
- Unabridged
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Fascinating “What If?” stories from Hugo and Nebula award-winning masters of alternate history! What would the world be like if Teddy Roosevelt had fought in World War I? If the space race started during World War II? If Joseph McCarthy had been elected President? These and other questions are answered in this collection of alternate histories. As these stories suggest, the world as we know it might have turned out different than it is today, if only one minor—or major—change had occurred in history.
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Mediocre
- By Gary S. Shogren on 02-13-08
- We Could Do Worse
- A Millennial Collection of Alternate Histories
- By: Martin Greenberg - editor, Howard Waldrop, Gregory Benford, Brian Thomsen, Larry Niven, Mike Resnick, Kristine Kathryn Rusch, Harry Turtledove, Robert Silverberg, Allen Steele
- Narrated by: Richard McGonagle, Gordon Thompson, Stefan Rudnicki, William Windom, Richard Gilliland, Jo Marie Payton, Yancy Butler, David Ackroyd
The book is called "We could do worse". No you cant.
Reviewed: 02-19-24
First of all, this is a collection of stories, so your favorite author (in my case Niven) only wrote ONE of the stories, and chances are you've already read it. Secondly, the audio has problems. Every chapter begins with the last line of the story before, and is in turn, missing its' last line. Also some stories seem to be professionally read and audio mixed, others sound like they were done in moms basement by someone with a cassette recorder. The Massachusetts Yankee and Return of William Proxmire were great. Bloodied Ground and Ike at the Mike definitely held my interest, but none of the others did. At that Ike at the Mike, while fun, was a bit long. It was a fun idea, but it really couldn't support a story that long. Except for the above mentioned stories, I lost interest long before the author did. (One suspects that some of these authors were being paid by the word.) The performance of the very last story was excellent, the audio was great, and the reader knocked it out of the park, but sadly the text and plot were pretty bad.
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90 Minutes in Heaven
- A True Story of Death & Life
- By: Don Piper
- Narrated by: Don Piper
- Length: 6 hrs and 6 mins
- Unabridged
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After colliding with a semi-truck, Don Piper died and went to heaven. Ninety minutes later he returned to life on earth. After years of silence, he is now sharing his life-changing story.
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Title is misleading
- By LINDA on 11-27-10
- 90 Minutes in Heaven
- A True Story of Death & Life
- By: Don Piper
- Narrated by: Don Piper
I've seen Don Piper in person, and this is true.
Reviewed: 10-22-23
I have long been interested in accounts of Near Death Experiences. To be honest, I'm more than skeptical of most of them. Because I live in Houston I was able to see Don Piper when he came to speak at the church I was then attending. Seeing him in person I can say he was humble, funny, self-deprecating, authentic, and completely believable. Unlike a lot of other NDE stories, I have no doubt that this one actually occurred. This account is truthful, and (unlike a lot of other "near death experiences" account) I have no doubt at all that this is completely true. How this truth impacts your own life is up to you. You may like it, you might reject it, but either way, it is still true.
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The Art of Seduction
- An Indispensible Primer on the Ultimate Form of Power
- By: Robert Greene
- Narrated by: Jeff David
- Length: 5 hrs and 9 mins
- Abridged
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Synthesizing the work of thinkers including Freud, Diderot, Nietzsche, and Einstein, delineating the enticing strategies of characters throughout history, The Art of Seduction is a comprehensive guide to getting what we want - any way we can. Controversial but never dull, timeless and up-to-date, it's destined to be Greene's next best seller.
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VERY abridged
- By David on 03-19-17
- The Art of Seduction
- An Indispensible Primer on the Ultimate Form of Power
- By: Robert Greene
- Narrated by: Jeff David
Horrible, evil book about how to manipulate people
Reviewed: 10-22-23
I was expecting a book about romance, but this is entirely about manipulation, how to USE people. It isn't about love it is about power. Cold, soulless, chilling. Horrible.
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One Beautiful Dream
- By: Jennifer Fulwiler
- Narrated by: Jennifer Fulwiler
- Length: 7 hrs and 7 mins
- Unabridged
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Work and family, individuality and motherhood, the creative life and family life - women are told constantly that they can’t have it all. One Beautiful Dream is the deeply personal, often humorous tale of what happened when one woman dared to believe that you can have it all - if you’re willing to reimagine what having it all looks like. Jennifer Fulwiler is the last person you might expect to be the mother of six young children. First of all, she’s an introvert only child, self-described workaholic, and former atheist who never intended to have a family.
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A wonderful journey
- By Faith on 06-13-20
- One Beautiful Dream
- By: Jennifer Fulwiler
- Narrated by: Jennifer Fulwiler
Great inspirational book....
Reviewed: 01-31-23
This is a great book if you're feeling down, or your life is a mess, because this book is TRUE. Mrs. Fulwiler doesn't feed you a lot of inspirational platitudes, She tells it like it is.. and part of "like it is" is "this worked for me". This isn't someone sanctimoniously telling you "When God closes a door, He also opens a window".... (which would REALLY suck if you were an astronaut... or an airline pilot... or a submarine captain). This is someone honestly talking about the challenges involved with how to (in the words of Prince) "...to get through this thing called life" and still be sane at the end. You'll laugh, you'll sympathize, occasionally you'll be impressed, and if you're very lucky... you might just learn a little something too.
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Monster Hunter International
- By: Larry Correia
- Narrated by: Oliver Wyman
- Length: 24 hrs
- Unabridged
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Five days after Owen Zastava Pitt pushed his insufferable boss out of a 14th story window, he woke up in the hospital with a scarred face, an unbelievable memory, and a job offer. It turns out that monsters are real. All the things from myth, legend, and B-movies are out there, waiting in the shadows. Some of them are evil, and some are just hungry. Monster Hunter International is the premier eradication company in the business. And now Owen is their newest recruit.
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Suprizingly entertaining
- By Konstantin on 02-17-12
- Monster Hunter International
- By: Larry Correia
- Narrated by: Oliver Wyman
Loved it.
Reviewed: 12-12-22
Now I know why all my friends love Larry Correla's books. They are great fun. My only complaint is that the otherwise excellent performance is marred by the narrator's difficulty with some of the female voices. They aren't the best. Julie, especially sounds less like an intelligent accomplished sexy woman than a guy doing a bad fallsetto with a bad southern accent. On more than one occasion I lost track of who was speaking.
That being said, he does the action sequences incredibly well, which makes up for a lot.
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