Dr. J. Adrienne Roth
- 67
- reviews
- 9
- helpful votes
- 340
- ratings
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The Empusium
- A Health Resort Horror Story
- By: Olga Tokarczuk
- Narrated by: Antonia Lloyd-Jones, Natasha Soudek
- Length: 11 hrs and 3 mins
- Unabridged
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September 1913. A young Pole suffering from tuberculosis arrives at Wilhelm Opitz’s Guesthouse for Gentlemen in the village of Görbersdorf, a health resort in the Silesian mountains. Every evening the residents gather to imbibe the hallucinogenic local liqueur and debate the great issues of the day: Monarchy or democracy? Do devils exist? Are women born inferior? War or peace? Meanwhile, disturbing things are happening in the guesthouse and the surrounding hills. Someone—or something—seems to be watching, attempting to infiltrate this cloistered world.
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Never ending Misogyny
- By Nina O on 10-11-24
- The Empusium
- A Health Resort Horror Story
- By: Olga Tokarczuk
- Narrated by: Antonia Lloyd-Jones, Natasha Soudek
Tedious
Reviewed: 12-18-24
Too abstract and fantastical for my liking. Perhaps different character characters done by different people would have helped.
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Beautiful Ruins
- By: Jess Walter
- Narrated by: Edoardo Ballerini
- Length: 12 hrs and 53 mins
- Unabridged
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The story begins in 1962. On a rocky patch of the sun-drenched Italian coastline, a young innkeeper, chest-deep in daydreams, looks out over the incandescent waters of the Ligurian Sea and spies an apparition: a tall, thin woman, a vision in white, approaching him on a boat. She is an actress, he soon learns, an American starlet, and she is dying. And the story begins again today, half a world away, when an elderly Italian man shows up on a movie studio's back lot - searching for the mysterious woman he last saw at his hotel decades earlier.
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My mind wandered
- By Ella on 11-25-12
- Beautiful Ruins
- By: Jess Walter
- Narrated by: Edoardo Ballerini
Geography as characters
Reviewed: 11-09-24
Sequencing was more jarring than intriguing. Some of it seem too contrived. Despite some character complexity, I found there was too much caricature.
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Paris in the Present Tense
- By: Mark Helprin
- Narrated by: Bronson Pinchot
- Length: 14 hrs and 35 mins
- Unabridged
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In the midst of what should be an effulgent time of life, with its days bright with music, family, and rowing on the Seine, Jules is confronted headlong and all at once by a series of challenges to his principles, livelihood, and home, forcing him to grapple with his complex past and find a way forward. He risks fraud to save his terminally ill infant grandson, matches wits with a renegade insurance investigator, is drawn into an act of savage violence, and falls deeply, excitingly in love with a young cellist who is a third his age.
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Greatest living "novelist". Top 10 narrator.
- By BellevueMike on 10-14-17
- Paris in the Present Tense
- By: Mark Helprin
- Narrated by: Bronson Pinchot
French references and attitude
Reviewed: 07-02-24
Helprin is too in love with his words. Often beautiful, it needed a lot of editing. Suffered from repetitive actions, themes and fantasies.
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Master Slave Husband Wife
- An Epic Journey from Slavery to Freedom
- By: Ilyon Woo
- Narrated by: Janina Edwards, Leon Nixon
- Length: 12 hrs and 55 mins
- Unabridged
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In 1848, a year of international democratic revolt, a young, enslaved couple, Ellen and William Craft, achieved one of the boldest feats of self-emancipation in American history. Posing as master and slave, while sustained by their love as husband and wife, they made their escape together across more than 1,000 miles, riding out in the open on steamboats, carriages, and trains that took them from bondage in Georgia to the free states of the North.
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Necessary story well told!
- By Marc W Rhoades on 01-19-23
- Master Slave Husband Wife
- An Epic Journey from Slavery to Freedom
- By: Ilyon Woo
- Narrated by: Janina Edwards, Leon Nixon
Exciting first half amazing story of an escape from slavery
Reviewed: 06-23-24
The heroic attempt and success of the two protagonist has the reader at the edge of one seat with suspense. However, the story drags as it goes on and leaves the reader with many unanswered questions.
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Don't Believe It
- By: Charlie Donlea
- Narrated by: Nina Alvamar
- Length: 10 hrs and 31 mins
- Unabridged
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The Girl of Sugar Beach is the most watched documentary in television history - a riveting, true-life mystery that unfolds over 12 weeks and centers on a fascinating question: Did Grace Sebold murder her boyfriend, Julian, while on a Spring Break vacation, or is she a victim of circumstance and poor police work? Grace has spent the last 10 years in a St. Lucian prison, and reaches out to filmmaker Sidney Ryan in a last, desperate attempt to prove her innocence. As Sidney begins researching, she uncovers issues that were all overlooked during the original investigation.
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Donlea has outdone himself!! EXCELLENT Thriller...
- By shelley on 05-30-18
- Don't Believe It
- By: Charlie Donlea
- Narrated by: Nina Alvamar
Suspense and curiosity created
Reviewed: 06-02-24
One of those great summer reads that’s hard to put down. Not great literature, but fascinating who done it and courtroom drama presented an unusual venue of TV documentary
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Ladies of the Lake
- By: Cathy Gohlke
- Narrated by: Stephanie Richardson
- Length: 12 hrs and 27 mins
- Unabridged
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When she is forced to leave her beloved Prince Edward Island to attend Lakeside Ladies Academy after the death of her parents, the last thing Adelaide Rose MacNeill expects to find is three kindred spirits. The “Ladies of the Lake,” as the four girls call themselves, quickly bond like sisters, vowing that wherever life takes them, they will always be there for each other. But that is before: Before love and jealousy come between Adelaide and Dorothy, the closest of the friends.
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So amazing!
- By God story girl on 08-19-23
- Ladies of the Lake
- By: Cathy Gohlke
- Narrated by: Stephanie Richardson
Rivoting story of life as girls become women. A bit far fetched folding of occurrences.
Reviewed: 01-18-24
A bit far-fetched, folding of occurrences into a Hollywood ending. But the characters are compelling. Ending was a little too religious for my taste, maudlin and connived, Still, I enjoyed it.
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The Heaven & Earth Grocery Store
- A Novel
- By: James McBride
- Narrated by: Dominic Hoffman
- Length: 12 hrs and 21 mins
- Unabridged
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In 1972, when workers in Pottstown, Pennsylvania, were digging the foundations for a new development, the last thing they expected to find was a skeleton at the bottom of a well. Who the skeleton was and how it got there were two of the long-held secrets kept by the residents of Chicken Hill, the dilapidated neighborhood where immigrant Jews and African Americans lived side by side and shared ambitions and sorrows. Chicken Hill was where Moshe and Chona Ludlow lived when Moshe integrated his theater and where Chona ran the Heaven & Earth Grocery Store.
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Multiple Stories Obfuscate Narrative
- By Stephnsea on 08-12-23
- The Heaven & Earth Grocery Store
- A Novel
- By: James McBride
- Narrated by: Dominic Hoffman
Depth and breadth
Reviewed: 01-16-24
Wonderful story of ethnic groups, struggle and oiiintermingling in the 1900s Pennsylvania small town. Full of feeling,, fault, ingenuity and the power of support.
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David Copperfield
- By: Charles Dickens, Sam Mendes, Marty Ross - adaptation
- Narrated by: Ncuti Gatwa, Helena Bonham Carter, Theo James, and others
- Length: 8 hrs and 13 mins
- Original Recording
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Join David as he encounters his eccentric Aunt Betsey, faithful Peggotty and the villainous Uriah Heep, and as he falls in love with Little Em'ly, Dora and Agnes. And then there is old school friend James Steerforth: dashing, daring and seductive. This dramatisation explores the complexities and intimacies of that relationship beyond anything possible in Dickens' day, in an adaptation giving fresh life and vividness to this beloved tale.
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Fan fiction
- By BeRad on 12-12-23
Acting good; sound effects, interesting, but drowned out words; sound, sometimes very poor
Reviewed: 12-23-23
Interesting take on David Copperfield; but too far from the original, for my taste, sound effects, sometimes dominated the dialogue
and sometimes vocalization cannot be heard
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The Bee Sting
- A Novel
- By: Paul Murray
- Narrated by: Heather O’Sullivan, Barry Fitzgerald, Beau Holland, and others
- Length: 26 hrs and 10 mins
- Unabridged
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The Barnes family is in trouble. Dickie’s once-lucrative car business is going under—but Dickie is spending his days in the woods, building an apocalypse-proof bunker with a renegade handyman. His wife, Imelda, is selling off her jewelry on eBay and half-heartedly dodging the attention of fast-talking cattle farmer Big Mike, while their teenage daughter, Cass, formerly top of her class, seems determined to binge drink her way through her final exams. As for twelve-year-old PJ, he’s on the brink of running away.
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Bone Clocks meets Jonathan Franzen
- By Cranson on 10-26-23
- The Bee Sting
- A Novel
- By: Paul Murray
- Narrated by: Heather O’Sullivan, Barry Fitzgerald, Beau Holland, Ciaran O'Brien, Lisa Caruccio Came
Great rider, unconvincing Storey.
Reviewed: 12-19-23
Despite beautiful passages, the desperation of characters dominated realistic development. Storey was too contrived and the ending too convoluted.
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The Years
- By: Annie Ernaux
- Narrated by: Anna Bentinck
- Length: 8 hrs and 11 mins
- Unabridged
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The Years is a personal narrative of the period of 1941 to 2006 told through the lens of memory, impressions past and present - even projections into the future - photos, books, songs, radio, television, and decades of advertising and headlines, contrasted with intimate conflicts and written notes from six decades of diaries. Local dialect, words of the time, slogans, brands, and names for ever-proliferating objects are given a voice here. The voice we recognize as the author's continually dissolves and re-emerges.
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Mixed Feelings
- By Elin VanD on 05-10-20
- The Years
- By: Annie Ernaux
- Narrated by: Anna Bentinck
Intriguing , sociological, French.
Reviewed: 11-29-23
Difficult staying with the chronology. Confusing. Provocative. Hard to maintain focus at times. Moving, but not satisfying. Unique Sometimes easy with which to identify. Sometimes I wish I were French
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