Ireland, My Ireland: Memories from the Heartland

Arnold Meagher was born in a small village in the heart of Ireland, Ballinamuck in the County of Longford. When he was four, he moved with his family to the larger village of Drumlish, four-and-a-half miles away. It is in the larger village that his stories of growing up in Ireland's heartland begin: among villagers who loved to chat, among dew-covered pastures on his grandmother's farm and among the fairy forts and whispering bogs that dot the countryside.

Would you say that listening to this book was time well-spent? Why or why not?

I would have appreciated being told up front about all the instrumental music, choral singing and repetitious sound effects, some loud and potentially disruptive such as the sound of a whiste being blown loudly by the ref at a football game.. each and every time its use arises during the account of the game.

Not Taco Bell Material

Funnyman Adam Carolla is known for two things: hilarious rants about things that drive him crazy and personal stories about everything from his hardscrabble childhood to his slacker friends to the hypocrisy of Hollywood. He tackled rants in his first book, and now he tells his best stories and debuts some never-before-heard tales as well. Adam Carolla started broke and blue collar and has now been on the Hollywood scene for over 15 years. Yet he never lost his underdog demeanor.

Where does Not Taco Bell Material rank among all the audiobooks you’ve listened to so far?

While this is one of my favorite audio books, I never would have been a fan of the pre-Dr. Drew version of Adam Carolla. The wonderful influence of each man's spirit upon the other has tempered their more extreme personality traits, lending sophistication to Adam's surly outlook upon the world and a degree of good natured manly grit to Drew's ultra type A personality.

A Stolen Life: A Memoir

"In the summer of 1991 I was a normal kid. I did normal things. I had friends and a mother who loved me. I was just like you. Until the day my life was stolen. For eighteen years I was a prisoner. I was an object for someone to use and abuse. For eighteen years I was not allowed to speak my own name. I became a mother and was forced to be a sister. For eighteen years I survived an impossible situation. On August 26, 2009, I took my name back. My name is Jaycee Lee Dugard. I dont think of myself as a victim. I survived...."

I am very surprised by the degree of crudeness in the terms used to repeatedly characterize a pre-teen's episodes of rape, terms originating from the vocabulary of her mentally ill rapist, convicted sex offender and abductor and relayed from the 11 year old's recollection of her shock, disgust and personal devastation. It was also not something I'd care to read a second time. Given the fact that the young girl is shown on the book's cover and time has elapsed since her abduction and recovery was in the news, I think that there is a high probability of other young children gravitating to this audio book without their parents expecting it to contain such explicit content. Personally I think these particular terms are crude to such a degree that they only should be offered to adults, while I similarly consider that particular content to be distasteful for giving as a gift to my mother of advanced years.

Where Mercy Is Shown, Mercy Is Given

Considered by many to be the world's greatest bounty hunter, Duane "Dog" Chapman has become famous for capturing fugitives on Dog the Bounty Hunter, his number-one-rated show on A&E. But his job doesn't end when he cuffs his man - or woman. Having personally struggled against abuse, addiction, and a life of crime, Dog knows a thing or two about the path that these fugitives cuffed in the back of his car are on.

The narrator plods at a deathly slow pace and painfully overannounciates every single thing... if only the author narrated more than just the introduction. At the time I bought this book they mistakenly listed the author as being the narrator, so I was doubly dissapointed to find that someone else picked up at the beginning of the book itself and continued throughout in this agonizing manner. I wish our software would let us adjust for a narrator's speed and pitch, to correct for such oversights of judgement. The book would have been great if the person who we have an interest in would have followed through and done the full narration, as has been the common routine for autobiographical audiobooks.

VangoNotes for Medical Language

Study on the go with VangoNotes. Just download chapter reviews from your text and listen to them on any mp3 player. Now wherever you are--whatever you're doing--you can study by listening to key features for each chapter of your textbook.

... there were 2 more sections. I think the last person who wrote a review mistakenly thought that the audio chapter had ended when the first of three sections had ended and then there was a pause. I too had thought it ended, twice. The rest of the material is very valuable.

5 of
7 people found this review helpful

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