Mike Reiter
- 89
- reviews
- 35
- helpful votes
- 133
- ratings
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Hellgoing
- Stories
- Written by: Lynn Coady
- Narrated by: Andi Arndt
- Length: 5 hrs and 15 mins
- Unabridged
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A young nun charged with talking an anorexic out of her religious fanaticism toys with the thin distance between practicality and blasphemy. A strange bond between a teacher and a schoolgirl takes on ever deeper and stranger shapes as the years progress. A bride-to-be with a penchant for nocturnal bondage can't seem to stop bashing herself up in the light of day. Equally adept at capturing the foibles and obsessions of men and of women, Lynn Coady is quite possibly the writer who best captures what it is to be human at this particular moment in our history.
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needs breaks
- By Adam Silver on 2020-06-14
- Hellgoing
- Stories
- Written by: Lynn Coady
- Narrated by: Andi Arndt
A collection of stories, only two really landed
Reviewed: 2021-03-06
This is a collection of short stories. All of them are listenable and the narrator does an excellent job with the material. Only two of the stories really caught my attention. I guess it was more based on the subject matter of the other stories and the endings. There is nothing wrong with the subject matter of any of the stories, they just didn't peak my interest. Given the length of the stories I guess I was expecting more plot twist or poignant endings just because the space only allowed for limited character development.
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Runaway
- Stories
- Written by: Alice Munro
- Narrated by: Kymberly Dakin
- Length: 10 hrs and 58 mins
- Unabridged
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Three stories concern the same woman - in the first, she escapes from teaching at a girls' school into a wild love affair; in the second, she returns with her child to the home of her parents, whose marriage she finally begins to examine; and in the last, her vanished child turns up caught in the grip of a religious cult. In these and other stories Alice Munro's understanding of the people about whom she writes makes their lives as real as our own.
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Great stories, one quibble on good narration
- By Elizabeth Theis on 2018-09-18
- Runaway
- Stories
- Written by: Alice Munro
- Narrated by: Kymberly Dakin
Short stories of women in different life places
Reviewed: 2021-03-01
All the stories take place in Canada. Some I found interesting, some I didn't. Some I would have like to see go farther in the persons life. It is a pretty mixed bag,
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Us Conductors
- Written by: Sean Michaels
- Narrated by: Steve Coulter
- Length: 11 hrs and 21 mins
- Unabridged
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Locked in a cabin aboard a ship bearing him back to Russia and away from the love of his life, Lev Sergeyvich Termen begins to type his story: a tale of electricity, romance, and the invention of the world's strangest instrument, the theremin. He recollects his early years as a scientist forging breakthroughs during the Bolshevik Revolution and his decade as a Manhattan celebrity and reluctant Soviet spy.
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Perhaps not the topic for me.
- By MEF on 2020-05-18
- Us Conductors
- Written by: Sean Michaels
- Narrated by: Steve Coulter
Meandering Memoir
Reviewed: 2021-02-10
Leon Theremin recounts his life. He does it sort of as a letter to a lost love. Overall it is pretty boring. I got through the whole thing but even though it is only an 11 and a half hour book, it felt so much longer. It isn't bad, just boring.

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The Sentimentalists
- Written by: Johanna Skibsrud
- Narrated by: Celeste Ciulla, Joey Collins, Greg Steinbruner
- Length: 5 hrs and 32 mins
- Unabridged
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Johanna Skibsrud won the Scotiabank Giller Prize for this compelling debut novel. Napoleon Haskell lives in Casablanca, Ontario, on the shores of a man-made lake that covers the remains of the former town. When his daughter’s life unravels, she retreats to Casablanca and is soon immersed in the complicated family stories that lurk below the surface of everyday life.
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okay
- By PCR on 2020-07-28
- The Sentimentalists
- Written by: Johanna Skibsrud
- Narrated by: Celeste Ciulla, Joey Collins, Greg Steinbruner
It was ok, sort of a Vietnam story
Reviewed: 2021-01-15
The narrator tells the story of her interactions with her father over the years. His story sort of starts in Vietnam but it isn't revealed that way. They there is a parallel story about an event in Vietnam. Even though it was supposed to be a first person narrative, it sounds very third person. I am not sure if that is the performer or the text.
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Fifteen Dogs
- Written by: André Alexis
- Narrated by: André Alexis
- Length: 6 hrs and 20 mins
- Unabridged
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A bet between the gods Hermes and Apollo leads them to grant human consciousness and language to a group of dogs overnighting at a Toronto veterinary clinic. Suddenly capable of more complex thought, the pack is torn between those who resist the new ways of thinking, preferring the old dog ways, and those who embrace the change. The gods watch from above as the dogs venture into their newly unfamiliar world, as they become divided among themselves, as each struggles with new thoughts and feelings.
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Fabulous
- By Amazon Customer on 2020-04-06
- Fifteen Dogs
- Written by: André Alexis
- Narrated by: André Alexis
Interesting concept, well done
Reviewed: 2021-01-08
Two Greek gods make a bet that if they gave an animal human intelligence they would be more unhappy than humans. The bet ends up that the animal has to be happy at the time of death. They decide on 15 dogs that are at a kennel. The story then follows these dogs.
As you get introduced to the dog they start to develop personalities. SPOILER - but as dogs don't have long lives you are quickly down to four main ones.
The stories are interesting and both ask the big metaphysical questions of humanity, as well as hold a mirror to humanity. The style is engaging and the narrator sounds a bit like Donald Sutherland.

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Through Black Spruce
- Written by: Joseph Boyden
- Narrated by: James Jenner
- Length: 15 hrs and 18 mins
- Unabridged
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Joseph Boyden's first novel, Three Day Road, was a Today Show Book Club selection. Through Black Spruce is the exceptional follow-up to his acclaimed debut. Cree bush pilot Will Bird lies comatose in a hospital, while his wayward niece Annie arrives to sit in silent vigil by his side. Slowly their stories reveal two people previously separated by great distances, beaten and broken, and searching for some sense of where they belong in the world.
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Enjoyed this book.
- By Ernie on 2020-02-10
- Through Black Spruce
- Written by: Joseph Boyden
- Narrated by: James Jenner
In the tradition of Robertson Davies
Reviewed: 2021-01-03
The story is told of a family. The two main protagonists are an uncle and his niece. One of his nieces got involved with the brother of a biker drug dealer, the other went after her. The uncle gets targeted as a snitch by the bikers. The setting is mostly in the northern community Moosonee Ontario, with some of it in Toronto, Montreal and New York. The family is of Cree descent.
Over all the story switches between the uncle and the niece until their stories meet up. The style reminded me very much of Robertson Davies. It is the type of style where you feel you are sitting on somebodies porch being told a story. The characters feel familiar and relatable.
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419
- Written by: Will Ferguson
- Narrated by: Pete Bradbury
- Length: 13 hrs
- Unabridged
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A car tumbles through darkness down a snowy ravine. A woman without a name walks out of a dust storm in sub-Saharan Africa. And in the seething heat of Lagos City, a criminal cartel scours the Internet, looking for victims. Lives intersect. Worlds collide. And it all begins with a single email: "Dear Sir, I am the daughter of a Nigerian diplomat, and I need your help".
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At first I wasn’t sure-but then I fell in love!
- By Travelmug on 2018-02-26
- 419
- Written by: Will Ferguson
- Narrated by: Pete Bradbury
Starts slow gets better
Reviewed: 2020-12-24
This is a story about 419 scammers in Nigeria. The story starts off slow and somewhat frustrating but it picks up speed and actually gets quite good at the end. While the narrator wasn't bad, he sounded like rod serling from twilight zone and that was distracting.
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Barney's Version
- Written by: Mordecai Richler
- Narrated by: Graham Abbey
- Length: 16 hrs and 38 mins
- Unabridged
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Barney Panofsky - Canadian expat, wily lover of women, writer, television producer, raconteur - is finally putting pen to paper so he can rebut the charges about him made in his rival’s autobiography. Whether it’s ranting about his bohemian misadventures during the 1950s in Paris, his tumultuous three marriages, or his successful trashy TV company, Totally Unnecessary Productions, he quickly proves that his memory may be slipping, but his bile isn’t.
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No Thanks
- By Amazon Customer on 2020-05-17
- Barney's Version
- Written by: Mordecai Richler
- Narrated by: Graham Abbey
Kind of boring
Reviewed: 2020-12-11
Yes I know Mordecai Richler is a Canadian treasure and who am I to not like it!! It was boring. The only other Mordecai Richler I have read was the Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz, which I enjoyed.
This is the memoirs of Barney Penofsky. I guess it captures the voice correctly. It is quite boring but then again maybe that is the point? If you were rambling over the end of your life would most people find your life boring? The protagonist is quite boring. All characters are Jews, which is neither here nor there, but all of them are portrayed as judgmental, wildly racist and having massive inferiority complexes. I could see one, two or a few characters being this way but all of them are. The subtext is that all Jews are this way, which doesn't foot with the Jewish people I know, but then again none of the ones I know are from Montreal. Since this is supposed to be one man's remembrances, there again, maybe that view is how he sees the people he knew.
I guess where I am going with this is that maybe all the colouring that seems wrong to me makes sense in the context of the point of view of the narrator. But even if I accept that, it just moved very slow. It was filled with all the things that I could see as the CBC can lit checklist which kind of made it extra irritating.
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The Rosie Project
- Written by: Graeme Simsion
- Narrated by: Daniel O'Grady
- Length: 7 hrs and 30 mins
- Unabridged
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A first-date dud, socially awkward, and overly fond of quick-dry clothes, genetics professor Don Tillman has given up on love, until a chance encounter gives him an idea. He will design a questionnaire to uncover the perfect partner. She will most definitely not be a barmaid, a smoker, a drinker or a late-arriver. Rosie is all these things. She is also fiery and intelligent, strangely beguiling, and looking for her biological father - a search that a DNA expert might just be able to help her with.
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Awesome
- By Anonymous User on 2019-10-27
- The Rosie Project
- Written by: Graeme Simsion
- Narrated by: Daniel O'Grady
A touching unemotional love story
Reviewed: 2020-11-19
Don definitely has Asperger's syndrome, but he doesn't seem to know it. He knows he is different. He creates the wife project which sets out a bunch of criteria that his future life partner must have such as non-smoker, math literate etc. He approaches the world logically and works for efficiency. He has an analytical mind and an amazing memory. In the spirit of all sappy romance novels he meets Rosie who aside from being physically attractive fails on all his criteria and to nobody's surprise, she is "the one".
I am not quite sure why this is under humour and satire as it is the plot of every romantic comedy you have ever seen and it is just as predictable.
What elevates this above your standard rom-com fair is that it is told from Don's point of view. The book has, and the narrator reinforces a "Flowers for Algernon" feel to the story. This makes it very much worth the listen. While I did enjoy this book I probably won't get the others in the series as the literary device employed feels very much like a one trick pony and the plots will just be predictable fish out of water stories. I could be wrong but I enjoyed this book enough that I don't want its successors to sully it for me.
1 person found this helpful
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The 7 ½ Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle
- Written by: Stuart Turton
- Narrated by: James Cameron Stewart
- Length: 17 hrs and 4 mins
- Unabridged
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The rules of Blackheath: Evelyn Hardcastle will be murdered at 11:00 p.m. There are eight days and eight witnesses for you to inhabit. We will only let you escape once you tell us the name of the killer. Evelyn Hardcastle will die every day until Aiden Bishop can identify her killer and break the cycle. But every time the day begins again, Aiden wakes up in the body of a different guest. And some of his hosts are more helpful than others....
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Amazing
- By chantal clements on 2019-04-29
- The 7 ½ Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle
- Written by: Stuart Turton
- Narrated by: James Cameron Stewart
Worth the listen if you pay attention.
Reviewed: 2020-11-14
It is a well written who dunnit with a bit of ground hog day and Vantage Point/Bad Times the the El Royal thrown in as well. I don't think you could have solved the actual murders from the clues, although I may have just missed something. Even near the end Aiden Bishop seemed to know some things I don't remember him discovering. When the various reveals come it does make sense though. But that doesn't really matter because I found myself concentrating more on Who is Anna?, Who is Aiden Bishop? Why are they there and how long have they been there? Who is he plague doctor? And a bunch of other stuff that went into it.