About Book Review Rating and Awards

What are the Stars?

Books may be rated 1-5 stars. 1 star being the lowest possible rating and 5 stars being the highest. Books that have not been read do not have a rating.

Every book review may have an overall rating, a performance rating, and a story rating. The overall rating takes into account both the story and performance. The Performance rates the narrator, if the book was reviewed as an audible book. The story rating is for the book overall.

Books are not graded by spelling or grammatical errors, although poor performance or books that are hard to read may factor in layout. If something stands out, this will generally be mentioned in the review.

Products only have an overall score. Additional ratings may be added later for product and business reviews.

The Starts look like this:

Overall

Performance

Story

At any time, you can click on the stars to see a list of books, products, or businesses with a similar rating.

BOOK REVIEW: Emotional Awareness: Overcoming the Obstacles to Emotional Balance and Compassion by Paul Ekman, Dalai Lama

Emotional Awareness

"Educationally Interested but a tough Listen"

Paul Ekman

Overall

Performance

Story

Would you try another book from Paul Ekman and Dalai Lama and/or Richard Gere?

I adore Richard Gere and enjoy studying Paul Ekman's work but this was rather hard to listen to. It's very solitary not funny and remnant of sitting in a monotone college lecture.

How would you have changed the story to make it more enjoyable?

More antidotes, a story line that can bring you in to make an analogy of the science behind the work. It just needs something to pull you in. It's very hard to understand the Dalai Lama and Paul Ekman talking but interesting to hear their world views. I was hoping to learn more about Paul Ekman's work and how it works.

The Game: Penetrating the Secret Society of Pickup Artists ABRIDGED by Neil Strauss

Book Review: The Game

"I'm glad I'm not him but all women should listen"

Overall

Performance

Story

What made the experience of listening to The Game the most enjoyable?

The story of a pick up artist is sad in its own away. Since I'm not a man, it's hard to tell if this is a really a good judge of how men think or not. Seems like it might be a good judge, but I say that because it offers multiple perspectives. It seems obvious that some people like to use other people, or act like 'players'. This book is about men studying women. Most of the men featured in the book start off socially inept and wind up acting a bit scammy. In a way I'm glad for them, that they are improving themselves and being relatively honest, but really most of them seem to be taking advantage of other people's naivety.

BOOK REVIEW: Fresh Air NONE by Terry Gross

"Educational book...Judging Facial Expressions"

Overall

Performance

Story

What did you love best about Fresh Air?

I enjoyed Fresh Air as an education about how people judge each other and use facial expressions.

What do you think your next listen will be?

Don't know.

If you were to make a film of this book, what would be the tag line be? This would have a hard time being a film, unless it was a documentary but I'd tag it research on human expressions.

BOOK REVIEW: So 5 Minutes Ago ABRIDGED by Hilary de Vries

"Valley Girl Voice -- Just Okay"

Overall

Performance

Story

The story was semi-interesting. I'm going to return this book to use my credit on something better. Think Devil Wears Prada written and narrated for a 16 year old.

BOOK REVIEW: The Haunted Vagina by Carlton Mellick III

I've *NEVER* read this book. I'm a member of a lot of book clubs, so I get random recommendations a lot. Recommendations from authors I follow online, publishers, and even Facebook. This book was a Facebook recommendation that I still can't bring myself to read, but the description itself is too hilarious not to read once. I get very invested in books and the description makes me laugh/cringe simultaneously.

Secondhand Spirits: A Witchcraft Mystery, Book 1 by Juliet Blackwell

BOOK REVIEW: Secondhand Spirits

A Witchcraft Mystery, Book 1

by Juliet Blackwell

"Give the book at Least a Hour Before You Give Up"

Overall

Performance

Story

Agree with other reviewers the book starts off slow, but since it is a series I listened all the way. You don't get addicted or find a hook in this book until almost the end of the book. I wonder if the rest of the series follows from the first so if you get past this one, you will already have the gist and plenty more books to entertain you for hours. The narrator has a definite accent but since the main character has one too I suppose it's suppose to fit.

BOOK REVIEW: "Educational. Grueling. Helpful." Learn Korean - Word Power 101 UNABRIDGED by Innovative Language Learning

"Educational. Grueling. Helpful."

Overall

Performance

Story

This is not a story. This is educational material and hard to stay focused on. I've had a time trying to get through these audio books. They're free so I've kept them in hopes of learning the languages but it's not my favorite thing to listen to or the best language learning course I've attempted. Still if you are a member of audible and interested you have nothing but your time to lose.