Holes
It tells a story. Hardcover files this book as fiction, and its readers there call it funny and hopeful. Facts, not factors: neither plays any part in our call.
Not enough to go on
Only 3 people have rated the narration, which is far too few to tell a good reading from a lucky one. We know plenty about the book; it is the recording we cannot judge.
What you can do Press play on the sample and judge the voice yourself, because it is the half of the question too few listeners have answered.
Last searched Audible UK ·
Length does not decide this
4h 37m to listen, at 1×3h 42m to listen, at 1.25×3h 05m to listen, at 1.5×2h 38m to listen, at 1.75×2h 19m to listen, at 2×about 8 hours to readabout 6 hours to readabout 4½ hours to readabout 3½ hours to readabout 3 hours to read
The runtime is Audible’s own, shown at the speed beside it. The reading time is our estimate: 233 pages at 30 pages an hour, the pace you told us. Ours is 50, about 300 words a page, read at 250 a minute. Treat the reading estimate as a ceiling on this one: this one runs 1.2 minutes of narration a page against a shelf median of 1.9, so its pages are lighter than the average we divide by (verse, dialogue, wide margins), and it will go quicker than we say.The runtime is Audible’s own, shown at the speed beside it. The reading time is our estimate: 233 pages at 40 pages an hour, the pace you told us. Ours is 50, about 300 words a page, read at 250 a minute. Treat the reading estimate as a ceiling on this one: this one runs 1.2 minutes of narration a page against a shelf median of 1.9, so its pages are lighter than the average we divide by (verse, dialogue, wide margins), and it will go quicker than we say.The runtime is Audible’s own, shown at the speed beside it. The reading time is our estimate: 233 pages at 50 pages an hour, which is about 300 words a page, read at 250 a minute. Treat the reading estimate as a ceiling on this one: this one runs 1.2 minutes of narration a page against a shelf median of 1.9, so its pages are lighter than the average we divide by (verse, dialogue, wide margins), and it will go quicker than we say.The runtime is Audible’s own, shown at the speed beside it. The reading time is our estimate: 233 pages at 65 pages an hour, the pace you told us. Ours is 50, about 300 words a page, read at 250 a minute. Treat the reading estimate as a ceiling on this one: this one runs 1.2 minutes of narration a page against a shelf median of 1.9, so its pages are lighter than the average we divide by (verse, dialogue, wide margins), and it will go quicker than we say.The runtime is Audible’s own, shown at the speed beside it. The reading time is our estimate: 233 pages at 80 pages an hour, the pace you told us. Ours is 50, about 300 words a page, read at 250 a minute. Treat the reading estimate as a ceiling on this one: this one runs 1.2 minutes of narration a page against a shelf median of 1.9, so its pages are lighter than the average we divide by (verse, dialogue, wide margins), and it will go quicker than we say.
Reading load against listening load
Where that puts this one among the books we hold: in the bottom 8% of our shelf of books for effort on the page and in the bottom 10% of our shelf of books for effort in your ears. The middle of the scale is not the middle of the shelf (most books sit below the average on both), so a book at 0.00 is already in the top 43% for effort on the page. Each of the three is measured against the whole shelf separately, so the bottom figure is not the top two subtracted. It is this book’s own distance from the middle.
What the audio disadvantage is made of. Two things and no others: how fast readers say this one moves, and how demanding the reviews we read found it. There is no third: the structural one has no data source, so it contributes nothing rather than being guessed at. Both directions are declared priors we have never fitted against a real verdict, which is the weakest-evidenced part of the whole model.
How the call was made
Where a bar carries ticks, the grey one is the middle of our shelf and a coloured one is a line we publish, cool where we start backing the page, warm where we start backing the recording. The evidence squares at the foot are a different thing: how far each of our four sources went, hatched where there was nothing to measure at all.
- What is at stake
- −0.36It sits between the bottom 27% and the top 33% of our shelf of books for how well the print crowds think of a book: middling regard, so this barely moves the call either way. Blended across 1,401,201 Goodreads ratings and 1,274 on Hardcover, each scored inside its own population first, and never added together.
- Evidence
- 0.70How much of the picture we actually have, out of 1.00: four questions, each answered as far as the source could answer it, less anything taken off for reading fewer reviews than we aim to.The reading3 people have rated this reading: thinThe second sourceHardcover knows this book, with 1,274 readers there: as good as it getsThe matchHow sure we are that the recording we scored is this book: as good as it getsThe reviewsWe read 300 reviews to judge how demanding it is: as good as it getsWe are also missing something we treat as essential: only 3 ratings of the narration.
What each crowd complains about
We would need 40 reviews from each crowd before setting the two side by side, and only 35 of the reviews we read said they listened to it. So we are not drawing this one.
What the two crowds said
Showing the stars as each shop prints them. The two crowds are not measured from the same place: on our shelf Audible’s listeners average 0.35 of a star above Goodreads’ readers, so a recording that is ordinary for Audible can still out-star a book that is genuinely well liked for Goodreads. Switch the toggle to take that difference off.Showing each figure as its distance from its own crowd’s middle on our shelf, in standard deviations, so 0 is a typical book for that crowd. Listeners start 0.35 of a star up, partly because anyone who finishes a twenty-five-hour recording chose it deliberately, and this takes that off. It is not a claim that audio is better, the story figure is still Audible’s own (people rating a story they heard), and none of it moves the verdict above.
3 ratings of this readingstar chartstoo few to draw beside the book’s, and 250 is where we start trusting the shape
overallAudible
overall, pooled by the shop, so we hold no ruler for it
4 ratings · performance and story, as the shop pools them
the performanceAudible
the performance, against Audible’s own crowd
3 ratings
the story, as heardAudible
the story, as heard, against Audible’s own crowd
3 ratings
the book itselfGoodreads
the book itself, against Goodreads’ own crowd
1,401,201 ratings
The series
Holes
Finished · The reading changes hands
2 books numbered on Goodreads’ list, with 1 novella or companion filed between them. The last one came out in 2006 and Goodreads lists nothing further. Five quiet years is where we start using that word.
The reading changes hands across the 2 volumes Audible names in our records: Kerry Beyer reads book 1, Curtis McClarin book 2.
From Goodreads’ own series index, checked on 11 September 2026.
Every reading we hold
One complete reading of this book, and it is the reading every audio figure above is measured on. If there is another, we have not found it. The shelf grows in reviewed batches, never because somebody searched for a book.
- Kerry Beyerthe one we measured4h 37m3h 42m3h 05m2h 38m2h 19m · One voice · Audible UK and US
Only 3 people have rated this reading, short of our published bar of 250, so we name it and print no scores for it.
Hear it · Audible’s clip, its length read from them on load
The recording these numbers came from
- Runtime
- 4h 37m at 1×
- Read by
- Kerry Beyer
- Kind
- One voice
- ASIN
- B0GYS9W8VK · Audible UK
- Judged on
- 3 ratings of the narration
- Published
- Bloomsbury Children's Books · 2026
Too few people have rated this reading for us to call it our pick (our published bar is 250), so these are its details rather than a recommendation, and Audible sorts a search by newest, so check before you buy. The runtime is the check: if the one in front of you says 4h 37m, that is the reading these numbers describe. “Judged on” is the crowd behind every judgement we make about this reading: the smaller of the performance and story counts, which is why it is a little under the two shop counts added. We do not link out to a shop, and we take nothing if you buy there.