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Work · two recordings

The Left Hand of Darkness

Ursula K. Le Guin · Hainish Cycle, book 4 · read by George Guidall

It tells a story. Hardcover files this book as fiction, and its readers there call it reflective and adventurous. Facts, not factors: neither plays any part in our call.

Read it

Every book we have judged on how far the recording outruns the page: 201 of them, the page's answer at the left-hand end and the recording's at the right. Marked for scale: All the Light We Cannot See, To Kill a Mockingbird and Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone. This one sits in the bottom 1% of our shelf of books for how far the recording outruns the page. −0.40, where we start backing the page; 0.40, where we start backing the recording.The Left Hand of Darkness
About this recording, not the book

The recording is the weak half here, not the book. George Guidall’s reading sits in the bottom 4% of our shelf of books for how far a reading beats the book it is reading, and −1.63 against what the book’s own readers made of it (two different crowds, each measured against its own crowd’s middle before we compare them), on 5,809 ratings of the narration. A different reading would change our answer; until there is one, give the first encounter to the page.

Length does not decide this

9h 39m to listen, at 1×7h 43m to listen, at 1.25×6h 26m to listen, at 1.5×5h 31m to listen, at 1.75×4h 50m to listen, at 2×about 10 hours to readabout 8 hours to readabout 6 hours to readabout 4½ hours to readabout 4 hours to read

The runtime is Audible’s own, shown at the speed beside it. The reading time is our estimate: 304 pages at 30 pages an hour, the pace you told us. Ours is 50, about 300 words a page, read at 250 a minute.The runtime is Audible’s own, shown at the speed beside it. The reading time is our estimate: 304 pages at 40 pages an hour, the pace you told us. Ours is 50, about 300 words a page, read at 250 a minute.The runtime is Audible’s own, shown at the speed beside it. The reading time is our estimate: 304 pages at 50 pages an hour, which is about 300 words a page, read at 250 a minute.The runtime is Audible’s own, shown at the speed beside it. The reading time is our estimate: 304 pages at 65 pages an hour, the pace you told us. Ours is 50, about 300 words a page, read at 250 a minute.The runtime is Audible’s own, shown at the speed beside it. The reading time is our estimate: 304 pages at 80 pages an hour, the pace you told us. Ours is 50, about 300 words a page, read at 250 a minute.

If you must listen → dedicated listening only

Harder work in audio than The Handmaid's Tale.

All the books we hold · 222

Harder work in audio than 98% of the books we hold.

Fiction · 176

Harder work in audio than 98% of the fiction we hold.

Middling-length books · 55

Harder work in audio than 98% of the middling-length books we hold.

Reading load against listening load

Every book we hold placed by how much work it asks on the page, left to right, against how much it asks in your ears, bottom to top: 222 of them. Easy both ways is the bottom left corner, hard both ways the top right; above the dashed line the ears work harder, below it the page does. Marked for scale: Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone, To Kill a Mockingbird and The Diary of a Young Girl. This one is in the top 3% of our shelf of books for effort on the page and in the top 3% of our shelf of books for effort in your ears.
The dashed line is where a book would be same effort either way. This one sits above that line (audio asks more of you here than the page does), in the top 1% of our shelf of books for extra work in audio.
On the page2.04
In your ears3.13
Audio disadvantage2.74

Where that puts this one among the books we hold: in the top 3% of our shelf of books for effort on the page and in the top 3% 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.

Every book we could measure both features on placed by pace, fast to slow, against how demanding the reviews we read found it, plain to demanding: 166 of them. The easiest listens are the bottom left corner and the hardest the top right, which is the shaded one. Marked for scale: Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone, To Kill a Mockingbird and The Diary of a Young Girl. This one reads slower than most books we hold and more demanding than most, which is what leaves the format leaning towards the page.
This one reads slower than most books we hold and more demanding than most, which is what leaves the format leaning towards the page.

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.

The audio case
−4.10It sits in the bottom 1% of our shelf of books for how far the recording outruns the page. Past the line where we start backing the page. It is not what decided this one, though: the recording sits far enough behind its book to reach Read it on its own, which is the line drawn on the row below. When the narration is that far behind, the call is about the recording rather than about the format, and a different one would change the answer.
Narration payoff
−1.35George Guidall’s reading is less well received than the book it came from: in the bottom 3% of our shelf of books, on 5,809 ratings of the narration. This is a difference, not a score: it sets the reading against its own book, so a much-loved book with a merely good reading sits low on this shelf even where nobody disliked either. That is measured on standardised figures rather than on the stars in the charts below, and here the two disagree: listeners mark a performance higher than a story as a rule, 4.62 against 4.54 across our shelf, so this recording’s 4.15 for the performance beside 4.10 for the story is not the level pair it looks. Against their own crowds they are −2.04 and −1.75, which is the same sum the toggle over those charts does. Asked the other way (how the reading stands against what the book’s own readers made of it, which is a different crowd rating a different thing), it comes out −1.63. We report that one and never score it: two crowds that do not overlap are held together by nothing but the standardising, which is a cost the figure above does not pay.
What is at stake
−0.00It 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 237,576 Goodreads ratings and 1,325 on Hardcover, each scored inside its own population first, and never added together.

For the page

  • The voice lets the book down
  • A hard text to follow by ear
  • The crowds’ regard did not reach the line where we protect a first read, this reason did not apply

For the recording

  • 5,809 listeners behind it

So the case for the page won it, on this recording and not on the book itself.

A bigger dot counted for more: the voice and the ear are sized by their share of the sum above, the other two by how much stands behind them. A hatched square is a reason that did not apply here, which is not the same as one that counted for little.

Evidence
1.00How 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 reading5,809 people have rated this reading: as good as it getsThe second sourceHardcover knows this book, with 1,325 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 gets

What each crowd complains about

We would need 40 reviews from each crowd before setting the two side by side, and only 25 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.

4.08·Audible
overallAudible
overall, pooled by the shop, so we hold no ruler for it
46%5 stars: 46 per cent, 3,061 ratings
28%4 stars: 28 per cent, 1,894 ratings
16%3 stars: 16 per cent, 1,087 ratings
6%2 stars: 6 per cent, 387 ratings
3%1 stars: 3 per cent, 218 ratings

6,647 ratings · performance and story, as the shop pools them

4.15−2.04 sdAudible
the performanceAudible
the performance, against Audible’s own crowd
49%5 stars: 49 per cent, 2,848 ratings
29%4 stars: 29 per cent, 1,669 ratings
14%3 stars: 14 per cent, 795 ratings
5%2 stars: 5 per cent, 311 ratings
3%1 stars: 3 per cent, 190 ratings

How often this goes badly8.6% of the people who rated the performance gave it one or two stars. More than most recordings here. The middle of our shelf is 2.0%, and half of it falls between 1.0% and 3.1%.

501 of 5,813 listeners gave the performance one or two stars

The shape of the room

  • United
  • Warm, this one
  • Split
  • Lukewarm

A warm room: most listeners are happy with the performance, and a small group are not.

5,813 ratings

4.10−1.75 sdAudible
the story, as heardAudible
the story, as heard, against Audible’s own crowd
48%5 stars: 48 per cent, 2,813 ratings
26%4 stars: 26 per cent, 1,526 ratings
16%3 stars: 16 per cent, 915 ratings
6%2 stars: 6 per cent, 345 ratings
4%1 stars: 4 per cent, 210 ratings

5,809 ratings

4.09−0.41 sdGoodreads
the book itselfGoodreads
the book itself, against Goodreads’ own crowd
40%5 stars: 40 per cent, 94,281 ratings
37%4 stars: 37 per cent, 88,297 ratings
17%3 stars: 17 per cent, 41,147 ratings
4%2 stars: 4 per cent, 10,653 ratings
1%1 stars: 1 per cent, 3,198 ratings

237,576 ratings

The series

Hainish Cycle

The reading changes hands

9 works by Goodreads’ own count: its list numbers none of them, so this is their figure and not ours.

The reading changes hands across the 5 volumes Audible names in our records: Nathaniel Priestley reads books 1 and 2, George Guidall book 4, Roddy Doyle and Tim Treloar book 5, John Skelley book 6.

From Goodreads’ own series index, checked on 11 September 2026.

Next in the run, and we hold it: The Word for World Is Forest

Every reading we hold

Two complete readings of it, and one call above for the book: the verdict is a claim about format, not about a voice. Which voice to press play on is the next question, and this is our answer to it. Below 250 ratings of the reading we name a recording and decline to rank it.

  • George Guidallour pick9h 39m7h 43m6h 26m5h 31m4h 50m · One voice · Audible UK and US

    Performance 4.15 · Story 4.10 · 5,809 rated the reading · 8.6% of the people who rated the performance gave it one or two stars

    Hear it · Audible’s clip, its length read from them on load

  • Alyssa Bresnahan, Michael Crouchtoo few ratings to judge10h 07m8h 06m6h 45m5h 47m5h 04m · Two voices · Audible UK

    Only 19 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 we mean

Runtime
9h 39m at 1×
Read by
George Guidall
Kind
One voice
ASIN
B01N1WTK01 · Audible UK
Rated in
Audible UK and US · 618 + 5,195 ratings of the performance
Judged on
5,809 ratings of the narration
Published
Recorded Books · 2016

Audible sorts a search by newest, so ours may not be the first one you are offered. The runtime is the check: if the one in front of you says 9h 39m, 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.