2 readings

Jeff Harding

We hold 2 readings in this voice, on 1,757 ratings of the narration. Every one of them is rated by enough listeners for us to say where the reading stands. What follows is a record of recordings and not a verdict on a narrator. The stamp belongs to the book, the standing belongs to the reading, and neither of them belongs to Jeff Harding.

Earmark judges books and recordings, never narrators. A verdict says which format deserves your one and only first encounter with a book, so it belongs to the book; where a reading stands is a claim about one recording, measured against every other book on our shelf, and it belongs to that recording. Neither of those is a claim about a working life, so there is no score here for Jeff Harding and there is not going to be one. We also say nothing at all about a reading fewer than 250 people have rated. That bar is published on House Rules, and it is the same bar whether we would be praising a recording or criticising it.

Cloud Atlas

David Mitchell · with David Thorpe, Garrick Hagon, Liza Ross and 2 more voices

The reading we judged the book on · 1,422 ratings · Read by 6 voices

The reading sits toward the bottom of our shelf
16%In the bottom 16% of our shelf of books, on the gap between a reading and the book it is reading. The same figure the book’s own page prints for this recording, after allowing for how many people rated it.
The performance
4.30Audible’s performance score, on 1,422 ratings of the narration in every shop we count.
The book as told
4.12Audible’s story score for the same recording: the book, as this recording tells it.
How often it goes badly
7.0%100 of 1,422 listeners gave the performance one or two stars.

Our verdict on the book is Read it, decided with this reading in front of us.

The Black Dahlia

James Ellroy

The reading we judged the book on · 335 ratings

The reading sits toward the bottom of our shelf
23%In the bottom 23% of our shelf of books, on the gap between a reading and the book it is reading. The same figure the book’s own page prints for this recording, after allowing for how many people rated it.
The performance
4.46Audible’s performance score, on 335 ratings of the narration in every shop we count.
The book as told
4.36Audible’s story score for the same recording: the book, as this recording tells it.
How often it goes badly
4.2%14 of 336 listeners gave the performance one or two stars.

Our verdict on the book is Read it, decided with this reading in front of us.

The readings we judged a book on first, then the ones we did not, each alphabetically. Not a ranking: nothing on this page is ordered by a figure. Change the evidence and the page changes with it.