4 readings

John Lee

We hold 4 readings in this voice, on 958 ratings of the narration. 1 of the 4 are rated by enough listeners for us to say where the reading stands; the rest are named and not scored. 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 John Lee.

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 John Lee 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.

Empire of Silence

Christopher Ruocchio

The reading we judged the book on · 695 ratings

The reading sits in the middle of our shelf
40%In the middle 40% 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
4.50Audible’s performance score, on 695 ratings of the narration in every shop we count.
The book as told
4.23Audible’s story score for the same recording: the book, as this recording tells it.
How often it goes badly
3.7%26 of 695 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 City & the City

China Miéville

The reading we judged the book on · 12 ratings

Rated by too few people to place
1212 ratings of the narration, short of our published bar of 250. So we name the reading and print no figures for it.

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

The Wisdom of Insecurity: A Message for an Age of Anxiety

Alan W. Watts

The reading we judged the book on · 196 ratings

Rated by too few people to place
196196 ratings of the narration, short of our published bar of 250. So we name the reading and print no figures for it.

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

The Call of the Wild

Jack London

An alternative reading we hold · 55 ratings

Rated by too few people to place
5555 ratings of the narration, short of our published bar of 250. So we name the reading and print no figures for it.

Our verdict on the book is Listen to it, decided on a different recording, not on John Lee’s.

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.