My latest listen was the abridged version of "Up Country" by Nelson DeMille, read by Ken Howard...
I enjoyed it. I thought the character development was good, and the story moved along at a good pace. Ken Howard was a good narrator, although his presentation was more of a narration than a performance. By that, I mean that he did not really differentiate the characters by using different voices or add much inflection or emotion into the dialog portions. Nonetheless, his reading was not distracting, nor did it diminish the experience.
Given that the book was over ten hours, it is hard to believe that it was abridged, but after reading some reviews of the actual book, I guess the full version would have approached a forced march if listened to just due to sheer volume.
I was a little disappointed with the ending, because it didn't wrap things up cleanly, but given that the story centered around Vietnam, having no clear, clean, neatly tied up ending did seem somewhat fitting. Based on this book, I will definitely give DeMille another try.
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Posted by David at April 01, 2005 07:52 PM