It pains me to pan this performance so completely, but it also pains me that I spent $15 on this product, so I felt a responsibility to future purchasers. Was Slouching Towards Bethlehem worth the listening time? Needless to say, the book is memorably successful. In fairness to Joan Didion, I stopped listening after an hour or so, and bought the book. Though a delicate kind of failure, it made Joan's work almost impossible to enjoy, and I couldn't stop thinking of what had been missed in the reading. Here Diane's delivery was just too inappropriate, unbalanced, oddly off in emphasis and timing. In other words, some can read the words in a clear, intelligible manner (Diane certainly can), but they don't see what a writer would see, and they don't express what this author is *doing* - what makes great writing work. Some people just can't read out loud in such a way as to convey the subtler aspects of the author's intent. Every couple of paragraphs a nagging feeling resurfaced - that Diane hadn't seen this material before, much read it less out loud. Perhaps Diane began many sentences expecting a certain syntax, and when Joan's sophisticated style took the reader on a delightful little twist, Diane just got lost and delivered the rest of the sentence as best she could. I don't mean to impugn her ability to understand the material, but she read as if Joan Didion's sentence structure was just too much for her. Would you be willing to try another one of Diane Keaton’s performances?Īlmost certainly not. It's too late to return this book, but it would have been my first return ever at Audible. But as a reader, at least of this kind of material, I could not listen past the first two stories. I love Diane Keaton's acting legacy, and her personal charisma, which shines through her film performances. My brain recoiled at the strangely off delivery, with dozens of obvious mistakes and hundreds more subtle 'mis-aimed' attempts to add expression and dynamism.

Liked best? Well, Joan Didion's writing, of course! Liked least? What a weird clash of writing style and narrator style. What did you like best about Slouching Towards Bethlehem? What did you like least?

Slouching towards bethlehem