#Audio Stories-Review

[aamamun1995]

[PLR] DFY 100 Children’s Audio Stories-Review

[PLR] DFY 100 Children’s Audio Stories-Review.[PLR] DFY 100 Children’s Audio Stories Ignite Imagination, Inspire Young Minds,and Unlock Profitable Potential With Our Exclusive Private Label Rights Powerhouse! In this case, the product includes 100 audio stories specifically created for children.

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[sergle]

I just started listening to the newest season of Nosleep and had the deranged idea to write down my own personal ratings /10 and reviews and it's just my luck that the first episode was real bayud LMAO

[megaweapon]

me saying to myself “oh, harlan guthrie uploaded a seven part horror series all at once. I can surely sit back and wait a while, absorb this later” is the most hilarious lie i’ve told myself in a while. “yeah I won’t binge this immediately” i thought to myself. absolute clown behavior.

[aroaessidhe]

2023 reads // twitter thread

The Grimoire of Grave Fates

YA fantasy anthology of interconnected short stories

follows 18 students at a magic school, in the aftermath of the murder of a hated professor

as they all investigate or accidentally discover different clues to what’s going on

all sorts of interesting magic including necromancy, smoke, embroidery, song, dance, magical creatures

diverse cast of queer, trans, bipoc, & disabled characters

[achromaticbox]

what the hell is this fuckass stock photo collage cover, this does not look like it was made in 2022

[kradl]

Dive into podcasts that are covering your passion on Kradl.

Register on Kradl → Select topics you care about → Select topics you don't care about → Get the chronological feed of p!

[dwimpossblog]

Nightmare Country

The Doctor awakes on a strange new planet with no recollection of who he is and no companions in Nightmare Country in this week's #TBT!

[c-schroed]

Podcasts I Adore - SPINES

This week, I finished the last Episode of the "Mirrors" podcast by ZoomDoom Stories. Which means that I have now heard all of their marvellous productions. And now I feel this need to tell everyone what great stuff they make! Meaning that I'll write some reviews for all the three podcasts they produced and post them on iTunes et al., but before I post them there, I might as well leave the reviews here. So, tune in for some rambling about three audio fiction productions that range from "very good but sadly incomplete" to "so very fricking close to perfection that I really can't call it anything but DARN PERFECT". We'll start with the DARN PERFECT one:

"Listen again: Grove. Mosaic. Trumpet. Listen, and remember. Because those three words, those are the most important words in the world. This is SPINES."

"SPINES" is a fictional audio drama, which, like all productions of ZoomDoom Stories, is written by Jamie Killen, and congenially so. It is told in the form of podcasts made by its protagonist, a young woman who named herself Wren. At the beginning of the story, Wren seeks to find out what happened in a bloody ritual that she barely survived, and which left her without any memories of her past life, but with supernatural powers that she slowly has to explore.

Think "X-Men" meets "Supernatural", with a nice dash of Lovecraftian atmosphere and some sweet bits of Cronenberg-esque body horror. "SPINES" is a truly unique experience, and it clearly is one of the best stories I ever heard. What I love most about it is that it perfectly understands and respects the strengths and limitations of the medium it chose to be told in: Podcasts enable a very intimate way of storytelling, and the very talented voice actor playing Wren just perfectly allowed me to quickly grow attached to her and everyone around her. Wren has lovely quirks like naming every informant that reaches out to her after characters of anime shows she just watched, she has to deal with terrible situations and huge losses, and she is granted one of the most beautiful love stories I have ever heard.

And being told in the form of a podcast really helps the story to flesh out Wren. She comments the stories she tells in clear and unfiltered language and often directly addresses her audience. We, the listeners, also know exactly who this audience is. Besides people that are similarly gifted as Wren, most of the episodes are addressed to Zachary, a man she quickly saw during the ritual that started everything, and whom she since then feels weirdly attracted to.

Of course, telling a story in the form of a podcast also entails some limitations, and "SPINES" respects and works with these limitations better than any other audio fiction I have heard so far. The show's author Jamie Killen is very aware how information is told when broadcast into the public, which makes "SPINES" an all the more fascinating listening experience. For instance, huge changes in the status quo are often announced right at the beginning of an episode, because when something important happens that has to be told immediately, than why wait until it slowly unfolds in the narrative? A broadcast is not necessarily about suspense; it sometimes is much more about giving the important info right away, and then adding all the details. Furthermore, Wren is very careful with the information she shares, and often leaves out details that might help her enemies too much. Details like these make "SPINES" very special; it is one of the most thought-out and self-aware productions I know.

The second best thing that I love about "SPINES" is how each of its three seasons has its very own feel and atmosphere. Season one feels a lot like an urban fantasy version of "Supernatural", with Wren, on her quest for the truth about the ritual, encountering urban legends and terrible secrets scattered everywhere across the city she lives in. Season two, on the other hand, involves a lot of changes, and feels much more like a late-80s action show, with Wren being sent to different places from week to week; hopefully helping the people there with whatever supernatural catastrophe is going on, very much like a MacGyver or an A-Team. But with superpowers, and with more ghastly antagonists. Season three finally is characterized much more by urgency and emergency, with Wren and her allies always being forced to react to an enemy that they can never allow themselves to underestimate.

What also impresses me greatly is that every season ends with a perfect equilibrium of frustration and hope. There's always some kind of terrible catastrophe, but this terror is balanced out with something equally beautiful, making Wren never the triumphant heroine she might deserve to be, but giving her just enough hope to go on. I admit it; sometimes this kind of ending is too close to home for me, sometimes I'd just direly want Wren to win, and live happily ever after, period. But on the other hand, this masterful balance is what will always keep this story in the back of my mind, and close to my heart.

One final thing I want to mention, and I'll make it quick this time: Besides being a nail-biting story about fascinating superpowers and secret societies that worked among us for centuries already (which are depicted in the most realistic way I have ever seen!), "SPINES" is also a perfectly wholesome love story. I know I already mentioned this some paragraphs before, but I really can't stress enough HOW DARN WHOLESOME this love story is!

So. "SPINES" is the perfect combination of urban fantasy, horror, and romance. It has a perfectly fleshed-out narrator, played by an incredibly talented voice actor, and it masterfully uses the possibilities of its medium. To me, "SPINES" is close to perfection, and its very few flaws should stop no-one from giving it a try. As long as one likes horror, of course. The show can get quite drastic, from time to time.

10 out of 10 points. Sheer perfection. And a lifelong love for Wren and Shan and Winry. And Akira, and Bilal (because who would not want the literal perfect moment as a friend?). And all the others.

Besides my general opinion about the show, I'd also like to go into detail regarding three episodes that I find especially noteworthy. All of them are part of Season 3, so please be aware of minor spoilers.

Season 3, Episode 6 (Episode 22 overall): The Trade

This is my favourite episode. It marks the second time that the narrator of an episode changes to Shan, whom I adore at least as much as Wren, and it might have one of the most dramatic beginnings of all episodes. But what really makes this episode stand out is how well-thought its time-travel plot is. It makes perfect sense, and it involves my favourite temporal paradox, the bootstrap paradox (I you don't know it, go look it up; it's so much cooler than some poor dead grandpa). Plus we get to know a supernatural brothel in Vienna. Which I didn't even know I desperately wanted to hear about, until I heard about it. But now I need a spin-off about Ilsa and her Gifted courtesans. :D

Season 3, Episodes 2 & 3 (Episodes 18 & 19 overall): Iris, Part 1 & 2

There's much about this two-part episode that I really love, be it that it gives satisfying answers that I wanted to hear for a long, long time, be it that we're given a very credible reason for this story being split into two parts (once more, "SPINES" shows how perfectly well it is aware of its podcast medium). So I really, really wanted to like these episodes. But still, they turn out as some episodes that I really have trouble with. This might maybe due to me being not a native English speaker, but I have terrible problems with understanding the narrator of these episodes. So if you, like me, have problems with listening comprehension during this episode, please be reminded that there are transcripts of each episode. Although they currently can only be reached via archive.org's ever-so-useful Wayback Machine.

2019 New Year's Special:

This is a crossover with "Mirrors", another marvellous audio drama made by ZoomDoom Stories. And because I listened to this right after finishing the final episode of "SPINES", I did not know that it contains some major spoilers for at least the first season of "Mirrors". Furthermore, the events at the end of the episode play an important role in the third season of "Mirrors", but that's not that important in my opinion. But should you not know "Mirrors" by now and maybe want to listen to it later (which, again in my humble opinion, YOU DEFINITELY SHOULD!), then maybe listen to this New Year's Special after finishing "Mirrors" season one.

The episode itself was a bit of a disappointment for me, if I'm honest. Both "SPINES" (in at least one episode; i. e. episode 22: "The Trade") and "Mirrors" usually deal perfectly with all matters related to time-travel and temporal paradoxes; to me they really are a paragon of how to tell stories that involve different interacting timelines. So the way that time-travel is treated here is just disappointing to me. Don't get me wrong, please. It still is a perfectly entertaining episode. It's lovely to hear more from Wren and Shan, and it is hilarious to hear about the events in "Mirrors" from their perspective. But as to the time-travel aspect, well, I'm spoilt by now. I'm used to it being told so much better than here, with much less paradox narration. So this special might be the biggest flaw in both series. I mean, I'd still give it 7 out of 10 points. So that says more about how fabulous the rest of "SPINES" and "Mirrors" is.

[thefearandnow]

Favorite audio of 2022

For the past couple years I’ve been trying to make a habit of doing a sort of year in review post of my favorite audio from the past year, mainly for my own memory. So this is a non-comprehensive, unordered list of all the new music and podcasts I extra loved from 2022!

It’s funny to me that there’s only like two standout non-fiction podcasts from this year for me, not because I didn’t listen to a lot of non-fiction stuff (it’s my job) but because I haven’t been as up on new non-fiction shows.

Music:

Dragon New Warm Mountain by Big Thief

Few Good Things by Saba

Renaissance by Beyoncé

Home, before and after by Regina Spektor

Stumpwork by Dry Cleaning

Blue Rev by Alvvays

Ice, Death, Planets, Lungs, Mushrooms and Lava by King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizard

Fiction podcasts:

Who Killed Avril Lavigne (Super Normal Media)

Doctor Who Redacted (BBC)

Batman: The Audio Adventures (HBO)

Goblet Wire (indie)

Shipworm (Two-Up Productions)

Quiet Part Loud (Monkeypaw Production + Gimlet)

Two Flat Earthers Kidnap a Freemason (Good Pointe)

Non-fiction podcasts:

Cover Story Season 2: Seed Money (NY Mag)

The Last Cup (NPR + Futuro)

Honorable mention: Suave (Futuro) which came out in 2021 but won a Pulitzer in 2022

[azazel-dreams]

Doctor Who - The Nightmare Fair - The Lost Stories - Audio Drama

Rating: ❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️

[always-a-joyful-note]

All right. Time to ramble about a new thing that grabbed me by the neck and didn't let me go until I finished all available episodes.

That new thing, my friends, would be the Mistholme Museum of Mystery, Morbidity, and Mortality. And despite being terrible at writing proper reviews and hardly ever doing it, I'm gonna do my best to give a semi-coherent review of why you should listen to this funky little Australian podcast.

So! I see a lot of people comparing Mistholme to Magnus Archives. ..and while that definitely works, I also want to both compare it to Welcome to Night Vale and Wolf 359 for its at times very cavalier attitude towards the unexplained and its exploration on personhood and humanity.

Seriously, though. What I LOVE about this podcast, asides from the philosophical and discoursey tidbits that make the nerd in me go absolutely bonkers, is the way that while it is very much horror and mystery, it's just not that.

Like...it's a museum about supernatural occurrences and terrors, and while a lot of stories do end in creepy, bone-chilling ways, there's also stories that end ambiguously or happily. It's just people living in a world that happens to have alternatural items in it, and while many of the times things go horribly wrong, a lot of times things also can go right...or leave something good to think about. It's just...the best part about this podcast for me is how it's almost slice of life, but a slice of life that happens in a world of magic through the lens of a museum (literally ;)).

Moving on, though, I also seriously love how sometimes it gives off the feel of those educational shows where the characters talk to the audience. There's definitely some great meta moments (and y'all know how much I am wild over those), some stuff I DEARLY want to say about the second person voice but won't for coherence/spoilers. It blends genres - from sci-fi to horror to fantasy, etc. - and has an amazing meta mystery plot thread that just gets better and better as the show progresses.

More than that, though, I seriously just love the focus on worldbuilding. Ironically, this podcast is a MASTER at the show don't tell rule (with reasonable and very seamlessly woven ways of telling, too), and we gradually get to know of this world similar to our own but noooot quite right as the show progresses in a very organic way. And I'm also gonna seriously express the joy I feel in the ambiguity of the year in which the show is unraveling, as well as the ambiguity of how much the common public is aware of the alternatural and so many other things like that. Enough that you're not toooo curious about it but it still adds just another amazing element of story and FUN to this world.

The characters in this podcast - STARS THE CHARACTERS IN THIS PODCAST!! ATG (what I call the Audio Tour Guide)....well, other people have said it better than me but you WILL want to die for it and treasure it and protect it. The other characters that appear? Phenomenal, complex, just...people. And the VOICE ACTING IN THIS. I am....not a good judge of VAs, I'll admit, but just the voice acting in here. The subtle emotion and RANGE they give to their characters. How I'm able to almost SEE them all just from the way they speak. And the way they all develop, both silent AND speaking characters - I don't know how but Dom somehow made me love the mute or nonspeaking characters...or...just feel certain things for them ;)).

Just....plotwise, characterwise WORLDBUILDINGWISE (I am very much a fan of excellent, incredible worlds), performancewise, the themes and discourse on humanity and nature it invites, everything - solid 1000/10. It's really and seriously ranking up there with W359 as one of my favorite podcasts so far....

Now, of course, there will be some stuff that you may personally not find to taste like I did (what with the diverse stories and so on) but I don't think they belong in this review as they're more subjective opinions those up there were all objectively true despite my gushing I don't take arguments so we don't need that. I think the show really does its best in being respectful to all mythologies, religion, sociopitical issues, etc. that may crop up, and it keeps such an...objective? more hopeful? stance on almost every person narrated about (despite in-show opinions) that's kind of...well, refreshing I suppose? to hear? (Maybe the best way to explain it is that its neutral tone allows people, evil and good, to be people without betraying its show's own ethical code.)

Anyway, yeah....I love Mistholme. I love ATG and co. I love the VA and their voice and all other voices once again I ask why are podcaster voices so nice to hear? I love LOVE the individual stories and their unique way of just...revealing the world of Mistholme. And yes, again, I really love all its themes and the Thoughts(tm) they invite or that invade your brain space.

Anyway, with that, I'm still not forgiving the creator for s4 despite being on s5, how DARE -

And secondly, if I had a nickel for everytime an Aussie creator made an urban fantasy world with some of the best worldbuilding and character arcing and plot twisting I've seen, I'd have 2 nickels which isn't a lot but it's weird that it happened twice...

Comparisons and jokes asides, though, you really WILL love this world on its own. And maybe scream a little in wounded agony. But that's just the fun of visiting a museum of mystery, morbidoty, and mortality right?

[muirneach]

i guess what i really hate about the duolingo update is that if i want to study a particular topic, like future tense or whatever, i can’t do that. the new units are literally just the entire course in one single thing and it’s a different selection every time. which is good because you get a more complete experience with the language (instead of having One unit on One grammatical structure and then moving right along) but like i said. sometimes i like to go back and review a specific topic i can’t do that

[meledwards88]

Book Review - A Winter Flame by Milky Johnson

Book Review – A Winter Flame by Milky Johnson

www.audible.co.uk/pd I love that in the beginning Eve is a sceptic who due to previous heartache and loss detests Christmas but as the story progresses she starts to warm to the season. She is left a theme park which is under construction on the orders of her late aunt. This is something which when she is first told believes to be a joke. She then finds out that the park is not her alone. She has…

[rigelmejo]

Mm.

The main thing in Readibu that seems to benefit me is that it tells me the percent done in the right upper corner. I don't know why, but seeing percent really pushes me to keep reading. It did in Amazon Kindle and Moonreader Pro too, but both of those apps just Stop showing me percent for some reason eventually... I'm guessing because I read too slow for its calculator, or because the file I read is hundreds of pages instead of split into 2-10 pages in length.

Readibu also has click definitions, and audio of individual sentences, and it's paid version (which I'm not using) has full sentence translation. But Pleco has all those features, but better. Readibu let's me favorite words i look up, which is nice to me in particular because I can see the words favorited since I started this reading kick. But Pleco let's a person favorite words AND add them to many customized SRS flashcard collections so it's much better designed for study. (Readibus word favorite is only preferable to Pleco for me right now, because my pleco has thousands of words saved many of which I've now learned, versus Readibu which I got this month so all the saved words are fresh study words).

Readibu's main unique feature, as far as I can tell, is that you can click the Stats button for whatever you're reading, and see an estimate of the reading level of the material. This is convenient and really freaking useful, because the last took I found that did this required a lot more copy/pasting to use and didn't compare with HSK but it's own vague difficulty score and would often crash on me due to the amount of characters in a webnovel chapter (it was still useful and wonderful for existing though!). I think Lingq also had a similar feature when I used it (if I remember correctly), in that Lingq counted words you marked as known and could tell you the % new unknown words versus known in a given reading material. But the problem with Lingq for me, was my reading level was far above beginner and I'm too lazy to mark all the words I know. It was a LOT of words, and I just wanted to quickly read not pause to mark all the stuff I knew. The Lingq tool would likely be more accurate to YOUR real reading level, but it requires more regular Lingq use to be accurate for you. And I just didn't use it enough, and I hated Lingqs expensive pay model (especially given Pleco is way better for chinese and is a one time fee then free to use forever after). Readibu's Stats information is more generalized, but i can quickly open something I find easy to read, check it's Stats, then compare it to other things I want to read and see roughly how much more difficult they will be for me to read. So it's easier to pick something the same level or a little challenging, instead of accidentally going from one reading level to "this will take me months to slog through." It's very convenient, works great, and it's free (unlike lingq).

I'm only using Readibu's free version, but it's perfectly useful free. Like I mentioned, the only paid thing it seems to do is full sentence translation. And it's probably just using Google translate so a copy/paste will give you the same result free, or you could get Pleco (which was a one time cost of around $20 dollars for the several dictionaries I got and full Reading tool features which are hands down the best of all the Chinese reading apps I've seen) if full sentence/passage translation matters to you. The only particular thing tempting me to buy Readibu, is knowing if I know I'm being charged I'd probably read more to make it earn it's usefulness ToT. But I don't need to do that lol.

Anyway, review of Readibu: free version is great! I recommend! It's not the best Chinese reader app, and it's a bit clunky depending on the Chinese webnovel site link you input, but it overall works on everything I put into it, it has good definitions (better than Lingq), has audio, has words underlined (good for beginners), and difficulty Stats. It also says percent read which I personally think is kinda motivating. It's satisfying to read and finish a whole novel in readibu! (I also think Readibu has likely improved, I remember checking it out back when it came out and it definitely works better now with better definitions/websites compatibilities and is a very useful reading tool now). Paid version seems unneeded but maybe I'll check it out one day, i already assume it's paid version would probably be at least as good as Lingq or better (if you're studying chinese).

[joncronshawauthor]

🧟‍♂️ New Episodes & Exciting Reads | Author Diary - April 26, 2024 📚🎬

🧟‍♂️ “Punks Versus Zombies” Updates I’ve added two new episodes to the “Punks Versus Zombies” series. To make it even more accessible, I’ve uploaded a compilation of the audio versions of episodes 17-24 on YouTube. This format brings a new dimension to the storytelling experience, and I hope you enjoy it! 📖 New Short Story Release I’m excited to share a new short story, “Siren’s Song,” a…

[gemmiejewel]

Unveiling History's Icons: A Review of "Dead Famous" by Greg Jenner

Are you ready to embark on a journey through time and uncover the intriguing lives of history’s most iconic figures? If so, then Greg Jenner’s “Dead Famous” is the perfect companion for your adventure. In this captivating book, Jenner takes readers on a whirlwind tour of famous historical figures, offering a fresh perspective that combines humour, insight, and impeccable storytelling. Dead…