Play Audiobook Sample
You Think That’s Bad: Stories Audiobook
Play Audiobook Sample
(3.07) - 354 listener ratings
Quick Stats About this Audiobook
Total Audiobook Chapters:
Longest Chapter Length:
Shortest Chapter Length:
Average Chapter Length:
Audiobooks by this Author:
Publisher Description
Culling the vastness of experience—from its bizarre fringes and breathtaking pinnacles to the mediocre and desperately below average—like an expert curator, Jim Shepard populates this collection with characters at once wildly diverse and wholly fascinating.
A “black world” operative can’t tell his wife a word about his daily activities, but doesn’t resist sharing her confidences. A young Alpine researcher is smitten by the girlfriend of his dead brother, killed in an avalanche he believes he caused. An unlucky farm boy becomes the manservant of a French nobleman who’s as proud of having served with Joan of Arc as he’s aroused by slaughtering children. A free spirit tracks an ancient Shia sect, becoming the first Western woman to travel the Arabian Deserts. From the inventor of the Godzilla epics to a miserable G.I. in New Guinea, each is complicit in his or her downfall and comes to learn that, in love, knowing better is never enough.
Download and start listening now!
"There's just something about each of these stories that makes you want to read more and more. Each character is deep and gets fleshed out in such a way that when the stories (sometimes very abruptly) end you want to go back and reexamine them. That or go onto the next story and see what he cooked up next. All of them were engrossing in their own way. So I've picked up just about every book by Shepard to see what else he's come up with."
— Jacob (5 out of 5 stars)
Quotes
-
“Shepard’s cataclysmic renderings are both terrifying and awe-inspiring. There’s a word for that too—sublime.”
— O, The Oprah Magazine -
“Shepard’s use of relatively accurate biographical fact is bent to his own dramatic needs. Unlike memoirs that skew the truth, this is fiction that uses truth to warp into its own staged, often memoir-like reality.”
— Chicago Tribune -
“Each one of these eleven stories stands out for its masterly fusion of technique and subject.”
— San Francisco Chronicle -
“There is so much knowledge, insight, feeling, and artistry in each engrossing Shepard story, he must defy some law of literary physics.”
— Booklist (starred review)
You Think That’s Bad Listener Reviews
-
" Incredible range of stories, and within each a level intensity that's rare. Great stuff. "
— Elisabeth, 2/14/2014 -
" Still in general awe of Shepard, but some of the stories start to feel like research delivery systems, which was not the case with Like You'd Understand Anyway. "Gojira, King of the Monsters," which promised to be right in my wheelhouse, is sadly a prime example. "
— Dan, 2/13/2014 -
" "Gojira: King of the Monsters" is one of the best short stories ever written. Period. And yes, I'm including all the classics. I get it. But I would stack Shepard's masterpiece up against any of them. "
— Ken, 2/1/2014 -
" Jim Shepard is a very smart man and the vast array of subjects he writes about is mind boggling. "
— Lisa, 1/19/2014 -
" A mixed bag, with several outstanding stories. Detailed comments on all stories (with possible spoilers) at A Just Recompense "
— Karen, 1/8/2014 -
" Gorgeous, masterful. I couldn't get enough. "
— Jill, 1/2/2014 -
" Liked this book a lot. Shepard is an original "
— Laraine, 12/31/2013 -
" Shepard's the master, but I found less here to shout about than in his previous books. Tepid response possibly due to that terrible cover. Eesh. "
— Nathan, 12/31/2013 -
" One of the best collection of short stories I have ever read. Shepard's genius lies in his ability to take the reader to more places and times and through a wider variety of characters than any other short story writer I have read. "
— Suzette, 11/11/2013 -
" i cannot say enough about this book it blows my mind that i'd never heard of him. this book changed things for me. "
— Sasha, 10/30/2013 -
" Book of short stories - some good some not so good (for me). All seemed to explore failed family relationships of some sort. Several had a lot of bitterness and regret running throughout. If this is your thing then give it a try. "
— Kevin, 10/28/2013 -
" Melancholy little stories, and each one is so different from the rest! "
— Piers, 10/25/2013 -
" Wonderful as always--perhaps one of the best short fiction writers in recent memory; the economy of Shepard's prose never fails to amaze me, he can compose an entire universe with just a few sentences. If you haven't read Jim Shepard's short fiction, you really should. "
— Ben, 10/9/2013 -
" This is a great collection of stories. Each one masters a different voice and mood. Astounding range of time periods, locations, and protagonists. "
— Kelly, 11/5/2012 -
" I love Jim Shepard, but this isn't my favorite of his books. Still, as always, his best stories outpace nearly everyone else. "
— G, 9/11/2012 -
" I really wanted to like this collection of short stories than I did. And I kept kind of trying to figure out just what a was that wasn't clicking with me. But despite the excellent writing, the stories just didn't resonate with me, so I found myself kind of flipping through to the next. "
— Lisa, 9/10/2012 -
" Didn't grab hold of me the way Shepard's other collections have. Still good, though. "
— Tim, 11/25/2011 -
" Yes! In my hands! Now! Wee! "
— Sara, 3/22/2011 -
" Jim Shepard is a very smart man and the vast array of subjects he writes about is mind boggling. "
— Lisa, 1/3/2011
About Jim Shepard
Jim Shepard us the author of more than six novels and four collections of stories. His work has been published in the New Yorker, Atlantic, McSweeney’s, Tin House, Zoetrope, Playboy, and Vice, among other periodicals. He teaches at Williams College.
About Bronson Pinchot
Bronson Pinchot, Audible’s Narrator of the Year for 2010, has won Publishers Weekly Listen-Up Awards, AudioFile Earphones Awards, Audible’s Book of the Year Award, and Audie Awards for several audiobooks, including Matterhorn, Wise Blood, Occupied City, and The Learners. A magna cum laude graduate of Yale, he is an Emmy- and People’s Choice-nominated veteran of movies, television, and Broadway and West End shows. His performance of Malvolio in Twelfth Night was named the highlight of the entire two-year Kennedy Center Shakespeare Festival by the Washington Post. He attended the acting programs at Shakespeare & Company and Circle-in-the-Square, logged in well over 200 episodes of television, starred or costarred in a bouquet of films, plays, musicals, and Shakespeare on Broadway and in London, and developed a passion for Greek revival architecture.