Play Book Tag discussion

This is an excellent book. Thorough, well-researched, excellent writing, and written with such compassion. Gary Gilmore was not portrayed as a monster. He was portrayed with dignity and respect, which he probably deserved. What a wild story.

The audio was another matter. I thought perhaps this was a really old recording and that's why it was so terrible and seemingly out of touch. But no, it was released in 2018. I made it through 37 hours of the audio before I had to put it aside and read the rest. I blame the director - I think with non-fiction you shouldn't get much artistic licence ... Though Gary Gilmore was born in Texas, he was not raised there and didn't have a southern accent. This narrator voice him with an accent of the deep south, making him seem like a caricature of a back woods hillbilly living in a trailer park. Gilmore was not that. He was thoughtful and intelligent, and apparently humorous and kind (obviously not all the time.) Nicole was voiced with the same deep southern drawl. It really bothered me.

He also couldn't pronounce words and names. I'm so glad I quit when I did so I didn't have to hear him mispronounce Geraldo Rivera's name another 10 times. Grrr-aldo. And Claudine Longet's name pronounced ... you guess it ... Lawn-get.
But the most egregious of all was the pronunciation of the word "pique" as "Pee-kay". He was really terrible, and worsened the experience of listening.

Audio aside, this is True Crime at the top of its game. A deep look into the mind of a man who did a terrible things, and the people who loved him.

Great review.