General Content: With audiobooks it’s sometimes difficult to separate the quality of the book itself from the quality of the recording and the narration. I purchased St. Francis of Assisi looking a gain a greater insight to this man and his life. Unfortunately I feel that I learned little during the course of the 5 Ѕ hours I spent listening to this book.

Paul Rogers’ narration wasn’t terrible but it also wasn’t particularly enrapturing either. Of course, he wasn’t helped out by the fact that the sound quality of the recording was pretty bad. In addition to constant crackling and hiss, there were a number of times throughout the book in which the volume level changed or the narrator’s voice was edited in a noticeable way.

While the content itself was somewhat interesting, I think the book also suffered from having no clear “signposts”. In other words, there wasn’t anything to mark the beginning or end of a passage which made it seem like one fairly long, rambling monologue. It’s definitely not a biography of St. Francis but rather a commentary on his life. So don’t expect to learn the basic details of his life from the book, it’s assumed you already know them.

Overall I would like to give this book a higher score because when I was able to get past the aforementioned problems, there did seem to be interesting anecdotes and observations. Unfortunately, the distracting factors took their toll and made this a forgettable listen.

Audio-Specific Content: I listened to the unabridged (5.5 hours in length) version of this title through Audible.com. It is narrated by Paul Rogers who, while not terrible, does not have a particularly interesting voice. As mentioned previously in the review, problems with sound quality make this recording tough to listen to. So much so that I asked for a refund from Audible.