Daniel Lowenstein

Great book, bad reading

Revisado: 03-25-17

Is there anything you would change about this book?

This is one of Dickens' earlier novels and does not have the structure of the mature ones (starting with "Dombey and Son"). The illness and suffering of Little Nell thrilled Dickens' contemporaries but is likely to seem quite tedious to our contemporaries. At least, that is how I find it. Nevertheless, like all of Dickens' novels, there are wonderful characters, incidents, and narration. This should not be one of the first Dickens novels you read, but by almost any other fiction writer, it would be a masterpiece.

What other book might you compare The Old Curiosity Shop to and why?

Not as good as Dickens' later novels (starting with "Dombey and Son"), but like the other earlier ones, very much worth reading.

Would you be willing to try another one of Gerald Dickens’s performances?

No.

Did The Old Curiosity Shop inspire you to do anything?

Remind myself how good Dickens is.

Any additional comments?

I find Gerald Dickens' performance quite annoying. Since there are alternatives, in the middle of Chapter 4 I decided to try one of them, the one by Gerald Hagan. But I wish the old one by David Case/Frederick Davidson would be restored to the catalogue. He is unsurpassable.

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Not Greene's best, but very good

Revisado: 09-11-12

Any additional comments?

This was Greene's last novel published during his lifetime. He famously said that half his novels were "entertainments," and this is one. But while most of the entertainments, very much including this one, are indeed entertaining, they also usually contain considerable insight. Again, this is no exception. In Greene's more famous novel, "The Quiet American," a book with many virtues, he displays an appalling blindness to the evil of communism. There is some of that in "The Human Factor," but not as much. Some of communism's warts, at least, are visible in this book. Of the Greene novels I have read, I still prefer the earlier ones: "The Power and the Glory," "Brighton Rock," and "The Heart of the Matter." But whether you are looking for entertainment or insight into the human condition or both, "The Human Factor" will satisfy. Huzzahs for Piggot-Smith for a very fine reading.

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Worthy Sequel, Excellent Narrator

Revisado: 05-25-10

I beg to differ from the other reviewers. I believe the late Frederick Davidson (aka David Case) was without exception the best reader of audiobooks. Although I agree that this reading is slightly below his usual standard, Davidson below par is still better than most other readers at their best. The novel is the first sequel to The Three Musketeers and, although there is a bit less humor in this work, if you liked the original you will probably like this sequel.

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