Stumbling Sober

A good listen as long as you don't get sucked in.

Revisado: 02-24-20

The bulk of the chapter on 5G is riddled with inaccuracies, over exaggerations, and fear mongering. I point to this chapter specifically because it is within my field of expertise. If that's the case, what degree of accuracy does the rest of the book offer? There are several instances of contradictions between the first part of the book and the conclusion, be it isolationism vs globalism, tariffs vs subsidies, past administration inaction vs present administration inaction. It's hard to nail down a concise conclusion because it advocates for all strategies while arguing against them at other times. Don't get me wrong, the individual cases of abuse are clearly laid out and justifiably terrifying, but when it comes to a path out, there wasn't a clear consensus.

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I tried...

Revisado: 05-22-15

What could have made this a 4 or 5-star listening experience for you?

This was really an outline of a book, maybe two books. It needed color, description, not once was someone's face actually described. I really went into this trying to like it. It was written for someone that already knew what everything looks like in their imagination, namely the writer's.

What could Lynndsie T Hamilton have done to make this a more enjoyable book for you?

The story lacks the detail needed to paint you a picture of the surroundings. I spent the entire book lost to the backdrop; was it in a desert, a post-apocalyptic city, a traditional Japanese countryside? I don't know. There's advanced technology, but there's magic of sorts, ghost-like characters, prophecy, none of which seems to fit or are well explained to why they exist. There were times I didn't know if I was inside a mountain cave or outside in a garden. The details were vague and it was like visiting a museum at night with only a narrow beam flashlight. I could see what I was looking at but everything around it faded to black. The characters were equally confusing, their place in the story was superficial and I had no emotional connection to them, not even to the main character who just seemed to be a shell with no real depth. When the main character's friend dies, it's more of an emotionless footnote. Things were described in one-word adjectives, not explained in any detail that provided color or depth. The book itself was written for someone already familiar with the landscape.

What aspect of Jean Maldonado’s performance would you have changed?

Technically, there were some problems but overall I was able to follow along. There were several times when lines were re-read, either an error in narration or a duplication made in editing. Additionally, there were words mispronounced which should have been caught in editing. The narrator has a very unique accent, a dash of Miami beach with Arizona soft consonants, definitely a Spanish speaker. These are not negatives at all. My only suggestion would be in pronunciation, hard to explain but I guess closest to sounding out the 't' in mountains. It was a little distracting but he did a good job in narration overall. Sometimes while listening, I thought that the narrator was trying to hide or suppress his accent to make his voice more neutral.

You didn’t love this book... but did it have any redeeming qualities?

While not really having a place in the book, the story about the main character's family situation that appeared as a flashback in the first half of the book was probably the best part of the book. Write a book about that. Paint me a picture of emotions about that and I will read it!

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