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wonderful narration of Zola at his best

Revisado: 04-30-25

Germinal is generally regarded as Zola's best novel. I think that is a warranted assessment. The descriptions of the mines and workers' conditions are evocative and you really get a sense of the sheer torture of being in a mine. This audiobook is particularly well-narrated. I will be looking for other works this narrator has produced.

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Brilliant

Revisado: 11-15-24

This title should be required reading for anyone curious about feminism. Some of it is dated, but this book shows us how far women have come.

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True Crime

Revisado: 10-24-24

I think I was expecting more about the impact life leaves on the body...I probably should have read All That Remains. This does talk about the developmental history of bones and fingerprints, but it's largely in service to criminal investigation. Just be aware of that going in.

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esto le resultó útil a 3 personas

completely gripping!

Revisado: 10-16-24

This is the third vampire novel I have read in as many weeks (Dracula, The Historian) and while Dracula remains my gold standard, this is easily not just a close runner up, it's one of the most engaging and well-paced books I have read, especially in the horror genre. Mind you, there's little here to get you to leave the lights on while you sleep, but it's brilliantly atmospheric and I love the new set of "rules for vampirism" it sets out. Now the caveat: the book is very coarse and coarsely sexual. This is not PG. It's not "politically correct." It's the late 1970s in New York and it's raucous and raunchy.

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Eleanor is awesome

Revisado: 10-14-24

Brilliant characters, excellent hauntings, leaves you in suspense and wanting more! Eleanor's wild imagination is addictive. Well narrated, too.

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Excellent novel to read after Dracula, but...

Revisado: 10-13-24

The novel tends to drag a bit, especially in the second half. I'd just read Dracula for the second time before picking up this one and it was exciting to delve into historical details and some comparison with Bram Stoker's novel. I liked that most of the book was related in diary format, like Dracula. Around halfway through, unfortunately, the book started really to stretch as if the writer were being paid by the word.

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Gogol's Brilliant, but the recording is messy

Revisado: 10-08-24

Gogol is a master of storytelling and he's here in all his variety and glory, from provincial sketches to laugh out loud mad men. I actually liked the narrator, but I'm pretty sure that portions of the text (especially Russian names) were cut out and patched up with new recordings. Men's voices change a lot from day to day, hour to hour (women's less so.... I used to work in documentary film) so it's really hard to get the inserted audio to flow with what's already there. The result is some janky audio, made worse by occasional volume issues. If you can ignore this the characters actually have pretty charming voices (IMHO) and regardless the content is worth the cost. Highly recommend!

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Actually my favorite Dostoyevsky

Revisado: 10-05-24

I'm a big Dostoyevsky fan and lover of Russian literature in general, and I love Dostoyevsky's longer works (especially Brothers K and Crime and Punishment), but I have to admit that I found these two novellas even more to my liking. the Double is magical and the Gambler is an exquisite examination of the descent of multiple characters into self-destructive monomania. And of course, the translation is fluid and enchanting.

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A Different View of 19th c Russia

Revisado: 10-03-24

This is, of course, a masterful translation. the stories offer a very different view of Russia from what you find in Tolstoy and Dostoevsky. The collection really is a series of short stories and folk tales. The book is worth it if only for the title story, which is totally nuts! Highly recommend to fans of Russian literature.

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warning: this is a scholarly book

Revisado: 09-23-24

There's nothing wrong with the fact that this is more of a scholarly work than, say, Confessions of a Buddhist Atheist, but it's not what I expected. TL;DR we should go back to early Buddhist texts which are less dogmatic than what we find in modern Buddhism and there's good reason to embrace rebirth. Not at all a bad book, but like I said, kind of scholarly and dry. I sped up the reader a lot to get through this one.

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