Eric W

Motivating, actionable, efficient

Revisado: 08-17-22

I'm a researcher in a linguistics-adjacent field and have also been studying linguistics informally for nearly 20 years. Although my interest in linguistics is not primarily foreign language learning (I am most interested in the structure and evolution of language), I have spent years studying various languages off and on, but never made much progress beyond being able to formulate basic requests or read children's books.

My persistent monolingualism has been a source of mild shame given my interest in language, and especially so after I lived and worked in a foreign country for over a year and came home with still only very basic skills in the language. This book helped me to re-evaluate what exactly I want out of learning a foreign language, to think more explicitly about the costs associated with learning a language, and motivated me to try again in a more focused and disciplined way.

The book is full of practical advice. I really appreciate that it is honest about the hard work involved, and that it emphasizes the value of focused study. I see a lot of advice online that is much more immersion-centric, and makes language learning seem like an almost magical thing that happens when you just dive in. I'm sure this works for some people, but it's not very efficient, nor practical for most people. In contrast, I'm good at focused study in other areas, so hearing about its benefits for language learning was motivating to me. Also, the book includes lots of practical tips for increasing your exposure to the target language in relatively low cost ways, which make it seem much more possible to fit some of the benefits of immersion into the rest of my life.

I also really appreciate how efficiently this book presents its information. It is not a rigorous framework for language learning, but rather a humble set of tips, observations, and motivations from someone who has succeeded at learning multiple foreign languages, and also made the conscious decision to give up on learning others. So many books in the how-to/self-help genre wildly over-claim benefits and stretch 2 hours of content into 10-15 hours, surrounded by fluff and repetition. This book doesn't waste your time and delivers exactly what it promises. I can definitely see myself coming back to listen to it again in the future, when I find myself in a rut or losing steam on my newest attempt at language learning. :-)

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Standard info, well presented, strange narration

Revisado: 07-01-22

The info here is all pretty standard advice that you've probably come across if you've done any reading about productivity before. However, the presentation is concise and well-organized, so it's still useful as either a starting point or a way to help get yourself back on track.

Lots of folks mention the narration, and it's true that it's pretty bizarre. It really sounds like they intentionally slowed it down or something to boost the length. At ~1.3x speed it almost sounds like a normal human being reading the book! One "benefit" of this strange style, however, is that I found this book very comfortable to listen to at 2x speed, and I even went up 2.5x briefly without missing anything. Most books I listen to between 1-1.3x speed, so it's unusual that I can crank it up so high.

A couple minor complaints I have about the content:

1. It pretty heavily emphasizes using shame as a motivator in parts, and lots of the discussion implies that feeling shame for getting off track is warranted. Personally, I think this is a very unhealthy approach to boosting productivity.

2. The book includes several "examples" that contrast the productivity and success of two hypothetical characters pursuing similar goals. One of these compares two aspiring software engineering consultants, but the description of their goals, measures of progress, etc. are basically nonsensical. In the scenario, the successful consultant's goal is to "write 15 pages of code a day", which she does, then "at the end of the week, she compiles the code with no errors and sends it to her client" and the client is "very happy to have a working code"! It definitely would have helped to run this example by anyone with even a tiny understanding of how programming works!

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Please stop auto-playing this book!

Revisado: 10-14-21

I never once clicked on this book, yet it keeps auto-playing every time another book finishes. Once it played in the background for several hours because I foolishly just took off my headphones after my book finished, assuming that finishing a book meant Audible would stop playing...

There is no way to remove the book when it is playing or stop it from playing in the future. I can only pause it and then choose something else.

Now I am getting recommendations because "you listened to 'A Demon in Silver'", which again, I never once chose to listen to.

I realize this is Audible's fault more than this particular book, but I'm hoping that negatively reviewing the book will: (1) stop it from affecting my recommendations, (2) discourage publishers from taking part in whatever program Audible is offering to have your books auto-play without the consent of the listener. This feature is user-hostile and if you participate in it, you're part of the problem too.

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Absolutely wonderful edition

Revisado: 10-22-20

I really loved this edition! This is the best way to enjoy Sherlock Holmes, in my opinion.

Stephen Fry's narration is fantastic and absolutely perfect for a quintessentially English collection of stories. His character voices are great: Holmes' arrogance comes through in just the right amounts, Watson's alternating fondness and frustration with him comes across perfectly, and all of the minor characters from working class to aristocrats are excellent. The American and Australian accents are a bit off, but even those are fine and mesh well with the rest of the narration.

However, the thing that puts this collection over the top is that Stephen Fry wrote and reads forwards for each of the collections and novels. It turns out, Fry is a huge Sherlock Holmes fan. His forwards provide both historical and authorial context for the stories and also a more personal perspective. Fry describes what he loves about the different stories, provides some light criticism, and also gives some great personal anecdotes about the role the Sherlock Holmes stories have played in his life. The forwards are really great and made me enjoy the stories even more.

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Fascinating and insightful

Revisado: 01-11-19

This is a fascinating look at South Africa's transition out of apartheid from a person who experienced it in a unique and complicated way. Trevor Noah is the child of a black mother and white father, "colored" (and illegal) by law, but who grew up in a black family and community, and identified as black even though his peers didn't always see him that way.

The book is less funny but more insightful than I was expecting. Trevor's views on race and racism, poverty, language, religion, and domestic abuse are all smart and thought-provoking. The stories about him as a teenager, at school and in the hood, running his various hustles, are an especially compelling glimpse into the logic, values, sense of community, frequent injustices, and occasional brutality of his world.

One complaint I have is that I feel like many of the stories ended somewhat abruptly, without proper resolution. They were structured more like jokes in that you get the punchline but then don't get to see how he or his family recovered from or evolved because of the events of the story. I think even just 1-2 paragraphs of resolution would have improved many of the stories and offered a lot more insight into how they helped shape Trevor Noah into the person he is today.

Another complaint is the casual way that animal abuse is treated in the book. Trevor treats racism and domestic abuse with the levity they deserve, even when they're surrounded by funny moments, but does not treat animal abuse similarly. In particular, [spoiler] there is a story where his two cats are gruesomely murdered and he basically laughs it off because he doesn't like cats, but there are other smaller examples as well.

The reading is fantastic, as you'd expect from a seasoned performer like Trevor Noah. I suspect this is a book that is best in audio format.

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Great book, fantastic reading

Revisado: 12-31-18

Strong recommendation from someone who loves Sanderson's Stormlight Archive, enjoyed the first Mistborn cycle, but was only lukewarm on the second Mistborn cycle.

In terms of complexity, the story and setting of Warbreaker are somewhere between the more straightforward Mistborn and the sprawling Stormlight Archive.

Fun, engaging heroes, and even some of Sanderson's best humor (via the flippant and self-deprecating god Lightsong).

As always with Sanderson, the magic system is creative, constrained, and described in wonderful detail.

The icing on the cake is that Alyssa Bresnahan is an absolutely fantastic narrator. Her voices are good and consistent, but not over the top. Her narration is varied and interesting, but again, not overly so. Just really excellent. I've even added two other books to my wishlist that I otherwise wouldn't have considered, just because she is the narrator.

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Disappointingly shallow, some harmful humor

Revisado: 12-31-18

I read (and listen to) a lot about linguistics and the history of language, so I wasn't expecting everything in this course to be new to me. However, I was still disappointed by how little new information or perspective I got out of it. I'm happy that so many people have enjoyed this and been introduced to linguistics, but if you have any linguistics background at all, I recommend skipping this one purely from a content perspective.

I was also not a fan of the lecturer, and I'm surprised most other reviews are so effusively positive about him. While many of his jokes and anecdotes are indeed funny, many others are (sometimes vaguely, sometimes overtly) racist, misogynistic, or cruel. One of his more obnoxious quirks is that he's uncomfortable saying the word "women", instead using euphemisms like "of the female persuasion" in a singsongy voice, as if he's going out of his way to be politically correct or something. Pro tip: the word "women" is not politically incorrect, but racist anecdotes are!

A much smaller complaint is that, in arguing against a prescriptive view of language, he ironically spends an inordinate amount of time arguing for what is "good" or "OK" in language, as opposed to presenting the evidence for what "is". I get that something must be said in an intro to linguistics to dispel the notion of a prescriptive set of rules that we can use to distinguish good language from bad language. But I feel like he's fighting fire with fire by arguing that what we've been told is "bad" is actually "good", rather than explicitly distinguishing between prescriptivism and descriptivism, and stating that we care about what "is". I also feel like this point is belabored well beyond what a reasonable person would need to be convinced, but I recognize I'm not the target audience for the argument.

Overall, this was an extremely disappointing listen considering my interest in the topic and the extremely positive reviews.

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