Adam

TERRIBLE AI recording; dishonest publisher

Revisado: 08-27-24

It might not be evident from the preview, but once you’re 10 minutes into this, the narration quality is appalling — blatantly a very poor AI voice, which the publisher and Audible have lied about by not acknowledging it.

Even the “text to speech” feature on your smartphone is better than the preposterous mispronunciations and robotically wrong cadences in this “recording.”

This “audiobook” is not worth a single cent. Avoid, and scorn this publisher.

I will be getting a refund and filing an angry complaint.

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Worth a listen; much better than some other reviews claim

Revisado: 03-07-24

This is a solid 4-star book. Not the very best, but good, and definitely worth a listen if you have an interest in the Soviet gulag / prison system, Polish history, or adventure / survival stories in extreme conditions. It’s an enjoyable story.

The book is notably similar to “The Long Walk” by Sławomir Rawicz. They’re not identical, but similar, and they make a good matched set if you’re up for a pair of listens.

The narrator of this book is also *much* better than some other reviews on here would have you believe with their bigoted gripes about “English speakers only please.”

The narrator has a moderate Slavic accent (probably Polish? but I’m less familiar with that than some other Slavic accents), which is arguably appropriate to the story. If that’s unfamiliar to you, the audio sample for this book may not really give a good feel for it. If you’ve ever had a long conversation with someone who has an accent different from your own, you’ll find the same here — it can be a little disorienting at first, but you’ll easily catch on to the way he speaks before long, and then you’ll hardly notice, or even enjoy it. Despite his accent, he’s clearly fully fluent in English — all of his pronunciations are consistent, confident, and unhesitating. I had no trouble listening at my usual 1.5 speed.

So his accent makes the narrative feel more real and authentic in some ways, which is a plus. AND more importantly than what accent he uses, he performs the text with a steady, practiced cadence that also indicates he has professional experience as a voice actor.

In fact, my sole issue with the performance is a slight quibble over tone. The narrator consistently performs with a laid back, laconic, dry tone. This is also arguably authentic to many Slavic people, especially Soviet survivors, so it’s not wrong at all. I just don’t prefer it personally, because it makes the book feel somewhat more academic, with very subdued emotion. But it does work fine for the text once you start to hear it as the suppressed world-weariness of traumatic survival, and so I came around to it eventually.

One final note: Is it really a true story?

I’d say probably — but the one kernel of doubt is that questions have been raised about whether that other book, “The Long Walk,” is actually true. There’s some inconclusive evidence that it may be fabricated, including claims that it’s true-ish, but it’s actually someone else who made the escape in that story.

Given the similarities between the books, it strikes me as possible that if one is false, both might be, with the second conceived to cash in on the success of the first.

But does it matter? No. Both books are fun and meaningful reads that give an accurate *sense* of the topics discussed, so I’d still recommend them both even if they were proved to be “historical fiction,” so to speak. And on balance, I’m inclined to believe that both are probably mostly authentic.

After all, even the great Solzhenitsyn could be coy about the “non-fiction-ish” accuracy of his works — true in spirit if not in every detail, so to speak — in part because he was depicting things he didn’t personally witness, or was attempting to remember from decades after the fact.

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Holy smokes — what a ringer!

Revisado: 12-02-22

This book is surprisingly good — in terms of the plot, the prose, the structure, the clever and subtle integration of themes and motifs.

Is it memoir? Is it fiction? Yes; you decide. What it is, is a really well crafted book — and a helluva great read.

I’m normally staunchly opposed to authors reading their own books because most of them entirely lack the skills to be a voice actor, but this is one of the exceptions where the author’s narration is perfectly suited to the material and works seamlessly.

ALSO — the less you know about this book or the author beforehand, the more fun you’ll have.

I picked it up on a whim in a sale because the title treatment on the cover was so clever, and I figured, what the heck — now I’m curious, and it’s short. Turns out to be one of my best random finds in the last couple years!

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Superb production of a superb anthology

Revisado: 10-25-22

Nearly all of the short stories (62 total) by one of the 20th century's great writers. At the end of this review, I highlight some of the best to start with.

NEW TO BOWLES?

Paul Bowles blends the precise minimalism of Hemingway with the brutality and strangeness of Cormac McCarthy. His characters labor under the delusion that they are in control of their lives, only to have that certitude gradually stripped away – or abruptly shattered.

Bowles' stories often reach a point that feels surreal because characters are faced with an extreme situation beyond their comprehension, yet his narratives rarely depart from reality. Instead, he walks you and his characters out to the edge of the precipice one step at a time – and then compels you to confront the abyss.

Many Americans are unfamiliar with Bowles (even though he's American) because he lived most of his life abroad, primarily in Morocco, but he's in the league of those writers who could have won a Nobel Prize yet never quite did.

His greatest works are the novel "The Sheltering Sky" and this anthology of his short stories, dating from the 1940s to the 1990s. I've read nearly all of Bowles' fiction and loved most of it, and either this anthology or that novel is a great starting point. (That said, "The Sheltering Sky" will always be my personal favorite; I've read it many times.)


FOR FANS

This may be his only story collection you need – it includes 62 stories, and as far as I can tell, it anthologizes all of his prior collections. It's the same edition as the corresponding print / kindle anthology.

That said, I believe I read once that he wrote more than 100 short stories (not sure about that), so for completists, you may have more to hunt, but I don't know the provenance of whatever's been omitted. Might be juvenalia and lesser work published in periodicals but never collected for a book?


AUDIO PRODUCTION & PERFORMANCE

These 62 stories are arranged chronologically in publication order, and Audible has done us the favor of using the story titles as the section headings in the audio file, so it's easy to jump around as you like.

In addition to the pleasure of its completeness and range, this audio version also brings exquisite performances from two sublime readers.

Amusingly, I didn't realize until 2/3 of the way through that it was 2 different readers – they sound enough alike that I still have no real sense of which reader performs each story or when they switch.

So why did they use 2 readers? My guess is that, given the extensive range of non-English words, accents, and dialects, they may have needed 2 people to cover the whole span. Most of Bowles' work is set either in North Africa, or Central and South America, with numerous European characters thrown in as well, but he also has a few stories set in other locales. That global range poses quite a challenge for any one reader.

Thankfully, the pronunciations are natural and vivid throughout, and the readers give virtually perfect performances from start to finish.

* NOTE: The audio sample is NOT of either reader. That is the book’s forward, written and (evidently) read by Robert Stone.


TOP 16 PICKS (in the order they appear):

1. The Echo
2. A Distant Episode *superb; one of his most famous
3. Call at Corazon
4. At Paso Rojo
5. How Many Midnights
6. The Delicate Prey *superb; one of his most famous
7. The Hours After Noon *+superb longer story
8. The Frozen Fields *a joy, and a departure from his normal style
9. Tapiama *superb
10. The Time of Friendship ++excellent long story
11. Reminders of Bouselham
12. Midnight Mass
13. You Have Left Your Lotus Pods on the Bus
14. In the Red Room
15. Tangier 1975
16. Too Far from Home ++excellent long story

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A long wikipedia entry

Revisado: 10-18-22

This is OK, but not more than OK.

I was hoping for some actual analysis — perhaps not on the level of Robert Caro, but still, an effort to provide insights.

Instead, what you get is just a long recounting of episodic details and facts. It’s mildly interesting, periodically tedious. Jay Gould was a corrupt, unlikable thief and criminal, yet not in a way that’s actually gripping in some voyeuristic way. He’s merely loathsome and dull and deservedly forgotten.

The final chapter reveals, perhaps, why the author didn’t offer more analysis in the rest of the book: He concludes with an apologist’s love letter that glamorizes Gould and romanticizes trickle-down economics.

So between a whole book of that sort of cringey toadying or a boring wiki entry, I’ll take the wiki entry for 3 stars.

Not recommended, but if you know this topic is up your alley for your own reasons, then it’s adequately competent. (Same with the reader — “adequate.”)

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5-star performance of a classic

Revisado: 08-16-22

Julie Christie gives a brilliant performance of this classic, which is generally regarded as the “first work” of modern realist literature.

Another reviewer has attacked Christie’s performance with some ridiculous claims; he must have heard some other version or have some other axe to grind. (I heard a total of 2 errors in her pronunciation, which is normal for any audiobook, plus British pronunciations of some words where he likely didn’t know that the pronunciation differs from American English. And her pacing is great.)

And I was prepared to believe his cranky review — normally, I avoid celebrity readings. Famous actors do not make great voice actors.

While film actors have a very pleasant narrating voice, they tend to lack variety in pacing and tone over the course of a long work, and their “voices” tend to fall apart if there are more than 4 or 5 characters. The upshot is that audiobooks by famous actors usually sound more like a nice story time at the library, rather than a genuinely professional audiobook performance.

SO Christie’s performance here is doubly praiseworthy — her voice acting is *superb*.

She clearly put forth the effort to learn this other craft, and the reader is rewarded with a remarkable performance that is by turns sensitive, biting, dry, funny. There are a huge number of characters, male and female, young and old, rich and poor, and Christie embodies them all with aplomb. Her voice acting is on par with the greats in this field.

I also listened to portions of the other top editions of this work, and Christie’s stands out as the most engrossing and listenable — she is nimble and natural and has clearly thought through the tone of each passage.

Other readers by comparison often default to pompous, breathy, over-emotive narration to emphasize that “you’re listening to a classic.” If you’ve ever listened to a famous work and felt just sick of the narrator half way through, that is often why. Christie, pointedly, does not make this novice error.

As for the novel itself? Well — “It’s a classic!” right? 😉

I actually don’t love this novel, but it’s certainly worth reading at least once. In general I don’t care for 19th century French lit, and among works of that time and place, I enjoy this one more than most. (And it’s not a demanding work to follow or enjoy.)

So if you do plan to add this list to the list of great works you’ve tackled, I cannot recommend Christie’s reading highly enough. This is a 5-star production.

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An excellent, lesser-known Tolstoy work

Revisado: 06-02-22

This audiobook was a very fine discovery — brilliant prose with an excellent performance.

If you’ve never read Tolstoy, this is a superb place to start — much less daunting than his famous epics.

If you have read some Tolstoy, this should be high on your list of must-reads from his extensive bibliography.

I am not especially fond of 19th century literature (though I’ve read a lot of it), and Tolstoy is one of the few timeless novelists from that century. His insights, sentiments, and plot structures still feel modern, and his prose is not overwrought in a way that makes it feel dated.

This novel is arguably the first of his “greatest period” culminating in War & Peace and Anna Karenina. I realize that’s a debatable distinction, since he produced thoughtful works of literature in all the phases of his life, but for those who are just looking for a place to start, or who aren’t looking for “super deep cuts,” this novel is worth your consideration and time.

Personally, I much prefer “The Cossacks” to two of his other shorter works that are more often recommended — “The Death of Ivan Ilyich” (a touch boring) or “The Sebastopol Sketches” (innovative and insightful but not very cohesive).

By comparison, The Cossacks is an engaging story that is seamlessly constructed from start to satisfying finish, and it gives you an authentic taste of the talents he will bring to bear on a grander scale in his two epics.

“Daddy Eroshka” is a particular bright spot, though he’s only a supporting character who would be 4th on the cast list — a memorable and touching blend of Thoreau and Hemingway, for an anachronistic analogy. Eroshka’s persistent influence from the background of the main story arc might just be the finest part of this novel.

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Essentially unlistenable

Revisado: 05-31-22

Tolstoy’s short novel is good if not great, mainly for its worthwhile historical perspective.

This review is about this particular production — which is appalling.

This “narrator” monotonously reads in the sort of childish, almost-inquisitive tone appropriate for an after-school reading of “Peter Rabbit” for the preschoolers. Worse, he recites in the clumsy, stumbling cadences of a schoolboy incompetently reading aloud for the first time in front of the whole class. You can literally hear the pauses and tone changes of him trying to remember what he’s supposed to say next, and then rushing ahead in relief once he figured it out. Outrageous.

It’s not even a funny joke. It’s merely an insult that Audible would even offer something this bad for sale.

A computer-automated reading of the printed text is literally better than this — I compared.

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Vonnegut’s masterpiece

Revisado: 12-19-20

On my second tour of Vonnegut’s works, I am still bowled over by the unrestrained brilliance of this book in particular.

It is Vonnegut at his finest, using all his tricks and surprises and violations of “literary method” and other perversities, all effortlessly, all to masterful effect. Everything fits. It is all hilarious and cutting.

It’s also one of the clearest distillations of Vonnegut himself — if you admire or want to know this person through his work, this is one of his most vivid self portraits.

But what ultimately makes this book rise above the rest of his works is its intensely earnest humanity. It is remarkably bitter through and through, a thoroughly black satire, and yet he ultimately shows sympathy and kindness to the people and culture he pillories. It’s a little like the reversal in tone that Heller pulls off about 2/3 of the way through “Catch 22,” when all the hilarity suddenly turns dire without ever changing style. In Vonnegut’s case, all the bitterness suddenly turns bittersweet — and it’s a twist that should squeeze you by the heart cockles.

For what it’s worth, if you find this book seemingly scattered or baroque at first — “What is going on? What is he doing??” Vonnegut actually explains exactly why he’s written it this way at one point, and I think it’s a brilliant artistic statement. I already loved the whimsy of this rollercoaster ride — it’s an essential part of the tone — but his offhand yet profound explanation of what he’s doing and why only deepens it all in an unexpected way. Another example of the ease with which he wields his craft at this point in his writing career.

Last thought: One other reviewer has an obnoxious post about how “he rates this book a ‘C’ because Vonnegut rated it a ‘C.’” That is so inane and unfeeling that I’m left wondering if that person even read the whole book.

Artists and writers and musicians and the like rarely give objective appraisals or “rankings” of their own work, because their stance is so highly personal — mired in all the hopes and disappointments and unreasonable notions and other personal experiences that they can’t separate from each particular work and how it came to be. Vonnegut’s opinion on this book is useful for knowing him better — e.g., a good example of how his bitter judgements cut just as deeply about himself, and so it’s not surprising that he has mixed feelings about such a personal work — but it’s not a useful perspective for judging the book itself.

If we want to pit inane oversimplifications against each other for “why a book is or isn’t great,” then my own champion in that duel would be the fact that his felt-tip drawing of an asterisk is recognized as virtually a second signature for Vonnegut. It’s right there in the cover art for all these Vonnegut audiobooks on Audible. And the “why” for that comes from this book. That didn’t happen without reason; so let the staying power of that symbol joust it out with Vonnegut’s own self-doubts.

In the meantime, Vonnegut is an American master — and this is his masterpiece.

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Meh. If you like Jared Diamond, this is for you

Revisado: 11-24-20

This book is fine — it’s fine. And if you’re interested in medical / microbial history, then you’ll probably dig it, in a “merely adequate” kinda vein.

But I found it dull and overlong. (And I’m someone who has listened to, say, Hannah Arendt, and Gibbon’s “The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire” on audiobook — so I don’t demand a pulse-pounding narrative to stay tuned in.)

What made this book merely meh and increasingly tedious is the author’s overt effort to emulate books such as Jared Diamond’s “Guns, Germs, and Steel,” covering 1001 topics under one meandering aegis.

It’s a formula of “expansive thoroughness” that hopes to simulate “profundity,” but in reality, it merely goes from exhaustive to exhausting.

The innumerable tangents and byways aren’t earned; they’re just sort of pointed out, one after another after another. Thorough, yet shallow.

When Robert Caro or Michel Foucault take you on such a sprawling tour, *then* it’s profound. Here — well, it’s fine.

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