kcams

Biography as speculative gossip

Revisado: 05-26-23

If a rule for a biographer is not to get between reader and subject, Hendrickson has never heard of it.
The word "I", meaning the writer, shows up paragraph after paragraph, noticeably when he writes the like of "I can't prove it, but I feel it must be true." He's fond of titillating rumors.
He also writes, in a prose of self-conscious effects and affectations - "hoosegow" is used for 'jail' more than once - long tangents that barely touch on Frank Lloyd Wright. I often found myself wondering why he'd put me through 15 minutes of a passage that said next to nothing about the architect or architecture. Without such padding, this would be a much shorter and clearer book. The leaps back and forth in time are finally wearying as you try to hang on to the chronology.
In a similar vein, he often compares something about Wright to something about Ernest Hemingway. The first time or two confused me. What had they in common? Then he slips in that his recent other biography is about … you guessed it.
Before you buy this, look up the NY Times book review. The reviewer has more time to dismiss this book, which she does with many examples.
I stopped reading and intend to return it,

Has calificado esta reseña.

Reportaste esta reseña

esto le resultó útil a 1 persona

Don't!

Revisado: 06-19-18

I shall return this, but want to warn others who may be researching Lear as I am and are tempted to try something unreviewed. If you read Bloom, say, or Shapiro on Lear, and then try this, you'll be aghast. The thoughts are dull-witted and shallow, but they do match the writer's style. His writing would bore a fourth grader even though he's obviously aiming for adults. What he presents as insights are perfectly exemplified by the narrator, who pronounces "Goneril" as though the name were a sexually transmitted disease, and turns "Gloucester" into three syllables: glough - chess - ter. Thank god Will named the brothers Edgar and Edmund! I can't imagine how "Aguecheek" would come out. This whole thing - whatever it is - is an embarrassment to Shakespearean study. How someone chose to include it Audible's offerings is beyond me.

Has calificado esta reseña.

Reportaste esta reseña

Excellent information terribly read

Revisado: 05-24-16

The vast history that Rhodes covers in order to help us understand how the bomb came about is detailed and clear. His achievement is remarkable. However, the narrator mispronounces so many well know names and places that I was constantly distracted. Too, he seems unable to read a complex sentence as one thought; rather, he breaks many sentences into small parts, each with a full stop, so when I thought a sentence had ended, suddenly he'd add a continuation of the author's thought. Listening becomes like bobbing up and down in a row boat on a choppy sea, so your sense of forward progress is excruciatingly minimal.

Has calificado esta reseña.

Reportaste esta reseña

Mediocre presentation of fascinating material

Revisado: 10-21-15

If you are interested in theatre, Riedel's book will broaden your knowledge, and your stock of after-dinner tales. He presents two histories in one. The first is of the business people of the theatre, those who provide the money for the art while making money from the art. The second is of their productions, a concise survey of those stagings, mostly musicals, that created Broadway as we now know it and of the people who created the stagings. Both are presented in a crisp, journalistic style, often even gossipy, that makes almost no attempt to evaluated the artistic achievements of these productions but concentrates on the money, maneuvering, and manipulation that got them mounted, and how they made and lost astonishing fortunes while transforming the city of New York.
How musicals dominate Broadway is reflected in his attention, perhaps of necessity, and if you expect to learn much of anything about significant plays on Broadway - save a lengthy and fascinating description of the importance of Equus and Nickleby to the Schubert fortunes - you'll be disappointed. Once he gets past Nickleby, I can't remember his talking at any length about a play, though his hopes for future choreographers is worth his time.
More significant an irritation is the narration. The narrator is one of those breathless "I don't trust the words to be exciting, so I will make them exciting" readers who forces emphasis and significance onto words, like a library reader trying to force small children to enjoy a book. Then too, his attempts to pronounce some words - 'sui generis' as "sue -EE gen-AIR-is - becomes more of a problem when he mispronounces the name of a significant person.
Sill, I speeded him up and finished the book, glad to have the information. Reidel's accomplishment is to make quite clear why we call Broadway's version of theatre "show biz."

Has calificado esta reseña.

Reportaste esta reseña

esto le resultó útil a 1 persona

Wonderful research, but where did it happen?

Revisado: 08-13-14

The author's scholarship and style is commendable. His book is an insightful, moving, and detailed account of these great moments in world history. But it is history. And history is linked to geography. The narrator phrases clearly but too often leaves you with no idea where these events take place because the proper pronunciation of too many of these foreign place names escapes him entirely. This production is sinfully sloppy. Do listen to the book, but check with a map and an audible source of foreign place names or your friends will laugh should you discuss what you've learned. And you will learn a lot.

Has calificado esta reseña.

Reportaste esta reseña

esto le resultó útil a 7 personas

More fun than a barrel of...never mind

Revisado: 05-26-14

I don't believe I've used five stars across the board before, but whatever quibbles would barely knock a point off any. Not only is this scandalously funny, I mean Rabelaisian, but it is delightfully allusive, irreverent, and clever to the point of adding not only wit but insight to Lear no matter how well you think you know the play. Too, I'm rarely fond of narrators making funny voices, but Morton dares and nails the characters, to my mind's eye. Plus he does sardonic marvelously well. Should I ever get a chance to direct Lear, Moore and Morton have given me some wonderful ideas.

Has calificado esta reseña.

Reportaste esta reseña

Academic study hurt by narrator

Revisado: 01-05-14

Potter's scholarship and breadth of reference is informative and extensive. The book spends more time on detailed critical considerations of the works, including the poems, than on the life but brings contemporary lenses to both. Unfortunately, the narrator emphasizes all the academic qualities of the prose with an overly enunciated, staccato reading that sounds just short of robotic, except when he is reading from the works, when his phrasing, remarkably, often becomes smooth and coherent. Quotes, too, are in a range of arbitrary accents that distract. He appears to have no acquaintance with the period at all, which results in pronunciations - shire rhyming with fire, Henslowe with now, Navarre in three syllables, etc.- that can only be generously called not standard. And "roman a clef" as "Roman ah cleff" is simply hilarious. The production is poor. You will learn more about Shkspr. You will work hard to do so.

Has calificado esta reseña.

Reportaste esta reseña

esto le resultó útil a 3 personas

Worth every credit

Revisado: 12-02-12

Two things are remarkable about this audio book.

The first is the quality of the content. Hitchens' mind, evidently, possessed a voracious curiosity, an enormous capacity, and the gift of incisive synthesis. Additionally, he had the ability to articulate this combination with precision and delight.

The second is the rare, to me, ability of the narrator to match the clarity of the prose. He makes no attempt to clarify meaning, merely and intelligently allowing it to come through in the phrasing of the writer's sentences and the shapes of his paragraphs. The result is the clear emergence of both sense and the author's voice.

The listener is very fortunate to find both at once.

Has calificado esta reseña.

Reportaste esta reseña

esto le resultó útil a 2 personas

Well worth your time

Revisado: 08-26-12

Jobs' life is a fascinating story, particularly if you're curious about technology. But there's a great deal more than high tech, and Isaacson covers it all efficiently, although other sources hint that he presents a slightly more generous view of Jobs than others might have. His access to Jobs' family is intimate, but time may tell whether it colored an admiring portrait.
The reader has three problems.He occasionally mispronounces common words and some names, so you stop listening for a second to mentally correct what you've heard. He also seems to think he has to make the copy interesting, so it's often as if you're listening to something written with sudden ALL CAPS. Third, he's rarely able to quote someone talking without making them sound as if he or she is whinning. I found I was creating an opinion of a person from how he sounded, not from what he said. When I went back and repeated the quote to myself, I found its effect could be very different. No doubt Jobs and Eisner and Ellison, et. al., could complain, but surely they could be simply declarative more often.
He does not, fortunately, get so between you and the book as to prevent both following it and enjoying the content. Given the impact of Jobs on our culture and the details of his story, this is a biography well worth reading.

Has calificado esta reseña.

Reportaste esta reseña

Useful information marred by narration

Revisado: 06-09-08

This is a valuable, albeit basically Eurocentric, history, that goes into sufficient detail to allow you feel familar with each epoch. So far, it has avoided any overtly political agendas and over speculation.
Had I know the reader was David Case, however, I would never have purchased it. For this book he uses a pseudonym, but his flaws remain.He is such a lazy, apparently undirected or produced - certainly uncorrected - reader that I swore never to listen to him again. Some may mistake his accent for a sign of literacy, but to call his pronunciations "non-standard" is generous, whether one looks for them in British or American usage. Further, he seems often unable to distinguish between a comma and a full stop, leaving a closely listening reader to repeat the sentence in the mind, adjusting the dependancy of clauses simply to make sense of what one has just heard.
While I recommend what Roberts has to say, I find myself irritatingly distracted by who is saying it. Buy the book, but be prepared to work far harder at listening than a competent reader would permit.

Has calificado esta reseña.

Reportaste esta reseña

esto le resultó útil a 14 personas