Eric

Poorly edited; AI-written and read

Revisado: 08-31-23

This is absolutely written by ai, and they don't even try to hide it. One chapter that talks about reading people switches awkwardly and nonsensically to speed reading tips. Actual speed reading and study tips for 10 minutes, which have nothing to do with anything else in the chapter, but would possibly match the "reading people" prompt for an ai. It's an ai glitch in the scrape.

And the narrator sounds like an ai too, mispronouncing words in a way only an ai could, and putting mechanical pauses and inflection in random sections of the sentence. Whether this is a real person or not, it is unlistenable in all the ways an ai voice would be. Speeding up the playback to 150% hides this a bit, but the content is borderline insulting.

It's just a poorly edited ai compilation of points with no good throughline, full of such unhelpful gems as pointing out that someone wearing a lab coat is probably a scientist or doctor.. Every now and then something of interest is thrown into the random stew of words and concepts, as you would expect from an ai, but not worth the slog.

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unlistenable

Revisado: 03-02-20

it's ironic how many of these NLP books have voice readings that are completely emotionally unengaged, and so easy to tune out. This one in particular is so slow and stilted you need to speed it up 150% to make it halfway decent. But that's not enough. You'll find yourself tuning out after three words every single time. The fact that it's supposed to be about making words engage emotions makes the listener not trust any of the information. How could the author allow this?

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Exhausting to listen to a perfect robot impression

Revisado: 12-11-19

The performance and production of the voice sound so much like a computer that I had to check out Phil Holland's other books to see if it was a code name for a model of voice synthesis. Turns out his other readings are less dry, and he actually inflects based on context at times. No so here. He pauses for commas robotically and consistently, and adds no more inflection to any sentence or word than would a computer with no knowledge of the words' meaning. I was enjoying the content, but it's exhausting to listen to a robot. You have to mentally add all the inflection, which for some reason is more difficult when you're listening. When you're reading, it happens naturally. On the up side, not many people could pull off such consistency. Phil Holland is a consummate professional.

Weirdly, the production seems to have trimmed out silence and breath, which clips the ends of words sometimes, making it sound even more like a robot. The producers of this audio miss the point entirely.

The book itself I do like, but the reading is so exhausting that even this crucial point doesn't matter.

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Self Help masquerading as Humor

Revisado: 09-16-16

What would have made Furiously Happy better?

Marketing as self-help for depression, rather than humor, seems a better approach to match the book with its best audience.

Any additional comments?

This is a book about combating depression by, basically, giving in to mania (e.g. swimming in fountains, wearing silly hats and accosting strangers, etc). It's written as a sort of example to follow for others who have depression. It's silly, it could be seen as fun, but it's aimed at readers dealing with this disorder, not at readers simply looking for a real laugh at clever humor. Whether or not mania is a healthy response to depression is another question, and one that would be moot if this book wasn't written as a recipe for wellness. As it is, though, I'd probably consult a physician before trying anything in here. From my experience, free-wheeling mania isn't the cure for depression, it's often a destructive symptom.

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Poorly Written

Revisado: 06-29-09

The narration is good, the research seems good, but the writing is extremely poor. One example from 47:59: "The distribution of wealth is not being evenly distributed." (This sentence should of course read "Wealth is not evenly distributed) Gaffes of this sort heavily pepper the book, as do the sort of awkward phrasing and unprofessional style you'd expect from the average high school student term paper.

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Great book, mechanical reading

Revisado: 11-25-03

After listening to this monotonous, droning narrator, it occurred to me that he sounds just like Steven Hawking's voice emulator. Especially at the ends of senences. I actually checked the credits to see if they had used a voice emulator to make this recording. They did not, but they might as well have.

On the plus side, the words are very distinct and clear, a must for a recording available only as a 1 or resampled 2. If you can stay awake and focused during the drone, you won't miss a word, but a work as dense and at times dry as this great book could have used a more "involved" rendition. This narrator seems to have absolutly no knowledge of nor concern for the meaning of what he reads - thus the voice-emulator style. (He also mispronounces English place names, but that's to be expected).

Book: 4.5 stars
Execution: 1

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