OYENTE

C. Chiu

  • 15
  • opiniones
  • 14
  • votos útiles
  • 16
  • calificaciones

Informative yet flawed

Total
4 out of 5 stars
Ejecución
5 out of 5 stars
Historia
2 out of 5 stars

Revisado: 12-04-23

Professor Baum basically delivers his lectures here as if reading a book out loud while trying to add a bit if drama to his oration. At over 24 hours, this was a long book reading!
Baum was effective in providing some context to many China events, such as linking the fall of the communist Polish government to President Deng’s later response in Tian An Men. His colorful first person stories within the overall China narrative are often vivid.
However, there are some quibbles. His awkward pronunciation of Mandarin words was a little distracting. He also kept to a largely western perspective in his interpretation of Chinese government characteristics, and that lack of cross-cultural exploration kept his analysis from being more fresh. The unethical nature of how he staked his academic career casts a bit of a cloud over his tale-telling—in which he often seemed a bit too enamored with his own place at the table.
The lectures, which end around 2009 in China history, are already a bit out of date. Although the events of 2010 to 2023 in China leave Professor Baum’s final lecture comments appearing quaint, poignant or seeming to fall short, the massive amount of person-centered content in the previous lectures makes this series valuable for deep background information on modern China.

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Eye-opening long essay to the choir

Total
2 out of 5 stars
Ejecución
5 out of 5 stars
Historia
2 out of 5 stars

Revisado: 03-09-22

So much to say about this book, but, at least i want to say something positive: Pastor Baucham’s personal stories—his upbringing, ministry experiences and time in Africa—were touching and enlightening. Simplistically, I sense his desire to justify the individualistic aspects of his own successes as well as push back against any narrative that implies that African Americans cannot make it on their own. I do not fully disagree with those sentiments.

The flaws in this book are many, but they will be invisible to most people who have no background in social sciences.

1. The audience is clearly “the choir”, those who agree with Pastor Baucham’s “worldview”. This is obvious because his most frequent polemic approach is to simply repeat or describe “CSJ” positions and expect the reader to see how obviously wrong they are with no further elaboration. He also invites readers to hear the long details of his personal story—to sympathize with his views (and I agree that this is very good!) but he does not approach those he criticizes with equal interest in their stories.

2. He makes several misleading statements as an authority. For example, his “authoritative” CRT definition comes from a student server, not from any statement from an actual CRT theorist/professor. Despite his background in studying and teaching sociology, he discards sociological reasoning and mistakenly calls it a “behavioral science”.

3. He repeatedly makes the head scratching error of accusing those he criticizes of a certain behaviors and then doing the same things himself.

4. He describes in detail the positions of those he criticizes while being very vague about his own definitions of “justice” and his own solutions to racism. The closest he gets to defining injustice is in a chapter where he focuses on abortion as its main manifestation. The closest he gets to a solution to racism is to state that we need to promote God’s righteousness,preach the Gospel and be (essentially) “color-blind”—as if anti-racists are neglecting the first two.

He states that the Bible is a polemic “from beginning to end” but the Bible is NOT just about attacking and saying, “Do not…!” The Bible has MUCH to say about confronting injustice, but this book is sadly lacking in sharing any of that. Instead, although Pastor Baucham presents himself as wanting to unite Christians, he ends the book by basically expressing a lack of any good solutions to disunity. Instead, he tells Christians to oppose what he (and his likeminded readers) calls “lies” as the the highest priority, above justice and above relationships.

This is a good book to learn about a particular right-wing, conservative, evangelical worldview.

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Strong characters, hard science & geek nostalgia

Total
5 out of 5 stars
Ejecución
5 out of 5 stars
Historia
5 out of 5 stars

Revisado: 01-10-21

Mr. Taylor again succeeds with an enjoyable epic that satisfies on a number of levels: skillfully weaving several parallel storylines whose implications lead to the next book in this series, sustaining several strong characterizations, including several new persons, integrating good science (including engineering, sociology & some philosophy) and building some suspense. The story did almost big down at times, but Ray Porter’s performance helped make it enjoyable. Individuals in the large cast were still largely identifiable in their voice characterizations—not an easy feat!

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Attempted “Red Storm Rising” w/aliens

Total
3 out of 5 stars
Ejecución
5 out of 5 stars
Historia
2 out of 5 stars

Revisado: 12-07-20

The author created a long arc scenario with a somewhat original take on alien invasion. However, it was hard to care for the numerous persons in the story whose character development was shallow at best—despite some obvious effort to go deeper at times. Men were stereotypically masculine and women were similarly feminine—even the aliens. The aliens’ society and culture were sufficiently human-like to make their personality flaws understandable but this took away from their believability as aliens.
The plot had a few holes that seemed necessary to allow humanity to survive. The written narration was sometimes tedious and over-obvious: long paragraphs of description of action and thoughts that could have been more compactly expressed with dialogue.
The author shined the most with descriptions of military hardware and procedures, giving the novel a feel of a lesser Tom Clancy novel.
I enjoy military SF in general, but I am not sure I would look forward to the next part of this series.

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Moving and inspiring from a life lived

Total
5 out of 5 stars
Ejecución
5 out of 5 stars
Historia
5 out of 5 stars

Revisado: 09-28-20

John M. Perkins confronts hard topics in this book with grace, insight and forthrightness. This includes his own personal pains—the death of his son—and things he sees troubling our current (2020) society. This is not a book just for African Americans. It can also be a deep devotional for all Christians who seek to draw closer to God while living out their faith in a fallen world.

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Western Philosophy Lite

Total
5 out of 5 stars
Ejecución
5 out of 5 stars
Historia
4 out of 5 stars

Revisado: 09-28-20

I enjoyed these little ~10 minute encapsulation of important western philosophers. Although one can detect some bias by the author (against deism, distant from non-western ideas, for gadflys), this book does a good job of simplifying and illustrating major philosophical concepts. Although I have no expertise in philosophy, in this format, I am sure more informed listeners/readers could detect some distortions and omissions. Overall, a relaxing and mildly stimulating listen.

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Excellent, short book of devotions

Total
3 out of 5 stars
Ejecución
2 out of 5 stars
Historia
4 out of 5 stars

Revisado: 05-08-20

The content of the book was refreshing for me, however, the recitation was rather unemotional and flat. Murray’s sentence structure is often quite complex and the rather monotone reading often requires more effort on my part to understand what Murray was trying to say.

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The Automatic Detective Audiolibro Por A. Lee Martinez arte de portada

Some twists and turns, not too deep

Total
4 out of 5 stars
Ejecución
5 out of 5 stars
Historia
4 out of 5 stars

Revisado: 09-28-19

Great performance by Mr. Viator! He brought clear personalities out for each of the characters. The story had it’s twists and turns but the fight scenes, after a while, felt a bit predictably repetitive and lacked as much suspense as they could have. There were a number of scifi concepts here—social classification of non-biological sentients, social integration of severely mutated humans, first contact with extraterrestrials, etc., but these were not covered deeply enough for hard sci-fi fans. This was basically a hard-boiled detective yarn with eccentric characters in a scifi fantasy urban setting.

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Not for children

Total
3 out of 5 stars
Ejecución
5 out of 5 stars
Historia
3 out of 5 stars

Revisado: 09-07-19

I enjoy Space Opera generally. John Scalzi has not disappointed here, but I do think this will not be to the taste of all. Firstly, I would like to commend Wil Wheaton’s performance. Even more than the story itself, I felt that Wheaton’s delivery propelled my enjoyment of the narrative.
The broad outline of the book is compelling: a millennium-old space empire about to fall and a young, ungroomed woman who tries to save it. The first book did a good job of showing how the new “Empero” (I apologize for any misspelling; this is an audiobook) grew into her new position by overcoming hostile adversaries and trials. In the second book, her character is less prominent as the intrigues of other ones take front stage.
Some of these main villains are fleshed our well, but I largely felt that the motivations of several of these players seemed very thin. The Empero’s romance was only slightly better-developed. I did appreciate how Scalzi made women to be the main protagonists and antagonists, but, again, the motivations of most of the participants seemed to be a mixture of lusts for power, sex and overcoming one’s own insecurities—not very sophisticated drives for strong women characters. The more complicated and extensive prologue about one man’s spiritual journey into the Church of the Interdepency is wasted as it is never followed up in the rest of the book save for a single phrase about what happens to that character.
This is not a book for children. The violence is much more graphic than the sex but it seems as if there were relatively fewer episodes of the former than the latter. Several of the sex scenes were really opportunities for two characters to dialogue—and I guess that beds seem more spicy as backgrounds than offices or lounges. There is also a very abundant use of profanity—particularly by one female character who chews up a great deal of the scenery and emotional energy in the narrative.
Finally, the plot had a bit too many external deus ex machine-like elements to my liking. Scifi makes it easy to drop in heretofore unmentioned bits of tech or powerful protagonists but I prefer that these play a less prominent role in saving the protagonists’ narrative arc in stories I read or listen to. The final confrontation between the protagonists and antagonists also seemed somewhat flat and too neat at the end.
However, as with most good space operas, Scalzi ends this part of the story with an unresolved plot twist that suggests new, very interesting reveals to come about this universe’s history. Most likely, despite the flaws of book two, I will end up reaching for book three just to learn what will be learned by the Empero there. (I forgot to mention that I’m also a history buff).

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A passionate and erudite plea for empathy

Total
5 out of 5 stars
Ejecución
5 out of 5 stars
Historia
5 out of 5 stars

Revisado: 09-04-19

In this book, Dr. Dyson tells his own story while celebrating his Black heritage, giving readers/listeners a peek into African American life & thought and confronting the history and passivity that have caused hurt to his people. In his narration, Dyson is unabashedly enthusiastic over the many accomplishments and the genius of African Americans, both past and present. However, his systematic commentary about the factors which have (and still do) oppress and denigrate Blacks takes up a great measure of his discourse and passion in thus book.
In the narration—which, at times, is raw with emotion—I felt Dr. Dyson reach out to his readers/listeners to try to get us to understand the depths of the misery (and triumphs and pride) of African Americans. I believe he does a good job of explaining why racism is not simply an attitude or voluntary belief while dismantling the most common defensive dismissals of white pundits. As a non-Black person of color, I appreciated how Dr. Dyson used both reason and personal experience to try to explain his heart to a white audience. On the other hand, I could also see how his emotional delivery could be off-putting to some who are not used to this kind of African American preaching. Those emotions—Dr. Dyson does not shy away from being confrontational and blunt at times—may tangle some listener’ brain processes so that they might not comprehend the bare meaning of his statements.
Other parts of the book that I feel may be difficult for some include: the mixed exaltation of secular with spiritual figures/ideas, the extended explanation of why the oppression of Black by police is so important. However, if the reader/listener tries to attend with empathy, even if comprehension or agreement is lacking, I believe that steps can be taken to bring heats closer to the Black community and some of their struggles in the US.

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