Sherry

The printed book has a map and character list.

Revisado: 10-06-23

It would have been nice if I could have downloaded that as a .pdf to follow along rather than screenshot what I found online.

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Why does the reader have a British accent?

Revisado: 07-15-21

I am enjoying the book, but I am really confused as to why the reader is speaking with a British accent when the book takes place in Illinois (US).

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Please don’t sell this to anyone

Revisado: 11-16-20

I am working my way through the Newberys. I couldn’t find this anywhere else. The audio quality is very poor, and the narrator actually yells quite a bit. Some of his characters were difficult to understand. I had to listen to parts of it twice to understand what was going on.

I may not have looked closely, but I didn’t realize it was abridged. Please re-record it.

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Ugh

Revisado: 04-29-19

I have to get through this for my book group, and as the leader I can't cheat. I also don't have time to pick the book up, I need to listen to it. I hope I am able to get something I can discuss about the book, because the reader is so dreadful I can't concentrate on the content.

I have listened to over 300 books, so this isn't my first bad reader, but he is by far the worst. He reads like a fourth grader, pausing after each word, injecting absolutely no conversationality or rhythm to the work. Furthermore, he mispronounces words. If you are getting paid to read a book you might take a little time to look up the words you don't know. Why the producers and sound mixers didn't tell him he was doing it wrong amazes me.

For the record, he mispronounced "Morrill" and somehow managed to correctly pronounce, "Zoucha."

I did some research about the reader, after thinking about his performance. This is what others have to say about Christopher Solimene: "Monotone, horrendous, dreadful, computer voice, robotic, woeful, synthesized, terrible, AI, Siri, ruined, robot, kindergarten, unlistenable, horrible, sucks, ruined it, sickly, droning, and my all time favorite 'a bit of a goober.'"

With reviews like this, I can't believe they are still hiring him to record audiobooks.

So I gave up and sped read the book to the point where I gave up on the reader. Here is the review of the book.

The 2019 One Book One Nebraska selection is “This Blessed Earth: a year in the life of an American Family Farm” by Ted Genoways. Genoways followed the Hammonds from eastern Nebraska through a year of farming. Rick Hammond is ready to start the process of passing the family farm to his daughter and her soon-to-be husband.

Rather than a day by day accounting of what goes on, Genoways shows up for harvest, then planting and so on, describing the farming process through the year then taking a detour through how farming got to where it is now from the turn of the century at each point. Told in the vein of Michael Pollen, the author explores tangents on the Homestead Act, development of pivot irrigation, and how Henry Ford promoted the growth of soybeans for use in biofuels as well as plastics. All of these side tracks help provide context to the current story.

Honestly? I have some mixed feelings about this book. The author is clearly from Nebraska, as he thinks Valentine is in the northwest corner of the state (p.122) [getcha a map out, turn to Nebraska and find the northwest corner of the state, ya see Valentine? no? That's cuz it's smack in the middle of the state, on the north border.], and Hamilton County (Aurora) is in the center part of the state [on yer map, it will be shortly west of Lincoln on the interstate]. I recognize that is a pet peeve of mine, but the research he did in Scottsbluff was slipshod at best. He indicated that the Wildcat Hills are irrigated, he confuses acres with acre-feet and also gives some inaccurate information about the Tri-State and Gering Ft Laramie Canals (p.180-182). In the final chapter he claims the Bayard sugar factory closed due to a monoculture of corn in our area (p. 217).

In this quote, Genoways is talking about how by 1912, the sugarbeet had transformed our area, “The beets themselves were reliable and profitable... The byproducts of sugar refining...could be processed into feed for cattle, stabilizing the beef industry and creating jobs on ranches and bringing packing-houses into towns along the railroad. And the manure from the ranches could be used to enrich irrigated soil to grow a greater diversity of crops-most notably soybeans, alfalfa, and eventually corn.” I am reluctant to trust farming information from someone who can’t tell soybeans from dry edible beans, and who thinks beets were here before corn.

Genoways has written a cultural biography with science and history thrown in. I suspect the eastern Nebraska portion (99% of the book) is better researched, so if you want to learn more about where your food comes from and aren’t too worried about details, this book gives a good overview of farming in eastern Nebraska.

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Mrs. Frisby stands the test of time

Revisado: 03-24-15

What did you like about the performance? What did you dislike?

The reader's voice had an ebbing quality which became annoying after a while. She started each sentence loud and became quieter as the sentence went along, then the next sentence started out loud again. You could barely hear her at the end of a longer sentence. She did have a pleasant voice.

Any additional comments?

This is a great children's book. My kids and I listened to it over the course of several car trips and we thoroughly enjoyed it.

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