Andries Gouws

You don’t have to agree to find this book exhilarating

Revisado: 10-10-24

Deutsch has some startling theses, much of which coheres into a single world view: we should be optimists, as there is no limit to how much our knowledge and technology can improve. His argument for this startling view is itself startling, and basically startingly simple. Whether we are convinced or not, we will have to redefine our own views vis à vis his. I don’t know whether I know of any other book to which the description ’intellectual roller coaster ride’ is more applicable. After two listenings I still haven’t mastered his chapter on the multiverse, but this is no impediment to grasping the rest of the book. And it is exhilarating to even have a sense that with one or two further rounds of listening to it I could be able to explain his cutting edge theory on this abstruse topic in a way that others would find helpful. This is testimony to what a master expositor of (his and others’) ideas Deutsch is.

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Everything you always wanted to know about atatus but were afraid to ask

Revisado: 05-05-23

An entertaining and informative grand theory of how status and culture are interrelated. It synthesizes insights from a great many significant predecessors. I’ve only listened to it once, but thus far nothing has struck me as naive, inconsistent or downright wrong. I feel that for the foreseeable future returning to the book and trying to partly apply it, and partly attempt to identify its weaknesses will take me deeper into the topic than proceeding to read a lot of other authors on the same topic. I found his remarks on how the way in which one attempts to shape and present the self is largely governed by status seeking, particularly good and relevant to my philosophical interests.

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As good as it gets

Revisado: 05-11-22

Having already listened to the English and French versions of this audiobook, I was surprised to discover that my Italian was good enough to more or less follow Moro Silo's exquisite Italian version (slowed down to 70% of normal speed). At this speed it was about 80 hours of listening, but by the end of the book my passive grasp of Italian (grammar and vocabulary) had improved enormously. (Along the way I looked up and saved a lot of Italian words in Google translate, and sometimes a hard copy dictionary). So I simultaneously had the pleasure of Tolstoy's story, and reflections on history, the pleasure of the Italian (in Silo's clear and very moving rendition), and the pleasure of seeing my Italian becoming much better.

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Beautifully read masterpiece

Revisado: 06-14-16

The Brothers Karamazov is obviously one of the masterpieces of world literature. (Well, I know that Nabokov and the prominent Dutch scholar of Russian literature Karel van het Reve found Dostoyevsky overrated, but whatever weaknesses he has, if any, the vividness, the storyline lurching ever onwards, the psychological and philosophical depth - all make him irresistible to me).
The work is read with real panache, and Vincent Violette enunciates extremely clearly, ideal for me, as I often find spoken French hard to follow.
I have been working at my French on and off over a period of more than forty years, and have recently picked it up again in anticipation of a forthcoming stay in France. I came across this French version of The Brothers Karamazov by accident, and it immediately struck me how much easier I found it to make out the spoken words than with the other French audiobooks I've been trying to listen to (often not very well recorded technically, either).
That the reading is also lively, expressive and varied makes it even less of an effort to follow; the story just draws one along.
I look forward to listening to Vincent Violette's reading of the French version of Crime and Punishment, which should be just as good.
This has been one of the most rewarding audiobooks I've ever listened to in any language.
Hats off to Vincent Violette, and old Fyodor D!

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Hard to absorb as audiobook, excellent as a read

Revisado: 04-14-16

This is a book I should rather have read in print. That would have the added benefit of being able to look at the countless maps and illustrations, none of which is included in the Audible edition (inexplicably, given the ease of providing a pdf file).

Jerusalem is a city with a fascinating history, and Montefiore does about as good a job of telling this history as one could wish for. (The book doubtless deserves its countless rave reviews, and John Lee's narration is also excellent).

However, at times hour after hour of narration involving a constant succession of potted descriptions of conquests, rebellions - and the atrocities involved - becomes hard to absorb and leaves one's head spinning. Like an account of thirty football games in direct succession, one loses score and can't remember who did what to whom - just that it was exceedingly bloody.*

This is true mainly for earlier parts of the book (after a few hours I almost decided to stop listening); I found the later actors and events, which are dealt with at greater length, easier to remember.

I listen to audiobooks - most of them intellectually quite challenging - while painting; somebody who does nothing else while listening may find the whole of the book easier to absorb.

So, my advice is: if your eyesight and lifestyle allow it, read it instead of listening to the 25 hour audiobook.

* "In “Jerusalem: The Biography,” Simon Sebag Montefiore unleashes so many kings, killers, prophets, pretenders, caliphs and crusaders, all surfing an ocean of blood, that the reader may begin to long for redemption, not from the book, which is impossible to put down, but from history itself." - Jonathan Rosen in a review of the book in the NYTimes, Oct. 28, 2011.

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