Susan G.

A little less talk, a lot more action

Revisado: 10-23-24

I LOVED the first book. I loved the movies (old and new). But this second book I just couldn't finish. Too much talking and little action. Maybe that changes later, but I just couldn't hang on that long. Apparently I'm in the minority here...

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Interesting history

Revisado: 10-23-24

The material was rather dry. While the reader did as well as he could with the material, the later chapters demonstrating how tricks were done were hard to follow...these were things that needed to be seen, not described.

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Amateurish in every way

Revisado: 09-20-24

I can't believe that these two major, respected authors actually wrote this garbage. All that hoohah for a story that has the same tired villain that has been part of countless thousands of storylines. Trite. Absolutely nothing new here, nothing imaginative. Too much name dropping to try to make it "real" or relevant. Shallow characters. And the reader? Talk about bad acting! Hours and hours of overdramatic emoting, very often inappropriate and completely over the top. I was exhausted just listening An 8-year-old could do a far better job. Don't waste your time or money.

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Skip the book; see the movie

Revisado: 11-07-23

One of those rare times when the movie is better than the book that inspired it. Saw the movie first and found it intriguing. The book, however, gets bogged down in too much detail about most of the characters and their daily lives. I understand that the author is trying to illustrate how the "everyday investors" are average people, but he got carried away and the storyline loses its focus. I mostly found myself frustrated and frequently wanting to skip ahead.

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Best book I’ve read in years

Revisado: 09-13-23

Takes a basic plot and makes it so very entertaining. The characters really come to life and are charmingly believable. The “reader” Is. The. Best. He doesn’t really read it at all; rather, he performs it on the stage of your mind. Makes me want to see it as a film. I was so disappointed when it came to an end!

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A different reader would help

Revisado: 05-16-23

I am struggling to get through this book. The content is very interesting, although I thought it would have more scientific detail. But the reader's voice puts me to sleep. Excellent diction but not much more than a monotone.

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Absolutely awful reader

Revisado: 08-25-21

After seeing a movie based on this book, I was intrigued enough to want to read the whole thing. Unfortunately, that's not going to happen as I won't be able to get through Book 1. The reader sounds like a smoother version of a digital voice. She has a limited range of inflection and tone, and what she DOES have is completely unsuitable for this kind of story. I could imagine her reading a bedtime story to a group of 5-year-olds, but even that's a stretch. Makes for an unbearably hard listen. I like the underlying premise, but there is so much unnecessary material and monologues it is a slog to get through. And just when you think something fascinating and important is about to be revealed, you get dumped. As others have noted, just too many hours wasted...

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And the point was...?

Revisado: 05-02-21

This is the first book I have read by this author, and I have very mixed feelings about it.

The reader is the absolute BEST I've heard. Her ability to do an array of voices, for both sexes, is astounding. Also impressive is the many accents, and the range of emotions.

The story, however, was a mystery to me. I kept wondering where it was going, and the ending was obviously meant to get the reader to buy the next book. But the story didn't seem to have a plot, it just kept wandering on (like the main character), and at the end I couldn't see any point to it. I do not plan to continue the journey.

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esto le resultó útil a 6 personas

Great story with unexpected depth

Revisado: 02-23-21

I've always found the story of this chapter in US history highly interesting. But what I loved most about this book is learning how the trip came about, and the people who made up the fearless emigrants traveling west. There was so much I HADN'T heard before. Most accounts of the Donner story focus on the cannibalism aspect. But it's the other details that really gave me a deeper understanding of what it meant to be an emigrant: to leave one's home, one's town, one's entire way of life to make a perilous journey of this scale. To me, the horrors of having to eat human flesh in order to survive took a relative back seat to what was endured and suffered to get to that place.

My only real criticism has to do with the reader. He has a very good clear voice, and enunciates well. But he apparently doesn't know what a paragraph is and consistently fails to pause between them. Also, he reads with the same cadence and pitch for the entire book. It got tedious after a while, and then somewhat irritating. If I didn't find the story itself so compelling I might have bailed out before the end.

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Fascinating

Revisado: 06-10-20

What a fascinating read. So much depth and detail. Adams and others come alive, you feel like a friend. McCullough makes you part of the story, which I love. Wish they taught history in school this way. As usual, Nelson Runger gives an incredible narrative.

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