Brett

Well-suited for bloggers, still helpful for others

Revisado: 08-22-20

Exactly as the title states, this book invites the reader to follow a 30-day program to get into traveling, with strategies for organizing, making the most of, financing, and monetizing trips. It has a definite spin toward travel bloggers, but there are many strategies that are still useful to a general audience - for instance, trip planning and travel hacking. On the other hand, that also made some portions of the book irrelevant for most listeners

This is an author-read audiobook, which is always a nice feature. The authors/readers were enthusiastic and engaging in their reading, and their reading flowed well.

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A nice survey of problems and treatment options

Revisado: 11-20-18

This book provides a valuable survey-level introduction to CBT-based approaches to working through anxiety and depression. Many find these problems difficult to understand and deal with and may not know where to start. This makes treatment and recovery all the more difficult. That's where this audiobook comes in; at only an hour and a half to listen to, it discusses the nature of anxiety and depression and established CBT treatment protocols, giving enough information for listeners to be informed about their options without going into detail with examples and exercises that a first-time seeker of help may not yet be ready for. This makes it accessible for those just getting started with treatment options.

The reader had the just the sort of voice you'd imagine (or, at least, I would) a therapy-discussing audiobook would have and that worked well for this reading. He was always clear and easy to understand.

I was given this free review copy audiobook at my request and have voluntarily left this review.

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Simply sumptuous satire

Revisado: 10-28-18

The Importance of Being Earnest was greatly entertaining from start to finish, and even beyond that - even its title is a double entendere! Full of farcical humor, it satirizes upper-class society in the late Victorian times. Thematically, it was interesting to see certain aspects of society being satirized in their own time for similar reasons to what we find unusual about them now. We may think of ourselves as somehow enlightened and different because we can see problems in social norms in our own time, but the same was true over a century ago.

The reader was always clear and adopted exaggerated voices very well suited to the caricatured archetypes and ridiculous roles he was reading for, making the silliness all the more enjoyable.

I was given this free review copy audiobook at my request and have voluntarily left this review.

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A well-done rendition of an American classic

Revisado: 10-21-18

I greatly enjoyed this reading of the Legend of Sleepy Hollow. Both Washington Irving's writing and Roberto Scarlato's reading measure the doses of horror and humor just right to make the legend a classic. The satire never interrupts or overwhelms the rest of the story but comes naturally, and the horror elements are always kept in perspective of their basis in Ichabod's jittery, superstitious nature. The story from beginning to end is never dull and always has some element going on that’s entertaining to listen to.

The reader balanced the mock horror with the humor at the surface in just the right way throughout the reading and was always clear to listen to.

I was given this free review copy audiobook at my request and have voluntarily left this review.

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Life's Short, Think It Up

Revisado: 09-03-18

Seneca the Younger's writing De Brevitate Vitae, On the Shortness of Life, is in general just as applicable today as it was nearly 2000 years ago. With his contemporaries as examples, Seneca points to an array of ways time is misused and lost with frivolousness and wastefulness, lack of focus, spreading oneself too thin with distractions and obligations which in many cases aren't necessary, and even hard work without a clear direction. It's worth reading or listening to for the still-relevant reminders on how to make the most of our lives. The only exception for me was the last part of the essay, in which Seneca elevates philosophy above all other pursuits as the way to a life well-lived. While it is right to recognize wisdom as a key ingredient in a meaningful life, the development thereof alone is not in and of itself sufficient to make one's life well-lived. There is surely some subjectivity in this - perhaps to Seneca philosophy was all that was necessary for a life that was by his own standards well-lived - but to present it as a general truth seems either presumptuous or shortsighted.

The reader was clear, easy to understand and follow, and used tone well throughout the essay. I'd like to comment more on inflection and matching tone to the mood and characters, but when you're narrating for a Stoic philosopher, there's not so much room for that!

I was given this free review copy audiobook at my request and have voluntarily left this review.

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esto le resultó útil a 1 persona

Entertaining with some thoughtful content

Revisado: 09-03-18

Anthem was entertaining and posed some points worth thinking about. With her main character Equality 7-2521, Rand gives a good perspective on what someone raised in her dystopian collectivist society might feel and discover as he unearths his individuality. She also does well illustrating how important individual freedom is in creative thought and progress. I personally disagree with Rand’s philosophy, which I find to be excessively egocentric (through Equality, she even posits that one should esteem and look on oneself as a deity) but because subjective I will try not to use it as a review criterion. Nonetheless, the conclusion is a little flawed not only as a narrative but thematically as well. This will be explained after a brief intermission to address the reader’s performance.

It seems the reader did so well reading naturally that critiquing didn’t even cross my mind while I was listening! I certainly have no complaints about the reading performance. There was never any question who was saying what, and the intonation and tone modulation was all very natural.

[Ending spoilers will be included beyond this line]

For all the focus on individuality and valuing one’s self first and foremost, Equality’s love interest Liberty does nothing but follow him like a puppy and obey him like a servant from the time Equality leaves the city onward. At the same time, Equality monologues on how no one will ever command him again and how he alone is to rule himself, and hence this new philosophy is starkly contradicted by Liberty’s “freed” behavior. As for the narrative aspects, the entire conclusion feels rushed – Equality’s escape and survival come too easily, as does Liberty's sudden tracking ability and intense love for him despite their limited interactions and the fact that she had nothing but those few meetings to lure her our of the brainwashed society that's kept everyone else locked in. Equality's grandiose plan isn't substantiated either.

I was given this free review copy audiobook at my request and have voluntarily left this review.

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Nothing beats the story written by the man himself

Revisado: 06-20-18

Especially for one who has undergone popular cultural apotheosis such as Tesla has, there is no substitute for a first-person perspective when trying to separate fact from fiction and legend from history. Moreover, readers and listeners can get an impression of Tesla's personality from his autobiography, and understand how he worked and some of the factors that led him to the discoveries and inventions he is known for today. The inventions Tesla focuses on and builds his story around were clearly integral to his life: there is no differentiating between sections of the book on Tesla's life and on his inventions; they're too deeply rooted together for such a separation to be possible. I liked hearing his explanations of and visions for his inventions - the explanations were thorough, though with an audiobook and hence no diagrams sometimes it can be hard to follow. This shouldn't be held against the book, of course - it's my choice of media, not his explanation, that's responsible for that.

The reader was clear and easy to understand and well-suited to the task - he did a great job of reading in a professional manner but occasionally adding a flair of personality where appropriate, and his intonations and speech were just as one would imagine Tesla to have used were he to read the book aloud today.

I was given this free review copy audiobook at my request and have voluntarily left this review.

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A good adventure, but not too deep

Revisado: 04-22-18

The Call of the Wild was a good story to listen to and one I would happily recommend to anyone who likes a relatively straightforward adventure novel. I would say it's well-rounded but doesn't really excel the way I would expect a classic to - I found it to be fairly predictable at times, and although it exhibited themes regarding wild heritage and the nature of civilization, I didn't find it to be very thought-provoking. It was more like London wanted to show a picture of what he thought of civilization and human and animal nature without really studying them with much depth.

The reader was very good - he kept an engaging tone and varied it appropriately with the sentences and scenes. It was nice to hear something read in a way that sounded natural and fitting.

I was given this free review copy audiobook at my request and have voluntarily left this review.

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Introduction to anxiety & panic attack recovery

Revisado: 02-26-18

This book gives advice generalized anxiety disorder and panic attacks, which I think it did reasonably well. Please note that although I do have OCD, I don't have generalized anxiety disorder nor do I have panic attacks, so I can't speak to its content from personal experience. That said, what I heard from this audiobook did corroborate my experiences and understanding of how to recover, so I have confidence in it for the most part. I do think it at times oversimplified a very complex set of problems and could have used more examples (rather than repeatedly using "having an anxiety attack" as an example as a feared event), but it's good as an introduction to the mindset for recovery from anxiety. I am a little wary, however, of anything that promotes pseudoscience like the gamut point, which this book did at one point.

Anyone interested in help with other problems should know, though, that the cover and subtitle, though, are misleading - it didn't really address depression as the cover suggested, and negative thinking is basically addressed only as it relates to anxiety. Those were the reasons I had taken interest in the book, which meant it really wasn't that useful for me and was fairly disappointing.

The reader was clear and easy to understand, and he modulated individual sentences in a sensible way, but he used almost the same modulation for every sentence. It was like listening to the same sentence repeated over and over, just with different words, which honestly made the book difficult to pay attention to. I found myself rewinding because I had started to tune him out unconsciously and missed part of the book

I was given this free review copy audiobook at my request and have voluntarily left this review.

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esto le resultó útil a 6 personas

A helpful philosophy and how to start

Revisado: 02-11-18

When I listened to "Minimalist Living", I felt as if I were hearing it from a friend who wanted to share life change that was positive for her and she hoped would be positive for me. The author's focus was on sharing what she had discovered in the philosophy of minimalism - making room for the things that matter most by clearing away baggage - and not on proselytizing, aggrandizing, or hyping and marketing, and she acknowledged and welcomed that we would all have different "flavors" of minimalism. I appreciated this tone in the book.

After describing how minimalism has been an improvement in her life, she gives several simple ideas and rules of thumb that can help readers and listeners to get started. It's especially helpful that she understands how monumental and difficult a task decluttering can be and builds some of her methodology for clean-up around that.

The reader was clear and did well making the book nice to listen to.

I was given this free review copy audiobook at my request and have voluntarily left this review.

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