OYENTE

Jason

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Agincourt Audiolibro Por Bernard Cornwell arte de portada

Simply Perfect

Total
5 out of 5 stars

Revisado: 07-31-09

This was simply the most amazingly written, perfectly narrated tale I've ever surrendered to. Delicious, funny (the first time we meet Sir John is alone worth the entire purchase price), brutal, and detailed. I simply could not ingest the book fast enough.

I sit here now, basking in the afterglow of a masterful novel. The book is decidedly graphic, but not unnecessarily so: this book entails medieval warfare. In fact, it so captures the horrors of war that it makes me wonder how humanity ever crawled out of the Middle Ages alive.

The characterization in the novel is brilliant. And the characters are completely engaging.

Above all, though, I loved Sir John. Not only is he one of the most humorously written historical figures, but the sheer delight of Charles Keating's characterization is stupendous.

My only regret: you can only hear this "for the first time" once. But I will listen to this again and again in the future.

Simply brilliant. Simply perfect.

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One Second After Audiolibro Por William R. Forstchen arte de portada

Preachy, Partisan, Possible, but Preposterous

Total
2 out of 5 stars

Revisado: 06-25-09

This romp through post-apocolyptic America is a flag-waving preach-fest about our vulnerabilities to a very real threat, electromagnetic pulse.

The voice acting was well-done considering the sheer breadth and scope of characters, genders, accents, and narrative that needed to be covered. Joe Barrett does an excellent job of this.

Unfortunately, the novel is chock full of transparent plot points that offer all-too-obvious foreshadowing of the disaster that will unfold. The term "unprepared" recurs ad nauseaum, essentially hammering in the fact we are all ill-prepared for even small-scale (but large impact) terrorism. Our dependence on technology is a verifiable liability and truth be told it's terrifying to me the idea of America being decimated through few, relatively low-tech weapons.

Here's the problem: the book is all stick and no carrot. The characters all suffer and at many times are insufferable. None of the characters are particularly believable (especially the women in this book, it reads like a masculine fantasyland where women vary between motherly supporting characters, to all-too-stereotype love-interests). OF COURSE the main character has an unfettered experience in the military and understands every aspect of history. OF COURSE the main character, a widower, has no problem befriending and protecting his new love interest found during disaster. OF COURSE all those close to the main character are charmed with negative events that can be envisioned long before the sad events happen.

The book could have been so much stronger by being subtle. It could have evolved the tragedy with ingeniuity rather than continue to hammer over the head with right-wing flag-waving. There was no room in this book for anything other than a Republican party line. The plot is shallow, not rich and deep. The book was unnecessarily hurtful.

Not worthy of your purchase.

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Dracula (Blackstone Edition) Audiolibro Por Bram Stoker arte de portada

Utter Brilliance!

Total
5 out of 5 stars

Revisado: 10-07-08

I never envisioned myself looking at Victorian literature with much enthusiasm. But I was very glad so many people pointed me toward Bram Stoker's Dracula. I normally am unmoved by vampire stories, but loved Salems Lot by Stephen King, so I thought I'd get to the origin of all vampire lore by hearing this classic.

The voice acting was incredible. Robert Whitfield, who narrates, does such an incredible job of portraying all of the characters with such adroit voicing that I was enthralled into the story in a way that reading it to myself would have been lacking. Much as Shakespear's plays are very trivial when read to one's self, but become unrivaled triumphs when well-acted (and conversely disastrous when poorly-acted), this audiobook lived and breathed.

I cannot emphasize how amazing this book is and how well it performs. This will be a story I will listen to time and again. Bravo!

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Star Wars: Dark Empire (Dramatized) Audiolibro Por Tom Veitch arte de portada

A celestial dump far, far away...

Total
1 out of 5 stars

Revisado: 10-07-08

As a huge Star Wars fan, and a big reader of the extended universe of Star Wars fiction, it was natural that I'd want my children to get giddy with excitement about all things Star Wars. As part of our own nightly tradition, I read them a couple of childrens' stories, and then as they fall asleep we play a CD of other stories to make their sleep time really adventureful.

Occasionally, Star Wars books have made it into our reading repertoire, but not so with SW audiobooks. This looked like a great kids' book and my sons' love of Luke Skywalker made this a desirable download.

Bleck...absolutely horrible is the only way to describe this book. While it's exciting to know Mark Hammil and Anthony Daniels appear as Luke and C-3PO, the remainder of the voice actors are pretty awful.

The narrator is clearly NOT aware of Star Wars or its pronunciations. The butchering of words such as Coruscant (which he pronounces Core-us-Kant) makes this as abrading as Jar-Jar Binks doing Karaoke.

The whole storyline is truly stupid. Luke gets seduced by a clone Emporer to become a dark sider, Boba Fett reappears from the Sarlaac without any explanation than he's tough to kill (c'mon: tell me HOW you got out..sheesh), and battle scenes sound so artificial and stupid that it makes the TV cartoon Droids (an arguably equally awful set of Star Wars stories revolving around R2 and 3PO that appeared in the 1980s) look downright articulate.

Bottom line: skip this. Ignore it. It is a blight of a story from an otherwise stellar universe. I really can't wait for the CDs I burned of this tale to be composted in a trashdump far, far away.

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Death by Black Hole Audiolibro Por Neil deGrasse Tyson arte de portada

Tyson dishes it up and up...good show!

Total
4 out of 5 stars

Revisado: 10-07-08

Tyson is an authoratative television personality who also has a great grasp of physics and the universe. This book had such a catchy title, how could I have even passed it up?

While being much more approachable in terms of use of analogy to explain very complex scientific concepts, it is also a sounding board for Tyson to rant on a few topics that drive him crazy about popular culture's views of science.

That said, it was a very fun book and well worth the money. Tyson is fun to listen to and his thoughts travel smoothly from point to point. He introduced me to some new information that I, even as an avid reader of all things science, had not known.

The only thing that could have made this book even stronger, perhaps, would be expansion on some of the scientific thoughts for those of us more versed in science. But Tyson's strength is reaching the common man, and so I wasn't surprised that occasionally very in-depth accounting of scientific preceps didn't meet my voracious appetite's needs.

I'll definitely be re-listening to this every now and again, though. It's wonderful for sitting outside and staring at the amazing sky. Bravo :)

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The Fabric of the Cosmos Audiolibro Por Brian Greene arte de portada

Classic Greene!

Total
4 out of 5 stars

Revisado: 10-07-08

No one in the physics world can bring such a concise yet approachable view to non-physicists like Brian Greene. As a closet astrophysicist, I really enjoy Greene's prose and analogies that allow me to jump into the microscopic and macroscopic universe and understand topics that are very hard to grasp when you're lacking the upper level mathematics about which he speaks.

The problem with the book is that the last few chapters become very difficult to understand, especially after an exciting and truly riveting first 3/4 of the book.

Unlike in Fabric of the Cosmos, his first book, a lot of the information is punctuated with good narration rather than a high dependence on diagrams (which is good considering that this is an audiobook).

I think if you're absolutely shellshocked and intrigued by the way physics has evolved and how it continues to evolve, there is really no other book out there that brings such a friendly and approachable viewpoint as Greene's.

Excellent narration by Michael Prichard (who even sounds like Greene) makes it a perfect purchase.

If only I could wrap my brain around branes and such. But that limitation is more mine than the book's.

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