May

A brief shining moment, over and over and over

Revisado: 11-20-21

The book opens with strong sense of person, place, and nostalgia of a city in the most Pamuk way you can expect, quite painterly and melancholy. Then there is a good amount of well laid out arguments and discourse over politics, suicide in the media, women and the wearing of head scarves, everyone’s opinion on the scarves, the existence of God, and what Westerners might opinionate about such things. It’s a real deep dive. What becomes somewhat irksome is that the story moves along so so slowly. You take that dive, and the story finally comes up for some air. the plot starts to gain traction again, but with the introduction of new characters always comes another deep dive into all the same subjects we just learned about. All the opinions and arguments we just listened to are rehashed over and over. And then the plot moves along a little more only to drag you down into another discussion on politics, scarves, suicide, and so on.
What can be appreciated about this, however, is that listening to these things happen In The book over and over you may come to realize how ridiculous it is to beat others down with your opinions and persecute others for their own. It’s a relatable trait, human beings are all quite in love with their own opinions and mercilessly persecute others for their own, and the story definitely beats this notion like a dead horse before we are rewarded with an ending.

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Poorly recorded Overperformed Narration

Revisado: 11-11-21

A great collection poorly put together.
There’s an audible background chatter going on throughout the recording, kinda distracting and surprised this recording was still offered with such poor quality, but meh it’s free so i suppose you can’t expect it to be well done.
About the narrator, it’s too overdone and it’s more performed rather than narrated and as some reviewers already pointed out it can be hard to listen to.
I wish Audible wasn’t so lazy about providing proper table of contents for audiobooks, they almost never have chapter titles,or even correctly numbered chapters, but this one is even worse in that all the works are recorded into two chapters, you can’t easily find or skip to any piece you want to hear, or know how exactly these are divided into two chapters, which is particularly annoying in a collection.

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Worthy of it’s Nobel

Revisado: 09-06-21

Orhan Pamuk has managed to pour all that is great and important about the history of a highly artistic, religious, and everchanging land with a great deal of elegance and mystery. The best parts of the book come to life because you understand so well how artists and religion are colliding during this time, the historical background is painted for you just enough to build up the fighting and fear and mystery and love. Excellently narrated, is there anything they got wrong? This story is a gem, as an audiobook it comes alive even more.

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Inspirational but misogynistic

Revisado: 07-06-21

I don’t even know what to say right now. I got 3/4 of the way through, paid attention, took some notes, really wanted to like it but I had to stop listening at times and have a powwow with myself about the derogatory language. His childhood story in the beginning resonates with many people who have grown up with a horribly abusive dad. I can honestly say I appreciated that he shared those harrowing stories. But this book is simply not written for me, a woman, and not respectable at times.
The further I got into the book the more I became painfully aware that David maybe still hadn’t overcome the trauma from the abuse he endured or watched his mother suffer.
Part of me began to feel for him, even in the dozens of moments throughout the book where he refers to his own shortcomings or mental weaknesses as every derogatory term you could possibly think of for the word ‘female’.
After being bombarded with such foul and misogynistic language for hours on end I felt like the message was loud and clear:
IF YOU HAVE A PU**Y THIS BOOK IS NOT FOR YOU.
I must have heard that word alone maybe 50 times, in the book exclusively used to describe a negative trait, mindset, or just plain weakness David perceived in himself or others.

(yes, all those reviews from both men and women calling David out about his excessive foul language are not exaggerating, here’s a quote from David as he is embarking on the last leg of a triathlon and began to feel self-doubt:

“We still had a 90 mile bike ride to knock off before the day was done, and they were getting after it while I was still on my knees. Right on time those simple questions bubbled up to the surface. Why the fuck am I even out here? I’m not a triathlete, I’m shafed to hell, sick as fuck, and the first part of the ride is all uphill. Why do you keep doing this to yourself, Goggins? I sounded like a whiny bitch, but I knew finding some comfort would help me hem my vagina, so I payed no attention to the other athletes…” )

That one was particularly hard to hear, and im gonna be really honest here, it reminded me of FGM. This is exactly why I wish he wouldn’t participate in normalizing such derogatory language in reference to women.

This book’s crash and burn was so unfortunate, I think because of how much we have grown so recently in this respect as a society that this book is not be aging well at all. You may be disgusted by its language but also saddened that it could have made women feel so inspired too, but most of the time made me feel degraded.
I’ve caught a clip of an interview recently where David mentions that he is still dealing with his own demons and finding peace. I realized that my initial thoughts about where he is at in his journey were pretty accurate, and although so much of the book is full of derogatory language, there were still some gems in it and I can’t hold what he’s been through against him. That clip alone helped ease that horrible feeling I got listening to those foul parts in the book. We are all on our own journey, and maybe the language made me feel like this book was not for me but I still appreciate and admire someone who lives out loud like that and allows others to see the character flaws like these and talk about his process and what he is doing, not in retrospect, or in the future, but right now to overcome them.

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A huge fan of this!

Revisado: 06-06-21

I discovered Blackout maybe two years ago and fell in love. I’ve always liked audiobooks and series but damn, never heard anything quite like this before. It was so well done and inspiring, every sound and accompanying music truly paints the entire scene in my mind, I love the massive amount of detail that goes into every scene, so much emotion and action, and it all pushes the story forward.

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Nothing Set this apart from the genre

Revisado: 04-29-21

This is among the growing trend of minimalist self-help books, but fails to really deliver new tips in that particular aspect. What I found the most interesting was not the list of tips for minimizing your own clutter, and parting with the excess of things, which are not that unique or well-thought out, but the commentary on Japanese culture as a whole was very revealing; he explains that departing from the minimalist life-style and in turn receiving "wake-up calls" like natural disasters etc are what has truly impacted the culture to divert from their excess and adopt minimalism collectively in the last couple of years. This perspective the author offers, along with what he has observed in the past few generations was truly interesting and hopefully another book is on the way that focuses on these cultural and socio-economic aspects as they were only lightly researched and skimmed over but honestly were the one thing I felt the author had a unique pulse on and had more to offer.

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Super Introspective and Relatable Tales

Revisado: 04-22-21

I’ve gotta get this off my chest. I particularly loved the opening story, Cream. Like so many of us in our youth, here is a young man in a turning point in his life that could make or break his future but he is completely unaware because he is so self absorbed and not taking anything in his life seriously. A handful of characters present their arguments to him, sort of wake up calls, trying to give the young man some direction, some clue on life, as he seemingly has no passion, no direction, or clarity of future, and we watch him (in retrospect) grapple with each lesson. Does he reach understanding?
I’ve caught a few critiques on this particular story published in several magazines before I had a chance to listen to it myself. I’m struck by how upset the critics are that they don’t understand this story. They pride themselves in being self-proclaimed fanatics of the author, but this story has thrown so many of them a curve ball that it’s almost comical how they gripe about it. How can you miss the point? The narrator appropriately clues you in at the climax, and if that isn’t enough he spells it all out in the end. Enjoy it! It sets the tone for the rest of the book perfectly, which is honest and revealing.

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Low effort to properly translate such a great work

Revisado: 10-29-19

It can be quite distracting throughout the recording to hear proper names of people and places and things mispronounced for lack of knowledge of the original language in which they are written.

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