Laura

Boring and annoying narration

Revisado: 04-20-23

I just listened to the excellent The Shining audio book and so am listening to this one next. The Shining is fast paced, heart pounding, tightly written and the narration is fitting. Doctor Sleep is slow, looooong, bloated and boring, so many words to get through to find anything resembling a story. The characters especially "True Knot" bad guys are pretty fantastical in normal circumstances rather than more everyday type people is extraordinary circumstances. I found the True Knot with their silly names like "snake bite" and "Crow Daddy" and "Steam Head" juvenile and disappointing, without the intrigue or complexity of the bad guys in The Shining, nothing to really be afraid of. The narration is monotone, voices sound mostly the same, and his voice has a "burr" or something I don't know what to call it, that is very distracting. Overall, I'm pretty disappointed, it's not up to the level or comparable to The Shining at all.

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Wish more material was covered!

Revisado: 03-08-23

I really enjoyed this series of lectures on the Old Testament. I appreciated that the lecturer went over some of the questions I've always had about the Old Testament scriptures all through my younger years in Seminary, Sunday School and chruch sermons. For example, the fact that Adam was standing right there right next to Eve during the whole serpent tree of life conversation and eating the fruit. Or why was Noah so angry and curses his own grandson when he was seen drunk in his tent. The discussion she brings to those moments made those passages make much more sense to me. She also included moments of discussion and reflection on the women in the bible, analysing their passages and discussing meanings of their actions or words. I really apprecaited how she put things into context of the times they were written, clarifying themes and wordings and meanings of those wordings when they were written. She also dicusses ancient myths written/told before the Old Testament and how they can shed light or have been incorporated into the stories of the Old Testament. This provided some added meaning to me. She explains it well, that some of the words or stories in the Old Testament may not make as much sense to us as they did to the people living when it was written because some of the stories or words relate to other myths/sayings/terminology of the times and for us there is not the context to fully and richly understand them because that context or scriptures/stories that gave them complete meaning has been lost to us. She really made the people of the Old Testament come alive for me, making them real people, with personalities, motivations and even character flaws. I found this Great Course enlightening, interesting and gave me new appreciation for the Old Testament.

This audio book might not be for you if:
1) You do not accept the use of BCE. This lecturer uses both BC and BCE together, but at other times, just either BC or BCE.
2) You do not need or have no interest at all in analysis of the stories of women in the bible. (This is a small percentage of what she talks about, but I read at least one other review that labeled this lecture as "feminist". I hesitated to buy based on that review it thinking it wasn't going to be a lecture on the Old Testament at all, which for the record I found it absolutely to be a lecture of the Old Testatment, just with the added richness from also talking about the woman in the Bible not just the men. Please note there are a lot of women in the Bible with their own stories or large parts in the stories that in my experience were never talked about in my church Seminary, Sunday School and chruch sermons, so the fact that this lecturer does was added value and interest for me.)
3) You do not want discussion/analysis of time period context or discussion of myths similar or predating the Old Testament that the Old Testament may have drawn some of its stories and themes from.
4) You don't want to listen to discussion of the possibility that some of Kind David's story is mythological.

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Contradictory and lacking detail

Revisado: 03-01-23

This audio book was free through my audible membership and I thought it might be an interesting listen. Overall, though, I found the book lacking in detail. Most of the stories or examples are hearsay, retelling of stories told to the author by others. Things he "heard" had happened to others.

I also found the author contradictory and very prejudiced. He says "seers" and their "seeing that which can't be know" is of the Devil but later he admits to using seers that sense where/how possessed people got possesed or how/where they need to be blessed. But of course THOSE seers HE uses are prayerful, humble individuals so they apparently are OK. He says that only priests given the right by the catholic curch to be exorcists can perform exorcisms, but laters says some Protestants can do it and also says anyone can perform exorcisms through prayer and other christian religious practices. He says cursed objects need to be destroyed even after being exorcised and burned, but then talks about keeping baskets full of them, why, as trophies or souvenirs? I'm not sure why they are kept other than for one of those reasons. He talks about seeking medical diagnoses for ailments both mental and physical but also spends a lot of time describing how misguided and inadequate doctors and their medical treatments are. He describes physical ailments disappearing after exorcism like ovarian cysts, which are known to often appear and disappear on their own without religious intervention. He also describes some ailments he attributes solely to possession taking years to be exorcised, coming back periodically, or never being cured, and all sound like untreated medical/mental conditions. To me this is a dangerous position that I have seen this very religious conviction lead to family and friends not getting necessary medical treatment for themselves or their children through misguided certainty that only prayer will "cure" all their ailments. Not getting (or refusing needed treatment/medication) medical treatment has lead people I know to suicide attempts, inability to work, abuse, poverty, family disfunction and misery, all things the author claims can only be avoided by exorcism. I've never once known a person to be cured through prayer alone. He claims people never attempt suicide after exorcism, expect when they do, which is attributed to possessed family member's influence. He claims continued misery and povery are also cured only by exorcism, except when they aren't, again because of possessed family/friends or another curse being made on that person. People, therefore, need continued, reoccurring exorcisms for years, or forever.

He also repeatedly says South American and African (so people of color) "witch doctors", sorcerors and warlocks are the worst evil of all and hardest to exorcise. LBGTQ people are apparently drug addicts and possessed. Women are more likely to be possessed and are more likely to cause men and children to be possessed (this has to be true since he questioned other ecorsists he knows and they all said the same thing) because those women are "loose" or in "irregular marriages" or are more likely to seek "witchcraft" or sorceries for themselves, their children or family. When he talks about Gypsies and their "paranormal" practices and superstitions, he claims "its always passed from mother to daughter, its always only the women" Even yoga is a gateway to possession by the Devil because it is somehow connected to reincarnation. So all those yoga stretches my physical therpist perscribed for me that helped my back so much must really have been a sorcery cast upon me by the devil and I'm not really better at all and what I really needed was an exorcism. Both the car accidentvand the resulting back injury must in reality have been the devils work as he possessed me. He talks about animals, particularly snakes, cats, and toads, being agents of the devil and his sorcerors and worlocks, though he also says animals including cats are sensitive to evil energies so their behavior should be watched, but wouldn't that be using animal behavior which is evil omens through the devil's influence? The author talks a lot about "superstitions" but much of what he attributes to possession and exorcism seems to be the same, superstitious beliefs.

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esto le resultó útil a 7 personas

Great story poor narration and editing

Revisado: 11-09-22

AUDIBLE NO LONGER ALLOWING RETURNS ON AUDIO BOOKS PURCASHED WITH CASH LISTEN TO SAMPLE BEFORE PURCAHSE!!

I read some of the reviews, but didn't anticipate just how bad the narration and sound editing are. Within sentences, every few words, there are completely different sounding narrations both in volume, tone, and "echo", sound much louder and with noticeable/strange echo quality, that are incredibly distracting. Nouns and names are pronounced differently from previous book. Why did the narrators not listen to even a small sample of previous book to pronounce things the same? CJ Cherryh is my favorite author and I'm excited to get to the audio books on audible, but this one is pretty bad. Listen to a sample first before purchasing. I purchased this a couple other CJ Cherryh books without much concern as Audible has always allowed returns if I didn't like the book. No longer. Unknown to me, Audible changed its return policy in October so that books purchased with cash are no longer returnable. I got this audiobook at a discount because I owned the kindle version so could get it cheaper for cash than the cost of purchasing a credit to then purchase it. This policy will ultimately lead me to purchase no more books than my yearly subscription of credits because I don't want to take the change on getting another poorly narrated book.

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esto le resultó útil a 1 persona

Written in present tense, and I just can't

Revisado: 11-01-22

This is the second present tense book that I've tried to listen to in the last few weeks, and I just can't get through it. I'm going to have to start listening to book samples first, to avoid present tense.

The story is interesting. I like dystopian stories. It's a young adult book (I think) so its not as complex and doesn't have adult themes that adult books do, so keep that in mind if you prefer one or the other. The narrator does a great job, good inflection, and decent character voice/tone differences.

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Narrator not good choice

Revisado: 10-14-22

I really like the Game of Thrones series. I read them about once a year. Listening to the audiobook is so hard. The narrator is annoying and distracting. His tone choice for some of the voices was especially confusing. Drago sounds like a strange little old man with a quavering high pitched voice instead of a powerful giant of a ruler. Tyrion sounds like a silly, low class clown, which especially made me wince, instead of the well educated prince that he is. In the books, Tyrion is obviously well spoken, intelligent and quick witted man. To make him sound so different and lower class than his siblings is questionable at best. I know there are a lot of characters, but in my opinion, the most important of the main characters should have been treated better than they are, Tyrion most among them as he seems to have gotten the worst treatment of all.

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good podcast but way too many commercials

Revisado: 10-11-22

this is a good podcast, interesting, well structured. however, there are waaay too many commercials and too often. all other similar podcasts I've listened to have had about 1/4 the commercials.

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Difficult for me to listen to

Revisado: 09-16-22

The story is interesting, the writing is ok, and the narrator is awesome. Robin Miles is actually the reason why I bought this book. The Good House by Tananarive Due is one of my favorite audiobooks, in large part to Robin Miles's skill as a narrator. She also does a great job with The Fifth Season. The story is interesting. I always love a good world disaster or post apocalyptical or far-future story, and the premise and plot for this one was good. I especially like N. K. Jemisin's descriptions, effective and imaginative without being too long or overly done. However, I have an issue with the book being written in present tense. I just can't get past it. It's extremely distracting to me and detracts from the story so much I can't focus on the story because (for me at least) I keep having to try to translate the words into images in my head, which doesn't work since I'm constantly lagging behind the story. Example, "after a moment, he nods" instead of, "he nodded", or "he turns to you" instead of, "he turned". Personally, I find it too jarring and confusing to listen to. The way the author writes sentences, there is a lot of description before the verb of the sentence so I sometimes lose what the subject and the action are, which is also jarring and sometimes makes me have to rewind to figure out what is going on. Example "because of these things, and because of the terrified bouncing scream of a terrified boy, as his father runs out of a madly swaying building, you pivot towards the sound. habitually, with a mother's ears..." Maybe reading it in the present tense would be easier than listening to it read in present tense because I think we usually always speak in past tense when telling stories. Also, though most of the book is written from first person of the main character, parts of the books are written from other characters. Its also personally jarring to me to switch to other characters, from first person "I" and "you" pronouns to another character, using the "him/she" but also the same "you" pronouns for these other characters, often without identifying these other characters with names at first, is very confusing. Sometimes, it took a long time for me to realize we were now with an entirely different character, and I'd have to rewind to get re-oriented. I've tried more than once now to listen to this book, and it's still so confusing for me to listen to, that I've given up every time. The book has high ratings so this doesn't seem to be an issue for most people, but maybe listen to a sample of the book first to make sure it won't be as confusing for you as it is for me.

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Enlightening and entertaining at the same time

Revisado: 08-22-18

This book was enlightening in a way that no other cookbook or autobiography has been. These fundamentals, things most chefs I assume learn in school, seem simple, and probably are to many people, but weren't for me. For example, my husband doesn't cook with salt. Growing up, his father had health issues and they cooked without salt and added it at the table for those able to have it. My husband has cooked this way forever! So, when he started cooking for me, and I insisted that adding salt at the table WAS NOT THE SAME!! :) He was not convinced. I would hover while he was preparing meal, asking, want me to season that? After reading this book, I know why salt applied at different times makes a difference in how the meal tastes. I can now explain why I like salt applied before cooking, and I even learned what a difference salting meats hours or a day in advance can make! I also learned that adding lemon juice can give a salt like taste to meals and I've used it in soups when I wanted to limit salt, like when I cooked for my grandmother who like my husband's father, couldn't have a lot of salt. It works!!

Besides the great cooking advice, the stories the author tells were very entertaining, I greatly enjoyed this book. I bought it in hardback as well I liked it so much.

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Fun, to the point, great narrator

Revisado: 08-22-18

I enjoyed this audio book. It was succinct, fun, and the narrator was great. I appreciated the description of the elements with their descriptors, such as pentacles as creation and fire as passion. I identify fire with swords and air with wands, so this separation makes it very easy for me to correlate to. The journey through the cards was simply laid out and it made for an easy listen, not too much detail for me to lose track of while listening at work.

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esto le resultó útil a 2 personas