M.S.

Good story ruined by horrible narration

Revisado: 12-15-24

Why do authors insist on narrating their work? Very few do it well. The subject matter of this book is fascinating, the scholarship is sound, but it’s almost impossible to listen to because of the narration.

The narrator stumbles over words, mispronouncing several, and the repeated pronunciation of “police” as “pleese” is very distracting.

She pauses in strange places, and uses cringeworthy voices for various speakers. I’m halfway through the book and these issues make it a slog. That’s a pity because it’s an interesting subject.

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Would have been better with a better narrator

Revisado: 11-07-24

The content was good, if a bit dry. But the narrator's weird and inconsistent pronunciation (and mispronunciation) of various words was distracting. Archangel pronounced Ark-angel. Alexandra's nickname Alicky pronounced Al-ICK-y. Strange pauses before words as if he was trying to figure out how to say them.

I love Helen Rappaport's stuff and this book was no different. It provided a lot of information I hadn't previously known, so I liked that. Just wish they had gotten Xe Sands, who has narrated other of her books.

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I was disappointed in this book

Revisado: 10-05-24

I've read pretty much everything about Anne Boleyn. Her story is fascinating and I was hopeful that this book would shed new light on it. Unfortunately, it is riddled with speculation and assumption, presented as fact, which in my opinion has no place in something purporting to be a work of history.

Examples include the assumption that Anne saw Claude of France and Margaret of Austria as role models and people to emulate. She may have, but the authors present no evidence to support the assumption and just accept it as fact. There are too many instances of the authors saying, "she must have..." or "she clearly..." without any actual support for the statements. I know it's hard to write definitively about Anne because there are so few contemporary sources and those tend to be biased in one way or another, but it's so important to separate speculation from fact.

Also, the narrator pronounces Boleyn as "Berlin." I had to go back and re-listen to almost an entire chapter because it finally dawned on me that she was talking about one of Anne's earlier ancestors and not some dude named Berlin. Even after I realized, it was jarring to hear.

Just not impressed with either the book or the performance.

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It's okay but I'm glad it was free

Revisado: 07-14-24

The subject itself is interesting. There isn't a lot written about U-Boat depredations along the American coast and particularly in the Gulf during WWII. This book provides quite a bit of background but it's packaged pretty dully. The story of the central family is clearly meant to provide a personal aspect by giving us people to root for and care about but the background details about them are neither interesting or necessary. And I really don't care about every adventure the family's son had on the ship.

Then there's the narration. It's pretty poor. The narrator has an okay voice but he adds emphasis in odd places and his pronunciation is all over the place. I'm about halfway through the book and I've counted four different pronunciations of the ship's name. He pronounces submariners as sub-mar-EEN-ers, rather than sub-MARE-in-ers, which just sounds weird. And he throws in a strange pause before most French or German words, as if he's trying to figure out how to pronounce them, then over-emphasizes the accents. Seriously, Wehrmacht and Luftwaffe are not particularly complex German words.

I'll finish it. It's not a bad book or a bad reading. It's just... okay.

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Not as good as the first two books

Revisado: 07-05-24

I loved Crocodile on the Sandbank. I enjoyed Curse of the Pharoahs very much. The Mummy Case was . . . okay. And this one is the same.

Amelia and Emerson are great, together and separate. The cat Bastet is a delight. Abdullah is as always, a worthy fellow, but I'm not crazy about most of the supporting characters. And Ramses is an obnoxious addition and I wish they'd never had him. I don't find him engaging, funny, interesting, or anything other than a distraction and a nuisance. The cat Bastet is wonderful but there isn't a cat on earth that would become attached to such a kid.

It just seems like the archaeology is becoming merely a backdrop for this whole Master Criminal bit. Part of what was enjoyable about the first two books was the nature of the excavations, the things they were finding, the work they were doing. Admittedly, I haven't finished this one yet but it just feels so dragged down by this wanna-be Moriarty Master Criminal plot.

And while I love almost everything about Barbara Rosenblatt's narration, her Americans are cringe-worthy. Why do they all sound like they come from Texas? It takes me right out of the story.

I'll finish the book. I may even read more of them. But I'm becoming disillusioned.

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Interesting but I can’t handle the narrator

Revisado: 01-31-22

She’s fine when she’s just reading the book but for some reason she seems to think she has to mimic a male voice when reading a male character. And her version of a male voice is an awkwardly deep, dopey-sounding monotone that makes every guy sound like an idiot. Amusing at first but quickly became grating.

I don’t know if I’ll be able to finish. The subject matter is interesting so I’ll try and hopefully there will be fewer male voices as it progresses.

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Poor history and too much speculation

Revisado: 07-06-21

Eva Braun entered the pages of history when she died with Hitler in the Berlin bunker on April 30, 1945. One would think that alone would be enough to make her interesting but Gortemaker is determined to find more. I understand the impulse but the execution leaves a lot to be desired.

This is very poor history. I lost count of the number of times the author said, "we must assume" or "we can speculate" or "it is likely" after the first several chapters. Virtually the entire book is speculation and Braun's presence is very thin. Gortemaker assumes motivations based on nothing more than speculation as to how the average person might react or behave in a given situation. She assumes relationships or hostilities based on nothing more substantial than a given person's mention or failure to mention Braun in their correspondence. She notes multiple people who cannot be considered reliable sources yet relies on their words if it conforms to her assumptions. She also repeatedly and erroneously refers to Hitler's sister Paula as "Angela," the name of Paula's daughter and Hitler's dead niece, an error that is both distracting and indicative of sloppy work.

Eva Braun is fascinating because we know next to nothing about her. She appears to have been a fun-loving, vibrant, charming young woman, a rather modern woman who enjoyed the cinema, dancing, modern music, and smoking cigarettes. Part of her mystery lies in figuring out why Hitler was with her and what he saw in her (and she in him). You will not learn that from this book. We will probably never learn it at all. And that's okay.

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Reprint of End of An Era, wish I'd known that

Revisado: 07-05-21

The description of this title mentions that it is a "centennial edition of the definitive book on the Titanic" but doesn't mention that book's original title. Nor does the rest of the description make it clear that this is Wade's End of An Era repackaged. Had I known that, I wouldn't have bought it. I've read the book before and this edition adds nothing noteworthy to it.

As for the book itself, it's not a bad book on the Titanic but not great. Wade's fascination with the Senate hearings is, in my opinion, misplaced. The hearing was useful in that it collected multiple eyewitness accounts in one place but they really didn't accomplish anything of actual value except a lot of publicity for Senator Smith. The disaster by itself was sufficient to change the way shipping lines approached the issue of the Atlantic crossing, the number of lifeboats, and the necessity of having 24-hour wireless. Besides, the United States had already addressed those issues - it was Great Britain that was behind the times.

The narrator does an adequate job but tended to put on a very bad English accent when reading dialog attributed to British passengers or crew, which was distracting.

Again, not a bad book, not a great one. For any student of the Titanic, it's worth a read but for the average person, you're far better off with A Night to Remember.

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Well written and extensively detailed

Revisado: 02-15-21

This is a long book with a lot of detail but it's never boring. It is meticulously organized also, so I never felt like I'd lost my place in the order of events. What this book did for me was to bring a great deal of information that I've gleaned from multiple sources over the years together in one well-crafted book with a top-notch narrator. My only criticism is the way the author adds random parenthetical German words and phrases. It appears to be an attempt to either clarify or emphasize a point but it's a bit jarring since the majority of those terms are unfamiliar to me and, I would imagine, most English-speaking readers. Still, it's a minor point and does not detract from my enjoyment of the book.

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*Spoilers* I love these characters but...

Revisado: 05-24-18

*SPOILER ALERT* You have been warned.

I really do love Jamie and Claire and this book isn't bad but it's not great either, in my opinion. My criticisms are as follow:

1. I really don't care for Brianna. She's a dull, lifeless character, no matter how much Gabaldon tries to make her interesting. She's not. And it's not that she can't draw interesting 20th century characters. Frank had depth and complexity, as did Reverend Wakefield and Mrs. Graham. Brianna just doesn't have any color to her. Nor does Roger. The standing stones have more character than he does. Why he and Bri get together is beyond me. It's not remotely believable.

2. Others have mentioned the overuse of "she said dryly" and "he said wryly." I'm not sure if she's doing it more in this book or if I notice it more because the book isn't as good as the first two. At any rate, I'm tempted to turn it into a drinking game. Same with "I shuddered at the sight..." or the thought or whatever. Claire was a WWII nurse, yet she shudders with horror at every bloody thing she encounters and then shudders again ever time she thinks of them. I don't think I've ever actually shuddered at a memory. It's annoying and makes her seem weak, which she isn't at all.

3. Why in the world do we have a man described as, of all things, "a Chinaman" in this story? Not to mention the fact that he's like a cartoon character, 3 feet tall and talking pidgin English.

4. Endless explanations. We're in the middle of a critical event and someone needs to know what's going on or what's happened or how we got there and some character goes into a story that stretches for 14 pages and describes every sight, smell and thought in nauseating detail before finally getting to the point. Like when Fergus tells her Jamie's been shot. Does he say, "come back quick! Jamie's been shot!" No, he tells a long and involved story that takes a dozen pages to get to that minor detail.

5. Too many cooincidences. They go to get the gold on the very day that the Portuguese ship goes to get it. The very day. It's been there for 20 years but everyone shows up at the same time. And they run into an escaped slave who of course is an ancestor of someone Claire knew in Boston in 1968 because that makes perfect sense. And of course she happened to visit her friend Joe in 1968 when he was examining the skeleton that turns out to be someone Claire meets up with in Jamaica (won't give that one completely away). And on and on and on. One I could suspend my disbelief. Two, I probably could. But it gets to the point where it takes me right out of the story.

6. Claire is 48. But instead of suffering from hot flashes and embarrassing dryness, you'd think she was 25 the way she and Jamie enjoy hot, passionate and graphic sex. I keep wondering when she's going to pull a bottle of lube out of her medicine box.

7. Twenty years have passed since Outlander. Claire never had conventional schooling. Yet in twenty years, she managed to get enough of an education to get into medical school - at a time when women had a very hard time doing so - and become a doctor. And not only a doctor, but a surgeon. Oh, and not only a surgeon but Chief of Staff of a large hospital in a major city. That may be the hardest thing for me to believe. Easier to believe in time travel.

Again, it's not a BAD book. But it could have been a much better one, in my opinion. If it had only been a couple of the things I mentioned, I wouldn't have minded. All of them together made it rather annoying and I'm now a little gunshy about trying the next one.

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