Jennifer

Loved it

Revisado: 01-22-23

This one was the best so far. Really nicely done the way the plot revoked around a valuable book. You always think there is no way he's going to get out of the fix he got himself into this time! But of course he does. I also find it clever the way the author gets you sympathizing with a character who is in fact a crook - there you are, rooting for him the whole time!

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Love Andy Carpenter stories

Revisado: 03-05-22

I love the humor in these books! The personalities, Andy's relationships with Tara, his dog, Laurie (the love of his life), and others, interesting, fun, great read. I just hate how David Rosenfelt feels the need to put in disgusting murders, as if that is what makes the book interesting. Decapitated head in a plastic bag, buried by evil people in his back yard (to make Laurie look guilty of murder)?? Yuck!!

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Really enjoyable, interesting book, funny too!

Revisado: 11-29-21

This is a great book, and I was especially happy that Bill Bryson was the narrator. He has a very dry sense of humor peculiar to him, and no other narrator can ever do it justice. I did find some sections, especially around the middle, a little tedious, but for the most part it was very interesting, and there are lots of really hilarious accounts of things that happened to him. I really appreciate an author that can make me burst out laughing uncontrollably. So rare! Most authors seem to think they need to be depressing to be taken seriously or to be interesting. Not to say there are not depressing observations he makes of Australian life: the massive destruction of local habitats, species going extinct, and the Aborigines being reduced to a non-existence, just so European descendents can live in boring, culture-less suburbs that sprawl for miles, with strip malls that provide you with globally available clothing and home furnishing stores, etc. I learned a lot of history that I didn't know before. However, I couldn't help wondering how much depth and how much truth we were getting since after all, he was a brief visitor, and a lot of it is just his opinions about how things are there. I wonder what Australians think about the book. Also, it seemed odd to me that, though Bryson did a lot of pondering about how Aborigines were treated, and explored some of their history, he didn't seem to make any effort to meet with any who could tell him what their perspective was. You just hear what Bryson's perspective of the Aborigines was from brief observation, and from talking to Whites and from books he read. Other than these details, I really enjoyed the book and it really made me want to visit.

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Wrong voice for Mrs. P., otherwise, lots of fun

Revisado: 09-09-21

I enjoyed listening to this. Rather a peculiar story, and a bit far fetched, but a lot of fun. Barbara Rosenblat is a good narrator (I like her in the Anna Pigeon series), but her voice for Mrs. Pollifax was all wrong - she made her sound like an 85 year-old, upper class English lady. And I kept wishing Mrs. Pollifax would give Farrell hell for constantly addressing her as "Duchess", which seemed a bit rude.

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Wrong accent, but great fun!

Revisado: 05-11-21

I grew up in England, reading these books as they came out in many paperbacks with way more Herriot stories than are included in the shorter collection, "All Creatures Great and Small", in which only a selection of the stories were included, so some of my favourite stories are missing. The narrator, Christopher Timothy, is excellent. However, I avoided listening to this for years because James Herriot, though English, grew up in Glasgow. I've got a cassette tape of him reading from his own books, and he has a decided Scottish accent which is lovely to listen to. It just seems odd to me that they would find a very English voice to be the voice of James Herriot. But once I got over my scruples, I found I really enjoyed listening to all the stories I had read for years, because Timothy is an expert narrator.

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Another great Kinsey mystery

Revisado: 05-26-20

What I like about the earlier Kinsey Millhone mysteries is how good Sue Grafton is at developing characters and intricate plots. The characters are all really believable and have depth, especially Kinsey. I really like the fact that she's a woman, and her somewhat spunky attitude. That's why I really enjoy this narrator, Mary Peiffer, who has the perfect voice for Kinsey's personalty. The books read by her are fun and full of energy (well, fun for the most part - after all, these are murder mysteries). The narrator for all the later books always sounds fearfully, worried, and bogged down in angst, and that is so wrong! They should have stuck to Mary Peiffer.

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Boring at first, but then enjoyable

Revisado: 12-19-16

Would you recommend To Say Nothing of the Dog to your friends? Why or why not?

Yes, I would recommend it, though the story progressed in a long and winding manner, so I am not sure how well that would go down.

Which scene was your favorite?

My favourite scene was when Baine, the butler, was putting Tossie, the young lady of rank and consequence, in her place and finally giving her a piece of his mind. What was interesting about this book is that superficially, it has the cleverness and British charm of your more typical Victorian novel (the period they travel back to), but what is not typical of Victorian novels is that we are also given a glimpse of what life must be like from the point of view of the less fortunate underclasses, making it clearly a book of the current time.

Do you think To Say Nothing of the Dog needs a follow-up book? Why or why not?

No, definitely not. Too long as it is.

Any additional comments?

I read a lot of reviews of this book and Doomsday Book (also Connie Willis, also Oxford time travel) before I listened to them. Judging from other peoples' reviews, most people think this book "To Say Nothing of the Dog..." was much better than "Doomsday Book", I guess because it was much lighter and did not feature the Black Death. But I actually really enjoyed Doomsday Book, even if a lot of it was grim, because the main characters get into perilous situations, and spend some time desperately trying to get out of them, and you get caught up in their plight. In "To Say Nothing...", I was quite bored for the first however many hours and had no interest in the Ned character at first, or as to why we had to listen to him stumble his way through Coventry in 1940 WWII or Oxford in 1888. Of course, some of this may be because I kept falling asleep. All it seemed to be was the author having fun with Victorian English speak and the frivolous life of the upper classes, with everyone sounding so charming but acting so awful. I kept wondering, what is the point of this story? And who is this Lady Bracknell? I forced myself to continue listening since so many people loved this book. By the time we got to Ned opening the carpet bag and finding himself face to face with the missing cat, and then when Verity starts explaining to him how she had messed up time travel with the cat and how they needed to fix it, I was fine - interested and curious to see how they resolved it, and in finding out what on earth a Bishop's Bird Stump is and how they are going to find it.

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Very enjoyable, except for the grim bit at the end

Revisado: 12-19-16

What did you like about this audiobook?

I don't agree with the reviewers who thought this was too long and boring. I like long audible stories, and I was kept interested and in suspense the whole way through. I thought all the characters were believable and well formed and I had a vested interest in their survival.

How has the book increased your interest in the subject matter?

Although of course I knew about the Black Death, I hadn't really thought about what it might be like to live through it and have everyone you know come down sick and die in just a few days, and to have no understanding of why this is happening. It made me want to read some history books on the subject to find out more. It also made me more aware of what life was like for women and girls back then, where you can be married off at the age of 12 to some rather nasty character, simply because you are seen as a bargaining tool by your family. And also got me thinking about how cold and uncomfortable it must have been living at that time.

Does the author present information in a way that is interesting and insightful, and if so, how does he achieve this?

I enjoyed the story taking place in "the present" (our future) more than the one taking place in the past (even before the Black Death hit). However, it took me a while to understand that the "present" was in the middle of the 21st century, and got really confused when they kept talking about the tube in Oxford. The tube in Oxford?? (there's no tube - i.e., underground train system - in Oxford.) Also, in the story taking place in "the present", I was a little confused when they treated the one case of a mysterious illness as "an epidemic", and proceeded to put the whole of Oxford into quarentine. An epidemic of only one?? Also, both stories in the present and past were really drawn out. Connie Willis seems to do this with all her books. Having said that, I enjoyed it to the end, if you can say, listening to endless descriptions of people dying of the Black Death is "enjoyable". What I mean is, by the time people are dying you have become invested in the characters and are curious about how it is all going to end, so you keep listening, wanting to hear what happens next. There are some flaws in the mechanics of how the time travel works, but probably only for hard core sci fi readers. It works fine for me. Again, if you want to be picky: knowing how people treat strangers from another country in the same time period - you are generally dismissed as socially incompetent and dumb - I would imagine this would be even more pronounced for Kivrin going back to the Middleages. The translator may do a good job of making her sound like she is speaking Middle English, but trying to get her behavior right so she fits in socially would be impossible. But no. Everyone accepts her for the most part, and she is taken seriously by "the Contemps" (the people she meets when she goes into the past). It was also a little disappointing that Kivrin does not really get to experience much of England in the Middleages as she is stuck in a small village with one family the whole time. But of course, that is probably what life was like back then. I also wouldn't have minded hearing more excitement from her about being in the past at this time period, and more curiosity in the world around her compared to her present.

What did you find wrong about the narrator's performance?

The narrator was very good. My only gripe is with the author, who loves to have her main characters try desperately to ask or tell some vitally important point to people who need to hear it so they can take action, and they don't listen because they are too busy talking or doing something else. Or they do listen and are incredulous and repeat what our hero/ine says as if they can't believe their ears. Or the person trying to impart the important piece of information can't do so because they are sick, or in a state of shock, or... Connie Willis' books are full of this kind of miscommunication and it gets very tiring after a point. But these are all minor objections, and over all it was a good story.

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