Doubting Tim

uninflected reading flattens and bores listener

Revisado: 07-29-18

While I really dislike "performances" in lieu of rreading, this flat, matter-of-fact narration hammers any life out of this rather narcissistic self-absorption in the not very interesting details of an average life.

kinda like seven hours of someone else's selfies on Facebook. Someone told the author to "add detail" to make it real. only works if you're interesting.

Good for putting you to sleep, though.

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unparallelled and worth repeated listening

Revisado: 03-28-18

A brilliant book. Its depth and breadth of knowledge are exemplary.

Unfortunately, its cautious optimism that we had learnt the lessons of our destructive tendencies may be unwarranted. The Trump regime demonstrates human selfish greed and ignorance. perfectly, appointing environmental wreckers to head the Depth of the Environment. The money of GOP supporters has been poured into getting rid of all regulation, combined with the ignorant Religious Right's belief in a God who put the earth there for their pleasure and exploitation (being "superior whites"). These uneducated and morally primitive people have lost for the USA any credibility as a world leader. As the most powerful nation with the most money and the greatest unwillingness to share it's wealth and power the Us seems morally bankrupt in these depressing days.

I have lost hope for future generations. if the USA can vote such a creature into power for the sake of money (a creature whose own son loves big game hunting as a great "way of life" for him, which sadly he can afford to pursue as often as he likes), we are indeed a plague species, and the sooner the Sixth Extinction -- of mankind--rrives, the better it will be for our planet and any remaining species we have not yet butchered. It will not be "a rapture".

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Persisted doggedly through to the end

Revisado: 01-27-17

Would you try another book from Aleatha Romig and/or the narrators?

No

What do you think your next listen will be?

Perhaps Alexander McCall Smith, or re-listen to Ann Patchett's literary and nuanced Bel Canto, ironically with a broadly similar theme (I would listen to Ann Patchett's Commonwealth, but the one available on Audible.com seems to have a different reader from another one available elsewhere -- Hope Davis -- who might have a UK accent, which I often find more pleasant to listen to, as the Brits tend to be articulate readers rather than "performers" of books) -- but I have been unable to find a sample of her reading to check it out, so I am stuck. Perhaps its time for some non-fiction again.

Would you be willing to try another one of the narrators’s performances?

Absolutely positively not without listening first! Perhaps this is an aberrant reading, but I doubt it. And I don't know why I got this one. It was a daily deal (thank goodness) so not much harm done. Surely I would have listened to the sample first! But apparently I didn't, since the extremely irritating word-by-word breathiness of the reading was there to be heard in the sample. So it is entirely my fault. If you listen to THAT and don't mind it, well, good luck to you, perhaps you might like it. If you, too, bought it by accident and haven't been able to get past that narration, I suggest setting the speed at 165%, so that she gallops along a bit more. She is supposed to be bright, but the religio-simpleton-breathy voice just doesn't jell with her supposed character.

What character would you cut from Into the Light?

Honestly, didn't care about anyone enough to be left hanging at the end wondering (since the end is left open).

Any additional comments?

I don't mind open endings if they are there to encourage thought, but in this case you get the sense that these people might be revisited, as there were lots of loose ends. But I honestly didn't care to know any more, not the least bit curious. The plot became increasingly obvious, and as I say, it was sheer dogged determination to finish the thing that kept me going. (The voice is quite good for knocking you at bedtime, though, if you have trouble sleeping.)

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beautiful literary fiction<br />

Revisado: 01-22-17

Patchett has a wonderfully nuanced eye for life and ear for language. And this is a perfect reading. Brava!!!

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We knew this already, didn't we?

Revisado: 01-01-17

What would have made Cure better?

Narration in a grown-up voice rather than breathless-kindergarten "[look children!] Large, green containers in the laboratory!"

Would you recommend Cure to your friends? Why or why not?

No. People who are interested in this topic would be able to read the thoughtful and well established academic work that lies behind it -- not this popularised version they would have to wade through, enduring cutesie descriptions of people's fluffy hair, etc. which seem to be there to add "human interest" -- hardly necessary, since the topic is fascinating by itself. I think popularising scientific knowledge (and combating mechanistic scientism) is a valuable service -- but surely only the most unaware devotees of scientism are still deaf and blind to the research? If you don't already know this stuff (or if you have set your face against it), I can't imagine you would want to listen at length. And if you are already well informed (a lot of it is obvious) there is a lot of extraneous fluff.

Who would you have cast as narrator instead of Genevieve Swallow?

Richard Burton? (I don't know. Anyone who doesn't do the book a disservice by adopting a prissy and over-excited intonation).

If you could play editor, what scene or scenes would you have cut from Cure?

the big, green containers in the lab, the fluffy hair, all the injected "human interest" filler

Any additional comments?

Ho-hum. But it was a daily deal, probably worth that amount to be reminded (again) about the mind. I'd be a bit peeved if I'd paid full price.

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Too much quavering emotion from narrator

Revisado: 09-13-16

Would you be willing to try another one of Xe Sands’s performances?

I am finding the reading slightly irritating -- trailing-off sentences, a kind of strange, almost casual off-handedness while at the same time seeming to quaver with emotion when it beats me what there is to be all quavery about. Sentences trail off rather than having a descending inflection to indicate a full stop (US period). Not a rising inflection of uncertainty, more like a waffle or indeterminacy.

Any additional comments?

Not finished yet. A pity (I think it is shaping up to be a good book, with interesting natural environment detail, if you like that -- I do) but I am persisting rather than lapping it up because of the narration. It is dragging the story into a miasma. I would not mind it there was no plot to speak of. But I'd like the reader to hold my attention better.

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not transported to the street

Revisado: 07-25-16

I was looking forward to listening, but if it was meant to be a celebration of the street and/or the French, it was killed off by the jerky reading -- which didn't settle down over time. The pauses fell between words, not between sentences or phrases , with slightly longer pauses before French words. The pauses were only slight, but enough to stop it being fluent. The writing never lifted above the pedestrian. it was a kind of flat journalese, never soaring. Loads of lists and minute detail but just not very interesting detail. What might have seemed too good to be true to the author just wasn't of absorbing interest to the reader. I guess you had to be there. I certainly didn't find myself transported there as I had hoped. Would not be bothered swapping the boring minutiae of my own daily life for the author's. More than I wanted to know about the daily ho-hum of any place.

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Don" know!!!

Revisado: 11-27-15

It outs me to sleep every time so I have no idea what it says. House is no tidier but I guess I might have to do that myself. Oh, hang on .. i did suddenly dust the window sills. Most unlike me.

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esto le resultó útil a 13 personas

Carefully crafted but over-explanatory

Revisado: 09-11-15

What didn’t you like about Nick Podehl’s performance?

I tried not to be irritated by the pronunciation "Char-" rather than "Shar-" in Charlotte. The reader varied it and came close to saying Shar- sometimes, but then lapsed back into Char-. Not a major thing. There were a few other minor pronunciation things.

Any additional comments?

I was not quite as impressed as everyone else seems to be. I bought the ebook as well on the strength of the admiration for it -- but I found there was a lot of restatement of current science and explanations of 'interesting facts' -- if you were not across these, they might be interesting, but if they were not new to you, in places it bogged the story down, and it went on for a very long time, partly as a result. I listened to it going to sleep -- and I found I could doze off for quite large chunks of it and not lose the thread, as it was all a bit predictable.

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Almost explains ...

Revisado: 08-28-15

Would you listen to What Is Life? again? Why?

I have listened to it a couple of times. If you've spent 20 years or so being perplexed about reductionism's usefulness in science but determined rejection of systems thinking and wholism, and its insistence on everything being continuous with physics, and take a sane approach to evolution, you may be drawn to biocentrism. But biology has been inadequate for at least a century, and the paradox of life as radically discontinuous with dead matter is (ahem) vitally interesting. It certainly isn't answered by mechanistic genetics.

This book is a lucid explanation of the issues, and as such is well worth listening to. The author places the big ideas in context very helpfully. He then plumps for reductionism and says wholism is a species of reductionism, and apart from giving some very interesting updates of long-chain amino acids, really does not offer a convincing new theory.

But his scientific recapping of the issues, addressed rationally, are a refreshing change from a dogmatic science-versus-religion bunfight with an arrogantly dismissive Dawkins in one corner and some deranged God-botherer in the other.

I came away feeling I had a much better grasp on the bigger picture in philosophy of science. But there is still a fault-line between organic chemistry and bio-chemistry which chemistry can't / won't address. A virus may be a bridge between living and non-living, as we were taught at school back in the Dark Ages, but a virus still doesn't explain the leap.

If you're not a ponderer and puzzler you might not like it. But if you do lie in bed at night thinking about things like reductionism and mereology, this is not 'academic' in a tedious way, and you might like it. I did.

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