Christopher Torgersen

Great book, great performance, poorly recorded

Revisado: 02-23-24

First, before I give any negative criticism, the bottom line is that this is a really great intro to Old English, and the performance of Sara Powell is extremely good. I would certainly not hesitate to recommend it. I thoroughly enjoyed it and appreciated the PDF that came with it and listed many of the words used.

The reason I took off a star for the overall rating is that the recording is somewhat bafflingly poor in quality. It's not beyond the pale, but it's bad enough that it made me wonder what kind of quality control they had for the sound. It sounds like it was recorded with a cheap microphone. Very often, "s" sounds are somewhat distorted so that they sound more like "th" sounds. When listening to a book with new and interesting words, this can be a problem. There also just seemed to be a high level of noise that was dealt with by a filter, which is probably related to the problem. It was enough of an issue that it occasionally distracted me from enjoying an otherwise superb book and performance.

Still, as I said, the bad sound is not severe enough to dissuade me from recommending the book to anyone interested in the topic.

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Engaging, fascinating, and well-preformed

Revisado: 10-07-23

I usually don't like when authors read their own books. Narration is a particular skill that writers don't necessarily have. Toobin is superb, though, and I want to lead by saying that he does a fantastic job.

The book itself is absorbing, interesting, and enlightening. I was in my twenties and not that politically aware when the attack happened, and looking back on it in light of where the country has gone since then is a different kind of experience. The story is told in such a detailed and organized way, and I didn't want to stop listening once I started.

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Couldn't get through it

Revisado: 08-16-23

The book is pure tedium, or at least the first part is. It follows a set of uninteresting, shallow characters that I couldn't possibly care for through doing a whole lot of nothing interesting. And it just goes on and on. I just did make it to the end of part 1 for a book club, and when we met, it turned out that almost everyone else got about as far as I did.

Obviously, this book has many supporters. It received a lot of critical praise. Whatever greatness it contains, it was lost on me and my fellow book club readers.

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Not particularly convincing

Revisado: 08-10-23

I came into this book with a bias in favor of it. While I'm not a linguist, I've read a lot of linguistics material, and I have never felt convinced by Chomsky's ideas about language being entirely its own instinct and such.

This book purports to give an evidence-based view for an alternate take, but it doesn't make a convincing case. It raises some questions and puts forth hypotheses, but it doesn't really give hard evidence, just strongly stated opinion.

Also, it covers a lot of ground that is very basic and known to anyone who knows something about linguistics. I didn't really need the detail on what acoustics and phonology are, but I can appreciate that some readers might. For me, I had to slog through a lot of information I already knew, only to find that the propositions the book makes are more about possibilities - what could have been - than real strongly supported ideas about what probably was.

As an overall review of the issues with Chomsky's ideas, it works pretty well, but it doesn't support its own arguments particularly well.

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Good but old and needs updating

Revisado: 05-12-23

I enjoyed the course, and Robert Kane is a good and engaging instructor. Sometimes he gives a bit too much favor to his own views, I think, but at least he is honest about it and doesn't try to sell it as the only view. The course gives a good overview of the topic.

The only glaring issue is that it was created in 1999. I know this because he references Columbine as something that occurred earlier in the week, and there are many outdated references throughout. It would be great to hear a more updated version that speaks to things that aren't a quarter century old, like misinformation and more current technology.

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Great fun story with virtuosic narration

Revisado: 12-08-22

N. K. Jemisin is a reliably skilled writer. One of the best in spec fic right now. Like its first part, this book is a bit more humorous and much more overtly political than her usual work. It might turn off people with a right-wing mindset. Since my politics is much like hers, I got a kick out of it. Also, as a NYC native, I appreciated the handling of the city.

Robin Miles gives one of the most impressive narration performances I have ever heard. It is stunning and remarkable. The accents, the emotion, the characterization. Even if the story hadn't been good, I would have marveled at her work here. She is helped out by some really good audio work that adds to the presentation.

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Even-handed and well-told

Revisado: 11-21-22

Before anything, I want to counter what has been written in other reviews. I almost didn't get this because several reviews stated that it was biased toward socialism, and I wanted something relatively neutral.

This course is not, in any way, biased toward socialism. To come away from it thinking that, you would need to think that extreme libertarianism is a neutral point of view. The instructor rarely actually advocates for anything, mostly giving histories of how several systems have played out in different countries. His firsthand descriptions of Warsaw Pact countries are vivid in how utterly bleak and stagnant life on the eastern side of the Iron Curtain was. There is no warm feeling towards collectivism.

Professor Stuart is very knowledgeable, and it shines through in the lectures. Economics can be very dry material, but he brings it to life unusually well with detailed (and sometimes actually humorous) descriptions and anecdotes. He gives a fair assessment of the advantages and drawbacks involved in both capitalism and socialism, and he discusses several mixed economies as well. Most of the course focuses on how things have played out historically rather than on theory, which I liked because most economic theories have their flaws exposed when one tries to implement them in some ideological manner.

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Couldn't get into it

Revisado: 11-07-22

I purchased the title because the description sounded like something I would enjoy. I tend to like modern fantasy with a horror edge.

Unfortunately, the title just wasn't doing it for me. Part of it was that I couldn't get into the story. The characters didn't come alive for me, and I couldn't remember who was who. Another part was that the author is kind of a subpar narrator. I don't know why he narrated his own book, but it would have been better to use a professional. He wasn't egregiously bad, but it had the sound of an author doing a reading from his book. No character voice differentiation, and it just didn't draw me in. It may be part of why the story and characters weren't working for me.

I got about a quarter of the way in before I gave up and returned the title.

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Hooked me fast and kept me going

Revisado: 06-20-22

It had been a while since I listened to something that really pulled me in and made me prolong my listening sessions in order to get to the next part. This book did it. It's one of the best listens I have had on Audible. The full cast production really helps, giving each character a distinct voice. I really felt like I was listening along. The story is sad, happy, fun, and heartbreaking. It is very well written and performed.

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This is getting tedious

Revisado: 06-10-22

I loved the first few books of this series. The character of Skippy was hilarious and new, and the story was genuinely interesting to me. But somewhere along the line, it ran out of steam. I don't know if Alanson realized he had a cash cow that he wanted to keep milking, or if he ran out of ideas, or what. But the books have become repetitive. The jokes, which are mostly the same ones used since the beginning, are stale.

I don't expect literary masterpieces out of these books. The writing has a tenuous grasp of the English tense system and plays loose with grammar. There is no deep exploration of the meaning of life. The aliens behave in ways that no spacefaring race could reasonably be expected to behave. I deduct no stars for any of that because I don't listen to these stories for serious, elegant writing. But those things become more noticeable when the things I do listen to them for start to fade.

The story really needs to get on with where it's going. It has become glacial in its pace. Things happen here and there, but it feels like watching filler episodes of a TV show. This book feels like it began and ended in basically the same place, with some slight movement. That's not what I really expect from 19 hours of listening. Calling Skippy "the beer can" used to be funny. It's not anymore.

I've realized what keeps me reading, though. The book is mostly a slog, but then the ending is fast-paced and fun and all the things I want it to be. For each of the past few books, I've decided in the middle of the book that I would not continue with the series after it, but the ending has convinced me to keep going. I hope the next book makes more story progress. This one could have been summed up in a couple of paragraphs.

RC Bray is great as always, though. I would have given up a long time ago without his narration.

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