A. Hawley

Thorough, pleasing, informative

Revisado: 02-29-24

A strangely fascinating audiobook. James Hoffmann has a pleasant voice, and his book covers everything about the coffees of the world in a brief form. I found the author onbYouTube, where his coffee videos are seriously useful and interesting. This audiobook is soothing to listen to and I enjoyed it way more than I expected.

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Important history poorly read

Revisado: 09-16-22

Interesting, eye-opening, and well-researched modern history of conspiracy-theorist insanity in American politics. Great information, and people over 60 will remember a lot of the big names that drifted across our TV screens when we were kids and didn't know what it all meant.

But the audiobook? Look, I get that these big insta-bestselling nonfiction political books probably go through a very fast final production process. The audiobook version is likely to be rushed. These things come and go quickly on the market and probably most audiobook listeners don't pay much attention. So a narrator races through the text with no sense of what it's really saying--big deal, right?

I'm sorry to rag on the hardworking narrator. I have some idea what's involved in this work. I'm just sorry the production had to be rushed--that he didn't have time to read the book in advance and understand it, or to match the retakes with the main body of the recording.

But if, like me, you can barely get through a narration where the emphasis in almost every sentence is on the wrong word, where the voice talent OBVIOUSLY recorded inserts and retakes in a different audio environment and even a different state of health, then I'd give this one a miss and read the print book instead.

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Not Georgette best

Revisado: 09-06-17

I like the titular quiet gentleman, and it's pleasant to have a heroine whose strength is commonsense and practicality. Still, the romance is pretty hard to believe, and the mystery is fairly tedious. I don't know whether the secondary characters are annoying in the book, but the audiobook reader makes almost all of them quite grating. read by a Phyllida Nash or an Eve Matheson, it might have been more amusing. This isn't a Heyer novel I return to very often.

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Not Georgette's best

Revisado: 08-18-17

I'm a huge Heyer fan, but unlikable characters in implausible situations make this story fall flat for me. Neither very Regency nor much of a romance, Reluctant Widow tries to be more of a period spy mystery, and gets a bit tedious in explaining its way through the convoluted and not all that interesting crime.

It does however, feature one of Heyer's best villains, the deceptively foppish Francis Cheviot, read in a wonderful over the top style by Cornelius Garrett.

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Good material, beautifully read, weirdly abridged

Revisado: 07-18-17

I've ordered a print copy of this book because the fascinating material on the audiobook is strangely chopped up and incomplete. it's clear that the abridgement wasn't done very thoughtfully. Kind of a weird listening experience because of this, but the material is extremely tantalizing. I'd consider this audiobook an introduction or Cliff Notes version of what must be in the unabridged book. Publishers, why do your make these choices??

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A fun, light story, narration a little problematic

Revisado: 07-17-16

Psmith shines in this story of comic New York criminal shenanigans, effortlessly and suavely sidestepped He's a great character: a funny, brilliant, verbose and kind of ridiculous fellow who courts trouble just for the fun of subverting it--the inverse, if you like, of Bertie Wooster. Psmith Journalist may not be Wodehouse's most fast-moving novel, but it has some wonderful laughs and a lot of action.

Whether the 21st century reader can or should overlook the casual racism of the time (1909), which does make some explicit appearances, is up to the individual, but it's only right to mention it--and the fact that the whole story seems to inhabit a world entirely free of women.

While Jonathan Cecil seems to hit the bullseye with his Old Etonian voice for Psmith, he's less successful with Wodehouse's exaggerated and slang-filled New York street talk. This is unfortunate, because in this novel, Psmith himself is pretty much the only British character. I would happily listen to this narrator in a novel that doesn't call for so many American voices.

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Stellar narration of a brilliant work of nonfictio

Revisado: 04-14-16

Voices and accents beautifully rendered by Robin Miles. Yes, the story is recursive--a style choice on the part of the author that emphasizes the folkloric aspects of the work. She speaks as her subjects speak, emphasizing what's most meaningful through repetition, as people do when telling their own stories. Truly one of the most powerful and important books I've ever read.

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A heavy lift but worth the effort

Revisado: 11-10-15

LJ Ganser makes tough material listenable. Big ideas couched in data. Worth the effort.

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Brilliantly read

Revisado: 10-29-15

A very long, difficult, archaic novel restored to vivid and thrilling life by great narration!

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wonderfully inspiring and insightful

Revisado: 09-27-15

loved it! I couldn't stop listening - even feel asleep last night with it playing in my ear.

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