OYENTE

Kelli D. Welch

  • 5
  • opiniones
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  • votos útiles
  • 10
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Good book, awful audiobook

Total
4 out of 5 stars
Ejecución
1 out of 5 stars
Historia
5 out of 5 stars

Revisado: 10-01-23

Bare-Faced Messiah is a meticulously researched and captivatingly recounted biography of L. Ron Hubbard. It is a must-read for anyone interested in Scientology, high control groups, cults, con artists, and/or the audacious.

But however much I recommend the book, I CANNOT recommend the audiobook. I didn't know it was possible for a person to read every single sentence with the exact same cadence and intonation as the one before for 18 hours, but this narrator has done it.

It becomes difficult to comprehend what is being read after a few minutes because your brain starts to tune it out, like the auditory version of olfactory fatigue.

Please read the book, just be forewarned about the audiobook.

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Superficially interesting, but doesn't hold up

Total
2 out of 5 stars
Ejecución
3 out of 5 stars
Historia
2 out of 5 stars

Revisado: 09-12-23

As a casual skimming of the subject of sociopathy, this book starts out being interesting and informative. However it quickly veers into dehumanizing "othering" of subjects, voyeuristic anecdotes, weak presentation of diagnostic criteria, random and inconsistent moralizing, and various non sequiturs.

Added to that, the narrator somehow reads it with a thick layer of sulky disdain.

This book seems more liable to make readers paranoid and suspicious of everyone around them than to provide any genuinely helpful insight.

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Brutal, brave, and beautiful

Total
5 out of 5 stars
Ejecución
4 out of 5 stars
Historia
5 out of 5 stars

Revisado: 12-09-22

I hesitated listening to this book because the subject matter is so disturbing. However, I'm so glad I did. But more than that, I'm so glad, and grateful, that Rachel told this story. It's a brutally vulnerable recounting of the criminal, unethical, and evil things that were done – and the things that could have stopped it which were left undone.

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An absolute gem

Total
5 out of 5 stars
Ejecución
5 out of 5 stars
Historia
5 out of 5 stars

Revisado: 11-08-22

Tom Wilson's story is equal parts laugh-out-loud funny and sincerely heartrending. The frame of this memoir -- the mysterious Masked Man -- is an effective vehicle for exposition, and somehow makes it feel both grounded and ethereal.

As for the narration, I was expecting an experienced voice actor to nail it, and he absolutely does. Every audiobook narrator should take notes from Mr. Wilson.

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Nothing Is True and Everything Is Possible Audiolibro Por Peter Pomerantsev arte de portada

A Disorienting Collection of Character Sketches

Total
3 out of 5 stars
Ejecución
2 out of 5 stars
Historia
4 out of 5 stars

Revisado: 09-10-22

This book reads like a collection of voyeuristic character sketches with a veneer of detachment, though at times it feels more like an attempt at an ironically self-erasing memoir.

While it can be argued that experiencing the surrealness is the point, the unfortunate reality is that feeling disoriented as a reader does not actually help to increase understanding. The author seems to have embraced the performance art of some of his subjects, embracing absurdism as a means of protest against absurdity.

That being said, some of the pieces of the narrative are truly insightful, and I would even say that they pay off enough to make the whole worthwhile. Ultimately I would rather this book's editors had provided a little more structure.

As far as the narration, I think this is the wrong narrator for this book. He seems like he is a good narrator for some types of books, however this is not one of them. He seems to not know the proper pronunciations of some geographical names (e.g. Chechnya), and his accents are terrible – his Irish accent sounds like a bad attempt at Manchester, and his Russian accent sounds more like French. Also, his steady RP seemed somehow inappropriate for the subject matter. He's talking sometimes about women forced into prostitution, the Russian mafia, suicide, corruption – incredibly depressing and disturbing subjects – but his tone never adapts to reflect that. I felt like I was being lulled to sleep instead of engrossed.

If modern Russian history, state-controlled media, etc. is of interest to you, and you want to read a lot of books on the subject, then you will probably benefit from having this one in your mental library. However, if you kind of only want one book or one overview of how things are in Russia (Putinism, Russian history, etc.) then this one is not going to be as helpful or exhaustive as other books out there.

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