Stuart Heath

Well-structured story given less-than-ideal treatment with flaky accents

Revisado: 07-31-17

I enjoyed the plot and Moren's humour, but there were quite a few clichés ('dropped like a sack of potatoes', etc.) and too many novel similes that didn't really do the work of evoking the world more richly for me.

I also found the reader's unstable accents quite distracting. Given the stylistic choice of using a range of British accents, it may have been better to have someone from those Isles do the narration. (I know it's set on other planets centuries into the future and no accents will sound the same then as they do now, but I was having trouble suspending disbelief or creating suitable head canon to account for them.)

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Excellent work marred by slightly substandard read

Revisado: 03-22-17

What made the experience of listening to How Proust Can Change Your Life the most enjoyable?

This is an accessible and applied introduction to Proust's work: it clearly explains some of Proust's principles for a wise life and helps readers bring them to bear on our contemporary setting.

Any additional comments?

There are numerous sentences in this book where Nicholas Bell doesn't give the listener the best chance to understand what's being said. Botton makes frequent use of contrasts (not *this*, but *that*), and Bell often fails to emphasize the correct words to make the contrast clear.

Also, Botton writes with a lot of wry humour, but somehow this is lacking in the narration.

At the risk of sounding snobbish, for a book filled with French names and phrases, it might have been better to have a reader who was more confident (or fluent) in French.

All this sounds more negative than I really feel. There's a lot to commend in the reading, but the above flaws made me rate it at 3 stars.

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