Amazon Customer

Good story, Too much clutter.

Revisado: 02-22-25

This book is full of true-crime stories that surround the rise of the FBI. But the listening experience is ruined by the author’s insistence on packing in every single detail he knows, irrespective of its pertinence. Do we really need to know that the agent in charge of an op had gotten married *to a stenographer* two weeks before the op started? Couldn’t the author just write “The recently-married Agent X took charge”? Or even just “Agent X, the operation’s leader, proceeded to [do whatever]”? The whole book is like this. The reader holds onto these multiple details, waiting for them to become relevant, but they never do, leaving this reader, at least, exhausted by the effort of having to sort the wheat from the chaff—a job the author should have done. I listened till Chapter 10 and then quit in exhaustion.

Has calificado esta reseña.

Reportaste esta reseña

Highsmith’s life reveals the difficulties confronting gay people in mid-century America.

Revisado: 12-23-24

The book is badly written, on a sentence-by-sentence level. In particular, the author distracts us with trivial information embedded into the exposition of important ideas.

The narrator often mispronounces familiar English words; she mispronounces one character’s name for most of a chapter, then reverts to the correct version.

Has calificado esta reseña.

Reportaste esta reseña

Good plot; off-putting persona

Revisado: 06-17-24

To the author’s credit, the plot is well-constructed; it has genuine surprises that are, nonetheless, well-earned. On the negative side: the characters are stereotypes; the author has an annoying habit of always referring to cars by their make or model. The characters never get into a mere “car”; it’s always a Lamborghini or a Silverado. Cars are more differentiated to the narrator (who is pretty transparently the author) than are human beings. That’s an off-putting habit, at least to this reader.

Has calificado esta reseña.

Reportaste esta reseña

2 or 3 insights repeated endlessly

Revisado: 03-29-24

I applaud Dr Durvasula’s effort to address those *harmed* by narcissists rather than narcissists themselves. Her insights would fit into a pamphlet; here she says the same few things over and over for hours.

Has calificado esta reseña.

Reportaste esta reseña

esto le resultó útil a 2 personas

Fearless indictment of evangelicalism

Revisado: 03-20-24

Gosse’s work rivals Samuel Butler’s The Way of All Flesh in detailing the harm visited on children by parents’ evangelicalism. Brilliant and devastating. Geoffrey Palmer’s narration conveys every need nuance.

Has calificado esta reseña.

Reportaste esta reseña

Best book I’ve ever read

Revisado: 02-28-24

Love and work, Freud said, are the measures of a life well lived. Ishiguro shows us three friends—clones in a dystopian society, as it happens—who try to defy death via exceptional love and exceptional work.

Several reviewers on this site are distracted by the dystopian premise. They feel they’ve “solved” the novel’s puzzle by figuring out the clones’ appointed fate as involuntary organ donors for ailing members of the human race that created them.

clohas created a sub-class clones to supply bodily organs to ailing members of the master, human, race.

dressing for ishiguro’s dramatization of the clones’ deluded beliefs that they can get a “deferral” of their premature death sentences through the means Freud identifies. In the orphanage, the young clones frantically work in their art because, they are told, art will prove they have souls and thus should be exempt from their sacrificial function. As young adults, they believe that a couple who really live each other can have their premature death sentences postponed a few years. How many of us, when faced with our mortality, are similarly deceived that death will spare us because of our exceptional work or our exceptional love?

Has calificado esta reseña.

Reportaste esta reseña

Cliché after cliché

Revisado: 11-27-23

I listened to the first half hour. I had to stop in utter disgust. The author should have entitled this book “Blatant Generalities.” Buy half a dozen Hallmark cards, shred, re-sequence, & that’s this book. He is so proud of himself for having discovered this revolutionary principle—you can’t go home again—while simultaneously insisting that all great philosophical and religious traditions have taught the same thing. Which is it? New or old? This book is obviously intended for someone who has never read a book in his/her life.

Has calificado esta reseña.

Reportaste esta reseña

esto le resultó útil a 1 persona

Outright stupid on 2 levels

Revisado: 10-30-23

The naivety of the present-day narrator, a newlywed besotted by her husband, is completely inconsistent with her other attributes. The character has no internal consistency.

The recent-past narrator, purportedly a therapist, repeatedly tells her patients “Don’t feel that way.” Such an approach is antithetical to best therapeutic practices. It defies belief that any patient would come back even for a second session.

Based on the good reviews, I listened to half the book before I stopped in dismay. A complete waste of time.

Has calificado esta reseña.

Reportaste esta reseña

Peerless

Revisado: 10-20-23

Ishiguro’s novel is a peerless meditation on self-deception, regret, complicity, and aging. It also has laugh-out-loud comic threads, such as the attempts by the narrator Stevens, the bachelor butler of a bachelor aristocrat, to explain “the facts of life” to his employer’s godson. Ishiguro deserves his Nobel Prize based on this novel alone.

Nicholas Guy Smith is a great narrator because (1) he crafts compelling and distinct voices for Ishiguro’s various characters; and (2) he skillfully conveys the novel’s underlying ironies.

This audiobook repays multiple re-listens.

Has calificado esta reseña.

Reportaste esta reseña

One good insight with too much clutter

Revisado: 05-29-23

To her credit, Berest helps us understand the often-asked question: why many European Jews ignored or discounted the threat of the Holocaust. She dramatizes one character hearing such a warning from his sister. But their sibling hood is so fraught that he has every reason (he thinks) to dismiss the warning.

As others note, the narrator makes many mispronunciations. It is very distracting. Her mistakes occur not only with French, but also with proper names familiar to English speakers, such as Maimonides.

About halfway though, the author cluttered her well-honed, intriguing launch with too much repetition (eg events told from various POVs) and too much introspection about “survivorship.”

Has calificado esta reseña.

Reportaste esta reseña

esto le resultó útil a 1 persona