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Too Stupid for this World, or the Next

Revisado: 11-13-21

It’s only sensible to expect a certain level of stupid from Dan Brown, and that’s fine. Not everything has to be at the intellectual cutting edge. There is such a thing as escapism, after all.

Unfortunately, this book is just a little too stupid. Being too stupid means the book is no longer escapism but imprisonment, and whatever reason might have existed for listening to it is destroyed by the need to avoid it at all costs before you lose your temper.

Dan Brown’s writing is not where his appeal lies. Dan Brown’s appeal as a thriller writer is to leaven his uninspired prose with fascinating details. It’s a similar formula to that used by Freddie Forsythe or John Grisham in their thrillers, although either of those is a better writer than Brown.

The difference between Grisham and Forsythe on one hand, and Brown on the other, is that Grisham and Forsythe get their details right, while Brown gets his details wrong. Sometimes slightly so, sometimes appallingly so. If a writer can pace a thriller so that the reader is too caught up in the action to care, that’s fine. But Brown can’t, and the false notes get more and more jarring.

For instance, much play is made of the fact that Vittoria Vetra is inappropriately dressed to visit the Vatican because she’s wearing shorts. This comes as a shock to Vittoria. How Vittoria wouldn’t know that the Vatican has a dress code being a, Italian, b, Catholic and c, adopted and raised by a priest, is difficult to understand. And that’s just one screech on the blackboard, among many, many more.

In a review of the film of Angels and Demons, someone wrote that, although the plot is rubbish, Rome had never been filmed so beautifully. The audiobook listener is denied even that redemption. Do not buy this book. It’s awful. Awful.

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One of Christie's Best

Revisado: 09-26-21

Agatha Christie had ambitions to break free of genre and be considered a "proper" writer. Mostly she failed, but every now and again the Muse smiled, and one of her characters took life. Death on the Nile features the usual fiendish plotting, but also one of Christie's best characterisations. David Suchet's narration is first-class, of course.

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Dead Air Kills Potential Classic

Revisado: 06-02-21

There is too much dead air in this performance of Native Tongue. There have to be pauses between chapters, but I timed eight seconds on 1:14, just before the start of Chapter 4. Eight seconds is a long time in terms of dead air, and these frequent breaks ruin all the continuity of the story-telling. It's a pity as I've read the novel and it's fun, but the audiobook version is unlistenable I'm afraid.

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Great Fun, like the Movie Itself

Revisado: 12-23-20

This is a fascinating and fun book about one of the great cultural phenomena of recent decades. Chris Taylor loves Star Wars, and has put huge effort into his research. The detail on the debt owed to Flash Gordon and to the early collaborators on the first Star Wars film is fascinating - the evolution of the text in the initial crawl is an accidental love-letter to the art of the editor. Accidental, because a good editor would have taken a blaster to a few hours of material that really isn’t necessary and is a drag on the narrative. For that, a star must be docked, but otherwise it’s a marvelous listen for any fan of Star Wars or the movies in general.

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Outstanding Performance of One of the Great Novels

Revisado: 12-23-20

Brideshead Revisited is Evelyn Waugh's masterpiece, and Jeremy Irons - who made his name as Charles Ryder in a British TV adaptation of the book in the early 1980s - is a superb narrator. The book has been described variously as a lament for a lost civilization and a exploration of the operation of Divine Grace in the world. It's both of those things, and more. What it is most, though, is one of the greatest of writers in English at the very top of his form, and that writing given full justice by one of the great voices of his generation.

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Awful

Revisado: 12-23-20

This book was a shattering disappointment to me. Like, I suspect, many of my generation, I grew up loving pop/rock music. However, I feel like I’ve heard anything worth listening to already. Ninety-nine new releases in every hundred sound stale and derivative. So, to keep my love of music alive, I keep trying to get into classical music.

Paul McCartney suggested once that Mozart had a profile similar to a Beatle in 18th Century Vienna. No, he didn’t. The equivalent of the typists at the Cavern Club were not going to see the Magic Flute in the evening. They listened to folk music, Austrian or Bohemian or Hungarian as they found it. Everyone gets pop music straight away; classical music is something that requires a bit of homework.

I hoped this would be a book to help in that process of learning how to appreciate classical music. It’s not. It’s rubbish, a hopeless, mixed-up mess. The book is about the fundamentals of classical music. The very first chapter is concerned with the difference in timbre and playing style between modern instruments and instruments that were contemporary with the composer. That distinction is fundamental to classical music in the same way that learning how to operate the radio is fundamental to learning how to drive a car.

Reader, I hated this book. Avoid, avoid, avoid.

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Excellent Story, Ruinous Narration

Revisado: 07-13-19

This is a very disappointing audiobook. I’ve always enjoyed the novel itself, not least for its novelty of being a Jeeves story without Bertie Wooster, but the narration here is awful.

The prose is fine, but each voice the narrator chooses for the principle characters is worse than the last. He gives several characters what I can only describe as speech impediments, which makes for a wretched listening experience. I threw in the towel at Chapter 8.

Wodehouse books narrated by Martin Jarvis or Jonathan Cecil are a joy. This is closer to getting two weeks without the option from Sir Watkin Bassett while working in his professional capacity at Bosher St.

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