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5 Hours of Story Crammed Into 10 Hours of Audio

Revisado: 03-06-23

Don't expect a cohesive story here, this is a collection of anecdotes and audio snippets from the makers, cast, and crew of Fury Road and a whole bunch of outsiders who had nothing to do with the production. Seriously, who cares what Patton Oswalt thought about the movie? Due to the format, the actual information about the movie is spread out and constantly interrupted with inanities.

Around 40% substance, 30% Hollywood butt-smooching, and 30% feminist blah-blah.

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esto le resultó útil a 5 personas

Probably should tell folks up front that it’s not actually funny

Revisado: 06-10-20

Basically a rah-rah session for Team Woman, basic feminism stuff.

Wouldn’t have bought it had I known that. I’m sure it’s fine on it’s own terms, I’m just not the target audience.

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Should never have mentioned the Hitchhiker's Guide

Revisado: 03-01-20

The blurb claims fans of the HGG will love it, but this resembles the HGG books only circumstantially. Yes, there is an Englishman, an alien, and a robot. No, they are not similar otherwise. Our Englishman is a passive whiner instead of a reasonably intelligent and capable man thrust into bizarre circumstances and making the best of it. Our "alien" is an obnoxious academic who's hostile to everyone she runs across but inexplicably succeeds anyway, and can out-fight almost anyone she meets because of course she can. The robot is . . . bland. Characters sent to thwart the protagonists' plans could have been amusing but end up flat, mean-spirited, and unfunny. The reading saps any wit out of the text, with cadences seemingly chosen specifically to neutralize any hint of wit or charm in the written dialogue. The narrative wastes too much time at the beginning on Earth issues that will soon be meaningless for purposes of the story. The book spends its latter half on a planet designed to portray not a vision of humanity's future but rather a clumsy critique of current-day religion. Just in case the reader misses the point, the whole planet of religious rubes has Southern accents. Subtle it ain't. I listened through to the end to see if there was a point. I can't say there was much of one, although maybe the author can build something out of this framework in later books. This one was a trial to get through, and suffered due to the unfortunate comparison to Douglas Adams' work in the marketing materials. I don't find that I want to hang out with these characters anymore.

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esto le resultó útil a 3 personas

Tedious and self-referential

Revisado: 03-01-20

Pollan spends far more time talking about himself than he does about caffeine. It felt like around 12 minutes of interesting history jammed into 2 hours of SWPL chatting.

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Only one of three

Revisado: 01-24-19

Given the title, I expected a focus on sly characterization and wit, a focus on the absurd and unexpected, discussion of the foibles and failures of the monarchs, or at least a lively reading. Instead, it gets the job done in a reasonable amount of time for the amount of history covered. Brief is covered. But, I thought the reverence level stayed right down the center with neither a plus or a minus, and I did not laugh, chuckle, or engage in a wry smile at any point in the proceedings.

Also, a minor quibble: I thought the book spent too much of its time on post-WW2 history. I would think your average history reader is well aware of recent developments and is looking for insights into earlier events.

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esto le resultó útil a 50 personas

This book isn't actually about a lawsuit

Revisado: 09-28-18

I was more than halfway done with this book, and I realized that the author wasn't that interested in the reason I bought this book: the litigation between Mattel and MGA. The alleged premise of the book is not much more than an excuse for the author to deliver her sophomoric feminist critique of Barbie and state her belief in the importance of artistic freedom. To the extent she does address the parties in the case, it's cartoonish. MGA's CEO is a charming rogue of an immigrant success story. The guy who created the Bratz concept is a hero for taking a job with Mattel, hating the actual job but refusing to leave it, and then using his connections within the company to help produce his new product while drawing a paycheck from Mattel. Despite all this, the author proceeds from the theory that Mattel was nothing but an anti-freedom corporate bully for purposes of this case. The author clearly picked a side before starting the project; this is an anti-Barbie book more than it's a book about a lawsuit. If I had known that, I would not have bothered.

And to top it all off, the author doesn't bother explaining intellectual property law, California contract law, or labor & employment law, and doesn't appear to have a good handle on the differences. In a book about a LAWSUIT. She conflates patents, copyrights, trademarks, and trade secrets laws and never tells the reader the significant differences about these bodies of law, their origins, and the authorities that govern them. "Inventor" and "creator" are used interchangeably and carelessly, despite the significant differences between patent and copyright laws. There's an exhaustive discussion about "fair use" and the First Amendment but no indication that these legal doctrines were actually an issue in the lawsuit that this book was allegedly about.

There's undoubtedly an interesting story in the legal case of Mattel v. MGA, but it's not here.

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esto le resultó útil a 6 personas

Exhaustive and exhausting

Revisado: 08-18-18

It’s thorough and detailed with a lot of interesting information, in the first half in particular. But the closer it gets to the modern day, the more it bogs down into what feels like info-dumps of case files rather than an interesting narrative. As a result the book manages to be about 5 hours or more too long. The author jumps around in time telling parallel stories of crime family prosecutions without tying them together. By the time the last family rolls around it feels like more of the same and a grind to get through. The author would have done better to tell the overall story as one narrative, end with Gotti and summarize the rest. That felt like the end of the story, with the rest as an extended footnote. Also, the author really doesn’t like Rudy Giuliani and wants you to know that. Yes, it feels as out of place as that last sentence felt.

The narrator did not help one bit. The tone was plain-vanilla neutral with minimal inflection. Like listening to a filmstrip in science class in the 70s. Murder and betrayal could barely hold my attention at times.

Worth it for those who want every last detail, probably a slog for everyone else.

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esto le resultó útil a 2 personas

An explicitly pro-weed book

Revisado: 07-23-17

Allow me to summarize the book for you so you can be spared over 20 hours of blabbery:

Weed is super-healthy (as far as drugs go) and the crop has been valuable for all of human history and the only people who would be opposed to using it are authoritarians, Nazis, and racists.

After a few interesting bits of history, the book is pretty much the story of how awesome weed is and how awesome it made the people who used it. I could have forgiven that if the book had more balance, insight, or wit, but it's more of a slog than a pleasure to listen to. I don't blame the reader for the book's marginal quality, but he doesn't bring much life to the text either.

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