A. McNeely

Fun stuff and a fun set of characters

Revisado: 05-01-25

Creative mixing of fun elements makes this a book well worth hearing. That stated, the author needs to be told that Katherine Hepburn most definitely did not have any sort of “Southern accent” as she was well known for her New England “Yankee” birth, education, and family. It’s the sort of real-life reference that smudges the otherwise delightful details.

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Constructions of personhood both internal and external

Revisado: 03-31-25

Obviously dated, and not predictive (as we are now living in “after” the supposed time setting of the story as enumerated), but the conception of what is to be understood and accepted as an entity understood to be human is well worth the exploration. Likewise the notion of truth behind religious truth.

And I still have no idea of where you could possibly think “blade runner” would be an appropriate title for this story or any derivative hereof.

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Drab

Revisado: 03-15-25

It just didn’t work for me. Drab drab drab drab - it was just “blah”. I could not get into it.

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Meh

Revisado: 04-23-24

Interesting subject, the book is read by the author. Sometimes this is fine. Not so much this time. As for the copy itself, there seems to be an over abundance of the use of the word “however”. It’s not a charming over use, perhaps as you might find the use of Adrian Monk’s “here’s the thing.” It’s annoying.

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Roman history without gloss

Revisado: 02-07-24

Fantastic! The author writes in unabashedly frank language about the topic. The reader (woman, oh how I could kiss you for your performance) intones the perfect pitch, tenor, pronunciations, and marvelously understated matter-of-fact that makes this audio book shimmer.

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Tedious, repetitive but a good story

Revisado: 08-07-23

The history can be a bit tedious and repetitive. The story of discovery itself mirrors much of the history of the philosophy of science. There is the hat tip early in a mention of Thomas Kuhn. THAT name gets correct pronunciation however the narrator bungles too many of the names to mention along the way. A particular personal irritation was the pronunciation of “Zorathustrian”. The producer or director deserves a good thumping to their heads for either not knowing or not caring to help the narrator with the more obscure words. Seriously irritating!

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Some details are a reach, some details are wrong

Revisado: 07-12-23

Some details are a reach, some details are wrong, but the story in engaging.

US Senators don’t run anything but staffers. And they certainly don’t tell Representatives what to do. The job of being a Representative also does leave time for anything resembling being an architect designing AND building fifty structures.

The details about Georgia are absurdly, laughably wrong. South Fulton County has bedrock granite that simply would require far to long to blast through than two years to achieve just one shaft at 1000-ft let alone 50 of them. The University of Georgia doesn’t have a school of architecture nor plans to create one.

All those issues aside, the story is otherwise engaging.

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“However….”

Revisado: 06-09-21

Lots of details of Spain’s tortured modern political experience are explained and explored about as thoroughly as a book covering the span of time it does. It is an engaging tale up until about the time the Chevy Chase updates on SNL would have been airing.

The performance is lovely although some pronunciations are somewhat British (think of the way Lord Byron would have pronounced “Juan”) though not consistently so. That’s annoying at times. It’s not as annoying as the ubiquitousness of the word “however”.

The history here seems to constantly happen despite whatever contemporaneous indications would seem to predict. The national anthem of Spain as presented here ought to be “On the Other Hand”. If listeners to the performance were to engage in taking a shot of liquor every time “however” is pronounced then they would run through a case of booze well before the end of the performance. Talk about needing a siesta! Geez!

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esto le resultó útil a 4 personas

Good ornithology, speculative and political anthropology

Revisado: 12-18-20

After an engaging start this book settles into a nice cantering pace. It’s a nice ride viewing the interactive of Darwin and Wallace over “sexual selection” and the role of aesthetics, if there is any, in evolution. The dressage performance is decent, respectable, and for some reason begins to have a performance of name-dropping. Annoying as that show of intellectual snobbery may be, the ride keeps apace in a jaunty manner as the celebrity is just a blip in the narrative. That is until the politics and anthropology get started. Who gives a rat’s ass that a study of duck penis was paid for with Federal recovery funds? That would be the guy who was on the receiving end of the money when the study made national news, aka the author of this book. Who knew that ornithology was the place to really understand the evolution of humanity? That same guy. The book is a third longer than it ought to be with no discernible insight into the role of aesthetics because of the pseudoscientific blathering supposedly about anthropology and human evolution. As for the performance, the narrator does an excellent job. Sadly, though the narrator performs various bird songs as written in the text of the book he was not provided an opportunity for either a turkey or duck call.

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