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excellent story, could use a different narrator

Revisado: 11-22-24

Great book of adventure and wonder. Although there is a bit of the style of the mid 19th century and that can feel foreign.

The only disappointment I have is with the narrator's use of false voices for each character. Sadly, his ability to create character accents is halting, awkward, and forced. The book itself really doesn't need them, as it is almost always clear who is speaking. And the narrator in these cases just makes me cringe every time he speaks Ned Land, or Captain Nemo.

I recently heard this same story with another narrator, and was much better pleased.

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Literary analysis, not history. TED-talk style.

Revisado: 09-30-24

I was excited to find a history of this popular title, and from the Great Courses, I expected to be treated to a university-level history course. After enjoying more than sixty individual Great Courses in many subjects, this is the first disappointment in quality I've experienced.

To put the major disappointment first, I don't believe this to be a particularly good historical reconstruction. Indeed, it is more of an expanded literary analysis. While the argument can be made that Dracula is itself a single work of literature, and therefore deserves the bulk of the course's focus, a history would pay more detail to the, well, history! I had expected to learn about vampire lore from different cultures, perhaps a review of the overall academic and social climate of Victorian England, maybe some geography and politics of the real (and Victorian perception of) Transylvania, and the broader legends of the undead and supernatural beings.

Instead, this is quite clearly a literary scholar's view, not a historian's. There is little fact, context, or reference to actual events or legends. There is an abundance of references to other literary scholars' analyses, and a fair bit of comparison to similar gothic fiction of the time. There is also a great treatment to contemporary follow-on authors, like Anne Rice. But historical events, legends overall, and cultural references are mentioned only in passing, as if name-dropping; there is very little depth. Instead, I felt the focus is on interpretation of the novel's "meaning", and "why" Stoker wrote the way he did. All hallmarks of a book review.

As a second disappointment, the authors' style of back-and-forth, conversational banter reminds me more of a book club, or TED talk, than it does a lecture. As other reviewers stated, this is distracting when your audience is expecting clear, professional lectures. I personally prefer the traditional format for these types of audio books. While the novel itself may be nonlinear, wandering mystery, I find education courses should not use this format, and instead be fairly sequential for the sake of clarity,.

The authors themselves are not the usual Teaching Company-vetted academics, but appear (from their own website) to run a writing workshop, largely online. A quick search for both authors showed few peer-reviewed papers, but a larger number of book reviews, all about folklore in general. While this lends to their credibility, it is quite different from most Great Courses lecturers in history and literature.

Ultimately, I was pretty let down by this one. Had it been titled "Analysis of Dracula", or perhaps if it were done like the "Books that Matter" Great Courses, I would have been less disappointed.

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You see why it's a classic! Skip the "analysis"!

Revisado: 09-21-24

I was eager to hear a performance of the original version of this well-known tale, and this didn't disappoint. I had hoped that the real book would be much more complex than the terrible movies, or the hormone-soaked pre-teen novels that it inspired, and you can imagine how happy I was that the book really lived up to its reputation.

Students who've been assigned this read for a class beware...the movies and derivative works will not help you, for what happens in this story is quite different from what you'll expect. This is no romance novel, nor is it sensual erotica, or even particularly gory horror by today's standards. This, reader, is an adventure story, and a detective story! And it's one of the highest caliber.

The true story, the one written by Bram Stoker, is exciting, thoughtful, and worthy of the praise it gets. Sadly, someone at the publisher decided to tack on an "analysis" essay (though it's titled as an introduction), and the audiobook producers deemed this worthy of inclusion. It is thankful they placed the essay at the end of the recording rather than the beginning, for it is so trite and sophomoric that I would probably skipped the whole book after hearing it.

I feel it necessary to discount that whole essay, here and now, if only for to defend a story that I've come to love only after reading the original.

The essayist seems to want, desperately, to call this a work of erotica. In fact, they pay particular emphasis on two passages, John Harker's seduction by the vampiric women, and van Helsing's later temptation by the same. But these are small passages in a much larger novel--Harker's experience is not even a full chapter (his overall imprisonment in Castle Dracula amounts to several chapters), and van Helsing's experience is only a couple paragraphs. Yet the essay would lead us to believe that these are of profound significance--in fact, it hints this might be the whole theme of the book.

Not a word is mentioned of the bulk of the book as a cat-and-mouse chase, the innovative (at the time) use of hypnosis, the shared mind between victim and antagonist (Harry Potter fans take note...this is one of many devices used there!), the evil genius who seems one step ahead of everyone, and the lunatic as a sort of narrator-to-the-protagonists. Alas, none of these brilliant plot lines are discussed or put into context, for this essayist the story is about sexuality, homosexuality (of which there is none at all in the pages), repression, and domination. All these are topics in this "introduction" that simply do not occur in the actual story. Even the trope of the vampire as a man of infinite charm is limited to only the first meetings with Harker; after that, Dracula does not directly interact with anyone at all. Close friendship between two men does not require homosexuality; hypnosis does not mean domination; politeness, manners, and affection aren't erotica. No, it is the essayist who has a predisposition, not Stoker.

There is also considerable analysis dedicated to the subject of gender biases in the book. The essay seems to want the female characters, Mina and Lucy, to represent the stereotypical downtrodden pre-feminism victims of an oppressive society. Here again, I can't imagine the world this essayist is envisioning; it certainly isn't the one Stoker actually wrote. Both characters are lively, well-written, individuals with no over-the-top agenda to speak of. Both are intelligent, and placed well in the context of nineteenth-century european norms: as an educated woman of keen mind, and a wealthy heiress respectively. Sadly, the prose used to describe their station in life is outdated by today's standards, but they are always written with love, admiration, and respect. The essayist's attempt to characterize Lucy's joke of marrying multiple men as some sort of endorsement of polyamorous sexual relationships is simply laughable, and indicates the author didn't really read that scene fully, failed to understand it, or (more likely) put much later sub-culture ideas ahead of clear, common, norms for the era it takes place.

Finally, this "introduction" is so bad, that it seems to be about a different book altogether, perhaps Anne Rice's works, which are much more clearly sensual. The essay seems based on the idea that "Dracula" is a sort of prequel to "Interview with the Vampire", and therefore the sensuality of that book naturally comes from "Dracula". But it assuredly is not. These are different stories in content, theme, author, and historical context.

I can only hope Penguin Publishing will one day remove this misleading addition to a wonderful book.

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Sophomoric story, one dimensional characters

Revisado: 02-07-24

I'm not sure how this became an award winning story. I stuck through the first two books hoping it would get better, but this seems almost like it was written an AI copying the most overdone Sci Fi and fantasy formula. the characters have godlike power, but it's only revealed when needed, and everyone has a tragic, but predictable backstory. the protagonist is written to be the best at everything, and secondary characters are somehow written as disappointments in the author's eyes.

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beautiful history, entertaining stories, and wonderful narrator

Revisado: 12-06-23

beautiful history, entertaining stories, and wonderful narrator. loved the moana surf rider tale, and the stories of making clothes

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series is getting tired

Revisado: 12-20-22

I was excited to see another volume of this series, but disappointed here. The characters are getting tiring and the adventures predictable. In this one, the aliens and planets are just repeats from previous books.

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Story just kind of drags on

Revisado: 11-05-22

I really struggled to finish this book. It's very much an epic but, like Moby Dick, the level of detail seems to stall, rather than enhance, the story.
The story arc is pretty entertaining, but I was frequently asking myself why one passage or another was still happening.

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Poorly edited. Mostly a survey of companies

Revisado: 12-06-21

Loved the first chapter, but then it's like episodes of "60 minutes". Stories about specific researchers and their start-ups, not information about how the techniques work. Little or no references from those not affiliated with a particular study.

This might be good if you were looking for places in biotech to invest as a day trader, but for me I wanted to find out more about how gene sequencing, CRISPR, and RNA vaccines actually worked to make medicines. Mostly the chosen articles were about benefits of the latest wonder drug, with very watered-down explanations.

I do think the choice of topics was well-rounded, and some articles go into detail about the disease mechanism. But the title should have been "A survey of hot companies doing genetic engineering".

This is the third, and most disappointing, of the Scientific American e-books I've experienced. For much more informative works, see Black holes and Dinosaurs.

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Good info, presentation needs work

Revisado: 09-24-21

interesting subject matter, but lecturer presents like reading an essay aloud. author is a literature professor, and the style is like dictating a magazine article. choice of words is anachronistic or awkward when spoken, but would probably make a good textbook. speaking style is kind of sing-song with a definite meter that you can get tired of.

that said, the historical research is interesting and seems well-researched. topics of daily life, economic concerns, and geo-politics are insightful.

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Tried to be The Martian, then to be Tom Clancy

Revisado: 04-02-20

I wanted it to be a good techno novel like the Martian, and it starts off that way, working through the engineering and logistics of this disaster. Then a conspiracy twist comes out of nowhere and feels like a different story started again, in a different style. I struggled to finish.

Additionally, the narrator has difficulty doing male voices. in particular the combination of a forced deep male voice with a forced British accent was kind of a turn off.

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