CB

Painful read, but important to read to the end

Revisado: 10-13-24

the central part of this book is painfully repetitive, and both characters feel stuck and not particularly likeable. Not an image of love that I can identify with, on either side.

I almost quit several times, but I knew I needed to hear the end. Indeed, the ending pulls the themes of the book together in a powerful way that links the personal and the political. I reconciled my conflicted feeling about it by shifting about 2/3 of the way through to listen at 140 speed (something I have never done before).

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A classic – Still well worth listening to

Revisado: 12-09-23

Beautifully written with vivid descriptions of place and time and interesting, complex characters. Well read.

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An excellent performance of a classic!

Revisado: 11-13-23

This requires a serious time commitment, but my interest never flagged. I found the narration excellent. Among the many recorded versions, I can see why this one has received so many top ratings. I may look for other recording by this narrator.

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A true joy

Revisado: 01-07-23

This book is both delightful and very moving. I am old enough to have a look through the. She is writing about, and it isn’t exaggerating very much.

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Annoying but actually very honest

Revisado: 11-23-21

This is a linked series of essays not about happy and pleasant voyages but about what Gellhorn terms "horror voyages." And they are. From bad hotels and poor food to war zones when you are lucky to get out alive. She is often not an engaging travel companion, whining and complaining and looking down her nose at the locals. And I agree with the review that deems her racist, especially when she wandering around Africa just prior to independence in Uganda, for example.

And yet, she has nerve, traveling alone or with what many would consider unsuitable travel companions, for example sailing around the Caribbean during WW II looking for signs of the war in such conveyances as a rather ramshackle sloop crewed by several Black men. So of course she gets into jams (no, not from the Black men, but rather getting attacked by tsetse flies and then stuck in mud and breaking an axle driving around the Serengeti by herself. She is often testy but transfixed by the animals and, in a throw-away line at the end of that story, tells us that she came back to Africa and actually lived there for a while.

This book didn't make me want to go to any of the places she had been. Most would at any rate have been unrecognizable decades later. What it DID do is make me want to sit down at the computer and start writing up my own horror voyages. And it was the section on her trip to the USSR that made me recognize her honesty. What she encountered in the 1970s was very similar to situations I encountered there 20 years later. I went to a wide range of places in Russia, and the bizarre rules and bureaucratic obstacles remained exactly as she described. Indeed, many of the trips there were real horrors, except for those that were magical.

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Beautifully written -- major shocker in plot

Revisado: 08-23-21

Story of an older man, now retired, rather morose, who revisits a critical point in his life via reading aloud his journal of a visit to Denmark. Writing is elegant, often evocative. But I found the style of the long journal sections unconvincing. Even were he a writer (he is a retired agent), I would see these as improbable. And the plot twist near the end of the trip, which is the climax, is shocking, improbable, and, at one point, I think scientifically illogical. I finished it yesterday, and I am still not sure if I will recommend it to friends.

I found the performance outstanding.

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Mixed reactions

Revisado: 03-03-21

I know this is an incredibly popular book, but I found the first part so improbable that I almost gave up on it. A member of my book group convinced me to continue on, and on balance I liked it enough to finish it, but somehow the characters and situations never really rang true for me. I will be interested in hearing what the other members of my book club thought about it.

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Mixed feelings about this one

Revisado: 02-13-21

On the positive side, the description of Mabel, the young goshawk the author trains, was quite interesting. On the negative side, it felt like it was padded, not really enough content to fill the book, and it definitely lagged in the middle. And the extensive discussion of T.H. White was rather painful to read/listen to and was a bit afield from her own experience.

What I found most difficult, as someone who has on occasion experienced depression, although not at this depth or duration, is that it just isn't much fun getting stuck in the head of a depressed person who uses training a hawk to run away from the world. Glad she eventually worked her way through this, but, as I am still stuck at home alone during this dreary pandemic, this was perhaps not the best choice to listen to.

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Not very satisfying

Revisado: 10-18-20

I only listened to about half of this. He is engaging and tries to communicate directly about how science works. But it felt simplistic and also outdated. I am a social scientist by trade, so I understand the scientific method. If you don't know about how empirical research works, then this could be useful. But the language and examples were so dated! Yes, I had not checked but this dates to 1963. And it shows.

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Not my type of read but oddly engaging

Revisado: 09-21-20

If this were a full book that I had paid for, I probably would have given up on it after the first chapter or two and asked for my credit back. But since it was short and free, I stayed with it. This is fantasy, really far-fetched, including magical powers of healing, knowledge that would be impossible to obtain, and even past lives. And there are some major holes in the plot. But what kept me and has stayed with me is the author's power of description, especially a truly fantasy day -- man and woman swimming in a beautiful bay that they have all to themselves, walking through a forest to a hidden garden and eating a fantasy fruit, and visiting a beautiful house. And a very sensuous scene involving the application of sun-tan lotion. So I don't regret staying with it.

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