Nicholas Robinson

Beware The RAISHHH

Revisado: 05-11-24

When I listened to the preview, I was initially thrilled that the couple of German names I heard were actually not massacred . . . little did I know.

Yet again—see my review of "Nemesis," by Max Hastings—we are confronted by a Performance, and not a Narration.

In this regrettable case, as in so many others, the narrator fancies himself not just an expert in multiple foreign languages, but also in the accents to go with them.

I'm not sure which is worse—a narrator who utterly mangles every foreign name or place, but does not attempt to "speak" every utterance by the multiple foreign personages in the book with an attempt at their accent, or the opposite—a narrator who "might" be able to passably pronounce foreign names and places, but then goes WAY beyond the call of duty and tries to attempt the accents of these poor people, who of course spoke the original words not in a criminally incompetent attempt to add their country's accent to an English translation.

Thus we have a "Night Of The Generals" situation (the execrable 1970s-era all-star cast movie about some sort of Uber-criminal stalking the Nazi High Kommand, with Richard Burton and Peter O'Toole speaking English with hilarious German accents, as was the custom of the time) where all the "Chermanns" speek viss zese kindss off schtuffs . . .

However, with THIS narrator, it's so over the top that he actually seems to puff himself up before speaking one of these words, as in every instance of the word "Reich."

The result is so ludicrous that you just go dizzy shaking your head in wonder at how this guy ever got a job as an audiobook narrator . . . something like " . . . and Adolf Hitler and the Third—rrrrrRRRRRRRRRAAAAAISSSSHHH!" which the first time is bizarre, but subsequently FOR THE REMAINDER OF THE ENTIRE BOOK this guy does it again and again; and that is not the *only* verbal tic—dozens, maybe hundreds of them littered across persons, places and RRRAAAAISSSHHHes . . . if it weren't for the excellent writing (why doesn't James Holland narrate his OWN audiobooks? He's an excellent speaker—and I'm finding to my regret that the second book in this series suffers from precisely the opposite scenario—bad pronunciation, but no attempt to "perform") then I would have stopped listening about 30 minutes in.

I just am at my wits' end as to where they find these people to narrate these WWII books, which are spring-loaded to be chock-full of foreign names and places. The good ones probably number less than a dozen out of hundreds that I've listened to so far.

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The Perils Of Miscasting

Revisado: 04-09-24

As audiobooks are a relatively recent phenomenon—only as old as the methods used to listen to them—I find myself asking, not for the first (and certainly not the last) time, is what I’m listening to supposed to be a performance, or a narration?

The best way to describe what I’m imagining is a performance is the old radio shows they made before there was television. There were voice actors who “acted” the lines their characters were supposed to be saying. There were sound effects in the background and the cumulative effect was something like television without the screen, only more theatrical.

Narration, however, is an entirely different thing. David Attenborough is an excellent example of a narrator: he describes whatever is going on screen and adds extra commentary, according to the script that was written for him.

So what does an audiobook require?

Well, that depends on what kind of an audiobook it is. If it’s an action novel, perhaps one voice alone doesn’t suffice—maybe you need a separate voice for each character. (I’ve never actually listened to such an audiobook, so I don’t know.)

But this is not such a book. It’s a historical work of fact; and whether or not it has any dialogue is up to the author, who has to decide whether a historical figure actually spoke those exact words, or if the figure is described as having said those words.

However, no matter *why* the author chose to have his historical figures speak, one can be absolutely sure that the author did not add “If this book is being read as an audiobook, Narrator, USE AN AMERICAN ACCENT HERE” or anything remotely to that effect.

So we are left with an inescapable conclusion: that the narrator of this audiobook decided on his own to try to speak with an American accent every time an American person speaks.

Or tried to imitate Churchill giving a speech. Or making General MacArthur speak with a “gruff” voice. Or a Japanese speak like a character from SpongeBob.

Apparently, Stewart Cameron has been assured by others that his American accent is pitch-perfect. I can assure him that this is not the case. He is not Damien Lewis doing Dick Winters in “Band of Brothers.” In fact, Stewart Cameron’s attempt at an American accent is laughably, even catastrophically awful. Furthermore, his attempt at doing all the other various voices is so incompetent that sometimes he gets confused and has someone begin his speech with an “American” accent, but then makes him switch to some other, ludicrously inept voice . . .

But this is not the worst aspect of the narration of this book. As in *so* many others, it seems that whoever was in charge of hiring narrators for their books had no interest in matching competencies with their material; if I am not mistaken, this particular book is AN ACCOUNT OF HOW THE JAPANESE WERE DEFEATED IN VARIOUS THEATERS TOWARDS THE END OF WORLD WAR II.

If I am mistaken, I stand corrected. But would it not be prudent, even in the most careless manner, to hire someone who at least had had a few lessons in Japanese pronunciation? Because this book is mainly about the Japanese? And there are many, very, very, VERY many Japanese names and expressions? Because this is what this book is all about?

So it goes all the way up the chain—to rest in the hands of the author himself.

Is Sir Max at all concerned that this masterwork that he no doubt spent many years researching and writing is being read by someone who pronounces “Yamashita” as “Yama-SHEET-ah” (it’s more like “Ya-MAHSH-ta”) and makes American servicemen speak in funny voices? It is utterly *intolerable.*

Even the most CURSORY pronunciation lessons from someone who speaks Japanese might have saved this book; and if only Stewart Cameron had stuck to reading and ditched the performing, well, this might be an audiobook I’d listen to again.

As it stands, Sir Max, in this case all your efforts were in vain—you wrote it magnificently . . . but it sounds like Yankee Doodle Goes To Tokyo.

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Vance's Verbal Artistry: Elevating Prose to Poetry

Revisado: 01-30-24

In my Audible library there sit over 180 titles.

At least a third of these, I listened to just once and never revisited. Why? Because the book is poorly written, perhaps, or not what the title promised (I have several of these) but the biggest reason I don’t listen to these books again is usually because of the narrator.

If you happen to cross paths again with one of my reviews you’ll probably encounter my main lament: *who* is in charge of the narration of these books? Why, for example, is an adequate narrator given a book about world wars in which almost every sentence contains a foreign name or place, yet the narrator can barely pronounce a single name, even in English?

I give you a book about Richard Sorge, the master Russian spy who worked in Japan during World War II.

The book was principally about Sorge, which, properly pronounced in the Russian (or German) is something like “Sor-GUH” but right out of the starting gate the narrator pronounced his name “Sorj.”

I could not believe my ears. Was this book, which was some 18 hours long, really going to have the main character‘s name pronounced almost criminally badly the entire time?

As the matter stands, there are very few books about Sorge, and this is a classic, so I do listen to it from time to time . . . and brighten somewhat, when, halfway through the book, the narrator seems to have been given a talking-to, because he changes the pronunciation to "Sor-GEE."

And generally I tend to stay away from fiction, unless they happen to be classics like King Rat.

When I spotted it I thought immediately: "Lots of Japanese. Some guy will completely mangle it." (I lived in Japan for seven years and speak it fluently).

But then I spotted two words that made my heart sing: Simon Vance.

Simply put, Simon Vance can make "Business vs. The Labour Board: Trade Practices In Rawalpindi" sound like "Gone With The Wind.

He is head and shoulders the best narrator of books—he has done several—I have ever heard.

I have five books narrated by Simon Vance—just search for him and look for the non-fiction titles—and each one of them transforms the prose into poetry with Simon Vance's voice.

Try "The Worst Journey In The World" or "Churchill," by Roy Jenkins. (Come to think of it, I think I'll line up all five Vance books and listen to them all in a row!)

As a boy I went to boarding school in England for seven years or so and naturally got very used to the thousands of dialects and micro-dialects—you can cross a hedge and enter a different Slang Zone—so I've heard pretty much all of them, and can do a killer Australian myself; I once went to a party and spoke Australian to everyone all night and to this day I still hear from people who were there who swore I was from Australia.

In King Rat, Vance makes sure that each and every character—some are from Australia, some from Scotland and many from various parts of Britain, and Vance is careful to nail the right accent the moment each character speaks, and then switches to another the next moment when another character speaks.

Clavell loves dialogue and every character gets their own "inner thoughts," which we can all see as they're thinking them—and saying them.

Vance handles this as deftly as he manages the spoken dialogue..

One minor complaint is that he doesn't hit the American accent quite right—it's a bit too cartoon-ey, perhaps, but even then, he's careful not to overdo it. He doesn't try, for example, to do a "Texas a-yaccent" versus and New Yawk" accent. Wisely, but again, this is a very minor quibble.

The little Japanese that there mercifully is is handled very well and he performs a great "Korean guard" accent with hints of Chinese and touches of Hindi, and it all goes down as smoothly as the rest of the book.

And what a book! Good old James, I loved him so when I read him in the 80s and 90s and eventually went to live in Japan partly because of Clavell's books, but he can get a tad wordy sometimes . . . but it's always worth it, and he knows very well how to set up situations and ratchet up the tension and when to bring in the laughs.

And of course, with King Rat, you get the feeling that you are there, with them all, in that ghastly camp in the Singapore jungle because Simon Vance's voice takes you there and because James Clavell actually WAS there with them all in that ghastly camp in the Singapore jungle.

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When To Throw The Book At Someone

Revisado: 05-12-23

(This review was originally entitled "The Tragedy Of Poor Narration")

It continues to be baffling to me how these audiobook publishers select their narrators. Most books about World War II attract the finest of narrators; except when they don't.

If this were not the only audiobook about Dieppe available anywhere, I most certainly would have sent it back upon the strengths of the narrator's pronunciations of French place names. Truly, I believe any high school senior's best efforts to pronounce French words after the typical two years of indifferent French classes would have been far, far superior to this narrator's.

It took almost half the book to understand what he was trying to say when I heard "Arcla BAH tie" . . . after a few goes I began to think that this might refer to "Arc-la-battaille," but I still can't be sure.

Still, *any* words that are not demonstrably English are a struggle for this narrator. "Ad hoc" becomes "Odd hock." "Quay" becomes . . . (I kid you not) "Kway." "Gunwales," which is usually pronounced "Gunnels" to anyone remotely familiar with ANY nautical terminology, as I would expect a narrator of a book about a cross-Channel invasion to be, becomes in this narrator's efforts as "Gun whales." (I *kid**you**not*.) You could NOT make this stuff up.

As the book continues, the narrator continues to massacre EVERY foreign or remotely foreign words—his pronunciations of German names is an exercise in teeth clenching anger for this listener, but again, I'd have torn up this audiobook and burned it ten pages in (oh, sorry, yes, you can't tear up an audiobook) if this had not been the ONLY audiobook I could find on the Dieppe invasion (it can't, by any stretch, be called a "raid.")

But time and again, the question keeps haunting me: Do the producers of these audiobooks about World War II, which, after all, involved MANY individuals of foreign extraction fighting in places with many, many foreign names using many, many methods of locomotion unfamiliar to the casual listener—do they even give a **CURSORY** examination of the potential narrator's abilities to pronounce a) French words b) German words c) nautical words d) suspicious English words, like "Ad hoc" . . . ?

If they had, they would have thrown the book at this guy long before I ever did.

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Simply Astonishing

Revisado: 02-28-22

For any serious student of World War II history these days, it's hard to find any original content, especially on the War in the East. The same hoary anecdotes about Stalin ("Lenin gave us this great country and we f•••ed it up" etc.) are repeated ad infinitum, often just with different words; it's like watching documentaries about Stalingrad where you've seen the same clips literally countless times ("Oh no, here comes the guy wearing coconuts on his feet!")—the same stories, the same framings, the same characters and the same histories.

Obviously, there are some standouts, especially on the Russian angle—Beevor's "Stalingrad" and "Ivan's War" by Catherine Merridale are two incredible examples—but most of the rest, to one degree or another, are similar and repetitive.

There are the histories for military types, which run down battalion numbers and tank designations ("Kirponos's 4th Army 3rd Battalion's impressive stand on the Maeda escarpment's western salient, with Yeremenko's 4th Division 2nd Guard's Army's 1,500 Mark IV self-propelled 54mm howitzers were seen at 7:23 pm on January the 23rd, 1942 by blah blah blah blah blah blah") and then there are the man-in-the-street human interest stories and then there are the mechanical treatises of just the fax, ma'am, but a book that takes all this and stands it on its head is hard to come by.

Werth actually takes us *into Stalingrad three days after the surrender and to within ten feet of von Paulus himself* in the **first person** . . . you just can't get more direct than that.

By being perfectly bilingual (trilingual if you count German, oh, and French) he was allowed unprecedented access to most of the major front lines of the war (Leningrad, in the middle of the siege . . . Kharkov, four days after the liberation, Stalingrad, Moscow, and on, and on, and on) and then to many of the personalities (Stafford Cripps, Clark-Kerr, Molotov, etc. etc.) and then at length with German prisoners of war (in German!) as well as all the Russian/Ukrainian citizens themselves, speaking with their voices and then re-speaking in English, so that you have translations that are so authentic it sounds as if the speakers were actually speaking English, not Russian—and they were, in Werth's mind!

But all this, this rich, tapestry-like-detailed history would have all been for naught if the narrator had been, like so, so many narrators of WWII histories, with their myriad places and persons' names mangled atrociously; I could name a dozen right off the top of my head right now where you just stop and *groan* as you hear "Yamamoto" pronounced "Yamomota" and "Ordzhonikidze" as "Ordikidz." You get the picture!

But Derek Perkins is an astonishing narrator; perhaps the best narrator I have ever heard of any audiobook I have ever heard—and I have been listening to audiobooks every single day of my life since 2016.

Perhaps only one of the Churchill books' narrators came close, but Perkins nails every single accent there is in this book. His pronunciation of "Yeremenko" is bizarre; not even recognizable as the same name, but I went and checked—Perkins was correct!

It's obvious he has studied every single non-English word down to the tiniest syllable and worked them out carefully before committing them to tape. Further, his pitch, rhythm and pauses are exquisitely good.

The combination puts this book—and I'm only halfway through it! In the top five of any book—audio or otherwise—about the two world wars and probably THE top audiobook about World War II that I have ever listened to.

I knew Werth was around—I just never ran across any of his books as audiobooks before.

I would have given this book ten stars if they had been available.

(A little personal bio: I'm a 64-year-old American, now Canadian, born in India and lived there for ten years, educated at British public (private) schools for six years and lived in Africa (5 years) Japan (five years) California, France and now Montreal; speak Japanese and French fluently, German passably and used to speak Hindustani at a native level.

(Father was a radio operator in B-24s over Europe and flew 26 missions, later moved to Pan American and then The U.N.)

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Authors Should NEVER Narrate Own Books

Revisado: 01-25-22

In this case, Bradley comes from Michigan and has one of the strongest accents I've heard from that area: his "A's" are all exceedingly flat: "Chicahgo" (as most people say it) becomes "Chikaago," with an "a" as in "fat."

His Japanese pronunciation is mediocre, but his constant pronunciation of "Samurai" as "SamuROY" is infuriating; the word "samurai" has been around in the West for decades; in hundreds of movies and TV shows.

Furthermore, he has the odd intonation of people who are not professional narrators, sounding like he is reading a book to a class.

But the main shocker here is how he goes off on extended, chapter-long tirades about such things as Japanese atrocities in China with seemingly no prior warning, and without telling us how he got his sources, for example the numerous Japanese veterans who suddenly appear, to tell of some particularly gruesome atrocity. Did he actually speak personally to these veterans? If so, he never tells us.

I suspect that in that section at least he is carrying a torch for his friend (as he identifies her near the beginning of the book) Iris Chang, who became mega-famous for her book on the Rape of Nanking. Indeed, I wouldn't be surprised if his stories about Japanese veterans talking about atrocities were not taken from Chang's books; if so I'll have to look at his bibliography.

But Bradley seems to be making the case that ALL countries have atrocities in their past, and chooses to pick America's particular record in the Philippines as a major example. Then he launches into the early Americans' slaughter of Native Americans, which actually has the distinction of being true; the question is, does ANY of this material belong in a book entitled "Flyboys," whose dustcover actually relates the capture of eight Americans during the battle of Iwo Jima?

Bradley seems to be confused about his book's main subject matter, which veers from the shockingly graphic testimony of mindless murder to political treatises on the rise of aviation in the American military.

I'm only about a third of the way into this book, and while I applaud the author's obvious hard work at having set all this material down, I dearly wish he had had an attentive editor to whom "No!" would not have been a foreign word.

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Things To Love, Others Not So Much

Revisado: 01-22-22

First of all just let me say I wonder about the reader who complained that there was "too much romance" in this story, and that they had given up after ten hours of it. I'm afraid they must have been reading another book about Sorge of which I am not aware. The only other major Sorge book I am aware of is by Prange, who turns it into a spy novel, complete with live conversations, people laughing in response to others' comments, and a whole lot more descriptive of Sorge's love life than this one is—in fact, I'd say that Sorge's love life gets no more than passing references, apart from the reading of his letters to his wife Katya. Of his first wife Christiane and his later love, Hanako, there is not enough to interest anyone interested in Sorge's relations with the opposite sex, let alone romance fans.

This book is very heavy on the details of the Sorge ring (the "Ramsey Network") and how it operated, with a fair amount of detail about the 4th Department and the intrigues back at Centre, and if the Prange book is the Reader's Digest version of Sorge, this is the Spy Monthly Top Ten version.

The only place this book falls down is in the narration. Although narrator Grady is overall a competent reader with a pleasant voice, he often sounds as if he's reading from a text, often coming to the end of a sentence, vocally, but then suddenly discovering that there was more to the paragraph on the next line. It can sound kind of like "In March of that year Sorge travelled to Shanghai to meet up with the contact."

"llyushin, who had been sent by Centre to check up on the Ring."

Not an actual example, but you get the picture. And then there is the mispronunciation . . . Lordy, Lordy, the mispronunciation. Grady starts the book and indeed goes fully halfway through it calling Sorge "Sor-gay," which, while not nearly as bad as the Prange book narrator's "SORJ" (I kid you not) is *not* the actual German pronunciation of "Zor-GUH," which if you aren't expecting it gets pretty grating . . . until suddenly and out of nowhere, Grady starts pronouncing it "Sor-GUH," which is half-way there, and then sometimes even the correct "Zor-GUH," which when you hear it you want to applaud—until it becomes "SorGAY" again in the following sentence. And then back. And back again.

As a rule, though, Grady does pretty well with the German, except (and I just CRINGED) when he calls Eugen Ott "Yugen."

It's as if someone just shoved this book in front of Grady and said "Read!" Okay, I'll admit that if you don't speak German you might not know that it is pronounced "OY-gen," but it is not your JOB to know that it is pronounced "OY-gen." It IS Grady's job, unless I misunderstand the description of "narrator."

But let's not go to the Japanese, of which I am, unfortunately, a teacher. The pronunciation of Prince Fumimaro Konoyé is admittedly a tongue twister until you know that it's pronounced "KO-NO-EH," not "Ko-no-YAY" or any of the other permutations thereof. Fortunately this is the most egregious example of the Japanese names, but I don't speak Chinese and I doubt whether Mr. Grady does either.

In short, Mr. Grady is an excellent narrator—just not for a long book with approximately three foreign names in *every* sentence.

Otherwise, this is by far the best Sorge book I have yet read.

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Blessed HEAVEN—An Actual Japanese Person Narrating

Revisado: 10-06-21

Aside from being a native Japanese speaker, Brian Nishii is an excellent all-around narrator. But it's the blessed PRONUNCIATION of all the Japanese names that sends me over the moon—I have heard literally dozens of books about WWII and the pronouncers of Japanese range from Merely Awful to COMPLETELY UNLISTENABLE. And Japanese is one of the easiest languages to pronounce! The downfall is in the Romanization of it; if you don't know how to speak Japanese you will probably look at "sake" and say "SAH-KEE." Or another horror: harakiri as HARRY KARRY.

Yet this is the level of pronouncement of almost 95% of narrators . . . and it's just so simple: with a book about Hirohito, WHY WOULD YOU PUT A NARRATOR WHO CAN'T SPEAK JAPANESE on it? Same goes for books about WWII in the Pacific Theater. There was a book about the battle of Saipan recently that had me gnashing my teeth . . . if they are going to have a white author read these books can't they at least attend a course on pronunciation of Japanese words and names? It's not too much to ask.

Would you ask of a book about De Gaulle for a person who speaks no French whatsoever? Yet most narrators speak Japanese like they're in some cartoon.

As for the story, Yahara was pretty much an idiot ; he states that the cause of the war was the leaders, yet he forgets the primary movers of the Imperial Way faction who made things happen with assassinations and threats to these leaders, not the leaders themselves, except perhaps that spineless parasite Hirohito, who waved them all to battle with his 13-year-old level of intellect, which they all dutifully followed.

So Yahara's only claim to virtuousness is that he survived; nothing else. But Brian Nishii—KAMISAMA ARIGATOU!

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Could Be Abridged. By 80%

Revisado: 05-01-21

" . . . based on my work and the work of other people who work in this field."

" . . . based on my and others' work."

Now imagine if the first sentence is this book. Now imagine that the second sentence is this book after being properly edited.

This sentence is typical of the redundant wordiness McWhorter indulges in, and this is just one way the sentence could have been edited. The book as it stands is at least 50% overly stuffed by irrelevant comments, unfunny asides (Mr. McWhorter is seemingly very impressed by his own wit and charm, and quite obviously very full of many audience comments of his "witty talking style," so in this book he has decided to double down on this style) and for the entire set of "lectures," he seems to be playing to the pretty ash blonde in the front row whose frequent titters have to be edited out, resulting in the hatchet job done on this book.

Regrettably, it is a hatchet job whose blade could use some sharpening.

To wit: McWhorter rambles. He says the same thing over and over again and seems to constantly have an add-on with every statement, which can stretch to several sentences, all of which are completely irrelevant and which McWhorter quite obviously finds boundlessly amusing; and it IS amusing to everyone excluded by himself. (Now THERE is an irrelevant word puzzle of the sort McWhorter finds hilarious.)

There. I've just written a paragraph which rambles off topic, branches off into nothing, and takes us precisely nowhere near the point, which is the constructive criticism of McWhorter's book.

McWhorter is also immensely proud of his almost accentless Philadelphia brogue, although he reminds us at every turn that he's from New York. He talks as often as he can about his cat, although usually in a manneredly disparaging aftertone, as if he somehow knows it's not "cool" to have a cat. In fact, his attitude towards all animals seems unusually disparaging, as if they are just accoutrements to their human masters.

Indeed, his entire manner seems to be impersonally passionless, as if his whole life's purpose is to project some "cool" version of himself on a screen of presumably adoring readers . . . it's curious.

The reason I'm returning this book despite having read the whole thing is that I was waiting for there to actually be the "climax" of the book; namely where he gets to the whole point, where he summarizes and adds some amazing new facts with which to round off the book; but this turn of the pen never comes, and we're left dangling some participles in annoyed frustration.

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As If He Had His Cerebellum Removed

Revisado: 03-21-21

Virtually nothing of what I expected was present here. This book is a rambling discussion of various cases of brain damage through the ages, seemingly taken at random. The first chapter, for example, takes the case of a king who is badly injured in a jousting tournament, but a lot of the chapter is taken up in peripheral discourses on various subject which have nothing to do with anything remotely neurological, and with few interesting conclusions.

Every chapter seems to be more of the same—loose discussions of curious cases padded with a large amount of extraneous detail which is irrelevant to matters of the brain and add perhaps some limited historical colour which, frankly, we don't need.

Throughout the book I kept waiting for "the" chapter which would really deliver the goods about the brain—say, the story about the guy who toured America lobotomising people through their eye sockets—a major case that shook the foundations of brain science—but such a chapter never came.

Also, the author seems to be one of that dying breed of men who still indulges in the nudge-nudge-know-what-I-mean school of titillation where it comes to women and the female anatomy that seems particularly antiquated in the MeToo age.

The book's misleading title should have cued me in on the unfocused nature of this book but now I've read it so you don't have to.

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