Diogenes of Sinope

Story telling hour

Revisado: 11-12-22

The book is very accessible if you know no Roman history. That being said, it is a very annoying book and the shallow, cartoonish treatment of its subject matter was very disappointing. The book needed a good editor who could tell the author that the one-liners at the end of every paragraph are not funny or witty, merely gratuitous and annoying. This was a slog to read despite my love for Roman history and its naturally interesting topic. I wanted more substance and content. In short, if you know nothing about ancient Rome this might be a light introduction if you can wade through the author's attempts at humor. If you know anything substantial about Roman history and culture, you'll most likely be irritated by the sweeping, non-critical claims, and shallow treatment of the topics.

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This would be MUCH better if it included a PDF

Revisado: 05-23-19

The audio is repeated very, very slowly which helps with pronunciation but requires immense patience. 10 hours to learn 500 phases! It would have been much better if it included a PDF for reviewing the phrases and making sure that you learn to spell as well.

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New age book on aliens - little on time travel

Revisado: 10-30-17

First half of the books is generic science trivia on almost every conceivable topic. The main purpose seems to be to talk about new age flim flam: Elvis and UFOs, Easter Island, lost advanced civilizations, the ark of the covenant as alien technology, Atlantis, Ancient astronauts, angels and demons, Reptilians, etc. Evidence for the claims seem to be based on the fact that if you google these topics, you get lots of hits. Ha! Ultimately, I wouldn't care but the book pretends to be about the science of time travel. Standard bait and switch. Will ask for a refund. (I gave two stars on Performance since the Indian woman reading the book butchered the pronunciation of "David Bowie" - who also saw a UFO).

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A great biography of a great man

Revisado: 10-16-16

This biography of James Baldwin is very well researched, engaging, and very balanced. Baldwin as a black man dealing with racism and oppression, Baldwin as a gay man facing homophobia, Baldwin as religious man seeking the divine, and Baldwin as author perfecting his craft all get more or less equal treatment.

Leeming knows and attends to the history of Baldwin's time and the political and social issues of the day; he is very familiar with Baldwin's fictional and non-fictional texts. The book moves well and can be read along with Baldwin's novels to bring additional depth to the reading of his works. The audio performance is very good.

Highly recommended.

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Not much here

Revisado: 09-30-16

Not much here. Basically the audiobook retells the myths with little reflection or discussion. The historical and cultural background is rather superficial. The author does not seem to know the scholarship and the narrator struggles with Greek names. I've read other books from this (Charles River) series and they offered much more substance, context, analysis and depth. There is more serious content on the wikipedia page than in this audiobook. I would not recommend this to my students.

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As God Commands - A teen and his skinhead father

Revisado: 04-16-16

This is the same book as "As God Commands" (even the same translator: Jonathan Hunt). I assume the publisher thought it might sell better with this title. The original Italian title is "Come Dio comanda."

The book tells the story of a teenager growing up in Italy with his Neo-Nazi/skin head father and a small circle of other colorful and equally disfunctional characters. It is a fascinating story which wrestles with ideas such as fatherhood, loyalty, moral conscience, unconditional love, personal tragedy, and the place of religion in the lives of social outsiders.

The books starts off a little slow but becomes very compelling and interesting in the second half where it becomes very hard to put down. It is well written, insightful, and morally challenging. Niccolò Ammaniti is quickly becoming one of my favorite authors.

Highly recommended.

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Griffith Translation of Apology and Phaedo

Revisado: 11-15-14

Plato's Apology and Phaedo are acknowledged as two of the most important works in the history of philosophy, so I am not going to bother talking about the content (see the other reviews). Instead, since Audible seldom identifies the translator or the edition from which the recordings are made (and if the reader wants to purchase the text to read along, sometimes it is difficult to find the correct edition), my contribution will be to provide this information.

This excellent translation is by Tom Griffith. If one wants to read along, buy "Symposium and The Death of Socrates" (Classics of World Literature), Wordsworth Editions, 1998 (ISBN 978-1853264795). This print edition also includes the Symposium, Euthyphro, and Crito. Unfortunately it is not available on Kindle at this time.

The translation is fair and accurate without being overly literal. The performance in the audiobook is outstanding. Highly recommended.

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Great original, poor translation

Revisado: 09-27-14

It is always nice to see historically and culturally important texts, such as the plays of Sophocles, available through audible. Unfortunately, little thought is put into the quality of the translation. This translation, while reasonably faithful to the Greek original, is excessively pedantic and full of itself. Sophocles wrote his plays to communicate important ideas to ordinary citizens, the demos. This translation does not seem to try to communicate the ideas of the text in a clear and engaging manner, but rather, seeks to demonstrate the author's erudition and facility with obscure and archaic vocabulary. The audiobook is useless as a teaching resource, since few students can navigate sentences such as "In verities I wot" or "One, as a quadruped enfigured, keratoid in height, a moiety bullish, was Acheloos..."

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Worked for me

Revisado: 07-31-13

I don't normally write reviews about health/diet books but the ideas in this book have really made a difference in my life. I started this diet about two months ago and I have dropped about 30 lbs (from 207 to 176 lbs). When I started, my dream weight was 180 lbs. Now I must confess that I tweaked the system to speed up the weight loss. First, on the fast days I only eat between 50 to 200 calories (not the 600 allowed for men). I also do heavy cardio on the fast days (sometimes up to two hours) and lighter cardio on my feast days. Now that I am at my ideal weight I'll probably lighten up the workouts and eat the full 600 calories on the fast days (or only fast once a week). Losing weight this fast is probably not safe or healthy, but it's what I did. I think that following the diet more strictly would also have brought results, just slower.

I really like this diet since 5 days a week I can eat whatever I want (within reason) and frankly I am just not willing to give up chocolate, chicken wings, chips and salsa, and beer. I've tried other systems (such as "I Can Do This Diet") without any real or lasting effects (normal yo-yo effects). But this one worked for me.

Background info: I am a 51 years old male, and a little over 6 feet tall. I've been stuck at around 200-215 lbs for years even though I go to the gym somewhat regularly and I eat mostly healthy food. I teach for a living.

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Not for the faint hearted

Revisado: 06-27-13

First, the reader is amazing. This is a very, very difficult book to narrate and Luis Moreno does a superb job. I'll be checking out other books narrated by him.

Now to the book. This book is not for everyone - probably not for most people. It requires work and an understanding of what the Beat authors were trying to do and more specifically a grasp of Burroughs' literary aims and personal story. I recommend that those not familiar with Burroughs first read/listen to the introduction to "Queer Beats", edited by Regina Marler (also available from Audible.com). It does a nice job explaining the movement and giving a brief literary biography to Burroughs and related authors/poets; Marler also discusses the social and literary significance of the Beat movement.

The Wild Boys has no coherent story. That is not the way Burroughs writes. It is a collection of cinematic/fantasy scenes that are often visceral, pornographic, violent, surreal, brutal, beautiful, and disturbing. Images and scenes double back and are retold or re-imagined repeated. Nothing is taboo. Most of the sexual scenes are male on male, and since many come from Burroughs' memory and fantasies, they involve under-age boys and are very graphic and explicit. Burroughs creates an anti-conventional fantasy world (a queer Neverland populated with anarchistic gay lost boys) where he flips the bird to conventional mores and ideals, using his mastery of language and imagery as a weapon and a paint brush. I think that this is an amazing book and that Burroughs is a great author; I suspect that most listeners will think it is trash and pornography.

YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED.

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