PR

Gave up

Revisado: 03-25-25

I forced my way to half way in waiting for it to start being interesting. I gave up, A lot of drunkenness. Not much of a story.

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It caught me off guard

Revisado: 05-06-23

I had some hesitation about the story and some comments made by others. It turned out that the story and performances were better than I expected.

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It's not Stardust

Revisado: 08-02-22

Neil Gaiman is a very talented writer. I am familiar with his writings both of the book and screenplay, Stardust. Stardust is a delight that I recommend often. However, as good and fun and delightful as Stardust is, Neverwhere is clever and very dark. I am so glad I read and watched Stardust before Neverwhere because I would never have touched Stardust.

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An overly long docudrama

Revisado: 01-14-22

It was too long. This story could easily been told in 1/3 of them time. Way too much of it was made up of docudrama of imagined dialogue. I will skip any other works by either the author or the narrator.

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A story in need of a good editor

Revisado: 12-23-21

A semi-good book that at times, edges toward mediocrity. With material this good, it could have been a very good to excellent book. However, it lacked strong editing. The value of a quality editor is unappreciated by many. The trivia the author was able to get pass by the editor was amazing. For example, did we really need to know everyone’s middle initial? I would love to re-read it if the chaff was relegated to footnotes or a trivia section at the end of the book.

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Way better than The Martian, almost

Revisado: 09-12-21

To me, this book is better than The Martian. I expect it to be a better movie too. It is just excellent. Every crisis that occurs is met with science and research. It is not some lame approach like “I looked down and saw a malleable rock that just happened to be the same size as the hole in my hull and I used it to save my ship . . .” (and insert some happy ever after wording here). It is like the TV series MacGyver but on steroids x 10.

So why am I giving it four stars out of five?

Did you ever go on an amusement park ride with lots of twisting thrills except they made the ride is so long so that the last few twists are kind of boring and you just wish the ride had ended? Or did you ever have a stew where the cook added so many spices that it became a spice dish with a bit of stew thrown in? When (not if) they turn Mr. Weir’s book into a movie, they will prune at least a few of his crisis-solutions. I hope they start from the end removing at least the last three. For me, the ride was long over and I was hoping we were going to glide into the station at any moment.

If I were his editor, it would have been difficult to criticize the book. However Mr. Weir needed a stronger editor who could have told him the story needed to end earlier and limited his MacGyverisms.

In the Audible version, Ray Porter does such an excellent narration, that I pity those who only get to read the book instead of listening to Mr. Porter’s reading. It is epic.

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Meandering

Revisado: 07-21-21

Did you ever go to a party where there was a group who either grew up together or worked together? You knew who the people were but you did not have the same shared experiences. They would tell stories to each other and each would try to top the other, obviously having a good time. As you listened, you could not piece the stories together. They meandered from one story to another with no attempt to cohesively string the stories. “Do you remember Sally and what she did that famous night?” Out of nowhere came “Well what would you expect? Did you ever hear how her father made the family fortune?”

That’s this “book” in a nutshell. It’s a meandering set of loosely connected stories, some having barely any connection at all. I bought this loose collection (calling it a book does not seem accurate to me) because of its title and a vague promise of telling how NPR came together.

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Unbelievable

Revisado: 01-27-21

A ridiculous story built on a ridiculous premise (an army invades a house using the air conditioning ducts) in a house so big that makes Buckingham Palace seem small. An uninterrupted four+ month hostage standoff where the government supplies all the food, toiletries, etc. Nobody seems to care if they ever get out. These are not real people. (Anna Fields was excellent as the narrator.)

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Could be better

Revisado: 01-15-20

This book has some terrific points but some negatives too.

Reader (5) - Kaleo Griffith is excellent as the reader. He carried this book through some rough passages. I would consider other books he read because of the quality of his work.

Excitement (4) - This is my measure of how difficult it was for me to stop the story because I had other things to do. This varied wildly from 1 to 4. I was surprised that I rated it this high because there were times I just wanted to stop.

Comfort with characters (2) - I am not of Mexican heritage so I am making assumptions. But the characters talked like a bad Cheech and Chong movie without the humor. If these characters from my locality, I would be embarrassed. What I think was meant as machismo came off as foolish to me.

Bottom line for me. Raise the IQ on the characters. Good action did not sustain my dislike for any of them.

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Could have been shorter with no harm to the story

Revisado: 08-07-19

You have probably seen many pictures where the photographer stands so far back from the subject you get to see not only the entire subject but much of the land the subject is on along with a vast amount of the background. The subject can get lost in a tedious amount of unnecessary detail.

I enjoy history. I have a law degree. Constitutional law was among my favorite classes. We studied many of the cases discussed in the book. The author really knows his stuff. I went to the same university as he did. It is first rate institution.

But just like looking at a photograph of a subject who gets lost in the minutia of background detail, I felt this book meandered over too much unnecessary material. There were times I was so bored I wanted to just stop. In my opinion, he could have kept all the material but just moved about 40% into footnotes. It was my interest in Constitutional law that kept me going. If the reader does not have that interest, I don’t think he or she will enjoy the book.

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