Joel Adamson

Good 80s Fantasy

Revisado: 01-18-25

I'm really surprised this narrator doesn't have more titles. This is a fantastic sequel. This volume is a little less R-rated, but it's still for adults. Good plot, lots of adventuring.

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Not quite as entertaining as the Coddling; narrator hard to listen

Revisado: 02-26-24

Ive learned a lot listening to this audio book. Compared to The Coddling of the American Mind as read by Jonathan Haidt, this sort-of sequel is a far more legalistic, detailed, and less about personal behavior and psychology. My biggest complaint is about the narrator: Jonathan Haiti is fun to listen to, at the same time sounding like a fourth grade teacher and a respected academic. The coauthor Ricki Schlott, on the other hand, doesn't have the best voice for long listening. There's a fair amount of vocal fry, short "e" for short "i" (e.g. "melk" and "pellow"), and "imPORdunt" instead of "important." Crucial to know if that sort of thing gets on your nerves as it does mine.

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The best classic RPG fantasy

Revisado: 02-06-24

This is a classic fantasy book about a group of teenagers who get sucked into their Dungeon Master's world. But don't let that fool you. This is R-rated action adventure. It's more on the level of Conan the Barbarian than any Saturday morning cartoon show. I found it psychologically deep, if in an early-eighties, After School Special kind of way, while at the same time it was a thrilling adventure. This is where I'm going for classic fantasy for a while (until I hear more of the series).

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A good biography of Robert Jordan

Revisado: 11-14-22

Half this book is a fairly good biography of Robert Jordan and a guide to his writing process for The Wheel of Time. The other half is a reference that details inspiration and derivation of names and culture. I found the first half as interesting as it could be, particularly the part about Jordan's service in the Vietnam War. As the book's title suggests, there is a lot of detail on the process of creating The Wheel of Time, and only a cursory run-through of Jordan's other writing. There is NO mention of the role of Dungeons and Dragons, which was a little disappointing (I am not a D&D fanatic, but I'm very interested in its role in the creation of the modern fantasy genre). There is, however, extensive discussion of Jordan's more literary inspirations, particularly The White Goddess.

The second half is basically a reference book, an extended glossary (actually 2). I really don't get why we need a third reference book on Wheel of Time, but I guess this one focuses on "real world inspiration," an obsession I find rather odd. What was monumental about Jordan's work was its description of humanity despite being set in a different world. There is an overwhelming fetish people have for saying The Wheel of Time takes place in our world. That may be true, but it's the least interesting aspect of the work.

I did not like the narration. I know a lot of people grew up with the 47 CD audiobooks read by Michael Kramer, but I just find his voice dull and ponderous. Hard to listen to.

The last thing I didn't like was the section defending Jordan's use of sexual polarity to modern audiences who think that's all made up (the Amazon show already tried this and the result was a plot that made no sense). There's a whole stretch where the author goes out of his way to basically say that it's okay to like The Wheel of Time despite it being based on a gender binary. Who exactly is he talking to? This is a book for Wheel of Time fans. There's no need to tell me I don't need to feel guilty. I don't. Nor do I think Jordan's conceptions of sex and gender are outdated or harmful. Robert Jordan was a brilliant observer of human nature (better than many stand-up comedians). The things he commented on aren't going away. So that section felt shoe-horned in, but otherwise the first half of this book is worth listening to.

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Something's missing

Revisado: 08-18-22

There are large passages missing from this recording. I can't tell if these abridgements are deliberate on Heaney's part or if these passages were just edited out. The tete-a-tete with Unferth is just skipped completely, and the fight with Grendel's Mother is reduced to about ten lines. I hope there is another audio edition without these deletions. I kinda want my money back.

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Not Old English

Revisado: 12-27-21

I give this an overall two stars because plenty of effort went into this production, and it's good to have a spoken version of Beowulf in the original. Unfortunately, although the text is Old English, the pronunciation is entirely wrong. The narrator is pronouncing the text in something close to Icelandic (as far as I can tell), mispronouncing almost every word, in both vowels and consonants. It doesn't sound like Old English at all. This wouldn't be a big deal if this was some Youtuber offering his own interpretation. It does matter because this is included with Audible, purporting to be "authentic" and "in the original Saxon dialect." Experts disagree on some of the finer points of Old English pronunciation, such as whether to pronounce a short "I" as in "fish" or as in "eat," but none of them would pronounce "aethelingas" as "eye-thlings." That pronunciation doesn't occur in any dialect of Old English, and Beowulf is written in West Saxon, which is the most well understood and most studied dialect (of Northumbrian, Kentish, Mercian, and West Saxon). The narrator also pronounces "w," which was its own letter in Old English, wynn, as "v" as in Modern German.

This pronunciation may be Icelandic, but Icelandic has about as much to do with Old English as Spanish has to do with Romanian. They are in the same language family, but they are not mutually intelligible, and have different phonologies (the above-mentioned "v" is present as the letter "f" in the middle of a word, as "ofen" is the root of "oven"). Icelandic just has nothing to do with Beowulf or Old English.

I just don't want listeners to get the impression that this is actually Old English. It isn't. It's the right words, said completely wrong. It's not "authentic" or the "original dialect." It is absolutely not "what it would sound like in the halls of the Anglo Saxons." The meter is incorrect, the pronunciation is incorrect. It's not Old English. We have over 300 years of expert analysis and philology to tell us what Old English sounded like, and it isn't this. If you want an entertaining reading of Beowulf, probably the best one is by Benjamin Bagby. Even he admits it's not "authentic," but he did his best, consulting the experts.

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Great book, soporific narration

Revisado: 07-06-20

This is an excellent book that gets behind the panicked headlines, and answers many questions I've had about environmentalism since I was a kid in the first green wave in 1992 and as a scientist in the 2000s. The author goes very in-depth on various forms of energy and the ramifications of their adoption for climate change and climate activists. He also goes deep into the history of not only environmentalism but philosophy and social movements in general. If you wanted to know if polar bears are really starving, you should listen to Apocalypse Never.

Unfortunately the narrator sounds like a robot. If what he was reading wasn't so compelling, I might have fallen asleep driving.

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