Julie C.

Well organized and well presented lectures

Revisado: 07-09-19

Professor Vandiver is a great speaker. Her humility and the breadth of her knowledge allow her to present the subject matter from several different viewpoints and then offer her own conclusions and speculation in a very human way. I feel truly educated at the end of this series. It held my attention all the way through--in fact, I didn't want it to end!

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Disappointed at first but it's grown on me

Revisado: 04-16-17

I was originally disappointed in this guided meditation but over a couple years it has grown on me. It offers a method for finding perspective and increasing one's tolerance for unpleasant emotions. It's a helpful tool for the toolbox.

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Good overall plot but too much cruelty & profanity

Revisado: 08-03-15

Is there anything you would change about this book?

This would be good book for someone less sensitive to and bothered by cruelty than I am.

Would you be willing to try another book from Sara Gruen? Why or why not?

I would be reluctant to try another book by this author.

Could you see Water for Elephants being made into a movie or a TV series? Who should the stars be?

Yes, the storyline and the action would be probably translate well into a movie format, but it wouldn't be a movie that I would go to see.

Any additional comments?

The story is told by an unhappy, elderly man who sees a circus being set up and is triggered by it to reminisce about a traumatic and pivotal event earlier in his life. There was a lot of pure, unchecked evil in the story that was hard for me to listen to. I kept on, hoping that the end would justify the means. The end was interesting, and for me it was unexpected, which I like in a story, although if I had been the main character I certainly would have made a different choice--it didn't quite make sense to me. But the story pulled me along and I cared about the main character. I do think it was well written. There was just too much trauma in it for me. I have liked other books that also had a lot of trauma, but they tended to be books in which the trauma served to help the main character develop some core virtue or expose some deep spiritual truth. If the revelation of truth or beauty outweighs the trauma, I like it in the end. That doesn't happen in this book.

The narrators were both excellent.

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Interesting, informative, well-read by the author.

Revisado: 08-03-15

Any additional comments?

This is a non-fiction book. It was informative and very relevant to our current cultural parenting paradigms. I think that in the current climate of expecting parents, especially but not exclusively mothers, to be able to keep a million balls in the air without dropping any, ever, we all have a lot of guilt over what we think we could do better but just can't get to. This book eased my guilt a little bit in that respect by showing me that it's a cultural boat we're in, not a personal one that I'm in all alone.

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Easily the best audiobook I've ever listened to!

Revisado: 05-05-14

What made the experience of listening to The Far Pavilions the most enjoyable?

The narrator! I'm in love! He can do thrilling, scary, tender, political, introspective or descriptive scenes and make you feel you're there--in the scene and in the character's mind. His accents are great and he does both male and female voices well.

The book! I'm in love with the book, too! It has everything--adventure, intrigue, romance, philosophy, character. I particularly like novels that contain truth and beauty in addition to a well-told story. This novel is about the need of humankind for unity instead of prejudice, and it winds it's way to that truth in beautiful descriptions as well as a gripping storyline. Only once or twice did I guess what was going to happen next; mostly I was surprised, which I liked.

What did you like best about this story?

The value placed on characters with moral virtue.

Have you listened to any of Vikas Adam’s other performances before? How does this one compare?

No, but now I will! Please ask him to narrate A Fine Balance, by Rohinton Mistry--he would be perfect!

Any additional comments?

49 hours was not long enough for this book. I would have been happy if it went on for another 49. I'm so sad that it ended, but so glad that I listened to it.

As with other listeners, the long battle scenes at the end were not my favorite part of the book, but they were still good. They kept my interest, in fact, better than the long battle scenes near the end of War and Peace (which I read years ago and have not yet listened to). I was a little surprised that a female author wrote such involved battle scenes, in fact, but maybe that's why I found them a bit more palatable than I find battle scenes in general.

Overall, this book is beautiful, wise, and occasionally funny. It is also much like real life in the sense that it shows people picking their way through the entanglements of their relationships and society, making good choices and bad ones since they cannot see into the future, and taking the consequences of all their choices. It demonstrates the importance of integrity, honesty, compassion and tolerance. Thankfully we don't all have to brave danger and intrigue at every turn like the characters in this book (we do, but not at the life-and-death level), but we do all have to suffer through our tests in life and come out the other end with wisdom and compassion instead of bitterness and selfishness, so in that sense the story mirrored reality and was uplifting at the same time.

Maybe I should study archetypes a little more because I noticed that Ashok/Ashton was very much like Harry Potter in that his impulsivity gets him into trouble but his good character gets him out again, and Anjuli is much like Dorothea in Middlemarch in that her tolerance, patience and kindness get her into trouble because they carry naiveté with them, but as she continues to think about what she sees, she becomes wise enough to make better decisions for herself. I wonder if there are more such characters out there in the literary world because they're in all of us. Just a thought...

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