Ron Peters

Caxton edition boring and bad

Revisado: 01-18-21

More than half of this exceedingly long book is a dead loss, an endless string of pointlessly identical jousts, tournaments, and random damsel-savings. The content is worthwhile, and the performance is good; it's the writing that is like slogging through knee-deep cold porridge.

It’s no excuse that it was written in the 15th century – The Canterbury Tales and The Decameron are from the 14th century and both are massively superior in descriptive writing, characterization, plotting, and plain-old enjoyment.

Part of the problem may be that Mallory seems to have made no attempt to alter the form of the French originals (“as the French book sayeth”), which were part of an oral tradition based on stiff and stylized repetition.

I was disappointed that I only came across a review of Peter Ackroyd’s retelling (https://is.gd/1EYhBq) as I was finishing this book and I will likely try Ackroyd’s version (which is also available on audible.com) one day.

I'll also mention that this is not truly the Caxton version. Someone has taken it upon themselves to bowdlerize it, removing any and all sexual references and religious oaths.

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esto le resultó útil a 9 personas

Not as much fun as you' d think!

Revisado: 09-01-19

Ruth Goodman (2018) How to Behave Badly in Elizabethan England: A Guide for Knaves, Fools, Harlots, Cuckolds, Liars, Drunkards, Thieves, and Braggarts. A moderately interesting listen, at just under 11 hours, but it still managed to somehow be more academic than entertaining. The chapters cover such topics as offensive speech; Insolent, rude and threatening gestures; Mockery; Outright violence; Disgusting Habits, Repulsive Bodies, and a conclusion The Complete Scoundrel. The headings may have your eyes twinkling in anticipation of some good old-fashioned salacious fun and, at times, there are memorable descriptions now and then. But I found myself zoning out regularly. I needed to force my attention back time and again. It was reasonably interesting, overall, but definitely not something I’d ever listen to a second time.

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esto le resultó útil a 13 personas

At least it was short

Revisado: 08-07-19

An otherwise nicely enough acted and fairly well scripted work was marred by too much too loud music and too loud sound effects with way too much treble. Distracting and frustrating almost to the point of making it unlistenable.

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esto le resultó útil a 2 personas

Didn't finish - first time

Revisado: 05-25-19

The most boring audiobook I've downloaded out of forty or fifty some-odd. Huge digressions about his personal life which interested me not in the slightest.

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Stewart's narrations are very good

Revisado: 01-05-18

For this collection, specifically, it is nice to have On Anger, but On Clemency is an embarrassment for Seneca, and should have been replaced by something else (it's just a piece in which he sucks up to Nero and completely negates his own Stoic teachings in the process). In general it's a bad thing that audible.com books are always simply divided into Chapter 1, Chapter 2, etc. I have to spend large amounts of time bookmarking and annotating my purchases so I can find things in the way you are supposed to be able to, e.g., On Anger, Book 3. Lastly, listeners should be able to share these bookmark and annotation collections with one another, so we don't all have to re-invent the wheel individually.

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esto le resultó útil a 16 personas

Mary Beard always informative and entertaining

Revisado: 07-18-17

The history of Rome and the empire is so sweeping that it tends to be either a series of greatest hits vignettes or offers an overly idiosyncratic choice of focus. Mary Beard walks this fine line quite nicely, offering a nice cross-section of points of focus and a combination of wise summaries and interesting and illustrative pieces of modern research to support her claims concerning current trends in thinking about Roman history. All in all an excellent addition to a large literature.

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esto le resultó útil a 2 personas

Nice to have a modern translation

Revisado: 06-30-17

Any additional comments?

I already bought a copy of the Discourses and Enchiridion, but it is handy having a short, modern rephrasing of the Handbook.

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A classic among classics

Revisado: 06-30-17

What does Charlton Griffin bring to the story that you wouldn’t experience if you just read the book?

The narration of Charlton Griffon is good - well-paced and clearly enunciated - though he tends to average about one misread word per page; it's not very distracting.

Any additional comments?

Happily audible.com uses the same edition I own in hard copy - Modern Library, translated by John Dryden, revised by Arthur Hugh Clough. Or luckily, rather, since audible.com is bad about telling you which translation of a classical work you are buying.

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esto le resultó útil a 17 personas

A magnificent overview of Greco-Roman mythology

Revisado: 06-03-17

I would have loved to have met and spoken with Ovid, especially after he was banished from Rome. What a wit and a charmer he must have been! :-) His Arts of Love will always be one of my favourites, even though it often gets put down by critics.

I think the Horace Gregory translation, used here, is the best. And it is also one of the cheapest, available in the Signet Classic edition. (I wish they would tell you, right in the description, that this is the Gregory translation!)

Charlton Griffin has a great voice, and does a good job here. He does make mistakes in his reading, which were not corrected in this production, and makes a noticeable number of mispronunciations, which are mildly distracting.

In my opinion, this translation is so good that it makes up for any of these deficiencies, and then some. I think this is the best you can buy on audio from here.

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Seneca and James Cameron Stewart both excellent!

Revisado: 05-23-17

A good selection of Seneca's Essays and Dialogs; it's especially nice to have On The Firmness of the Wise Man included, since it is not widely available in print.

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