DJ

A Fine, (but Repetitive) Book; Excellent Narration

Revisado: 06-20-23

T.CW. Blanning’s “The Pursuit of Glory,” his history of Europe from 1648 to 1815, and a component of the excellent Penguin History of Europe series, is a fine book: Blanning is a talented writer, and he brings a degree of emotion, and even at times humor, to his comprehensive review of the period from the Peace of Westphalia, concluding the Thirty Years War, to the Congress of Vienna, which brought the Napoleonic Wars to a close. However, the structure of the book, organized around themes, rather than chronology, makes the repetition of facts inevitable. This is exacerbated by Blanning’s tic of repeating certain phrases, often multiple times within the same chapter (I cringed each time I read “…but here one example will have to suffice”). Further, while the text is not intended to be a military history, the absence of information about many key aspects of the numerous wars of this era is glaring. Finally, Blanning defines “Europe” quite narrowly, so the roles for of, for example, the Ottoman and Russian Empires, as well as the American Revolution, are given short shrift, to the extent that the book at times reads like a history of western and central Europe.

The narration, by Cameron Stewart, is uniformly excellent. You captures the spirit of the text, and in some ways of the time, very well.

“The Pursuit of Glory” is certainly worth the considerable time that must be invested in its reading, but be aware in making the journey that you will be crossing the same roads many times.

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Some Great Stories, but a Bit Uneven

Revisado: 04-20-23

This collection of stories from the New Yorker, covering the period from the 1940s through the 1990s, is a solid read (and an excellent listen), but it's a bit uneven. Some of the stories (such as Dorothy Parker's "Arrangement in Black and White") seem rather dated. Still, the collection introduced me to writers I did not know previously, such as Hortense Calisher and her excellent "In Greenwich, There Are Many Gravelled Walks."

The performances are excellent across the board.

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Half of a Good Book

Revisado: 02-23-23

Henry James's "The Golden Bowl" manages a difficult feat -- being simultaneously brilliant and unsatisfying. This novel of adulterous intrigue examines a young woman, her rich father, her husband (a penurious prince), and her father's wife (who is also her husband's lover). It is divided into two parts. The first, entitled "The Prince," is excellent. Whether due to, or in spite of (depending on your feelings about late Henry James) James's exploration of the mental processes of the various characters, we develop a feeling for each of the characters, and care for their predicament. The second, entitled "The Princess," takes place largely within the mind of the prince's wife, as she tries to disentangle her husband from his lover, while protecting her father. The problem is that the mind of the princess is, frankly, a boring place to be for over 200 pages. It isn't that she's unlikeable -- though she *is* unlikeable -- but rather that the reader never develops a sense of empathy with her plight. The plot, such as it is, becomes predictable, yet the reader gets to a point where the main hope is for the story to reach its inevitable conclusion.

The narration is excellent. The detached tone suits the text, and while following the convolutions of James's sentences is never easy (even when *reading* the text), the narrator does yeoman's work making it understandable.

Ultimately, "The Golden Bowl" is worth the struggle, but it doesn't clear the bar by much.

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Strong, Though a Bit Uneven

Revisado: 01-10-23

Kim Fu's "Lesser Known Monsters of the 20th Century" is a strong, albeit somewhat uneven collection of short stories. Fu is at her best in the stories that tone down the DeLillo-like cultural critique, and simply focus on the strange events that confront her characters. Personal favorites included "Sandman," "Scissors," and "Twenty Hours."

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Changing Conceptions of God and the Self

Revisado: 10-27-22

"The Great Shift" is another erudite yet highly readable book from James Kugler. Reviewing 1,000 years of Biblical history, he ties the changing concept of God to the changing concept of the self. In Kugler's view, the Biblical idea of God became more abstract and universal as the concept of the self became more concrete and individualized. As for the narration, Malcolm Hillgartner's work is first-rate, give or take a few mispronunciations of the Hebrew. His tone is excellent, and he conveys, in this scholarly work, a sense of "story."

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Tantalizing Mystery, Intellectual Tour de Force

Revisado: 07-31-22

Orhan Pamuk's "My Name Is Red" manages to tick two often mutually exclusive boxes: a great story, and an intellectual workout. We have a murder mystery, and the proverbial "will our couple end up together?". But we also have a fascinating examination of the world of Islamic art, and its interaction with the rapidly-developing art of the West. Add in that the language, at least in Erdag Göknar's translation (I can't vouch for the original Turkish) is often beautiful, and all is good. Let me add that John Lee's narration is top notch. Read this book. Or, in this case, listen to it.

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Comic Book Magic

Revisado: 05-18-22

Praising Michael Chabon's "The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay" is not exactly going out on a limb. After all, the book did win a Pulitzer Prize for fiction. However, it really is a fun, fine book. It combines the story of two young Jewish men dealing with the personal and professional travails of growing up in the years immediately preceding and during World War II with a fairly deep dive into the worlds of comic books and magic. At times, the plotting is a bit over the top, but that's probably to be expected in the genre. The performance is excellent, save for a few mishandled bits of Hebrew and Yiddish.

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A Weak Link in a Very Good Series

Revisado: 04-05-22

William Chester Jordan's "Europe in the High Middle Ages" is a decent enough review of developments in Europe from the 11th through the 14th centuries. However, unlike the first several volumes (chronologically) of the series, it suffers from the "once over lightly" problem common to many historical surveys. The one exception to this shortcoming is in the area of Jordan's specialty, religion. In that field, one gets a genuine sense of the role the Catholic Church played in the political, social, and yes, religious, lives of the various European peoples.

I would be remiss in my review if I failed to note the frankly terrible quality of the narration, by Leon Nixon. It's not that the timbre of his voice is so bad, though there is a slight reading-to-children aspect to it, somewhat akin to Mr Rogers. Rather, it's his unending mispronunciation of word after word after word, some of which might be expected to be unfamiliar (though I would expect that, between the narrator and the director, they would have figured out even the hard words), but many of which are frankly ordinary words. In a series of the quality of "The Penguin History of Europe," they should do better.

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A Good Read, a Fine Narration, and a Fun Ride

Revisado: 03-10-22

I'll start this by saying then I am a fan of Colson Whitehead's work, so I went in with high expectations. Fortunately, they were met, though not always in the ways that I expected. Fans of "Underground Railroad" and "The Nickel Boys" might be surprised at the rollicking, streetwise nature of the narrative. We follow the somewhat unsteady rise of Ray Carver, a West Harlem furniture salesman, noting the rather porous line between legitimate business dealings and those somewhat less so. We meet a crew of characters that would be well-suited to the best of heist movies, which this novel in many ways resembles. The ending is, like many of those heist movies, something of a "Let's wrap up all the loose ends in five crazy minutes," but that's forgivable, given the context.

For me, a particularly fun bit was recognizing much of the territory where I lived during my law school days, albeit 25 years after the time period of this novel (I actually lived in one of the buildings in which Ray Carver takes up residence).

I would be remiss if I failed to mention the truly excellent narration by Dion Graham. He captures the subtleties of the various characters, and yet conveys a sort of uptown hipster cool throughout. It suits the novel perfectly.

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A Good Book, But Even Intentional Repetition Gets

Revisado: 01-28-22

Reading “Zamia” reminded me of when some years ago, I read a collection of the complete short stories of Franz Kafka. Not just because of the Kafkaesque sensibility of di Benedetto’s writing, but because I once again started with the thought of how insightful the main idea was, but eventually began to think “Okay, I get it already.” The idea of existential futility is enhanced to a degree by repetition, but at some point iteration and reiteration and reiteration lose power and come to seem like either a trick or a monomania. This is a short novel, and not a bad one, but it is still a bit too long to carry on a single idea.

The narration, by Armando Durán, is very good. He conveys the feeling of a story being re-told, and he is easy to follow and pleasant to listen to.

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