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Entry-Level Travel Suggestions

Revisado: 04-03-21

If you never, ever, had a single thought about leaving your home to visit somewhere else in the world, this book is for you.

By the title, I expected insight about specific locations that would provide value after COVID, like lower airfares, short-notice hotel bookings, and less-crowded attractions. What I got was advice on the level of "if you go to Sydney, you should see the Opera House". The book is 20, two-minute ads for the most popular tourist destinations, including hostel rates.

The narrator read with enthusiasm, but I had to slow down the speed because his voice modulated in pitch so fast it was difficult to listen to.

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I Expected Better

Revisado: 05-14-19

As a professional musician from Texas, I was very interested in the subject of this book, Van Cliburn. While the focus of the book is the Tchaikovsky Competition in 1958, the book provides a full biography of Van both before and after his earth-shattering win in Moscow. I must admit, however, that this book delves into details that I was less interested in: the bios of Van’s competitors, what the ambassador’s daughter ate at a reception in Moscow, etc. Others may be more interested in this level of detail. But what completely ruined this book for me was the narrator. Perhaps he was selected for this recording because of his ability to pronounce Russian names, but his other talents weren’t suited to this book. First, he has an extremely, almost unnaturally, low voice. I found this quite distracting, especially since most of the book centers on Van’s youth. I would have liked a higher, younger voice. I also thought his Texas accents were horrible, and his attempts to mimic historical figures fell flat. Other national accents fared no better and were inconsistent. The narrator had a bad habit of building to a point in a paragraph, then immediately segueing into the next paragraph without pause. This confused me, as the subject of the next sentence was unclear. Quotes frequently were not set off from the author’s commentary, so that I couldn’t tell what was quote from what was opinion. But the most unforgivable sin of this narrator was his mispronunciations of the names of historical figures. “Wreck-It-Ralph” Vaughn Williams and “Lang Lang” (take a guess) were bad enough, but Leonard Bern-STEEN was mentioned about twenty times, causing me to grind my teeth. In 2017, with all that has been written about how Bernstein changed the pronunciation of his name, with interviews and television appearances available, and within the living memory of those who knew him, making a professional recording and not using the correct pronunciation of Bern-STINE is unpardonable.

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Inspiring Essay Ruined By Lifeless Performance

Revisado: 04-10-19

While the author of this essay is passionate about the subject of music, the narrator is completely detached from the topic. The narrator has a habit of emphasizing the main idea in a paragraph, then starting a new paragraph without a breath. It’s confusing and annoying. Add in his mispronunciations—Pur-CELL, HON-dahl, con-CHAIRT-to, among others—and the result is a mismatch between reader and author. The subject is interesting, not just for early music fans, but for all musicians. I’m grateful this essay is available on audio, but getting through it is a chore rather than a pleasure.

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