Professor Spice

Genuine medieval characters, modern storytelling

Revisado: 07-09-24

Applies modern experimental fiction technique to genuine-feeling characters from the 1500s. Unfolds like a movie, with scenes in reverse order (eg. Memento) and, at the same time, seeks to inhabit the mind of its main character, who is like us and unlike us in interesting ways. The mystery investigation plot gives the narrative muscle and keeps things moving. The characters outside of the main character are also terrific, and drawn from people up and down the great chain of being. Loved it. Very well read too!

Has calificado esta reseña.

Reportaste esta reseña

gritty and gripping

Revisado: 05-17-24

A fascinating, well paced novel set, unusually, in Cartagana, Spain, in the late 300s AD. A child raised in a whorehouse and the various, mostly awful, fates of the nearest thing he has to a family.

Has calificado esta reseña.

Reportaste esta reseña

esto le resultó útil a 3 personas

Beautiful, savage and gripping.

Revisado: 03-27-24

A wonderful story, beautifully read. Draws you into the bronze age world, and takes you from one fierce adventure to the next.

Has calificado esta reseña.

Reportaste esta reseña

Clever, interesting setting

Revisado: 11-26-22

I liked all the ways the allusions tied into the story, and the details and the personalities, and the ambiguity of the main characters.

Has calificado esta reseña.

Reportaste esta reseña

esto le resultó útil a 1 persona

Interesting and a bit disturbing

Revisado: 02-02-22

The narrator goes home to Nigeria, and makes herself at home despite the challenges that presumably sent her away in the first place. The parts describing her uneasy years in the US seem spot-on. The parts in Nigeria are also interesting and insightful but I find it hard to believe the happy ending. Her lover comes back to her, but he is married, and has gotten rich through corruption. Is this so great? Maybe there is something I am not getting. I would have expected someone so insightful to grapple with that a bit more.

Has calificado esta reseña.

Reportaste esta reseña

Interesting and a bit disturbing

Revisado: 02-02-22

The narrator goes home to Nigeria, and makes herself at home despite the challenges that presumably sent her away in the first place. The parts describing her uneasy years in the US seem spot-on. The parts in Nigeria are also interesting and insightful but I find it hard to believe the happy ending. Her lover comes back to her, but he is married, and has gotten rich through corruption. Is this so great? Maybe there is something I am not getting. I would have expected someone so insightful to grapple with that a bit more.

Has calificado esta reseña.

Reportaste esta reseña

Slow but very evocative

Revisado: 02-02-22

Naipaul rented a cottage and went for a lot of walks. So, story, what story? On the bright side, he is a great writer, and he conveys beautifully the sense of coming to a place, getting to feel at home, realizing that it, too, is in flux (so really is there any such thing as home?), and moving on. Added bonus, the cottage is on the estate of a reclusive aristocrat who in his younger days appeared as a character in a couple of other English novels. Beautifully read, which helps keep you going.

Has calificado esta reseña.

Reportaste esta reseña

Classic.

Revisado: 01-04-21

Lovely verse novella, wonderful translation, brilliantly read. The characters are beautifully drawn, and an interesting mix of wild to modern eyes and sympathetic. You do need to be able to concentrate a bit to follow as an audiobook, but if that is possible it is well worth it.

Has calificado esta reseña.

Reportaste esta reseña

Wonderful narration

Revisado: 12-16-20

This narrator could read the phone book and it would be entertaining. He gave the dozens of characters in this epic different voices, yet so delicately that it was never silly. The story is a bit like Don Quixote, except about Chinese Buddhist priests and spirits, and, oh yeah, a talking monkey. Also many relatable humans they meet. This is an abridged version, but it was long enough for me.

Has calificado esta reseña.

Reportaste esta reseña

Newark Jews in the McCarthy era

Revisado: 09-06-18

This is a fascinating study of a radio actor brought down by the blacklists and the complexity of his personal failings and how they played into it. The fact that he really is a Communist makes it more interesting. I enjoy Silver reading Roth, although this performance includes some coughing that I am amazed that no one edited out! I would bad surprised to hear that on Librivox, let alone Audible!

Has calificado esta reseña.

Reportaste esta reseña