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Huge Bummer, Great Concept

Revisado: 09-04-23

This story is excellent in many respects, I grabbed this to listen with my wife and it made for a fun listen, until it didn't.

I won't reveal any plot points, but the book was such a bummer we moved on from the series. I'm not sure if the rest of the series is quite as much of a downer, but this one was such a downer we won't try the rest. Wish the reviews I saw had revealed this.

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Misleading title and description

Revisado: 03-08-23

This is a fictionalized account of how the author made a graphic novel about female led slave revolts. In that respect it is…bad. It is cringingly self indulgent, so much so that at one point another character refers to the author as having done the “bravest” thing they had ever seen. This is an important and interesting(ish) story and deserves better. Full cast does great.

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A very worthwhile project that falls short

Revisado: 04-20-22

This is an important project, and I applaud the author for this attempt. At its best, this book has pretty good research, describes various exercises and a snapshot of the results, and provides helpful tips to facilitate challenging and polarized conversations. There are a few instances of jargon or cumbersome acronyms, but they are blessedly few and far between.

However, the promise of the book misses the mark. The author's own "I never thought of it that way" moments are frustratingly naïve, bordering on absurd. If it is news to you that people like or dislike certain politicians for their strongman tactics, or that people vote for their own perceived economic interests, or that wealthy expats in the US do not identify with the lower classes in their home countries, this book may prove enlightening. If you have been paying attention for the last few years, these moments presented as stunning revelations, may be maddening. The book could substantially benefit from editing, such that the useful information is presented earlier to support readability, and to flesh out more meaningful "INTOIT" moments that, while less personal to the author, provide more meaningful insight.

The author reads the book, and her performance is good, with one major caveat. At times, the reader is literally breathless, as though having run up a flight of stairs. This breathlessness, combined with the content, could be anxiety inducing in some. I hope the author keeps writing in this space, but this is a frustrating and often disappointing read.

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Fake reviews, very low quality text and production

Revisado: 03-18-21

The text of this book appears to have been written around 2014 or 2015 based on the dates used in the text.

It's also not clear who the audience is for this book. Rather than being a guide for "beginners" the entire first portion is aimed entirely at software developers learning about types of encryption for the first time, and only peripherally addresses cryptocurrency.

More globally, this is clearly an unedited first draft, possibly drafted by an AI or automatically translated from another language without a native English speaker editing. For instance, instead of referring to the "parties" to a contract, the author refers to each side of a contract as a "gathering" to the contract. To the extent portions of the book were drafted in English, the language is in unreadable jargon-ese. For example, a contract is described as "an agreement arrangement to do or not to conduct perform particular states by the gathering or gatherings to the document as currently authorized. This creates many ponderings relating the existing state of law or laws." This quote is from memory, but you get the idea. At one point, the reader actually recites multiple strings of hex code without explaining any difference between the strings.

The audio performance is likewise unedited, with the reader repeating himself multiple times after making mistakes that were clearly intended to be edited out.

Audible, you have to do better quality control than this.

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esto le resultó útil a 8 personas

Magazine article stretched to book length

Revisado: 03-03-21

I was looking forward to this book, I'm a fan of the genre, and have gotten a lot of benefit out of multiple marriage and relationship books in the past. My wife and I had a road trip, and we fired this one up. Rather than the book and its explanations and vignettes prompting deep conversation between us, we turned it off after a few hours because we got bored. After the third or fourth time we shot each other incredulous looks, my wife said as politely as she could, "this book is maybe kind of dumb." She is right.

The examples are unrelatable (adults fighting over who will get to spend more time with their parents came up multiple times) and the characters blew up over non-problems. The advice, while not facially insane or toxic, is unhelpful and poorly thought out (ie., don't treat things like a zero sum game, while not addressing zero sum resources, like the days spent with parents, which again, was a material part of the first half of the book).

The quality of the finished book seems like such a wasted opportunity. The author (the voice of the text is primarily male, it's not clear how much Mrs. Klemp participated) describes having interviewed hundreds of couples, and many seem very interesting. But the examples described are hopelessly few and far between, and those included seem cherry picked to be generic, rather than real or relatable.

Finally, the writing style is highly repetitive in the worst way. Whole paragraphs seemed to be more than 50% catchphrase, with one or two phrases like "80/80 marriage" and "mindset" repeated over and over. Even for non-fiction, this is a careless example of telling, rather than showing.

Narrator did fine.

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esto le resultó útil a 54 personas

Love Twain, Love Offerman, hated this.

Revisado: 11-16-18

I love the writing of Mark Twain, and the renditions Nick Offerman has contributed are excellent. However, this is a sloppily produced podcast that is, as Offerman describes, "bummer after bummer." It felt like "An Inconvenient Truth" with tidbits of Twain thrown in.

I expected something fun and informative. The book was informative but far from fun. I learned details about Twain's life that I did not know. But if I were to sum up the "feast" portion, it would be this: nothing that existed in Twain's day still exists, we cannot eat any of it or experience any of the things he did, because it has all been destroyed. Probably by you, the listener.

Also, the book entirely falls apart about halfway through. It starts out as a dinner party with interesting guests eating and discussing the foods Twain loved, but gives up any pretense of this narrative about hour 2. Instead, the book turns into a bit of a rant by Andrew Beahrs. Offerman almost entirely disappears, and, we never really hear from the other guests. This was a great idea that was an utter failure in execution.

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esto le resultó útil a 14 personas

The best of sci-fi: darkly realistic but hopeful

Revisado: 11-16-18

I read a fair amount of sci-fi, and this is one of the best titles I've read in years. As others have commented, the ideas are a novel and interesting take on the alien, and on the nature of humanity. Importantly, this is also an excellent book. The characters are well developed and whole, the pacing is good. The plot develops to a thrilling climax, and a satisfying though surprising ending.

The narrator does an excellent job of getting you emotionally involved. I found myself HATING the villains, and alternately rooting for the protagonists as the perspective of the narration changed. Very well worth the read.

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Excellent performance of a well crafted novel

Revisado: 12-04-17

The characters absolutely leap into reality in the first act. The pacing is good throughout the book, and the author does a great job of.... if this were a fantasy book I would call it world crafting, but it's based in contemporary LA. It's an immersive experience not many books are able to achieve. This book was an absolute pleasure that I couldn't stop listening to.

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Unlikable lead - abandoned after 5 hours

Revisado: 11-09-17

More than half way through the book I've had to just stop.

The story is told from the perspective of both a female and male lead. I like this genre, and the idea is a great one, but the execution is unbearable. Several have commented about the bad editing for the audio book (though the actors perform admirably), what I have not seen are reviews commenting on the horrible writing and editing of the text. Even for this young-adult fiction fan, the writing is cringe-worthy and needs a good editor.

Worse, the female lead character is bewilderingly unlikable. This goes beyond the "insert personality here" main characters from the likes of YA vampire and post-apocalypse novels. The main character's dithering and insecurity were such a turn off I've abandoned the book (rare for me at about 70 books a year).

Maybe she turns human in the third act, but the publisher should really consider a second edition of this book (which is chock full of potential) after the text is visited by a healthy red pen.

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Terrible listen, possibly wrong

Revisado: 04-18-15

What disappointed you about Criminal Procedure?

This is an outline, written with no thought whatsoever given to the fact that it would be read aloud. Imagine passages like this "Five. For a discussion of whether suspects have R-E-P in car containers, see section 1.3.2.a supra." Godawful. This would be a bad outline in text format, it is a crime in audio.

Would you be willing to try another one of Deaver Brown’s performances?

No. This should not really be called a performance, so much as reading into a laptop in Deaver's house, apparently, based on background noise. He should have had someone edit his reading to fix obvious errors, like reading the wrong word in a sentence, and then continuing on like nothing had happened. Very distracting. He also should have learned the difference between words like "peremptory" and "preemptory," This is like an advertisement for Sum and Substance, what an awful performance.

Any additional comments?

There are different interpretations of law, but several statements in the outline are directly contradictory to statements made in crim pro class at law school, and in textbooks from well known authors.. The law may have changed since publication, or, given the competence of the rest of the production, the author has the law wrong.

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esto le resultó útil a 11 personas