Sam

A Joy to Listen To

Revisado: 08-07-22

My mother was a programmer in the 1970s and I use a lot of scientific computing in my work as a physicist, so this (audio)book was a special joy. An important piece of history told sincerely and lovingly, it felt like listening to a family story. I appreciate that the women were portrayed as full human beings, including both the technical work AND their lives outside of ENIAC, which is a balance not often achieved. The narration was good, but not great, in it was never a distraction from the narrative itself, but it didn't seem to add that extra "oomph" I've experienced in some other audiobooks. The only "mispronunciation" (if you can call it that) I heard was IEEE as "I E E E" instead of the colloquial "I triple-E", which in a book rife with both technical and military terms is a huge success - I've had to give up on other audiobooks due to the painful number of mispronunciations, but no such issues here.

Nerd that I am, I would have loved more specific explanation of why ballistic trajectories required numerical rather than analytic integration, but I understand that such "in the weeds" details would have been out of place here.

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Narrator is atrocious

Revisado: 05-12-22

I had high hopes for this audiobook - I'm a woman in the Air Force and was looking forward to adding some female military role models from these biographies. Unfortunately, the narrator is AWFUL. She seems to have done no research at all on how to properly pronounce the military terms & acronyms, constantly mispronouncing or stumbling over them. Worse, she didn't even bother to pronounce Col Malachowski's name correctly, and it was painful hearing it over and over during her chapter. The narration was so distracting that I had trouble focusing on the actual stories - I finally admitted defeat and I'll have to try again with the physical book.

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Physicist/physics teacher approved

Revisado: 12-18-21

If you're on the fence, listen to this one. I figuratively inhaled this audiobook over a week of work travel. I loved every moment. I appreciate the complexities of the main character in addition to the science - Andy Weir managed to do it again without just rewriting the Martian on a spaceship. The performance was also excellent; I'm always skeptical of performers who do "voices," but Ray Porter does it well and included the right amount of acting/emotion.

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More like a memoir w/ older perspective

Revisado: 05-28-21

I really wanted to like this book - the title & subtitle were so intriguing - but after slogging on for 2.5 hours I accepted that it wasn't what I was looking for. For those trying to decide if they want to listen, I offer these points: a) this book feels more like a memoir than anything else and b) it is written from an older perspective that would probably play better with my mother (in her 60s) than with me (in my 30s).

Additionally, like others, I was hoping to hear more retelling of stories/myths, but that appears to be limited to a few alternative interpretations in Part 1, and only offered after telling the traditional version. Finally, I found the author's repetition of phrases tiresome - while a useful literary device, they started to feel like I was getting bashed over the head and asked "do you get it yet?" This may be less problematic when consumed in smaller chunks (I binge listened, as far as I managed to make it).

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Excellent story - terrible narration

Revisado: 12-11-19

I was so excited to finally "read" about Misty Copeland, but the narration was atrocious to the point of distraction. The narrator seemed to be poorly attempting to affect some sort of accent (Bostonian, maybe?) with strange pronunciation/enunciation (especially of ballet terms, which seems ridiculous given the book is literally about a ballerina) and an odd delivery that doesn't fit at all. I found that I couldn't pay attention to the actual content due to the poor narration.

I have returned this and will simply have to find the time to physically read the printed edition.

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