Aaron

Grad school fun

Revisado: 04-16-22

If you've spent any time reading Barthes, Derrida, and Foucault, you'll have fun seeing them transplanted into a witty detective/espionage novel loaded with sex, violence, and political commentary. Poor Phillip Sollers!

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Addictive, Edifying Fun - Truly Outstanding

Revisado: 10-12-19

I cannot recommend this series highly enough. The dramatizations are tautly written, convincingly performed, and just spellbinding, really. It dramatizes the twenty novels that constitute Zola's Les Rougon-Macquart series, his masterwork, and these performances got me so interested that, in the month since listening, I've already read three of the original novels and plan to read more.

To assist those interested and those who are in the midst of listening, here is my overview of which chapters present which of Zola's novels.

Part 1: Blood
Ch. 1 / Ep. 1: Animals / based on Zola's The Fortune of the Rougons
Ch. 2 / Ep. 2: Fire / based on Zola's The Conquest of Plassans
Ch. 3 / Ep. 3: Food / based on Zola's The Belly of Paris
Ch. 4 / Ep. 4: Politics / based on Zola's His Excellency Eugène Rougon part 1
Ch. 5 / Ep. 5: Drink / based on Zola's L'Assommoir
Ch. 6 / Ep. 6: Art / based on Zola's The Masterpiece part 1
Ch. 7 / Ep. 7: Masterpiece / based on Zola's The Masterpiece part 2
Ch. 8 / Ep. 8: Fury / based on Zola's La Bête humaine part 1
Ch. 9 / Ep. 9: Trains / based on Zola's La Bête humaine part 2

Part 2: Sex
Ch. 10 / Ep. 1 Performance / based on Zola's Nana part 1
Ch. 11 / Ep. 2 Power / based on Zola's His Excellency Eugène Rougon part 2
Ch. 12 / Ep. 3 Family / based on Zola's The Kill
Ch. 13 / Ep. 4 Lovesick / based on Zola's The Dream
Ch. 14 / Ep. 5 Innocence / based on Zola's The Sin of Father Mouret
Ch. 15 / Ep. 6 Jealousy / based on Zola's A Love Episode
Ch. 16 / Ep. 7 Affairs / based on Zola's Pot-Bouille
Ch. 17 / Ep. 8 Lust / based on Zola's The Ladies Paradise
Ch. 18 / Ep. 9 Flesh / based on Zola's Nana part 2

Part 3: Money
Ch. 19 / Ep. 1 Crash / based on Zola's Money
Ch. 20 / Ep. 2 Massacre / based on Zola's Germinal part 1
Ch. 21 / Ep. 3 Trapped / based on Zola's Germinal part 2
Ch. 22 / Ep. 4 Swindle / based on Zola's The Bright Side of Life
Ch. 23 / Ep. 5 Inheritance / based on Zola's The Earth part 1
Ch. 24 / Ep. 6 Reap / based on Zola's The Earth part 2
Ch. 25 / Ep. 7 Fate / based on Zola's La Débâcle part 1
Ch. 26 / Ep. 8 Apocalypse / based on Zola's La Débâcle part 2
Ch. 27 / Ep. 9 Ghosts / based on Zola's Doctor Pascal

Unfortunately, it does not actually include the "30-minute bonus programme, The Life and Work of Émile Zola," though the product description would lead you to believe otherwise.

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Age of Anger is superior, but this is quite good

Revisado: 04-17-19

The level of genuinely novel synthesis Mishra offered in Age of Anger makes it the finer book, but I am grateful for this history of counter-imperialist intellectuals. The sentence craft and clarity are every bit as good in this book as his previous, and I learned a great deal from it as well. My only real regret is that Mishra confines his attention largely to Asia, and I think the book could have benefited by looking at African, Latin American, and First Nations intellectual responses to the model of Western modernity.

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Impartial, much-needed narrative history

Revisado: 03-16-19

Belew is a remarkably thorough and brave scholar, and she needs to be to meet the scholarly challenge of assembling a credible narrative history of a furtive and violent movement like this. Given that much of the movement’s developments involved clandestine and often criminal behavior, it takes great care to assemble and sort through the archive to develop the contours of the real story. That scholarship also involves personal bravery, since the white power movement valorizes acts of  pseudo »lone-wolf » terrorist violence. Finally, the history itself is grippingly narrated and the analysis is intellectually insightful.

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Thoughtful journalistic tour of contemporary India

Revisado: 03-09-19

While Dutt’s prose style is sometimes pedestrian, this is an otherwise thoughtful journalistic tour of contemporary India, well read by Ramanee (who manages the shifts from English to Hindi and back again seamlessly).

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Good but incomplete

Revisado: 12-17-18

Here is the table of contents I wish were listed in the product description:
Borges and I
Man on Pink Corner
The Library of Babel
Death and the Compass
The Lottery in Babylon
The Maker
The Encounter
The Circular Ruins
Shakespeare’s Memory
August 25 1983
The Immortal
Parable of Cervantes and the Quixote
The Story From Rosendo Juárez
The Aleph
Dream Tigers

You’ll notice that there is no “The Garden of Forking Paths," nor "Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius,” nor “Funes the Memorious,” nor “Pierre Menard, Author of the Quixote." So, as many others have pointed out, this is not just incomplete; it’s missing many of Borges’s most famous fictions. But what’s here is good and well read.

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Exceptionally good

Revisado: 08-30-18

Prof. Ayers presents a well-organized and concise history of one the most historically complex regions in the U.S., weaving economic, political, and cultural threads together in a clear and convincing manner. Thankfully, the brutal facts of racial oppression defining the region are not white-washed here but rather illuminated so that the changing forms of racial subjugation that appear in different decades begin to become more unified and comprehensible if no less repugnant. Many listeners will find their assumptions challenged, and that’s a very good thing.

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esto le resultó útil a 26 personas

Exceptional and Fascinating Course

Revisado: 08-07-18

Of the many TGC courses I’ve listened to, this is among the very best. It is sensibly structured, and despite the density of detail, the lectures remain remarkably clear and easy to follow throughout. Best of all is the way Prof. Baum peppers many of the lectures with personal anecdotes drawn from his visits to China going back to the mid-1970s in the late stages of Mao’s reign. The anecdotes he shares are always relevant to the subject at hand and add insight and texture to the lecture’s content. Truly a gem!

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A fine introduction

Revisado: 03-21-18

This is my first listen to any of Smillie’s guides to opera, and I am delighted to find how excellent it is. You are given, in economical fashion, a sense of the opera’s historical context, its dramatic elements, and its musical characteristics. The excerpts of Puccini’s work perfectly punctuate the overview, whetting your taste for the full musical experience.

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Excellent

Revisado: 08-07-13

Would you consider the audio edition of With Amusement for All to be better than the print version?

Best to have both

What did you like best about this story?

Transportive strangeness of "old weird America"

What do you think the narrator could have done better?

His voice and performance are just fine

If you could give With Amusement for All a new subtitle, what would it be?

....

Any additional comments?

....

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esto le resultó útil a 3 personas