Lauriesland

Narrator is soooo wrong.

Revisado: 05-03-21

The narrator sounds like FDR, not Samuel Clemens. I couldn't stand to listen to him.

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If you think 2020's election was nuts...

Revisado: 12-18-20

...read about LBJ's US Senate run of 1941! Only unlike 2020, Johnson's really was riddled with fraud. Robert Caro does not make you like Johnson. He was obnoxious as a child, and he did not improve in his
personality or behavior. Winning by intimidation was the name of his game, and many underhanded maneuvers. Sound familiar?

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Content and narration reduced me to tears

Revisado: 01-11-16

I attempted to listen to classics of Indian spirituality but returned two audiobooks because I couldn't tolerate the narrators. One had a vaguely Texas accent and a mouthful of mush--which couldn't have been a more ridiculous match up of reader and material--and the other narrator read so slowly, I could hear him breathe and swallow . . . when he or I wasn't nodding off. Okay, I probably should have transcended my irritation, but I'm still only human.

This particular audiobook, however, could not be more wonderful. The translation itself is magnificent, and the introduction is educational, well-organized, and intimate--a perfect preparation for reading the Gita. It is more than an hour long, and I listened to it several times, entranced.

The narrator, an accomplished British actor, could not have been better. The publishers of the books I returned should take a lesson from him. He is articulate and easy to listen to. He nails the Indian accent when he occasionally switches to that as appropriate for the content.

I resonate with the teaching of Hinduism, and after visiting the country twice, I couldn't get a handle on it. That there are many gods and the form they take struck me as whimsical and imaginative. Now, understanding so much more about the philosophy, I have an entirely different and more serious perspective.

This can be a life-transforming book. You must read it if "only" as great world literature.

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Made sense of a complex religion

Revisado: 12-24-15

I love India and Bollywood movies and have been fascinated by the temples and rituals I witnessed in my trips there. But I knew almost nothing about Hinduism. What I could see confused me. The religion seemed whimsical and imaginative, but I was sure I was misinterpreting what it was about. This series of lectures set me straight.

Dr. Muesse's lectures are informative, and he makes Hinduism's concepts and beliefs comprehensible to my Western, linear mind. Starting with the origin of Hinduism, he traces its evolution through the millennia until modern times. This might sound funny, but now I understand much better the plots and characters' motivations in Bollywood musicals.

The professor's delivery is pleasant to listen to. He has a slight Southern (US) accent and an earnestness that I enjoyed. Without reservation I recommend this college course.

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Wow! Did I learn a lot!

Revisado: 12-02-15

Professor Baum is a bit stiff at the beginning, but a few lectures in, he relaxes into the delivery and comes to life. He is certainly an eminently qualified presenter.

This series is comprehensive and offers a thorough history of China. The English behave like thugs as usual, and I have to wonder how, in relatively few decades, they learned to "play nice" in the international arena. Foisting tons of opium onto the Chinese to balance the ledger on import/export financials was about as despicable as anything they did to any country . . . and that's saying something.

We have warlords, court intrigue, crushing poverty, revolution ("It's not a dinner party," Mao said when someone objected to the violence), etc. Amazing to me is that this vast territory held together pretty much as a unit through the millennia.

Dr. Baum's lecture allowed me to put the current political situation in China into historical perspective. The book is long--twenty-four hours--but with a good return on your investment of time.

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Important topic, mediocre writing, worse narrator

Revisado: 09-11-15

I don't want to discourage anyone from reading this book. I read a lot of WWII nonfiction, and I am amazed that I never heard of this1942 roundup in Paris of all the Jews--not by Nazis but by the French police. The Jews were locked in an arena for days without food and water or sanitary facilities, then transported to a camp. Fathers went to Auschwitz, and later, mothers were torn from their children and babies and sent to Auschwitz for execution. The frightened, hungry, filthy little ones had to fend for themselves, then they, too, went to death camps. As a Jewish woman, I think everyone should learn what happened. Research this atrocity and read about it.

As a book editor, I have to say the writing is pedestrian. The author found a great subject and a good hook--a Jewish girl locking her four-year-old brother in a cupboard so he would be safe. The girl assumes her family will be allowed back to their home, but of course they are not, and the little boy dies of thirst and starvation. The author raises profound questions pertaining to our responsibility to history's victims. Should we keep their memory and suffering alive, or is it better to relegate them to the past? If a victim wants to forget her past, make a new life, and keep her grief secret from her loved ones, does an outsider have the right to remind her and expose her true identity? I applaud the author for exploring those ideas.

But I have to wonder about de Rosney's s editor. The pacing of this book is terrible. The plot is out of balance, back heavy. Instead of stopping where it should, it goes on and on. Rather than ending in a satisfying, powerful way, all energy drains from it. A well-plotted novel ends shortly after the climax. The author includes a brief denouement to wind things up, and then types "The End." That does not happen here. Instead of feeling satisfied, I was thinking, "Will this never end?" De Rosney's editor had a responsibility to help the author rearrange her material so that would happen.

Then there was the word choice. Sixty years after this heinous roundup, two thousand people gather for a COMMEMORATION of the event. What did the editor let slip by? A CELEBRATION. You have got to be kidding me.

Now, the narrator. She was awful. She had a perky, Minnie Mouse delivery for almost all of the female characters. The men sounded identical except for a potential lover at the end of the book, and he sounded like Goofy--dull, dragged-out delivery, a mouth and nose stuffed with cotton balls, and an artificial, low timbre that was almost funny. She spoke in snippets so lacking in appropriate emotions, I wondered how this woman got the job and kept it. Her voices from one character spilled into another character's dialogue time and again. In all, it was not a well-thought-out reading with distinct voices and emotions we have mostly come to expect from Audible.

To be fair--or, more accurately, to search for something nice to say--she had a credible French accent. But so do many other narrators.

I wish I could encourage everyone to read Sarah's Key. Instead, look up The Vel' d'Hiv Roundup and spend time on the Internet learning about it.

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Interesting Insights into Lincoln's Mind

Revisado: 09-04-15

I have been reading one Oxford History of the United States volume after another and finding each one fascinating, insightful, and well-written. I was particularly interested in how President Lincoln responded to the ever-mounting tension between North and South. He kept a cool head, trying to avoid war. The Southerners come across as a bunch of unrealistic hotheads. Had the politicians been thinking analytically, they would have known before the first shot was fired that they couldn't win.

This book was about so much more than the war: western expansion, religion, the birth of the women's movement, industrialization, education, finance, culture, transportation . . . McPherson doesn't miss anything. He organizes the material in a way that is simultaneously macro and micro, and all the pieces fit together. He enables readers to grasp what the United States was about during this era.

Now. Let's. Talk. About. The. Narrator. He read so slowly, I kept picturing him nodding off, chin on chest. I set my iPhone to 1.25 speed, and even at that he did not sound rushed.

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Small town, Sexual misconduct, Mass hysteria

Revisado: 08-27-15

Oh, boy, this was a tough one to read. A highly respected family physician in a small town rapes female patients for twenty years. He selects the most vulnerable, from adolescents to senior citizens. He performs painful pelvic examinations when the woman comes in for a sore throat and then violates her. The majority are Mormons, whose culture promotes silence, fear, and guilt about sex. Lovell's residents are not only Christians, they are zealous bordering on manic, frenzied in their self-righteous outrage. After all, Doc is a church founder and elder beyond reproach.

This handful of brave, frightened, humiliated women have nowhere to turn. Their Church punishes them for being impure, and the small-town police don't believe them. When the state medical board finally investigates and strips the doctor of his license, influential politicians come to the aid of this psychopathic predator.

He gets what he deserves by the end of the book, but by the time he does, the Christians of Lovell have all but destroyed these women, their families, their businesses, and the town itself. This book was grotesquely fascinating. Someone should bulldoze Lovell and bury it in ashes.

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Deep, Challenging Perspectives

Revisado: 07-26-15

Sam Harris voices strong opinions about science, scientists, religion, politicians, anthropologists, and humanity's morality, values, and capacity for good and evil. The content is so fascinating and densely packed, I occasionally had to back up the file to listen again to what Harris said. The book requires close, constant attention.

Harris, who does a good job as narrator--similar to Malcolm Gladwell's delivery--believes we have a measure available for right and wrong, and we don't have to turn to religion for guidance. (I don't think anyone would argue that atrocities have been and are committed in the name of religion.) He proposes that we can measure what is good and what is bad by whether actions promote the well-being of the people directly and indirectly involved. Scientific advances have allowed us to quantify neurochemicals released, thereby determining our well-being or its opposite.

One thing in particular that struck me was his discussion of the mutilation of young girls' genitalia. If we conceptualize one eight-year-old girl held down by two men while a third cuts into her, then sews her up, allowing only enough of an opening for urination and menstruation, we are appalled. Multiply that horror by thousands and thousands of girls, and anthropologists say we should chalk it up to religious beliefs and cultural traditions unlike ours, and within that context, respect our differences, excuse, and accept. Whatever the context, Harris says, mutilation is wrong.

And that was only one point Harris makes. I recommend this amazing book.

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I Loved the Characters Too Much to Suffer

Revisado: 07-09-15

I have adored this book. I can't heap enough praise on the narrator, who brings everyone to life. The characters are embedded in my heart and in my dreams. So here is my confession: I couldn't finish the book because dread overwhelmed me. I am a wee-wee.

I got to a point well into the plot where McMurtry was intensifying a novel that already had me overwrought. He was building to the volcanic climax. I saw what he was setting up. I recognized the foreshadowing. Terrible things were going to happen to people I loved. I couldn't endure it.

This is so embarrassing: unable to sleep, I googled the plot synopsis on my iPhone. It was 3:12 AM, but I had to know. I decided to read the summary of the final two chapters and then determine if I could handle finishing the book. I decided I couldn't. It would be too upsetting to live it, witness it, through the characters.

So I stopped. I chose to stay at Clara's ranch with Lorie and July. I can be happy there.

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