Kate

Cringe-worthy pronunciation- Chinese words & names

Revisado: 11-20-15

What could have made this a 4 or 5-star listening experience for you?

I love Robertson Dean's reading. I plan to listen to the entire 50 hour "Powerbroker" recording again some time. He has excellent pacing and a gorgeous voice that I could listen to (literally) for days. BUT the producers of this audiobook should have given him at least a cursory overview of Chinese pronunciation. It made this book extremely difficult to listen to, not least because the pronunciation of Chinese names and words have different meanings due to their varied tonal pronunciation.

What was most disappointing about Jung Chang and Jon Halliday ’s story?

Chang's rendition of Mao is rather flat. Having read several biographies of Mao, I thought this one had some new things to offer, but overall lacked the depth and personality that you can expect from a great biography. Not much is known about Mao's early life, but the authors could have done more investigative work to build out his early life and give some context for the reasons he made the major choices that shaped his life. In biography, I want more than a journalistic list of chronological events. I want to know the author's take on why the person might have behaved in such and such a way; something juicy that gets into the phychology of the person. I want to come away feeling that I know the subject. That's not the case with this book.

Who would you have cast as narrator instead of Robertson Dean?

Like I said I love Robertson Dean, but for this I would have picked any narrator who has command of Chinese pronunciation.

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Good audiobook but narrator struggles with basic pronunciation

Revisado: 06-04-15

This is a great narrative of medical anthropology. So my comments for people considering it aren't about the content of the book, but about the production quality of the audiobook. The narrator mispronounces truly basic English words so often that I was both amazed and distracted. Any right minded producer should have corrected these mistakes. I applaud this reader for her Hmong pronunciations, but the tone and pace of the rest of the text is pretty weird. I still recommend it, but you should know that going in.

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