S. Schwankert

The tedium of the ice.

Reviewed: 11-21-24

Mensun Bound’s “The Ship Beneath the Ice” does an excellent job of allowing the reader to experience the tedium of the long months that Shackleton and his men experienced after Endurance was first trapped, and then later sank.

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What a mean-spirited book

Reviewed: 09-12-23

Mr. Stone must have a Titanic ax to grind. That can be the only explanation for a book that is a mean-spirited and poorly informed look at the Titanic story. How Mr. Stone could call Eva Hart an “Oprah-like” figure is baffling. And please, it’s “scuba dived,” not “scuba dove.”

Adding insult to injury, Mr. Stone’s voice is poorly suited to the material. Avoid.

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1 person found this helpful

Comprehensive

Reviewed: 12-28-22

It’s understandable why other reviewers have written that this book is all over the place. However, “The Lives of Chang and Eng” provides a comprehensive context for the world in which they lived.

It is entirely possible that the author realized early in his undertaking that original source materials, especially from the brothers, would be scarce, and that filling a book would require an expansion of scope. There are certainly times when the book becomes repetitive. Overall this is a fine historical work.

I would avoid other books read by the same performer. His delivery led me to listen to the work at 1.2x, and his habit of allowing his sentences to hang at their end was not pleasant to the ear.

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Superb for athletes of all sports

Reviewed: 06-03-22

This book was recommended to me years ago and I’m kicking myself for not having read it back then. I am not either an alpinist nor do I have any interest in mountains, but this book need not be only for people with Eiger dreams. Any endurance athlete can benefit from what it discusses in terms of physiology, psychology, and preparation. I may even pick up a used paper copy of the book so that I can use it as a reference, it is so dense and comprehensive that it requires more than one read. Thank you to the authors and I highly recommend this book.

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1 person found this helpful

Find the original, not this work

Reviewed: 04-12-22

Perhaps this was a work that would have been better to read than to hear. The author, who reads her own work, sounds like she’s auditioning for a high school play. Her obvious lack of knowledge of any Chinese dialect grates on the ear as she reads Chinese names and Chinese terms. Fortune’s story is a great one and not need the exoticization that it receives in this telling. Go find his original work and read it, and put this unnecessary interpretation to the side.

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A concise history

Reviewed: 03-06-22

This is a concise history of the Red River War. There is just the right amount of introduction and detail on each of the characters and events. It can be listened to in a long car ride or broken up into three half-hour segments.

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The longest volley ever

Reviewed: 03-05-22

This is an excellent piece of history but it’s too long in one of two ways. Either the reader will really enjoy the secret, communist history of ping-pong. Or, the reader will enjoy the part of the story the covers the diplomacy that the title promises. However to put the two together makes it for far too long story. The book bogs down in the middle in endless detail of various players treatment during China’s Cultural Revolution. Even though the many China hands that will read this book may find that bit interesting, the audio performance makes it extremely tedious. It’s strange that the producer did not feel it necessary to find a narrator who is experienced in the contemporary pronunciation of Chinese names. Throughout the book’s reading, the continuous mispronunciation of these names, especially since those names represent some of the story’s central characters, is absolutely grating and takes away from an otherwise engaging history. Perhaps this is one to read rather than to hear.

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Interesting but not a classic

Reviewed: 04-29-21

This is an interesting mountaineering story but far from a classic. There’s far too much unrelated fluff included, such as an entire chapter about a British Indian female climber who runs into trouble on Everest. The audio performance is excellent, I would like to hear more books read by Steve Campbell.

The book is also unnecessarily anti-China.

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11 people found this helpful

Enjoyable and short

Reviewed: 03-02-21

This is an easy interview with Elmore Leonard, recorded more than 15 years ago. Leonard provides some insight into his writing and how he wrote, and his emphasis on character. No great revelations in this one, but it's enjoyable and short.

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Arsenal fans will enjoy this

Reviewed: 03-01-21

Fans of Arsenal will enjoy, perhaps adore this book. Fans of football/soccer in general, maybe not so much.

It's great to hear the Professor's voice, telling his own story. It's a very point to point story: I grew up, I played football, I became a manager, I managed here, here, here, then I arrived at Arsenal. Maybe his clinical approach to life and storytelling is what made him a great football manager, but it's not enthralling for the reader. The players that were so key to the Arsenal titles of the late 1990s and early 2000s get short shrift: the names Ian Wright and Thierry Henry are barely mentioned. One thing that the book is missing is any feeling of what it meant to win the league titles and FA Cups that made The Invincibles an all-time great team. That may be just the way Wenger remembers those times, as goals that were to be, and were, achieved, but it might have been enjoyable to hear a bit more about the emotion surrounding those wins.

What gets a lot of attention is how Wenger saw the move from Highbury to Emirates Stadium. We get a lot of information about the need for the new stadium, the costs, how the costs affected the wage budget, how the wage budget could not exceed 50 percent of total expenditure, and that it had an impact on the team's performance on the field. All of this confirms something I as an Arsenal fan suspected for years: that Arsenal's board wasn't so concerned with results on the field as long as the bottom line results were positive. Wenger seems to be ok with that, based on his recollection. Unfortunately, as Wenger and Arsenal discovered, once winning becomes secondary, it quickly becomes even less than that. This is symptomatic of current owner Stan Kroenke and all of the teams he owns in various leagues, that they are not contenders for championships: Los Angeles Rams, Denver Nuggets, Colorado Avalanche, Colorado Rapids, and of course Arsenal.

I'm glad I listened to this book and I enjoyed it. If you are a fan of Arsenal and/or Arsene Wenger, you likely will too. Anyone else? I'm not so sure. The book could have used a better edit and a bit more organization.

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