Baudelaire

Worth listening to again and again

Reviewed: 03-31-24

I read this book the first time when I was about 12, and since then, many more times thereafter. Clavell’s novel is not a short beach read, but trust me—it’s worth the trip. The depth of his historical research into 1600s Japan is evident on every page, and our central character Blackthorne acts as our eyes and ears, mystified as many of us would be by the richness and complexity of this culture and time.

But long after the Game of Thrones conflict for power is over, it’s the characters that stay with you—the canny strategist Toranaga, the incredibly disciplined and decisive negotiator Mariko, the reckless Yabu—all of these characters will stay in your memory because you until you feel as if you’ve lived this plot with them.

If I have any complaint, it is not about the novel, but the narrator. While recognizing that voicing a 50-60 hour novel with dozens of named characters is no mean feat, I found Lister’s pronunciation of Japanese names and words a distraction at times, as when he voices working-class Japanese characters as vaguely Cockney, or pronounces Fujiko as “Hujiko.” As I do not speak Japanese, I concede this may be the correct Japanese pronunciation of that name, but I do know the word “samurai” is not pronounced “Sam-yooo-rai.”

That brief quibble said, this work is outstanding, and more than worth the investment of time. You will not be sorry—and in fact, I’ll bet you find it hard to put down.

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Definitely a product of the time

Reviewed: 09-25-22

_TW/ CW: The book is definitely written at a time when casual racism and homophobia were far more prevalent.

Overall, this was a fast-paced read, but definitely a product of the times, not just in the casual slurs department. Without giving anything away, the story starts with a setup like “Sorry Wrong Number,” but it’s a specific crank call from a mysterious person, not a mistake.

I figured out the twist by the end of the first page, but because I’m generally horrible at doing this accurately, I figure was being set up as a reader to expect Ending X when I’d really be getting Ending Y—a twist in a direction I wasn’t expecting.

Nope. Happened like I predicted.

A big subplot concerns a character who is revealed to be gay. The characters react like you’d expect, and the fate of this character is also as you’d expect. :-( Just be aware.

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Great story, amateurish narration

Reviewed: 11-30-20

First, if you have watched the series, you’ll realize how faithfully it parallels the book, with the exception that the book has Beth dealing more successfully with some of her personal issues, and the series increases the stakes for Beth at a number of points the book did not.

In some ways, the series did a better job making use of characters and situations. To use a chess metaphor, Tevis doesn’t develop his back rank as well as Netflix. There are some odd things that missed the fact-checkers—microwaved airplane food and Nautilus machines didn’t exist then, I think—but they weren’t a big deal. However, if you enjoyed the series, as I did, you’ll enjoy this revisitation.

The real drawback is Amy Landon’s narration. I’m surprised she was chosen for this work, to be honest. Landon’s biggest drawback is her inability to voice male voices, which is a problem in that most novels tend to have a mix of men and women. Instead of pitching her voice beyond her range, a better decision would have been to vary characterization in other ways, but she doesn’t, and as a result, sounds very unconvincing.

Also unconvincing are her Mexican and Russian accents, which sound the same. Her pronunciation of foreign words is also inaccurate.

Bottom line, Landon would have done a better job by simply reading the text. If you walk in to this Audible selection understanding this limitation and still being willing to persist for the sake of the book, it’s worth the purchase.

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Pronunciation Counts

Reviewed: 07-28-19

The Audible Edition

The good news first. Adrian Griffin has a pleasant voice with clear articulation and variation. Free from annoying vocal mannerisms, his voice is engaging to listen to and he does a solid job narrating the first-person Lovecraft classic here.

That said, Lovecraft is an author who doesn't stint on using "I-scored-1600-on-the-SATs" vocabulary throughout his work. Here's one example:

"One edifice hewn from the solid rock seemed to go back forty or possibly even fifty million years—to the lower Eocene or upper Cretaceous—and contained bas-reliefs of an artistry surpassing anything else, with one tremendous exception, that we encountered."

This is a fairly typical passage. The problem is that Griffin clearly isn't familiar with many of the less-frequent words used here, and as a result, makes a major audiobook sin in mispronouncing them. Some examples include the following:

1. "Aeons." This word is pronounced "EEE-onz." Griffin pronounces it "AYons" throughout. I do understand that "ae" is a less-common vowel combination in English now than in Lovecraft's time, but this issue should have been caught by the reader or his producer/director. Source: https://www.macmillandictionary.com/us/dictionary/american/eon?q=eons

2. "Bas-relief." The preferred pronunciation is "BAH-relief," not "BASS." Source: https://www.macmillandictionary.com/us/pronunciation/american/bas-relief

Those were only two that I can recall, but there were more. It happened with enough frequency so that it genuinely impeded the experience of listening to this story.

This Story
If you're listening to Lovecraft, you're probably a horror fan. However, be aware that this story is a very slow burn, even by slow-burn story standards. It has a great deal of power, but for me as a reader, Lovecraft dulls his impact by over-explanation (and I'm a fan of 18th and 19th-century fiction, so over-explanation generally isn't a problem for me).

SPOILERS FOLLOW.

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I think it's also crucial that authors carry out the suspension of disbelief. Am I willing to suspend my disbelief and enjoy a story in which successive hosts of space aliens from millions of years ago colonize Antarctica? Sure! Damn straight! OTOH, I didn't find it at all credible that in a matter of -- what? A few days? -- the Antarctic explorers had successfully decoded the alien's art and text sufficiently to read and understand their history over thousands of years. So no. Unfortunately, Lovecraft leans on this (improbable) chain of events for understanding much of what follows. By the time we do get to the end, the story, at least for me, felt more than played out. It was best in the beginning, where the looming sense of "OMG, what the heck destroyed the Antarctic camp?" was strongest and least determinable.

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Very repetitive, mostly old advice

Reviewed: 10-07-16

This book wasn’t for you, but who do you think might enjoy it more?

Not sure

Would you ever listen to anything by Barbara Oakley again?

Not really

Any additional comments?

This book was primarily old advice repeated ad infinitum-- like, "Make sure you take a break from focused study because that will help you rest and recuperate so that you're learning more effectively." This is one of the oldest study tips in the world, but it was repeated so often in the first few chapters that I genuinely started getting offended, like, "Yes, I understood this (old) advice the first time I heard it..."

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