Grant

Louis Rhead was the illustrator not the translator

Revisado: 07-04-24

A nice change of pace. It is startlingly evident that the stories come from a very different time and culture. Nicely produced.

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Masterful reader gives 120 per cent and brings needed life to a text that sometimes drags

Revisado: 04-02-24

Mann drags? Yes, in my opinion, he sometimes does. It will be a patient reader that does not somewhat dread another discourse on the nature of time. And the book is quite long, and might be more popular and widely read with a little disciplined pruning, although it could be argued that a little bit of tedium for the reader was an intended feature. The reader gives it his all, infusing the sometimes dense prose with meaning and feeling. I doubt I would have made it through the book on the page without the breath of life in the performance.

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Whole is less than sum of the parts

Revisado: 12-26-23

I can understand why this book shows up on lists of highly rated novels. There is much to admire. I can just as easily understand why it is little read or known. It is dauntingly long. The book has an overall cool tone — analytical, ironic, overly intellectualized. The book will drift into sidebars of philosophy, sociology, psychology and politics that bring any narrative flow to a halt. Lot and lots of talk about abstractions of all kinds. And a robust knowledge of Austrian and European history is often required to make some passages and events meaningful or interesting. If you found The Magic Mountain uncongenial for any of these reasons, MWQ is far more extreme in these respects.

Yet individual chapters can be masterfully written, with some occasional overwriting. But the sweep is so vast, the digressions so disruptive, that it never really gels to a whole. This was a work of great ambition, but a bit more focus would make it more accessible.

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Charming but lesser Wodehouse

Revisado: 12-24-23

All the classic Wodehouse elements and technique are present. Well performed. Plot is a little rickety but the plane lands safely at the end. If you like this one, try Money in the Bank.

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A guilty favorite

Revisado: 12-08-23

Forgotten gem where understated British prose meets broad farce with some scattered undertones that were probably more shocking back in the day. Matter of fact delivery of the narrater accentuates the absurdity of the proceedings. Not flawless but very enjoyable.

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Cartoonishly bad

Revisado: 08-13-23

Not even “so bad it’s good.” Plot is meager and implausible, Poirot and Hastings do action sequences for which they are not credible. It’s all a bizarre Jame Bond parody, complete with the climax at the villain’s secret world conquest headquarters wit a bit of “The Final Problem” thrown in. A few nice twists and turns but even they grow repetitive. Narration is well done but cannot rescue the hot mess text

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Tedious at best

Revisado: 03-27-23

Yes, it has the dreamlike qualities on which the Kafka brand and adjective are based. But it also has lots and lots of stilted, unnatural dialog about nothing of compelling interest. If nothing else, K was successful in anticipating the vapid, navel-gazing, self-absorbed discourse that burden the internet. If you want to try Kafka, go to the shorter form works.

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Autobiography as looong picaresque novel

Revisado: 12-25-22

Everyone has probably known at least one Casanova in their life. No, not a great lover; a person of prodigious and varied talents who achieves and then squanders great success over and over. That is the life presented in this lengthy volume, which is undoubtedly studded with fascinating episodes and acute depictions of the customs and social attitudes of the times. Casanova (or his editors and translators) is an elegant writer. But the overall length is daunting and there are extended passages that are dull or presented at excruciating length. A reader with general curiosity might be better served by an abridgment or a third party biography.

It is not particularly steamy stuff, unless you like your smut arty and verbose. Lot of polished and mannered coquetry, some of it by Casanova rather than his conquests. His love life seems devoid of any deep or lasting feeling on his part (aside from his florid protestations) and his adventures in the flesh trade are, surprisingly, some of the more tedious parts of the book, although they probably read differently when written.

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You have better options

Revisado: 11-25-22

Story takes a wild twist at the end but the new “truth” seems less reliable and certainly less interesting than the old. Puzzle pieces do not add up and loose ends waggle, even after allowing for effects of possibly unreliable narration. Cookie cutter audio verite that has been done elsewhere substantially better.

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A strange and sad life

Revisado: 11-22-22

I took a chance on this book despite knowing little about Nietzsche and much of what I did think I knew was parody or half-truths. I have no basis for assessing whether the author’s account is balanced or accurate; she does seem to have some very strong opinions complete with heroes and villains, and occasionally you wonder what the other side of the story sounds like. As another review has noted, it can be hard to follow in the audio format. It is sometimes unclear whether the text is a direct quote of N (or another), the author paraphrasing or summarizing N (or another), or the author stating her views or conclusions. These distinctions are probably clear in print.

The book left me with dark suspicions that N was more quirky than brilliant and could easily have been lost to history had circumstances not been kind.

And yes, the German pronunciation is a little comical.

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