Stephen P. Manning

Fine book, ruined by bizarre narration

Revisado: 07-17-16

Would you recommend this audiobook to a friend? If so, why?

No. The content is excellent but the narrator is so annoying I couldn't recommend it.

How could the performance have been better?

If the narrator would stick to English. He apparently thinks that it helps for him to attempt to pronounce many, but not all, words of non-English origin in some kind of simulacrum of their original sound. This is mostly true of personal and place names. It is deeply deeply deeply annoying. It does less than zero for the narrative flow and comes across as amateurish posturing. I almost returned the book because of it. Awful.

Was this a book you wanted to listen to all in one sitting?

No. It's a history book.

Any additional comments?

Madden's work is very good. His book on Venice was outstanding. And he is the rare historian without a viciously self-hating bias against the West. Too bad his work was stuck with this crazy-making narration.

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No-holds barred Mormonism

Revisado: 02-24-16

What did you like best about this story?
Givens is a professor and knows the landscape and lingo of professional theology. Plus, he is not at all shy about emphasizing what makes Mormonism different from Christianity, not only in its foreground doctrines but in the deep cosmological background assumptions that generate and support those unusual beliefs.

Most striking and consequential are the assertions that 1. "matter and intelligences" are coequally eternal as the stuff of the universe and that 2. embodiment is not an impediment to divinity but a positive requirement for achieving it. As well, Givens shows the cultural contexts and echoes which place some of Joseph Smith's ideas in a more understandable light. Givens, a practicing Mormon, describes Smith's prophetic style as "inspired syncretism."

Givens is looking for the deep structures which will give the foreground doctrines a more cohesive rationale and this he does quite well. If you have a taste for philosophical theology and can handle the rhetoric of the professoriate, this is a fascinating book which will give you a new perspective on a religious group that is both caught up in its own compulsion to "fit in" and is treated with ill-concealed scorn by the "cultured despisers" who run our society through media.

Did the narration match the pace of the story?
The narration is ok. His speed and clarity are fine. The narrator can occasionally sound a bit on the unctious side. But he did not do his pronunciation homework before recording this: he mispronounces words at the rate of about one per half an hour.

Any additional comments?
In delineating Mormonism's departures from and likenesses to Christianity, he gives a lot of attention to Origen but makes no mention of his near-contemporary Irenaeus of Lyons, whose work would have filled out the picture.

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esto le resultó útil a 7 personas

I tried but I finally couldn't take it anymore

Revisado: 10-30-15

What disappointed you about The Devil’s Pleasure Palace?

Although I share most of Mr Walsh's attitudes and am in fact even more to the Right than he, this book desperately needed an editor. Meandering and crossing back over the same turf, without any organizing principle I could find --except self-indulgently showing off his knowledge of German opera in German-- this repetitive and labyrinthine ramble frustrated me so much that I gave up by Chapter 10.

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esto le resultó útil a 32 personas

Info, vgood; voice & attitude, nope

Revisado: 10-11-15

Would you say that listening to this book was time well-spent? Why or why not?

The factual info is interesting and different, with focus on ordinary life in the ancient world rather than the usual interest in great men, battles, etc. (Not that there's anything at all wrong with that.)

What was the most interesting aspect of this story? The least interesting?

Most interesting was, of course, the focus and the details of lives of ordinary people in civilizations distant from us in time. Reinforces how coddled and easy our lives are by comparison, even those of us who consider ourselves "disadvantaged."

How did the narrator detract from the book?

First, his moralizing attitudes. Despite occasionally reminding us not to impose our current notions on people who lived in vastly different circumstances, his typically PoMo university-style moralizing about racism, sexism, inequality, etc. really got on my nerves, as well as using these old cultures to occasionally take shots at contemporary politics, etc.. If a 19th century Oxford don has taken a similar attitude out of a Christian context, I am sure the professor would be outraged at his dogmatic arrogance. But his own contemporary religion is just as smug and irritating and condescending. I finally stopped listening after Chapter 22. Really irritating.Second, his speaking style is highly artificial, even for a Brit professor. Very clipped and hyper-articulated. Eventually it distracts from his content.

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esto le resultó útil a 17 personas