Julie W. Capell

Good story, too convoluted for an audiobook

Revisado: 01-22-25

The good: Plot is quite original, with lots of different threads and people hopping back and forth through time, stuff I usually like. It's one of those books that's hard to talk about without getting into spoilers, but I will say I liked how the story incorporated lots of mysterious real events from history and gave them a resolution. There was also a good mystery element in that the characters are trying to find out why all the humans on Earth vanished, and there are multiple factions who could be the ones responsible so the story keeps you guessing as to who is really behind the disappearance and what their motivations are. I also like these Audible Originals when they are done with a full cast. The cast here is good, but . . .

The not-so-good: Unfortunately, this plot may simply have been too convoluted for an audiobook. Like many others, I got completely lost toward the end and didn't totally understand what finally happened. Part of the problem was there were too many characters, and too many who sounded the same (at least to my American ears). A bit more variation in accents would have helped me keep the characters straight.

Bottom line: Good story that I wish I could read as a physical book--or it would make a great movie!!

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Best memoir I have ever read

Revisado: 01-15-25

Absolutely amazing, riveting book that MUST be listened to as an audiobook read by the Everett himself. Part memoir, part linguistics deep dive, into the many years he spent living in Brazil with a very small, very isolated band of indigenous people called the Piraha. When Everett first came to live with these people, he was literally and figuratively on a mission. He was a missionary bringing them the word of God, and his goal was to learn enough of their language to translate the Bible.

If that sounds off-putting, it is, at first. Like many white people across the ages, he inserts himself into the life of this small village, certain that his ways are superior and that he is there only to "help" the Piraha. Almost immediately, disease and other dangers (the snakes of the title) begin to open his eyes to the narrowness of his worldview. Everett does not flinch in recounting many situations that do not show him in the best light, as he grows and learns and changes over the course of the years. Some of the stories are humorous, others are heart-wrenching, but all are well-told and I couldn't stop listening.

Intermingled with the stories of daily life in the jungle, Everett recounts with professorial accuracy the process he went through to learn Piraha. I have a degree in linguistics and found these sections incredibly fascinating, particularly since in the audiobook one is able to hear Everett speaking the language. To say that Piraha is unique is a huge understatement. Everett's efforts to understand not only the vocabulary, but the underlying structure of the language, yielded results that rocked the linguistic world to its Chomskian core.

Ultimately, this is a hero's journey in the best sense, with the white "hero" discovering that he isn't the savior after all, and that other people have developed different ways of living in and perceiving the world that have much to offer that Western society lacks.

This goes on my list as the best memoir I have ever read--excuse me, listened to.

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Gem of a novella

Revisado: 01-07-25

What a beautiful, gem of a novella. If I didn't already think Scalzi was one of the best scifi authors ever, this would clinch it for me. Only an amazing author could write about a trip to the outer reaches of the universe, that takes place over millions of years, in which practically nothing happens, and manage to make it not only interesting, but compelling. So many ideas crammed into this slim piece, and at the end, I had tears in my eyes. Bravo!

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Weirdly impersonal memoir

Revisado: 01-07-25

I'm not sure what I was expecting when I picked up this book, but what I got was a completely boring, sanitized and weirdly impersonal memoir. The chapters alternate between factual explanations of historical events that happened during Francis' lifetime, clearly not written by the Pope, and then chapters where the Pope tells his recollections of those events. Even listening to the audiobook, with Stephen Colbert narrating the history sections, didn't make this enjoyable. I stopped listening after less than an hour.

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Impactful, worthwhile listen

Revisado: 11-17-24

"How did you know if you had the strength and courage for a thing like that? Especially for a woman, raised to be a lady, whose courage had been untested?"

It's a question that this book answers by following a young, pampered California girl who joins the army and serves as a nurse in Vietnam in the mid-1960s. Her journey from wide-eyed patriot to disillusioned veteran kept me riveted. It's obvious the author did her homework (in the afterword, she acknowledges all the Vietnam veterans who helped her make the book as authentic as possible). The scenes in the operating rooms were the most impactful. The author did an amazing job of making me feel like I was right there. I could feel the heat, smell the mold, hear the screams. To balance the horror, there are many scenes where the soldiers, nurses, and doctors relax, have parties, and support one another. Friendships develop and while some are tragically short, others last a lifetime. The female friendships in particular were portrayed as supportive and positive, not only during the war but also post-war, rather than being used to drive conflict in a story that already had plenty of real life-and-death conflict.

The second part of the book shows the terrible treatment the Vietnam veterans received from their fellow citizens from the point-of-view of the protagonist, who is suffering from undiagnosed PTSD, although it wasn't called that at the time. In a nuanced plotline, her family is unable to honor the sacrifices she made, clinging to the idea that only men can be heroes in wartime, while also being incredibly supportive as she struggles with trauma and depression for years. She tries to seek help from the VA but is told the support groups are only for combat veterans who would be uncomfortable having a woman present. She tries to talk to non-veterans but they don't understand why she can't simply put Vietnam behind her. Unfortunately, much of this remains true today, as I have learned from working with a veteran's group for the last several years.

Woven throughout are several romantic plotlines which I feel were the weakest part of the book. In particular, the protagonist's romantic fixation on one "bad boy" veteran got repetitive and bogged down the second half of the book. There were some other parts toward the end that dragged a bit but the final scene wrapped things up well, even got me a bit teary-eyed.

This book gave me a much better understanding of the role of women in the Vietnam War. For a bit of a different take on women in combat, I would highly recommend the book "Ashley's War: The Untold Story of a Team of Women Soldiers on the Special Ops Battlefield," the biography of a woman who served in the US Army in Afghanistan.

[I listened to The Women as an audio book read by Julia Whelan, who did a marvellous job]

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Great narration on a so-so story

Revisado: 10-12-24

There aren't a lot of people who can write funny scifi and generally John Scalzi is one of those people, but this story fell flat for me. Falling back on scatalogical humor seems pretty juvenile and the whole set up was so far-fetched, it failed to engage me. Amber Benson did an amazing job narrating, using lots of different voices that helped distinguish the many different alien characters.

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Lots of character and relationship development

Revisado: 09-10-24

Good for a middle "book" of what looks to be a trilogy. Escapes the problem second books often face where there is no really satisfying climax because that is being saved for the last book. Here, there is a huge dramatic climax--although it isn't the one the reader is being led to expect. Along the way, the action moves at a brisk pace as the large cast of characters is moved around the chessboard, each with different motivations. Lots of character and relationship development, which helps up the stakes. The vampire culture is quite well thought out, their motivations make sense (they aren't just evil for evil's sake), and they don't all agree on the correct path forward. I really cared about what happened to all the characters because the author took the time to show me what made them tick, how they originally met, etc. And several of the characters get a pretty big character arc and growth opportunities in this installment, which sometimes doesn't happen in a middle book.

A couple nits I have to pick about this entire series. The world in which the action is set is not very well developed. A comet has hit the Earth and caused an unending winter, which is a cool idea (no pun intended). A huge percentage of the humans on the planet died either immediately or shortly after the impact. Human civilization has collapsed. Yet in this post-apocalyptic world, the remaining humans and vampires somehow have access to endless supplies of food, water, clothes, energy, cars, gasoline to run the cars, etc. No one is ever depicted farming (how could you in perpetual winter) or searching for supplies, or running the power plants that are providing the electricity that they are using to light their castles and run the devices on which they are constantly listening to music and watching old movies. I guess the author decided he didn't want to focus on all that boring stuff, but would it have hurt to at least refer to some of the ways in which the survivors have been able to cobble together what they need in this new world order?

[I listened to this as an audio book performed by a full cast of characters, with music and sound effects. Really high production values and acting all around]

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Like a radio play with full cast

Revisado: 09-08-24

Extremely well-produced audio book with a full cast of actors, sound effects, etc. Engaging characters, plot that moves along quickly, and some twists I didn't expect. I would compare it to Buffy the Vampire Slayer, only more gory and less campy. Will definitely be downloading the second season.

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A journey white people need to take

Revisado: 08-17-24

Like many other U.S. schoolchildren, I read "Huckleberry Finn" in grade school. I remember disliking it. Then, about 10 years ago, I visited Mark Twain's house in Connecticut and asked the guide if he were to recommend just one Mark Twain book, which would it be? And he answered "Huckleberry Finn" so I decided to read it again. I disliked it intensely. The whole thing with the Duke and the King I found boring and I cannot stand people being bullied, so the way Huck treated Jim--constantly tricking him and treating him like he was an idiot--not to mention the fact of Jim being ENSLAVED--was sickening.

So when I heard that one of my favorite contemporary authors was going to tackle a rewrite of the story from the point of view of Jim, I was wary but intrigued enough to pick it up, and I am so glad I did. It's an absolutely brilliant re-envisioning of what is going on beyond the understanding of the whites in the story. Everett imagines how enslaved people perceived their white owners and managed to stay alive despite the small and large cruelties visited upon them by vicious or just unconscious whites. He introduces many different Black characters, each with their own way of dealing with their enslavement, including some who "like being slaves." He demonstrates the ingenuity of the enslaved and their perseverence in seeking to fulfill their own hopes and dreams.

Most impressively, all of this is achieved while still keeping the reader in the vernacular and sensibilities of the era. Some other reviewers have criticized the book for inserting "modern ideas" into the mind of an enslaved person in the mid-1800s. I respectfully disagree. It might be uncomfortable for some to believe that Blacks at that time could have thought the way James does, but that is only because whites have been educated to believe that.

Check your prejudices at the door, and be ready to see through new eyes. This journey down the Mississippi is one everyone should take, but most especially white people.

[I listened to this as an audio book performed by Dominic Hoffman, who did an excellent job]

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A master storyteller telling her own story!

Revisado: 08-17-24

Obviously, the only way to experience this book is in the audio version, read by Whoopi herself. Almost in a stream-of-consciousness form, Whoopi relates fascinating stories of her childhood, family, and her not-always-wonderful years as a major star of film, Broadway, and television. She jumps back and forth in time, but we are never lost because she connects the dots as to why certain incidents are linked in her mind, and uses her masterful storyteller talents to keep the reader mesmerized all the way.

She begins the book by declaring that she's unsure about the accuracy of her memories of many parts of her early life, but it's soon clear that Whoopi is a keen observer with an amazing memory. I loved her ability to not only recall details of early incidents in her life as they seemed to her young self, and at the same time reflect on how those incidents made her who she is today and lessons she learned. Or should have learned! Because she doesn't shy away from telling unflattering stories about herself, including multiple struggles with drug addiction and a sometimes uncomfortable relationship with her only daughter.

Mixed in between the self-revelatory passages are wonderful stories of her rise to stardom. A film aficionada from a young age, she fangirls about all the major actors and movie folks she has been lucky enough to work with including Mike Nichols, Stephen Spielburg, Elizabeth Taylor, and many others. In one of my favorite passages in the whole book, she talks extensively about how seeing a Nichelle Nichols on the original Star Trek--a black woman in space!--made her feel included, like she could do anything, and led her to later ask Gene Roddenberry to make a character for her on Star Trek: The Next Generation.

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