Alceste

Wise young guys

Revisado: 11-18-24

I liked the story better than I thought I might. The description suggested standard teenage angst albeit LGBTQ+ angst. There was depth and an element of character depth even if the boys were a bit too well-adjusted for there traumatic history and too wise for their first-time experiences. The voices were an active part of the enjoyment with well-intentioned effort offered to their characters.

Has calificado esta reseña.

Reportaste esta reseña

A book for boys, thank you very much

Revisado: 07-05-24

This book could have saved lives in the days of my youth. I tried to resist the charm of it, the simple, teenaged angst played out with only a few improbable happenstances. I don't have a great love for country music as Emmett does. I'm old, so I no longer relate to the fear of disclosure with which Luke lives. Nonetheless, I pushed the button when I finished their story and started again. There are incidents at the beginning of the story that fund events at the end of the story without giving them away too soon. I liked that. There is a bit of silliness that seems to be requisite in "Young Adult" books, but it didn't spoil the story for this old guy. The lyrics of country songs included in the text are ordinary enough that they made me wonder if they were supposed to amuse me. Ultimately, I just thought Emmett had a long way to go to write great country music and Wanda June must have sung her flat lyrics with a lot of style to make the kind of success she got from them. It's possible. All that aside, we need more well-crafted stories for LGBTQ kids and this is a good one. The intimacy between the boys was honest and sincere and never pornographic, neither "soft" nor x-rated. The story has a decidedly masculine voice, the reader gives Emmett a higher, lighter pitch, but he's still a boy and one to whom other boys that age could relate. I wonder if straight boys could read it and learn not to be homophobes. I think they could.

Has calificado esta reseña.

Reportaste esta reseña

I resist superlatives

Revisado: 08-16-21

This is a remarkable piece of literature. It tries and fails to be too many things at once, but it manages to capture truths about a difficult era without being histrionic. There is a simplicity to it; there is a great humanity and a level of authenticity while steering away from overt didacticism. In my own time, I lived through the events against which the narrative is set and I was not looking forward to sludging through them again thus I approached it with a resolute hesitation. Sure enough, the central character with whom I was to travel is grieving and has been for two years. It was hard to bear his grief and I didn't like him. He was vain and self-absorbed and he only kept me engaged in the early chapters by the wise choice of the reader to perform against the grief whenever possible. Michael Crouch kept me listening when I would likely not have had the perseverance to keep reading. My least favorite aspect: I had difficulty suspending disbelief for the single-layer villainess who is blessedly minor in her impact on the story. I know there are people who are rotten through and through, they exist in the world. I know a story cannot have fluidity if every character is fully fleshed, but there was not a single redeeming attribute to this female character. It is the title character who has died of AIDS at the outset who held me tightly and compelled me to remain with his widower and care about him to the end. Surely this flawed, artistic, tragic young man -- too soon gone -- loved this shallow "gym-rat" for something beyond his carefully pumped twin pectoral major muscles and ultimately this proves to be true. He's no angel in the end, but he is fallible, human, vulnerable, and deserving of the love he finds. And even with that, don't mistake the work for a romance, and -- thankfully -- it is not one of those fuck books with a thin plot holding together prurient descriptions of overt sexuality. I was satisfied with it, in the end, this story and the performance of it, and I suspect it will become more important as the test of time and distance from the time of pain allows it to take its place as a deeply human testament to a heartless time for the gay human being in U.S. history. I hope this paragraph, another view of the work will convince you to listen to this reading of the work.

Has calificado esta reseña.

Reportaste esta reseña

esto le resultó útil a 7 personas

Serious subjects and authentic characters

Revisado: 06-23-20

Do you know how titles listed as "romance" sometimes just seem so shallow? It is amazing the high percentage of gay characters there are in the world of gay romance. It is remarkable how they are all tall, buff, and uniformly handsome. So often there is one side of the romance per chapter. Not in this one. These are characters with the sound and rhythms of authentic human beings. Okay, there is a bit of fawning upon those with fabulous fortunes, These characters, most of them, are infatuated with wealth and luxury. But the voice is sound, the voice of the narrator is genuine, the events ring with a kind of truth most of the time. There is an epic quality to the twenty-plus years encompassed in the narrative. The characters are not all good or all bad, they are flawed, they have weaknesses, they are consistent despite shifts based on experience and the gains and losses of living. They are racially diverse and reflect at least a broader base of the actual culture as it exists in the setting of the work. I cared about thm. I listened to the entire piece without stopping. There was a sense of contentment and the promise of happiness at the end, but not for all of those in this found family, this family of friends lose some and change and grow and the promise at the end is not happily ever after but happy for now and perhaps stronger and more ready for what may come based on the events of the storyline. Is it the best book I've ever read? No. Was it worth the cost of the access to it? By all means. It is better than most and worth a look.

Has calificado esta reseña.

Reportaste esta reseña

A master storyteller

Revisado: 09-03-19

I really enjoyed this book. I finished it and immediately sent copies to friends and family. This man understands story structure and he is dedicated and invested in this particular narrative. Beyond that, I realized afterward that this is not just a "good read," but an important record of a significant event in the history of humankind told in a very personal and intimate manner. Dustin Lance Black is not an actor. He doesn't distance himself from the material for the sake of performance. There are really raw moments in which his heart trembles in delivery. These moments were nearly too difficult for me, but I am so glad I experienced it and even at my advanced age I am sure that I grew from the experience. I lived through times that were terrible for LGBTQ people, really dreadful, repressive cultural attitudes and legal and political horrors. I don't want them forgotten and this record of one small step forward needs to live in the world of the young people, gay, straight, bi, transgender, queer and human if for no other reason than to let them know from whence they've come and how human and vulnerable they are. I will listen to Mama's Boy again.

Has calificado esta reseña.

Reportaste esta reseña

There is no reason I should like this book

Revisado: 09-29-17

I am not a teenage boy. I'm a wise old man looking for something to which to listen while working. I read a lot, so the titles with characters anything like myself dwindles as I age. So I bought this one. I was dreadfully disappointed as it began. The reader was so boyishly chirpy and the events were set in a high school very much unlike anything I experienced in my youth where you could be (and some might have been) actually murdered if it were to be known you were anything tending toward effeminate even if you were essentially straight. If I hadn't been working with a shovel and gloves, I probably would have given it up. But the writer had suckered me into his tale and made me engage with his characters. Oh, yeah, I knew where some of the plot complications were going and some of them came up awfully fast and without much cost; some resolutions came far too easily and without much resistance. Nonetheless, I began to think how much I would have loved to have had a book like this to read when I was a young fellow, how much easier my life might well have been if I had Benjamin's experience to hold up against my own. So much waste might have been avoided. And it was at that moment when I began to appreciate Jay Bell's skill at sucking me into his fantasy without ever giving up an iota of my resentment of him for doing so. I hate books like this. I never read books like this. I have to admit that I am going to go now and listen to the second book in the series, but I still think Jay Bell is a romantic Pollyanna and thinking about him makes me grumble discontentedly.

Has calificado esta reseña.

Reportaste esta reseña

esto le resultó útil a 1 persona

TJ is growing powerful

Revisado: 07-02-17

I expected "light;" I expected a bit of fluff. I got, instead, the next step in the maturation of a fine author. So many LGBTQ authors write m/m fluff, so many cannot completely disguise the fact that they are middle-aged straight women indulging a prurient fascination. TJ Klune writes books that have weight, meaning and substance in addition to passionate LGBTQ characters and TJ Klune is growing and I am going to get to watch this and think about it and I am anxious and excited by the prospect.

Has calificado esta reseña.

Reportaste esta reseña

Sincere and more polished

Revisado: 04-21-17

This author grows with each endeavor. I was expecting sentences to be used with prepositions to end them and storyline holes, but this one skirts most of that and tries to tell a story that is much larger than the framework might support. As with one of the two central characters, the author seems to more often expect a positive outcome from what he calls "fate." It is charming and endearing. The characters have weaknesses and lapses in individual analytical thinking that test verisimilitude; I always thought "well, that's possible. I wonder if, in those moments of personal thought, I was pulled away from what might have been a deeper connection to the personalties of narrative. The characters cry a bit too much for my taste but not as much as in those supposedly LGBTQ "romances" written by middle-aged, straight, female writers with too many feline friends around the keyboard. These are male characters who happen to be gay. Their truth rings resonant for me, I can breathe with them. I will be glad when gay characters no longer put a book in a category with a circumscribed readership, their are a lot of primarily straight human beings of both sexes who could get a lot out of reading this book.

Has calificado esta reseña.

Reportaste esta reseña

The performer sells the implausible

Revisado: 03-15-17

What made the experience of listening to Perfect Imperfections the most enjoyable?

Charlie David is an experienced, competent performer with a passion for the characters he portrays and a clarity of delivery that allows the listener to understand his words with ease and to access the emotions of the character with an equal facility.

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

The story is awfully predictable and, especially at the outset, there are a lot of things that occur that are just rather difficult to believe might happen. The more the reader knows of the world in which the author sets the work, the harder they will find it to suspend their disbelief. For this listener, I was pleased that I listened to the recording and had not read the book. The reader sold otherwise eye-rolling dialogue and unbelievable circumstances with an easy style and a seeming truth in delivery.

What does Charlie David bring to the story that you wouldn’t experience if you just read the book?

The reader has an apparent skill and an obvious talent for creating a character and, beyond that, for assuming a tone appropriate for the location dictated by the author. His speaking voice changed in private conversations in private settings and was still in character, but appropriate to more public situations. Beyond that, he was rather successful at separating the voices of the characters without apparent effort or affectation, thus providing a clarity for the listener as to which character the author had assigned the dialogue.

Was there a moment in the book that particularly moved you?

The eventual acceptance of the musician of his affection and connection to the man who had been his companion and friend was expected and necessary to the plot line, but I was affected by the timing, in particular, that the reader/performer brought to the delivery of this moment in the text. It was easy and unhurried and gentle with a depth of feeling that made what might have been a rather tired turn-around in the nature of the character far more engaging and yet never sentimental, a very good balance of vocal skill and emotional commitment to the words.

Any additional comments?

I am so tired of poorly written works of fiction with LGBTQ characters. I long for more complex and yet still realistic, believable and true-to-life revelations, events, developments, and characters. I have read other works by this author and I believe he is growing as a writer who can create full, complete, and resonant stories. I don't think this is one of those, but it shows that the writer has that potential and the vocal characterization of the actor reading the text added the essential, vital element the improbable story required.

Has calificado esta reseña.

Reportaste esta reseña

Short and dirty

Revisado: 04-19-10

Yep, it's man on man, and it's not long, and still they get it on several times and they're "hot" guys and one's a street fighter and the other gives up everything to stay with him and I expect that they'll live happily ever after . . . just like real life. There's not much to it, it's fun, it's sexy, it's unbelievable, and yet it wasn't a waste of time. Hey, a guilty pleasure really is nonetheless a pleasure.

Has calificado esta reseña.

Reportaste esta reseña

esto le resultó útil a 2 personas