Tatiana Racheva

Chapter 7 is where it’s at

Revisado: 02-05-24

At first, I really didn’t like the book and thought it was a waste, but since it’s short, I decided to keep listening. The chapter on maturity levels and the surrounding chapters get quite good, so I’ve revised my review.

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Something is wrong with the narrator

Revisado: 03-06-23

Even my husband and 12-year-old son complained about the intonation and the style of narration. Interestingly, she suddenly gets better in chapter 5 (chapter 8 in Audible). Maybe the first half of the book is actually narrated a by voice model based on the real narrator?

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The best narrator

Revisado: 09-23-22

The book is good, choosing a fictional narrative to deliver the ideas, which is far more effective than the usual way this is done. My favorite aspect, though, is the narrator. I’ve been listening to audiobooks for over a decade, and he’s by far the best. I’ll have to check out more books he’s read.

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Is the narrator a text-to-speech program?

Revisado: 03-24-22

Terrible performance. I’m wondering now if I can find a better free version somewhere. The narrator sounds like a robot.

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Intelligent and lucid

Revisado: 12-01-21

If you're hesitating whether you should read or listen to this book, don't. It's really well-written, and Walter Lippmann comes off as an extremely intelligent guy. I don't know whether anything more insightful on the topic has been written since, but I doubt it.

On the other hand, John Klickman, the narrator, doesn't know how to pronounce basic words such as "proselytize" or "superfluous". I'm shocked. There are also several instances when he misspeaks and has to do another take. I've never heard an audiobook where the narrator would mess up, snap his fingers (I'm serious), then reread the word or phrase he messed up.

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Difficult without notes

Revisado: 09-16-21

There is terminology used that needs to be defined. For example, what is meant by “subsistence”? It’s also repetitive, stylistically, and I can’t help but think of the “holy hand grenade”. To my untrained ears, the book sounds like word salad, for the most part.

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Ultimately political

Revisado: 09-15-21

In the first part of the book, the author explains the nature of Shinto and how it is integrated with Buddhism and Confucianism. He then gets into the history and evolution of Shinto, and explains the views of the various individuals who developed Shinto and its relationship to the other religions and to the Japanese national identity. The last part, unfortunately, gets into the current-day politics and passes judgments on what kind of Shinto is better and worse. That I didn’t appreciate. I know it’s a controversial subject in Japan, but from this American author, I would have liked a more dispassionate survey of attitudes and practices. Because of that last part, the whole book reads as, from beginning to end, as an ideological, even propagandistic work, written from the point of view of the American empire.

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