S.F.

Clearly well researched…

Reviewed: 04-10-23

But so incredibly technical. I think it was as interesting as a book with so little characterization and so much math & science could be. I think the movie was better.

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I learned a lot - love this narrator

Reviewed: 01-18-23

He has a very cozy voice, I really enjoyed listening to him. I found this book really interesting and pleasant to listen to. It's a great overview of the Revolutionary War and I learned a lot that I didn't know!

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Struggled w this narrator

Reviewed: 11-07-22

I found the subject matter mostly engaging, but the narrator’s bizarrely choppy, over-articulated, strangely inflected and robotic way of talking really distracted me. Had to listen at 1.3 because he was so SLOOOOOOW. He sounded like a computer generated voice. He also mispronounced a fair amount of words - mostly place names - which was also very irritating.

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1 person found this helpful

Gorgeous story, okay narration

Reviewed: 01-25-21

It took a long time to get through the first half of the book - so much "when we were children" narrative & character exposition, but once I did, it really really paid off. Gorgeous story and ending. I didn't love the narrator at all - the voice she created for adult Phillip sounded like a 12 year old girl, and the voice she created for adult Maggie sounded like a 50 year old woman. I also felt that she wasn't very sensitive to creating the different atmospheres of the story -- Juliet Stevenson is an example of a narrator who can take texts of this era and style, and make them totally immersive while making the complex language sing. I found this narrator to be a bit plodding and monotonous, and the way she performed the emotional dialogue made it sound a bit ridiculous, - like high-melodrama. It didn't have to be that way. I wish I had read it rather than listening to it.

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Needed a more committed, dynamic narrator

Reviewed: 11-17-17

This was such a slog to get through. I mildly dreaded pressing play but continued out of a sense of duty, and felt so relieved when it was over.

This book is so rich, so dense, and gave me so much to think about. A really interesting perspective on the Vietnam war and subsequent fallout that you really don't come into contact with much in Western education.

However, I found it extremely repetitive, while featuring an emotionally-deadened protagonist that I, as a result, felt nothing for. I could have done with less political/philosophical dialectic -- that was also repetitive.

The main issue for me was the narrator. He has a lovely quality of voice, but every single sentence was read with a sense of calm, measured, passive equilibrium that cauterized the drama and intensity. At times I thought it was a choice -- the protagonist is emotionless, so the narrator is doing that too -- until the end of the book, when the protagonist was very much not emotionless and the narration didn't change. I enjoy his voice, but man he made this difficult to get through. A more dynamic narrator would have transformed this experience -- I wish I had read the book instead of listening to it.

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Needed a more committed, dynamic narrator

Reviewed: 11-17-17

This was such a slog to get through. I mildly dreaded pressing play but continued out of a sense of duty, and felt so relieved when it was over.

This book is so rich, so dense, and gave me so much to think about. A really interesting perspective on the Vietnam war and subsequent fallout that you really don't come into contact with much in Western education.

However, I found it extremely repetitive, while featuring an emotionally-deadened protagonist that I, as a result, felt nothing for. I could have done with less political/philosophical dialectic -- that was also repetitive.

The main issue for me was the narrator. He has a lovely quality of voice, but every single sentence was read with a sense of calm, measured, passive equilibrium that cauterized the drama and intensity. At times I thought it was a choice -- the protagonist is emotionless, so the narrator is doing that too -- until the end of the book, when the protagonist was very much not emotionless and the narration didn't change. I enjoy his voice, but man he made this difficult to get through. A more dynamic narrator would have transformed this experience -- I wish I had read the book instead of listening to it.

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Extremely mediocre

Reviewed: 06-16-17

What did you like best about All the Light We Cannot See? What did you like least?

This book was extremely mediocre, aggressively average, strongly blah. It wasn't offensive, but it wasn't particularly original or revelatory. I found the language to be exhausting -- lots of strained similes and metaphors seemingly introduced as a substitute for lack of plot movement or depth of character development. You know you have an author problem when multiple characters have a tendency to make the same incongruous nonsensical metaphorical connections -- then it's not a justifiable character trait, but a crutch that the author relies on, and once I started noticing it I couldn't stop. I guess this book provides a new take on a WWII story -- what was the war like for a blind French girl and a German boy ambivalent about the war's aims and intentions -- but.......I don't know, did we really need that?

What didn’t you like about Zach Appelman’s performance?

Monotonous, slow, & soporific. Lovely tone of voice, but he seemed more preoccupied with beautifully precise articulation than conveying meaning or emotion. I really struggled to pay attention throughout most of the book.

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2 people found this helpful

Yikes

Reviewed: 04-06-17

This book is really not good. It's about 300 pages too long. There are many irrelevant, non-plot-related interludes that seem to go on forever. Almost all of the characters share a slant-eyed cynicism about the hypocrisy of the world which seem much more about the author's worldview than the characters' -- it's like he uses his characters to express every irritable thought he's ever had about reality television, airports, social media, food eating competitions, protest movements, modern publishing, academia, etc. etc. etc. ad infinitum. The worst part is that it ends with a truly stupid plot twist & our protagonists making epiphanic realizations about being your authentic self and the importance of forgiveness. Self-help aisle nonsense.

This book is an exercise in writing 600 pages about characters with very few redeeming or engaging characteristics. I finished it only because I started it, and after investing enough hours, I had to see it through.

The narrator, while I'm sure an excellent actor, just did TOO MUCH. He imposed his performance on the text to an extent that t felt like it was all about him. When he read Laura Pottsdam's passages, for instance, his "I'm so vapid and immature and awful" judgmental take really interfered with my ability to actually comprehend what the author's intentions were, or understand the character as more than a caricature.

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4 people found this helpful

Beautiful story, beautifully performed

Reviewed: 09-15-16

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

I absolutely would. Jenna Lamia is one of the best!

What about Jenna Lamia’s performance did you like?

She is so emotionally present with the material -- she really draws me in as a listener. I felt like I was completely inside the main character's head.

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Well-trodden ground

Reviewed: 09-15-16

Would you try another book from Michael Pollan and/or Michael Pollan?

I have read several of Michael Pollan's books, and though this one has an intriguing conceit at the heart of it, the conclusions he comes to are nothing new. The Omnivore's Dilemma and In Defense of Food literally changed the my life in the sense that they expanded and transformed my thoughts about food in the modern world. This book....did not. It was same-old same-old from Pollan.

Who would you have cast as narrator instead of Michael Pollan?

A professional narrator. I could hear him mentally checking out with his own material. You can tell, as a listener, when a narrator gets bored, and it becomes a struggle to listen attentively when it happens. Some writers are able to enliven their own material in a really exciting way (see: Bill Bryson), but Pollan doesn't really.

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2 people found this helpful