MT

Well Worth Your Time

Reviewed: 02-05-17

My first attempt at listening to an audio book in German. I chose this book because it's an old favourite that I wanted to re-read anyway. No problem - the reading performance is excellent; very clear, the words easy to distinguish. And the story itself still good, and as poignant today as it was 30-40 years ago when I first read it, about how trying to save time can lead to the exact opposite. (Why don't we ever learn??)

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2 people found this helpful

Worth rereading

Reviewed: 01-04-17

I remember first reading Gone With The Wind in my teens back in the 1970s. Not sure whether I saw the movie first or read the book first but it was around the same time.
Since then, I’ve seen the movie again a couple of times, but haven’t reread the book until now. In my memory, I recalled the novel as “romantic”. But what struck me when listening to it now was its realism. The characters certainly have their romantic dreams (don’t we all?), but they are also to a very high degree stripped of their individual youthful illusions in the course of the story. All in all, I found the novel well worth rereading all these years later. It also made me think both of how the world has changed and how I have changed myself through the course of my own life. - The narration of the audio book is excellent.

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Excellent Reading Performance

Reviewed: 03-17-13

In this case I’m very glad I bought the Audible book along with the Kindle edition, because the reading by Carolyn Bonnyman is excellent. The novel is set in the Hebrides (on a small fictional island named Garve) and it enhanced the total experience to listen to it read in a Scottish accent by someone who could even manage the occasional quotes in Gaelic. I think it’s a book I’m likely to listen to again just for the joy of a good reading performance.

The book interweaves two stories:

Alys, from modern-day Edinburgh, revisits the small (fictional) Hebridean island of Garve after twenty five years. She is divorced and misses her son who is on holiday elsewhere with his father and his new wife. On Garve, Alys gets reaquainted with Donal, an old playmate from holidays back in their childhood. In the hotel where Alys is staying, she also gets fascinated by an old embroidered cabinet on display. This turns out to have connection to Donal’s family.

The cabinet also turns up in the parallell story of a woman who was brought to the island three hundred years earlier; and Donal’s forefather Manus.

Compared to some other back-and-forth-in-time novels I’ve been reading lately, this one has less focus on mystery, and more on romance. The two stories, present and past, run parallell rather than being all tangled up. (And yet…) Even if perhaps the book’s strongest point is not the “plot”, I still found it a good read.

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4 people found this helpful

David Copperfield

Reviewed: 10-29-12

If you could sum up David Copperfield in three words, what would they be?

A classic Dickens novel.

Would you recommend David Copperfield to your friends? Why or why not?

Even if you know the story from film/TV adaptations, I think it adds a deeper perspective to actually read the book.

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

I think Simon Vance's reading does justice to the variety of characters in this novel.

Did you have an extreme reaction to this book? Did it make you laugh or cry?

As I was basically familiar with the story beforehand there were no great surprises but I think in the novel David's credulousness stands out more and forces the reader to question and re-question whether this is for better for for worse.

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