Emilio Englade

Wonderful performance, but the file is tanked

Reviewed: 08-16-17

Would you try another book from Wilkie Collins and/or Glen McCready and Rachel Bavidge ?

yes

What about Glen McCready and Rachel Bavidge ’s performance did you like?

Many of the voices were wonderful, in particular the bravado of Pesca at the beginning of the story, and Count Fosco at the end.

Any additional comments?

The performances were wonderful, and the book actually only becomes better as it goes along. You will be best off getting another performance of this wonderful book, though, because this one's file is corrupt less than an hour before the end of the story.

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More of what he said

Reviewed: 09-21-15

Any additional comments?

This is mostly an amplification of Seth's review above. The biography itself is great, with a lot of insight into García Márquez, his books, and the Latin American world, which I knew very little about. I'd happily read it again, but probably not listen to it, because the narrator's pronunciation is an ongoing distraction. His French and German are atrocious, when García Márquez is in those parts of the world. The pronunciation is so forced that I would often have to spend a moment figuring out what he had just said, whenever he would name a French person or location. The Spanish is fortunately better (for someone like me, who never studied it), but even I periodically noticed things like his constantly mispronouncing Simón Bolívar's name. The English is generally OK, though with constant Spanish inflections. But even here there are occasional howlers, such as pronouncing hors d'oeuvre "oars devores," not close to either the English or French. With these constant irritations, it takes some work to settle into the story. Nonetheless, García Márquez led quite a varied and interesting life, and the bio has made me want to read his work beyond 100 Years of Solitude. Martin did his job quite well in creating a comprehensive and very readable account of the life and work, it's just shame that the experience is let down by the awkward narration.

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2 people found this helpful

A fun-packed romp

Reviewed: 05-14-12

Where does The Pickwick Papers rank among all the audiobooks you’ve listened to so far?

A fine reading that I owned first on cassette tape. The reading is spirited and does a great job of bringing the range of characters to life.

If you know the book, this abridged production is edited in any interesting way: the story is presented without the ongoing Mr Jingle plot line. This works pretty well - it preserves some of the grab-bag feel of the book, and allows the audio to focus more on the central story of Pickwick himself. You do lose Mr Jingle, but if you haven't heard the story before, you won't feel that something is missing.

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1 person found this helpful