Measuring the World Audiobook By Daniel Kehlmann cover art

Measuring the World

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Measuring the World

By: Daniel Kehlmann
Narrated by: Rider Strong
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Scientist-explorer Alexander von Humboldt summons the great mathematician Carl Gauss to Berlin before embarking on an ambitious expedition across Russia, determined to measure the world. The story tells of Von Humboldt's focused and robust adventures—as he negotiates savannah and jungle, climbs the highest mountain, counts head lice on native's heads, and explores every hole in the ground—and Gauss, a man born in poverty who will be recognized as the greatest mathematician since Newton and whose greatest trials in life are his wife and that everyone else thinks too slowly.

©2009 Daniel Kehlmann (P)2006 Phoenix Books Action & Adventure Genre Fiction Historical Fiction Political Fiction Explorer
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If you have had more than your fair share of the sciences, this book will feel like an old friend. I thoroughly enjoyed and understood it. Quixotic, Godotesque, and scientific all wrapped up in the humanities. An honest book.

Interesting for initiates not sure about everyone else

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This is a fascinating story but the fact that it's translated I think led to some confusing passages. The narrator also didn't delineate the characters well, which sometimes made it harder to follow who was speaking and what was going on.

Interesting but confusing

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The story was interesting but I couldn't get past the awful narration of the reader. The reader was so off-putting that I had to slog through. With so many excellent narrators on Audible, it's astounding that a German best-seller novel with good translation was list in poor cadence.

Worst reader ever. No respect for a comma.

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Difficult to follow. Not sure if it was intentional but makes all the characters look like buffoons. Lots of scientific obsevations and jargon.

How bad this book is.

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I find the story gripping and entertaining. Not being Gauss, I didn't count the large number of times I laughed aloud while listening to it. The narrator isn't my favorite narrator, but he does a good job. There are problems with the translation that bug me, but I ignored them and was thoroughly entertained and even somewhat educated by this novel. I rarely write reviews, but upon finding two reviews that trashed it, I thought it my duty to toss in my 2 cents.

Love it

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I'm about one third in the book and the editing of the audiobook is very very bad: long pauses right in the middle of conversations, or ending and beginning of two different chapters merged together as part of one sentence. You have to guess what happened from the context. It makes listening to the book more academic and less pleasurable.
I personally didn't feel the narrator chose the right tone for the book as well, but I am not sure if it's just bad editing that threw me off.
Overall, I feel like I'm persevering with this book even though I like the content and would probably enjoy had it been performed and/or edited differently.

very bad editing. hard to listen

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Weirdly long pauses in the middle of chapters but no pauses between chapters. The sound editing was all over the place - I constantly had to adjust the volume.

Really disliked the production

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I was hugely disappointed with this book - as it had been given fantastic reviews (especially in Europe where I live).

There is no clear point to the story, there are no climaxes, it ends very very strangely - and the narrator keeps a monotone voice throughout.

I'm baffled - and I just don't get the point what the author is trying to tell....

Extremely disappointing - please avoid

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I heard the author reading parts of this and it sounded excellent. The narrator, Rider Strong, reads the book as though he is reading it aloud for the first time and clearly has yet to learn what a full stop and a comma mean. I want my credit back.

Give this a berth -- a wide one

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He said it all. Do not waste your time.

I agree with Henrik.

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