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Antigua, Penny, Puce Audiobook By Robert Graves cover art

Fantastic performance by Ms Bond

Overall
5 out of 5 stars
Performance
5 out of 5 stars
Story
5 out of 5 stars

Reviewed: 06-26-23

Anyone can read a book...aloud. But to bring it to life takes a dramatical genius such as Ms Bond. Graves' works are always meticulous to parody and sometimes require credulity, but Ms Bonds' voice performances are so stunningly convincing (and humorous) that all unbelief is suspended. There is never any doubt of the existence and independence of these characters, all emanating, vocally and spiritually from her singular genius. You gotta hear it to believe it. And no one does a snotty little boy better than she. Similar kudos to the reader of the Real David Copperfield, but if it were a competition (and thank God art never is) Ms Bond would edge him out by a hair.

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A work of genius.

Overall
5 out of 5 stars
Performance
5 out of 5 stars
Story
5 out of 5 stars

Reviewed: 05-19-22

as above. Amazing reasoning, amazing scope. You will be surprised at how little history you knew.

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Useful Idiot

Overall
2 out of 5 stars
Performance
3 out of 5 stars
Story
2 out of 5 stars

Reviewed: 07-26-21

You've heard the phrase. I'm not so certain about the useful part. Maybe the quo ming tong could tell us.

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You Cannot Edit Pefection

Overall
5 out of 5 stars
Performance
5 out of 5 stars
Story
1 out of 5 stars

Reviewed: 12-28-18

What more could one ask for? Perhaps the most enduring work of the 20th Century, innocently unpretentiously disguised as a children’s book and arguably the best actor of our time who is willing to read it, masterfully, for us. And someone else who blows it.

It needs to be redone, just as it was originally, with Derek Jacobi…but it must in no way be edited. It is not a work that can be edited, or specifically, elided, any more than Shakespeare can. Can you imagine the listeners’ disappoint when Toad quickly bargains for the horse without that poetic description of the Gypsy’s stew? It is life without breath or marrow. What is it about? There are countless other butcheries done by some madman who doesn’t understand the work at all. Just as it’s spiritual twin, the Odyssey while depicting action, eschews it. The ideal state is peace, ease and contemplation…return to Ithaka. And some fool with scissors has decided, “Well let’s trim this down to what happens.” So we are left with plot, that is, almost nothing, except Jacobi’s curtailed brilliance.

Keep everything that has been done, but add back everything that belongs there. There is no partial perfection, and here you have two perfect actors. It were as though someone had painted wide black frames on the scenes of the Sistine Chapel and said to you, “Here, focus on what’s important.” The point of great art is that everything, and nothing is important. It all fits flawlessly, indispensably together.

Re-record it. For the sake of posterity. When will Jacobi come again? When will Grahame come again?

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4 people found this helpful

ketchup on mignon

Overall
5 out of 5 stars
Performance
1 out of 5 stars
Story
5 out of 5 stars

Reviewed: 12-27-18

I can’t tell you what a disappointment these narrations are. Of course Harper Collins can no longer be trusted to do anything right and I hear they’re of the verge of editing the marrow out of these wonderful works—probably the greatest pieces of American Literature. Ingalls makes Hemingway, Melville or Fitzgerald look like pompous pretentious adolescents.

Jones narration is an insult. She doesn’t do everything wrong—Ma is very good. But as a gestalt, she is ketchup on fillet mignon. Please redo the entire set. It is a cultural imperative. Despite her best efforts she cannot destroy the beauty of these works but where oh where does she get the idea to use a Southern drawl and why would she conceive that Pa is tone deaf and worse. He is after all a violinist. She infantilizes the speech of the girls by blurring the final consonants and extending the vowels in the most obnoxious, and I think culturally prejudicial way. These people are in no way backward or ignorant. The minute Cherry proposes to sing, any responsible director would have shoved her out of the studio and locked the door. Even worse, her affects are often inappropriate to the situation….it is hopeless, it must be redone.
And if you think what I’m asking is impossible…not at all: Killian’s narration of Fagle’s Odyssey is superb….not overacted, not unconsciously sneering.

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100 people found this helpful

60's Radical

Overall
1 out of 5 stars
Performance
1 out of 5 stars
Story
1 out of 5 stars

Reviewed: 07-04-18

60's Radical. Your heard it before. Same mill, new grist. Tried and flase, worn down, worn down. No info.

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5 people found this helpful

Mish Mash

Overall
1 out of 5 stars
Performance
1 out of 5 stars
Story
1 out of 5 stars

Reviewed: 07-04-18

Not a Voltaic pile, but a pile nontheless. A wordy, wordy exercise in political disorientation. If up were down and black were white, and we mixed them all together...we would get a book like this. Good, for his sake, he can collect his GS pension.

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1 person found this helpful

Pompous and verbose.

Overall
2 out of 5 stars
Performance
2 out of 5 stars
Story
2 out of 5 stars

Reviewed: 11-19-15

This book wasn’t for you, but who do you think might enjoy it more?

The fatuous.

Would you ever listen to anything by The Great Courses again?

Of course.

What didn’t you like about Professor Kenneth R. Bartlett’s performance?

He is idiotic to the point of distraction. He should read a book now out of print by Rudolf Flesch called How to Be Brief.

You didn’t love this book... but did it have any redeeming qualities?

I couldn't listen long enough to find them.

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3 people found this helpful