merich

Has its moments but meh

Reviewed: 06-20-24

Many of the insights into what engineers do and how they do it are interesting. But much of the book is a rant about how society seems to value scientist more than engineers when engineers are actually doing the more important and challenging work. Resentment about being under appreciated is always lurking beneath the surface and frequently bursts forth. I guess seeing this attitude also provides an insight into the world of engineering, but it was both odd and tiresome.

You voted on this review!

You reported this review!

Kind of ridiculous

Reviewed: 03-18-24

Enjoyable, because all of the standard Dick Francis elements are present. But the narrator was challenged by having to do some Italian accents, and the plot was just too unrealistic. Francis tends to have heroes who are a little too good to be true and villains who are a little too bad to be true, that comes with the territory. But this time the basic plot was  too hard to swallow.

You voted on this review!

You reported this review!

Absurd

Reviewed: 02-09-24

More than 100 mini-chapters of nonsense. An unrealistic cartoon, slapped together without style or creativity. Apparently I am very much in the minority, but the whole thing seemed ridiculous to me. Some exaggeration comes with the territory, but the 3 title characters were both wildly unrealistic (Holmesio has super-human smelling abilities, they all have limitless funds without an apparent source, often the authors don't even try to explain how these 3 manage to pull of their results other than to say, as they assert more than once, "we are very good at what we do") and also formulaic (great at fighting but also aesthetes who enjoy very fine wine and cuisine; superhumanly skilled but also fatally flawed, etc. etc. etc.). One coincidence after another. Over the top gruesomeness and venality by the bad guys. Just absurd.

You voted on this review!

You reported this review!

Not Francis at his best

Reviewed: 01-14-24

The usual elements – first person story by a seemingly ordinary man who rises to the occasion and doesn’t have to brag because those around him keep saying how wonderful he is. Some horses, a love interest, physical bravery. But the story is far-fetched, the coincidences a little hard to stomach, and nobody is especially appealing. And the narration is problematic because many of the characters are Italian, which requires a lot of rather unconvincing accent work by the reader.

You voted on this review!

You reported this review!

"Stories" is a generous term

Reviewed: 10-01-23

These "stories" are a chance to hear basic spoken French and perhaps pick up a few new words. Every sentence is of the most basic structure (subject verb object, subject verb object, subject verb object ad infinitum) and in the present tense. But the text is really just a bunch of "use this word in a sentence" examples strung together. To say the stories have a plot would be generous; to say they have characters in any meaningful sense would be false. They are kind of like when a second grader writes a "book" for school. Just a string of declarative sentences. I realize that the author was constrained by the need to write in a simple and easily understood style, but it's really false advertising to refer to this as a collection of short stories. It is a collection of sentences.

Weirdly, the recording begins with a lengthy, utterly bizarre, unnecessary, and out of place legal disclaimer, in English,

You voted on this review!

You reported this review!

1 person found this helpful

Interesting but nothing great

Reviewed: 03-19-23

The historical accounts are interesting though slightly superficial. There's potentially a massive amount of material here, so it was necessary to cut and to skim over quite a bit. Given that, why oh why did the author keep interjecting personal reminiscences of his various travels to some of the locations discussed in the book. These personal anecdotes added nothing but time/pages, felt grandiose and self-indulgent, and meant there was less time available to describe the actual subjects of the book. Also, Winchester notes at the beginning that he initially put off the project because he didn't know how to organize it all. He latches on to doing so according to five Chinese elements: wood, fire, earth, metal, and water. That works, more or less, but feels arbitrary and does not afford any insight or broader perspective. More meaningful than alphabetical order, I suppose, but not by much. I don't regret reading this, but there was such rich material to work with it could have been a lot better.

Other reviewers have objected to Winchester injecting his political views. I thought he barely did so and was not bothered at all. If it feels too "political" to acknowledge that, say, Native Americans were badly treated, then maybe history is not for you.

You voted on this review!

You reported this review!

Narration ruined by peculiar pauses

Reviewed: 02-11-23

The stories are the stories, great as ever (at least for us Holmes enthusiasts). I thought Scalon's reading was fine. I prefer Stephen Fry's, but this is refreshingly different in its way and it's nice to have another version. And the price can't be beat. But there is one big problem. At the end of any character's statement, there is a weird pause. The pause is not super-long, but there is a decided gap. So when there is an exchange, it feels like a series of interruptions, like someone pressed "pause" for a second and then "play." The result is that the flow of the narrative, and in particular the flow of any dialogue, is badly chopped up and interrupted. For me, it was enough to ruin the listening experience. I don't know what to make of it; it's almost as if the reader recorded each character separately and the engineers then pieced it together but were not able to get the pieces sufficiently close to one another. Quite bizarre. (The Fry collection is 5 hours shorter, despite including introductions to each volume, and I suspect the difference reflects the accumulation of all these brief, annoying pauses.)

You voted on this review!

You reported this review!

1 person found this helpful

No insight, no expertise

Reviewed: 10-31-22

Talk about a not great course. The lecturer is presented as an expert with special insight, but the slightly sensational stories she recounts sound like a middle school book report and could have been assembled by anyone with access to wikipedia. The lecturer brings no special knowledge, expertise, or insight; just lays out bare-bones tales of gruesome crimes.

You voted on this review!

You reported this review!

Bizarrely inconsistent narration

Reviewed: 05-16-22

The story was fine. An engaging plot in the realistically unrealistic style of the genre. The narration was usually at least acceptable but with bizarre lapses. Suddenly, the reader would place the emphasis on the wrong word, as if she actually didn't understand what she was reading. And lots of misprononunciations. Or, most peculiarly, inconsistent pronunciations. Like half the time "prelim" had the emphasis on the first syllable and half the time on the second. Or "ferry" and "furry." When she wasn't messing up, she was solid. But an unusual number of mess-ups. ("Lien" is pronounced "lean", by the way.)

You voted on this review!

You reported this review!

mixed

Reviewed: 05-04-22

Everything in the book that is about birds was fascinating, just great. The reporting on climate change was grim but important. But the long descriptions of the author's expeditions to remote locations to capture and band birds were exceedingly tedious: repetitive, formulaic, and uninspiring, and full of people that seemed a lot less witty and interesting than the author thinks they are.

You voted on this review!

You reported this review!

1 person found this helpful