Audiobooks: 'Scaramouche: A Romance of the French Revolution,' 'Guns, Germs, and Steel'
Rafael Sabatini - Scaramouche: A Romance of the French Revolution from librivox.org
Scaramouche is a romantic adventure and tells the story of a young aristocrat during the French Revolution. His successive endeavors as a lawyer, politician, actor, lover, and buffoon lead his enemies to call him "Scaramouche" (also called Scaramuccia, a roguish character in the commedia dell'arte), but he impresses many with his elegant orations and precision swordsmanship.
The novel has a memorable start (Book I: The Robe, Chapter I, 'The Republican'): "He was born with the gift of laughter and a sense that the world was mad. And that was all his patrimony. His very paternity was obscure, although the village of Gavrillacs had long since dispelled the cloud of mystery that hung about it."
(Summary from wikipedia)
This is so, so good. It's an episodic novel about a cold-blooded in-betweener who stirs up trouble wherever he goes and then runs off (kind of like the Doctor, no?). There's a lot of Oedipal stuff bubbling underneath the surface, and some of the monologue are tedious, but less so listening than, I imagine, reading.
And the reader for this project is totally amazing; he does different verbal tics but subtly, and he's a real pleasure to listen to.
At Project Gutenberg.
At amazon.
Jared Diamond - Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies
A 1997 book by Jared Diamond, professor of geography and physiology at UCLA. In 1998 it won a Pulitzer Prize and the Aventis Prize for Best Science Book. A documentary based on the book was broadcast on PBS in July, 2005, produced by the National Geographic Society.
According to the author, an alternative title would be 'A short history about everyone for the last 13,000 years.' But the book is not merely an account of the past; it attempts to explain why Eurasian civilizations, as a whole, have survived and conquered others, while refuting the belief that Eurasian hegemony is due to any form of Eurasian intellectual, genetic or moral superiority. Diamond argues that the gaps in power and technology between human societies do not reflect cultural or racial differences, but rather originate in environmental differences powerfully amplified by various positive feedback loops. He also, most explicitly in the epilogue, argues that societies with food surpluses and high-to-moderate degrees of interaction with outsiders are more likely to encourage great people to realize their full potential and to adopt new inventions.
(summary by wikipedia)
I have almost nothing to say about this; it said a lot of things that may very well be self-evident and I'm not really convinced by his conclusions.
At amazon.com
Scaramouche is a romantic adventure and tells the story of a young aristocrat during the French Revolution. His successive endeavors as a lawyer, politician, actor, lover, and buffoon lead his enemies to call him "Scaramouche" (also called Scaramuccia, a roguish character in the commedia dell'arte), but he impresses many with his elegant orations and precision swordsmanship.
The novel has a memorable start (Book I: The Robe, Chapter I, 'The Republican'): "He was born with the gift of laughter and a sense that the world was mad. And that was all his patrimony. His very paternity was obscure, although the village of Gavrillacs had long since dispelled the cloud of mystery that hung about it."
(Summary from wikipedia)
This is so, so good. It's an episodic novel about a cold-blooded in-betweener who stirs up trouble wherever he goes and then runs off (kind of like the Doctor, no?). There's a lot of Oedipal stuff bubbling underneath the surface, and some of the monologue are tedious, but less so listening than, I imagine, reading.
And the reader for this project is totally amazing; he does different verbal tics but subtly, and he's a real pleasure to listen to.
At Project Gutenberg.
At amazon.
Jared Diamond - Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies
A 1997 book by Jared Diamond, professor of geography and physiology at UCLA. In 1998 it won a Pulitzer Prize and the Aventis Prize for Best Science Book. A documentary based on the book was broadcast on PBS in July, 2005, produced by the National Geographic Society.
According to the author, an alternative title would be 'A short history about everyone for the last 13,000 years.' But the book is not merely an account of the past; it attempts to explain why Eurasian civilizations, as a whole, have survived and conquered others, while refuting the belief that Eurasian hegemony is due to any form of Eurasian intellectual, genetic or moral superiority. Diamond argues that the gaps in power and technology between human societies do not reflect cultural or racial differences, but rather originate in environmental differences powerfully amplified by various positive feedback loops. He also, most explicitly in the epilogue, argues that societies with food surpluses and high-to-moderate degrees of interaction with outsiders are more likely to encourage great people to realize their full potential and to adopt new inventions.
(summary by wikipedia)
I have almost nothing to say about this; it said a lot of things that may very well be self-evident and I'm not really convinced by his conclusions.
At amazon.com