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Humboldt's Gift
- Letto da: Christopher Hurt
- Durata: 18 ore e 5 min
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Humboldt's Gift
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Valutazione media degli utenti. Nota: solo i clienti che hanno ascoltato il titolo possono lasciare una recensioneRecensioni - seleziona qui sotto per cambiare la provenienza delle recensioni.
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Generale5 out of 5 stars
- Scott
- 10/05/2008
Great Book, Great Reader
This is a wonderful and compelling reading of a very good book: one that would be very easy to ruin with an unintelligent interpretation.
No, there is not a lot of "plot" per se and it is highly discursive: welcome to Bellow's world! There's a passage of several pages where Charlie considers the subject of productive inactivity from every possible angle, which struck me as almost a manifesto for the technique of the novel itself. Events in the outside world mainly serve to prompt ruminating, reflecting, and reminiscing.
But make no mistake: there is in fact a story, it features great, colorful characters, it's told in beautiful language, and it's very entertaining all the way through. It made me laugh out loud all the time. And finally, countless little plot threads that have meandered through the text for hours all get neatly tied up into a satisfying screwball ending.
But the book is not really about the destination. It's about the journey. The book is drenched with warm-hearted nostalgia, and a comprehensive generosity of spirit that is hard to find anywhere in the world, at any time. Charlie Citrine makes the world a bigger and friendlier place to be.
And again, this reader is probably the best possible reader they could have chosen for the part. I plan to give this book a second and third listen in the future. This definitely ranks up there with Ron Silver's reading of American Pastoral, George Guidall's reading of Zorba the Greek, and Donal Donelly's reading of Dubliners as one of the best audiobook performances I've ever had the pleasure of experiencing.
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22 persone l'hanno trovata utile
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Generale2 out of 5 stars
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Lettura3 out of 5 stars
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Storia4 out of 5 stars
- Chris Reich
- 14/12/2014
Rotten Audio Quality, Poorly Read
Herzog! Bam! Henderson the Rain King! Bam! The Victim! Bam! The Adventures of Augie March! Bam!
I seem to have fallen into a Saul Bellow groove. I've enjoyed (Very good to Great) every audio title until this one. I wasn't crazy about the narration but the reader is supposed to be jaded and snarky so I'll give Hurt a pass though I believe much of the Bellow philosophy of life is lost in the monotonous delivery.
I don't think this is Bellow's best but it's still got plenty of meat and a lot of it very tender and delicious near the ample bone. There's a bit of fat and a vein of gristle that makes the book a little dated---it's destined to be a period piece.
The biggest complaint is the awful, tin can like audio quality. I tried all the formats and it made no difference. I thought my ear buds were failing so I got new ones. This book just has lousy sound. If there was another version, read by someone else, I'd ask Audible for a credit. But, alas, there isn't and I may come back to this again so I'll keep it.
I wouldn't recommend it to you.
Chris Reich, The Business Physicist
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8 persone l'hanno trovata utile
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Generale1 out of 5 stars
- Robert
- 20/02/2010
The worst narrator, ever
The first audio book I've not been able to finish. The narration is so bad that I found myself struggling to understand what he says. He drops the ends of words, trails away at the ends sentences, and makes the listener work to parse out what he's saying. Listen to the sample - when I first heard this bit on my iPhone, I couldn't tell if he was talking about "the melancholy of affluence" or "the melancholy of Athens"! Too many instances like this make you too aware of the narrator and knock you out of the story. A shame.
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8 persone l'hanno trovata utile
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Generale5 out of 5 stars
- R. Bellerose
- 31/03/2008
Masterful language
Thickly spread with self-reflection, this story seems to move slowly, but each aside engrosses the reader and moves the story along. Filled with social commentary that will sparkle for decades.
The reader is tireless and without error. He renders the first-person Charlie in a believable and consistent voice.
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6 persone l'hanno trovata utile
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Generale1 out of 5 stars
- Pamela J. Cope
- 04/07/2009
what is the gift???
I kept listening, waiting for something to happen. Nothng ever did. what a disappointing waste.
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3 persone l'hanno trovata utile
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Generale3 out of 5 stars
- Amazon Customer
- 06/05/2009
Humbolt's Gift, Saul Bellow
The pace of this book is pedestrian at best with the main character rather self absorbed and brooding. The relationships tend to be self serving and hedonistic. I found the reading experiance left me depressed and hollow. While the main character, Charlie, had many redeeming qualities he seemed to have no spiritual foundation or sense of where these moral imperatives came from. Even with all his introspective broodings he was clueless about why he acted the way he did or was offended by the actions of the other characters when they crossed certain moral boundries.
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3 persone l'hanno trovata utile
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Generale1 out of 5 stars
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Lettura1 out of 5 stars
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Storia1 out of 5 stars
- Steve Hay
- 26/07/2019
Oh sweet baby Jesus skip this one
I'm currently reading my way through all the Pulitzer Prize fiction winners, else i would have gladly laid aside this book in the first 5 minutes never to have returned again.
In the instance that I encounter truly terrible books, such as this, I always inquire as to if the author has since passed from this life so that we can be assured that their literary nonsense has ceased. Which thankfully, Saul Bellow has been gone for years so there need be no further worries as to Humbodlt returning in any capacity. Hallelujah amen!
Sadly, in addition to the actual content being horrendously awful, the narrator drops his voice at the end of words as well as the ends of sentences; thus, you have to up the volume to hear the end of anything but then the rest of the sentence is so dang loud. Blahhhhh.
Checking this off the list. That's all that matters. It is finished.
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2 persone l'hanno trovata utile
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Generale5 out of 5 stars
- Eric Miller
- 25/01/2015
Some people write in a way that is captivating
I really enjoyed this book. Journey into his mind. Much to digest over time. The writing was truly mesmerizing, no matter what he was talking about, no matter how gross or how lofty, I was captivated.
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2 persone l'hanno trovata utile
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Generale5 out of 5 stars
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Lettura4 out of 5 stars
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Storia5 out of 5 stars
- James
- 27/09/2011
#1 Classic
Wait... you do know who wrote this right? This is Saul Bellow. There's no way you're not going to read this, even if it IS with your ears.
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2 persone l'hanno trovata utile
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Generale5 out of 5 stars
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Lettura5 out of 5 stars
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Storia5 out of 5 stars
- Michael
- 11/06/2021
Bellow at his Best
This is the novel for which Bellow won the Pulitzer Prize (he also won the Nobel prize the same year). This is one of my favorite of Bellow. The novel jumps between humor and drama, introspection and story, characters and events. Sometimes Bellow is too introspective for his own (or the reader) good. This is Bellow at his best. The characters are particularly strong as is the story (which is not always the case with Bellow). I really liked this production and will listen to it again.
A number of reviews found problems with the sound and narration, but I did not. I thought the narration was great, well paced, clear, and with a wonder expression of the character's varying moods.
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1 persona l'ha trovata utile
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Generale4 out of 5 stars
- Mike Bradburn
- 20/03/2008
Worth the effort
On reflection, this was quite a remarkable book. At first, I really struggled to follow the narrative, as there were so many tangential strands of the story and I was in serious danger of giving up. However, I'm really glad I stayed with it and I would advise just relaxing and not worrying about trying to find the 'real' plot - just enjoy Bellow's flights of intellectual fancy and allow yourself to wallow in the sublime turns of phrase and the incredible descriptive depths he goes to. I think he won the Nobel prize for this book and you can understand why. It really does become utterly engrossing at times and, despite his oft atrocious over-intellectualising, Charlie Citrine (having to guess at spellings, is one downside of audible books!) becomes truly vivid and lifelike.
I'm not well-up on my regional American accents, but the reader did a great job and seemed to bring a genuine Chicago-feel to the whole novel. Different characters were effortlessly portrayed with only the slightest of vocal changes and the intricacies of the fairly taxing philosophising were navigated as well as possible.
All in all, I was genuinely saddened when the book came to its predictably unpredictable end. Beautiful.
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7 persone l'hanno trovata utile
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Generale5 out of 5 stars
- Tom
- 31/05/2010
A Great Novel
I remember struggling with Saul Bellow at school - Henderson the Rain King, I think it was. So I approached this book with some trepidation. But it is excellent - I love that sharp fluid prose of the best American writers. The novel itself is what you would call multi-layered. The story itself is quite interesting but what really makes the book is the clever way the author juxtaposes the storyline with the philosophical musings of the two main characters; at the beginning I could not believe that the author was being so serious, but by the end the subtlety of the presentation became more clear. The contrast between the main narrator's serious approach to matters intellectual and the seemingly luckless course if his life, and how the two are eventually reconciled is done with great generosity of heart. I loved it.
The narration is beautifully paced and does a great deal to bring out what the book is about.
Warmly recommended.
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5 persone l'hanno trovata utile
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Generale3 out of 5 stars
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Lettura1 out of 5 stars
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Storia4 out of 5 stars
- S
- 07/07/2014
Eat my words
That’s what the narrator seems to like to do. Perhaps it’s just me, or that I listen to audiobooks on my headphones and am sensitive to the dynamic range I should subject my ears to, but he eats words up, rendering them inaudible. The prosodic contours that the narrator chooses to parse the cadences of Saul Bellow’s masterly writing plunges the trailing bits of nearly every unit of diction below my audible threshold. This is quite annoying as it makes me lose words that have been carefully chosen by the author, or crank up the volume, in which case his voice takes on a piercing rasp which is also a source of discomfort. I persisted with this for a while, taking it in in short stretches, but I am strongly inclined to return the audiobook and pick up the paperback instead. I have nothing negative to say about the novel, but then this is one of Bellow’s famous works....
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3 persone l'hanno trovata utile
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Generale5 out of 5 stars
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Lettura5 out of 5 stars
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Storia5 out of 5 stars
- Amazon Customer
- 16/03/2023
humboldts gift
brilliant, brilliant, brilliant.Masterful Expertly written. expertly narrated. wonderful characters and descriptions throughout. I thoroughly enjoyed it
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Generale5 out of 5 stars
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Lettura5 out of 5 stars
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Storia5 out of 5 stars
- Robert Fox
- 13/07/2019
A mature Bellow tour de force
One of Bellow's mature tours de force, with a wonderful performance from the reader, quite characteristic of Bellow audiobooks. If only all authors were this lucky with their audiobook readers!
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Generale5 out of 5 stars
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Lettura5 out of 5 stars
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Storia5 out of 5 stars
- Amazon Customer
- 02/10/2018
A full-on world-beater. A masterpiece.
Unstoppably brilliant. Up there with Herzog, Augie March and Ravelstein. The guy reading it does a near-genius job in capturing the mock-heroic, comic and often deeply moving tones Bellow could effortless convince onto the page too. Bravo. My only slight side-note or nag would be the over-all recording quality isn't great. It's clearly been recorded digitally off of an original cassette tape, the other side of said tape on occasion faintly coming through. Very soon though i almost totally faded this out and it didn't ruin my enjoyment a jot after the opening 15 minutes. This is a must read, highly recommended, and not just for fans of Bellow or stylish prose: the story being compelling enough in itself. It's one i'll read and read again over the years, dipping into the physical copy often for one of those many spellbinding bellow set-pieces. 10\10.
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Generale1 out of 5 stars
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Lettura3 out of 5 stars
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Storia5 out of 5 stars
- john mcgrath
- 22/02/2018
great book good reader but very poor sound quality
Sounds like it was recorded on a 1970's cheap cassette recorder with the mic turned up too high. Astonishingly poor audio for audible...fix it or re-record it please! A refund should be given for such an obvious technical flaw.
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