This was my first graphic audio comic, but it won't be my last. I knew sci-fi and fantasy translated well into graphic audio, but it dSo cool.
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This was my first graphic audio comic, but it won't be my last. I knew sci-fi and fantasy translated well into graphic audio, but it didn't occur to me how well a comic book would work. FANTASTIC. Can you call something with this level of pervert-superhero gore, fantastic? Well, I just did.
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Ok, so this is a dramatized version of The Boys, Volume 1: The Name of the Game. If you've read the comics or watched the television show, I think you'll enjoy this. You have music, sound effects, a full cast reading the parts, and a narrator describing what's happening. And while it may sound like a clusterfuck to try and adapt a completely visual medium like a comic into a dramatized audio adaptation, it is extremely well done and a lot of fun to listen to. I immediately started searching out the rest of this series and can't wait to grab them.
Venetia is quite the free spirit. And while Damerel isn't perfect, I think they make a good pair. I was also qFor those who love a good scandal.
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Venetia is quite the free spirit. And while Damerel isn't perfect, I think they make a good pair. I was also quite shocked at the twist that allowed them to get their HEA! Didn't see that one coming but I liked it.
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Venetia has her own money and doesn't need to marry, nor does she necessarily want to, until she meets her match in Lord Damerel. Unfortunately, his scandalous past makes him a non-option to eligible young ladies like herself. It appears that he ran off with a married woman, lived in sin for a bit, and has spent his remaining time in one rakish escapade after another. So. He's had a bit of fun over the years, yeah? And has now come back to his family's seat - right next to Veneita's. Where they soon become fast friends. I love that they genuinely like each other, and that's probably the main reason I rooted for these two to get their HEA.
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But there are several things in the book that are products of its time, and that might make it less enjoyable for some readers. For example, in the scene where Venetia meets Lord Jasper Damerel, he mistakes her for a servant and proceeds to forcibly kiss her. Ew. For several reasons. That didn't exactly endear him to me, but I can still remember thinking this sort of behavior was fun in a fantasy sort of way when I was younger. Authors had to write scenes around the values that were drummed into us as young women, so "forcibly" being kissed or touched (which allowed you to go with the fantasy and still see the girls as good) was pretty much the only avenue available to if you were marketing to the mainstream and wanted to add a bit of spice. Looking back, I try not to dock the book for social issues like that, and this was published in 1958, so...yeah.
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I also think some people are thrown by the statement she makes at the end about being ok with the uncertainty that he will be able to remain faithful to her over the coming years. But to me, that just means she's realistic about life. How can you ever be sure someone won't cheat on you? Is there something out there that I'm unaware of that can give you that 100% guarantee when you get married? No. There's no promise that isn't breakable, and if you think there is, you're fooling yourself. I know. I'm such a killjoy.
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If you're a fan of Heyer's romances, I think you'll like this, though. Recommended....more
Pop culture lectures are usually pretty fun. But to be honest, I struggled a bit with staying interested with this one.
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Shannon Scott takes us onPop culture lectures are usually pretty fun. But to be honest, I struggled a bit with staying interested with this one.
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Shannon Scott takes us on a trip through...well, wolves and werewolves. She has a very feminist slant in several lectures which I thought was both cool in some places and somewhat overreaching in others. And by that, I mean that some of the things she said didn't quite track with what other lecturers who were experts in particular subjects (Norse myths, or historical witchcraft for example) had said in their lectures. Her facts seemed a little more Wikipedia and a little less academia. Which just leads me back to the same old conclusion that no one is an expert in everything, AND you can pretty much cite random facts/histories/legends/events to show them in whatever light you happen to want to see them in. Maybe she has better lectures elsewhere?
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This did make me curious to learn more about real-life wolves & read Guy Endor's The Werewolf of Paris, but other than that...? I don't know. Whatever I was hoping for, this wasn't it.
This was such an interesting look at the reasons why so many people believe in conspiracy theories - not the least of whTHE TRUTH IS OUT THERE.
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This was such an interesting look at the reasons why so many people believe in conspiracy theories - not the least of which is because conspiracies do happen. But what's the psychology behind our obsessions with them? And why are they so hard to disprove? Why is it so much easier for us to believe that there are globally powerful and supernaturally nefarious forces at work behind the scenes, rather than to look at the evidence and follow the money?
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Is it really somehow easier to comprehend Lizard People running pedophile rings on a flat earth, than to look at a who profits from misinformation about the dangers of smoking? Yes. Yes, it is.
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Apparently, our brains like to "know" the answers. That's fair. And it is far easier to believe something that claims to give you a black-and-white answer than it is to wrestle with the idea that you don't know the answer yet...or maybe ever.
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And conspiracy theories give those pat answers. They might be the wrong answer, but you have an answer that you can fall back on when things are seemingly out of control. Which is another thing our brains don't like. The randomness of bad things. We want someone to blame, and the idea that sometimes bad shit just happens isn't going to cut it. When I'm worried about my job, my health, and the state of the world, the idea that multiple factors spreading back decades, including greedy humans, bumbling politicians, and plain old bad luck just doesn't make enough sense. There needs to be some larger mechanism in play. Because I'm important, dammit!
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Big Pharma gave my kid autism! The Bush family engineered 9-11! The CIA killed Kennedy! That's not to say that Big Pharma, the Bush family, or the CIA are on the side of angels, but it also doesn't make any of those statements true.
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One of the things Shremer said that resonated with me was that you can ask people what would it take to convince you that {insert conspiracy theory} was wrong? and that most of the time, the answer is nothing but crickets. There is no way to disprove it because the rationale is a loop. If you show documents, the documents are fake. If you speak to an expert, the expert is in on the conspiracy. If you produce a witness, the witness is lying or has been threatened. There's no way to show enough evidence to shake a belief that isn't rational to start with. I've seen this kind of behavior a lot, and it was interesting to learn some of the psychology behind it. It's still frustrating, but now it's a bit more understandable.
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It actually goes against our own ease to disbelieve something. And that makes it so much harder to be skeptical when your own confirmation bias starts to come into play. In other words, it's easy to believe what you want to believe. That's true for all of us, myself included. If it sounds like something I tend to already agree with, then it's that much easier for me to nod along, and that much harder for me to make myself stop and ask for evidence.
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There's so much interesting stuff in this short lecture, and I would really recommend this to anyone who is interested. Shermer might lean left, but I found him to be pretty unbiased when he discussed that both liberals and conservatives have their own equally silly pet conspiracies they like to marinate in, which I thought was a nice change of pace.
What makes an American monster? Well for starters, they have to be citizens. <--I kid, I kid!
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So Adam Jortner talks about the fictional monsters What makes an American monster? Well for starters, they have to be citizens. <--I kid, I kid!
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So Adam Jortner talks about the fictional monsters in books, movies, and urban legends that Americans created (or made their own version of) and why. Like, how do our monsters correlate to our societal fears?
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To be honest, I'd never thought about it much. Which is where all these neat little lectures come in and open up interesting new ideas to me that serve as a springboard to get me to sniff around and look at the world in a different way. And while I don't know that I necessarily believe monsters always have to have a deeper psychological meaning to us, Jortner made some good points and got me to think a bit deeper. At least for a few minutes.
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This would probably make a long car trip a bit less monstrous. Recommended...more
I miss all the good parties. Agatha does PR for a church fete in order to cozy up to a hot widower. But before the judges can pick a winner someone spiI miss all the good parties. Agatha does PR for a church fete in order to cozy up to a hot widower. But before the judges can pick a winner someone spikes the jams on display with some kind of hallucinogen, and a local decides to do their own rendition of I Believe I Can Fly right off the top of the roof. Was it a prank gone wrong, or something more nefarious?
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Well, I'm not going to tell you. There were a lot of twists, though. Too many? Maybe. (view spoiler)[And Agatha manages to be her petty self and lose Toni to another agency. Though I do like the idea of the kids running their own agency! And I secretly hope that Toni and Harry get together. Also, poor Bill! Not that I truly feel sorry for him because he really needs to shake off his parents before they ruin his life, but it seems as though he "might" be waking up to the fact that his future wife could potentially be scared off by his terrible family. (hide spoiler)] If you've stuck around for the other 18 books, I probably don't need to explain to you why I keep coming back. Agatha can be terribly annoying, and I want to slap her as much as I want to hug her. It is what it is.
However, I will say that for those of us who aren't science-y, there is a flood of all the different names that I cVery good explanation of evolution.
However, I will say that for those of us who aren't science-y, there is a flood of all the different names that I could never quite keep straight. Australopithecus afarensis, Australopithecus sediba, Homo erectus, Homo floresiensis, Homo naledi, Homo habilis, etc, etc, etc. So I was kind of doing a what-what-what face and just trying to catch the main gist. And I think I kind of did that. But only because Feuerriegel probably dumbed it down a lot for folks like me.
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The main thing she did was dispel a lot of the myths of evolution that I heard growing up, and helped me get a bit of a grip on what our ancestry may have looked like over the course of millions of years. I'm sure there is a lot more to it than what she covered, but I felt like I learned quite a bit.
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My backstory is that I grew up going to those wonky private church schools that taught the earth was 5,000 years old, dinosaurs were suspect, and Noah and his ark full of animals were historical events. And while it has been decades since I thought anything close to that was true, I just...well, I missed out on an education. So, here I am at almost 50, trying to remedy that. For anyone out there like me who has a lot of catching up to do, I think this lecture is a good place to start.
Agatha dreams of the perfect Christmas. I get it. Christmas was a terrible holiday when I was growing up, and I can relate to wanting to make your own Agatha dreams of the perfect Christmas. I get it. Christmas was a terrible holiday when I was growing up, and I can relate to wanting to make your own Christmas tradition as an adult that mirrors the image you wished you had as a child.
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Unfortunately, Christmas (or really any overhyped event) is likely to always be a letdown. That's just the nature of expectations vs reality. I've found it's better to let go of trying to make it great and just attempt to go with the flow. Though, that may be easier for me than for someone who grew up with these amazing memories of the holiday season.
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This Christmas Agatha hires a new young assistant detective, Toni Gilmour, and ends up rescuing her from a home much like her own childhood upbringing. Anyone who has made it to book 18 realizes that while Agatha is prickly, self-centered, and somewhat clueless about her own motivations, she also has a soft underbelly that keeps the people closest to her orbiting her cranky star. Toni understands Agatha in a way that the other people around her do not, and it was nice to see her enter the series. I'm really looking forward to seeing how she turns out.
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There is, of course, a murder and a mystery that needs solving. I mean, it wouldn't be Christmas if not. I really enjoyed this one, maybe because of what happened with James at the end, and maybe because I just needed a little Raisin in my life right now. Recommended for fans....more
First thing? Terrible narration. I think she was trying to enunciate her words, but it knocked the cadence of her speech off and sounded like a bad veFirst thing? Terrible narration. I think she was trying to enunciate her words, but it knocked the cadence of her speech off and sounded like a bad version of cheap AI reading the whole thing. I'm not even 100% convinced that this wasn't AI. I seriously had to speed it up to 1.7x just to help with the awkward pauses between words.
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Second thing? This sounded like a lecture from someone who isn't actually a fan of comic books. When she bypassed talking about flops like The Eternals and WW2 or the incredible amount of superhero fatigue that has set in, instead focusing on how awesome it all has been? I knew this wasn't a serious lecture. There wasn't any passion behind what she was saying. Just a lot of glossy facts that anyone who actually reads comics would probably already know.
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I have to say, a lot of these "Audible Original Great Courses" have been less than meaty, but this is by far the worst of the bunch. Swerve to avoid....more
