Atlantis
Gelesen von Margaret Espaillat
Gerhart Hauptmann
(4,269 Sterne; 13 Bewertungen)
Frederick von Kammacher is a young doctor in Germany whose wife has gone insane, whose children are in a boarding school, and whose career has been destroyed by some faulty research he has done. He becomes infatuated with a teenage dancer, and on a whim he boards the the same steamship the dancer is on bound for New York. Hauptmann was heralded as a seer for his description of what happens to their steamship mid-ocean, and what in reality happened to the Titanic only months later. (Summary by Margaret) (13 hr 59 min)
Chapters
Bewertungen
Super reader; slow story
TwinkieToes
(4 Sterne)
The reader was fantastic. I will have to look up more of Margaret's recordings. Sound quality was great. The storyline itself was good, but the text is full of description of non-essentials and full of philosophical thoughts. Do we really need a minute description of every painting in a New York City pub, for example? I can understand some of the philosophy being in there, but there was a LOT of it. Things like these slowed down the story to a crawl; it could have been told in 1/3 less time and have been vastly improved (IMHO) by the editing. I understand how the description of the book talks of parallels to the Titanic - a ship from Southampton to NYC goes down in mid-ocean, few people survive, and those that do are mostly from the upper classes rather than the steerage passengers. But I don't herald the author as a seer; there were too many differences. The reason for the shipwreck was different; also, this ship wasn't considered unsinkable.
Mediocre book, insufferable protagonist
Melanie Scheidler
(2 Sterne)
Honestly, I have read a lot but I have possibly never come across a protagonist who was so vain, self centered and plainly annoying. The failed doctor with a 'streak of genius' keeps on moralizing and judging all the world while being in the process of abandoning his sick wife and young children to run after a teenage girl half his age. Then he proceeds to vilify said teenager for not being the innocent angel he imagined her to be while knowing nothing about her except her looks. 'I threw it all away for nothing', he keeps moaning. We'll, maybe have a few conversations with a person before deciding you can't live without them. One is used to put up with a good deal of misogyny and bigotry in novels from this era but this was too much at some point and there was not enough literary quality to make up for it. Two stars for good reading.
Admiralble feat
Morten Engelsmann
(5 Sterne)
Reader consequently keeps her tube, her distinct pronunciation while representing the characters with individual and well positioned voices. Should I wish for anything would that be a single second pause after text end until "end of..." is announced.
Meh...
Paul Busman
(3 Sterne)
Great reader, good translation as far as I can tell, but for me the book dragged. I ended up skipping parts or all of chapters and don't feel I missed much