"Good Intentions" by Etgar Keret, read by Leonard Nimoy/"The Man Who Liked Dickens" by Evelyn Waugh, read by Leonard Nimoy
Does the story/selection appeal to you? Why or why not?
What does the reader to do bring the story to life, create a vivid voice? How would you rate the telling of the story? What in particular did you like or dislike?
I enjoyed the first of the two stories in this selection more then the second one. This is because the first has a storyline that is simpler and very easy to follow. The second story has a plot that confused me and was hard to follow at points.
ReplyDeleteNimoy, the reader, does a great job of creating a vivid voice by changing his tone depending on the mood of the charecter. In the first story he voices a former orphan who has struggles with past emotions when tasked with killing a man who was kind to him as a child. In the second Nimoy portraya many different voices by changing his volume and speech style depending on the mood and opinions of each charecter. I would rate the telling of both stories as very good and would say I particularly enjoyed Nimoy's ability to sound both sympathetic and troubled at the same time. In addition, his ability to create many characters with only one voice but many different tones is quite impressive.
I liked both stories and I'm not sure which one I liked more. I agree with Colin that the second story was a bit confusing. I think this might be just because the second one was longer and I had trouble listening for that long. Also, the first story felt more human, where as the second one just felt annoying at times because of Mr. McMaster's obsessive personality. I was getting quite frustrate that he wasn't helping the man go back to England. However, this doesn't mean the story was bad; I think it was good because I got into the story and engaged.
ReplyDeleteNimoy had a fantastic reading tone throughout both stories. The two things that stood out to me were that he was good at distinguishing voices for characters and that he was very good at changing his tone based on the current emotion. For example, he would read a bit timidly when the hitman was scared to kill the nice man, and he would raise his voice and excitement in the second story when Mr. McMaster got excited about reading. I also liked Nimoy's use of pauses in his readings. Not once did he stumble because he went too fast, and this is because he paced himself and made good pauses. This was good because it made the readings go really fluidly without any hiccups.
I would rate the first story as a 9/10 because it was simple and easy to follow, yet it was engaging and you could feel the character's emotions through Nimoy. I would rate the second one an 8/10 because the reading was very good, but I found myself getting a bit too annoyed with McMaster and didn't like the ending. However, this rating is obviously biased and I think I personally wasn't just able to appreciate Mr. McMaster as a character.
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