"Malta Sheffer" by Nelson Eubanks (read by Brandon J. Dirden) and "A Sunday Kind of Love" by Tom Wolfe (read by Tracee Chimo)
Excerpts from Humans of New York (read by Vanessa Aspillaga, Jason Biggs, Tracee Chimo, Lynn Cohen, Brandon J. Dierdan and Peter Francis James)
Does the story/selection appeal to you? Why or why not? This does appeal to me because it is about normal life, but a life that I don't experience myself. (the city life).
ReplyDeleteWhat does the reader to do bring the story to life, create a vivid voice?
Tells lots of details, alters tonal quality of voice, and also pauses.
How would you rate the telling of the story?
I would rate it quite well.
What in particular did you like or dislike?
My only dislike was that sometimes there were words that either I didn't know or I could not understand because of the pronunciation. I liked the way that the storyteller seemed to get into the story as well.
Malta Sheffer
ReplyDeleteDoes the story/selection appeal to you? Why or why not?
I think the idea of the story does appeal to me. The idea of the struggle of a man growing up poor in the city with an outlet of sports is very appealing. However, I think the reader focused too much on trying to sound overly sophisticated by making sure that every slight detail was elongated.
What does the reader to do bring the story to life, create a vivid voice?
He often uses imagery to make the audience feel like they are listening in on the story. He does a great job describing the scene where he is getting signed to the baseball team. He also does a great job of creating the image of the baseball field and his game.
How would you rate the telling of the story? What in particular did you like or dislike?
I would give it a 7. I think he does do a good job making sure that he speaks clearly and confidently. I do appreciate his imagery and descriptions but he turns a short story into a 30 minute speech. It also gets rather dull because there is not much humor in it.
A Sunday Kind of Love
Does the story/selection appeal to you? Why or why not?
This story does not particularly appeal to me. I tend to enjoy stories that are fast paced and funny but this story is not funny and very slow.
What does the reader to do bring the story to life, create a vivid voice?
The reader uses a myriad of metaphors and similes to bring the actions to life. Like in the first story she over describes parts of the story. For instance the first five minutes of the story is simply describing the position of the two lovers.
How would you rate the telling of the story? What in particular did you like or dislike?
I would give it a 6.5. While I do think the reader speaks very confidently and eloquently, I think the story itself gets extremely dull. I do respect her vivid descriptions but I think the story is far too slow and non climatic.
Malta Sheffer
ReplyDeleteDoes the story/selection appeal to you? Why or why not?
Though I don't think I would be drawn to this story on it's own (like Caroline, I do not have much in common with the main character, and I am not particularly interested in baseball,) I found that I really enjoyed listening to it. The plot and the exciting narration definitely appealed to me. I would disagree with Caroline in the sense that I do not consider this a narration of a normal person's life, but rather a compelling story about maturing through a sport.
What does the reader do to bring the story to life, create a vivid voice?
I noticed that the reader changed tones at various points in the story, to show changes in mood and the characters' emotions. This added depth to the narration. The dialogue was also very animated, and the accents certainly made it feel realistic.
How would you rate the telling of the story? What in particular did you like or dislike?
I thought the telling of this story was done very well-I would give it an 8 or an 8.5. I agree with Ryan that some parts of the story, particularly the description, became dull, but the storyteller seemed to do a good job speeding up and speaking with animation during these parts to keep the audience engaged.
A Sunday Kind of Love
Did the story/selection appeal to you? Why or why not?
I did not like this story very much. While I appreciated some of the descriptions, I thought that as a whole it did not have much of a plot, and it seemed to drone on.
What does the reader do to bring the story to life, create a vivid voice?
The reader used the speed of her voice and her tone very effectively to represent the pace of the story, from a drowsy Sunday afternoon to the bustle of Monday. She also made the story much more lively by using the voices of the different people as they observed the couple on the subway, which brought some energy to a rather dull portion of the story. I agree with Ryan that many of the descriptions were overly detailed- I might enjoy them more if they were isolated, but as a whole the story became heavy and drab.
How would you rate the telling of the story? What in particular did you like or dislike?
I would give it a 7.5 or so. I think that the reader did a good job with what she had to work with, and some parts of it were interesting and fluid, but I did not particularly enjoy the story itself.
Malta Sheffer
ReplyDeleteDoes the story/selection appeal to you? Why or why not?
This story appealed to me greatly for a few reasons. First, I love sports and baseball is one of my favorites and that helped me to connect to the character's ideas and the reader's tone and emotion. Also, New York City is one of my favorite places along with cities themselves. The true excitement of being in large crowds of a multitude of different people is truly amazing to me. Overall, this story appealed to me because I could connect to its ideas easily.
What does the reader do to bring the story to life, create a vivid voice?
The reader constantly alternates between tones and tempos in his voice. He would speak more slowly in a deeper softer tone for significant sections to the character's life showing the emotion of the character. Along with that he would speak very quickly with a bright higher pitched tone when describing crazed detailed sections to show his excitement. Overall, the reader's changes in tone and tempo of his reading created a very realistic and vivid picture.
How would you rate the telling of the story? What in particular did you like or dislike?
I would give this story a 8.5/10. The reader made the story feel lively and made me feel as if I was part of the character portrayed. Furthermore, the ideas of the story captured me with the reader's enthusiasm as I was very connected to the excitement, especially in the city life and love of baseball.
A Sunday Kind of Love
Did the story/selection appeal to you? Why or why not?
This story did not appeal to me. It was very unfocused and wild in that it did not seem to follow anything; there was no plot, or ideals, or even a true main character. I had trouble staying attentive to the detail as it was endless going on for about 10minutes in the beginning before any ideas were even presented to the story. I had very little interest in the detail and it made the story unappealing to me.
What does the reader do to bring the story to life, create a vivid voice?
The reader would run through an endless list of details at blazing speed with excitement in her voice showing the pure wonder involved in all of the details. This was very well contrasted as the reader would go into slow dull sections explaining short specific ideas and providing comic portions. In these sections the reader would pause often for the audience. In essence, the reader created a high-speed environment with her voice, but allowed for space in the environment to wrap significant ideas into her speech.
How would you rate the telling of the story? What in particular did you like or dislike?
I would give this story's telling a 6. Although the reader did an excellent job giving strong emotions throughout the telling, she very often would gloss over long sections of details much too fast for the listener to understand. Her biggest flaw was her speed in her reading. Along with that, she often lost my attention by changing emotion to drastically or making sections seem to be droning on instead of being full of excitement in the detail. Overall, she did a fair job with the reading but could have improved her speed in her reading by slowing it down in some sections and could have made her emotion shifts less extreme.