SM

Journal Entry Format is Difficult to Enjoy at Best

Reviewed: 07-10-22

There's something about hearing the space & clipped journal entries read aloud that, after one chapter, becomes maddening. I couldn't take it and had to resign in Chaper 13. leaving it unfinished.

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Wonderful, Well Curated and Performed

Reviewed: 10-02-21

Extremely well curated titles per episode, read with crisp and creepy aplomb. Significantly more enjoyable than most HPL Audible books. A+

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1 person found this helpful

Exquisitely Witty, Contemporary & Wry Funny Caper

Reviewed: 06-21-21

Recommended by Alan, it had to be cool and contemporary; and it certainly is. Funny, clever broadbased humor and not just for a queer audience. In fact, this could be a wonderful bridge to more respectful and happy coexistence through rapier, urbane comedy.

Everybody's Brother Steven Marque

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MVP Most Valuable Podcast

Reviewed: 06-04-21

If only this had been available when I discovered Motorhead in my teens; when the only thing less available in my little village of Chester, Virginia than the records, was information about the band! I read about Motorhead in CREEM and special ordered import versions of Ace of Spades, then the debut, Bomber and Overkill from Peaches. Ultimately I got to be mates with Lemmy at The Rainbow many years later in the early 2000s, but in 1980 the band was a fantastic mystery that totally intrigued me and did a lot to cement my plans to be a RocknRoller for the rest of my life.

Thank you for crafting and publishing such an enjoyable podcast.

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WSM Architypes Against Occultism Backdrop

Reviewed: 12-30-20

WSM Architypes written against a backdrop of occultism is as hard to resist as ot seems. A+

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3 people found this helpful

My Greatest Audible Discovery

Reviewed: 12-27-20

From the instant I saw the cover art for the podcast, without any awareness of the author or the production, I knew for certain this would be excellent. Not only was I not mistaken - I felt & feel prophetic and even fateful. For my taste in subject matter, writing & performance, this is dead solid perfect. At once it is urbane & plain; fanciful & unadorned; wry and guileless. Listening to the narration, beautifully accented with musical accompaniment, is cognatively alligned with the experience of listening to Bob Dylan songs.

I haven't the patience for many podcasts, as I'm not inclined to like spontaneous inanity. 'A Bob Dylan Primer' is so well conceived & realized, that I can't imagine anything more entertaining & pacifying to do, than listen to it in conjunction with listening to chronologically aligned & arrayed Dylan songs. The narration and language is rustic & warm & while I seemed to innately know this was going to be wonderful for me, I didn't expect it to be dear to me; and it surely is.

The penultimate praise I can give it is this: The best thing a critic ever said about me, (and my music by proxy,) was that I was "Metal's own Bob Dylan." This is podcasts own Bob Dylan. My ultimate compliment is this: While I've met Bob Dylan and even had an incidental rapport, now, because of Michael and the episodes of his podcast, I feel much closer to him and much happier for it.

Steven Marque
The Lords of the New Church & SM

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Who Could Make James Baldwin Tedious?

Reviewed: 07-02-20

I'm an avid consumer or Audible titles, (so far, 13 months of my life spent listening in fact,) & as such, probably a comparitive conneseur of narration. (I'm disabled & unable to read conventionally.) I was particularly avid to hear this book as is evidenced by my purchase & start of it on the day it was released, because I know how impactful & emergent were the introspections & orations of James Baldwin. So I'm sorry to say that Glaude's reading of his own words serve to diminish them & distance him from his subject. Now having slogged through the performance of 'Begin Again,' to the end, I'm left disappointed by the author's narration & accordingly with his book.

His recording is low in level, anemic in delivery & maudlin in emotion. The anguish & pain, power & the patois of James Baldwin that surely exists in the author's intention, thesis, & I suppose his manuscript; rings hollow when recited with his Princeton aloofness, cable news pundit savoir faire, & most disappointingly, his overwrought whispering for dramatic effect. With each passing chapter, I wondered, what a pedantic, but plain spoken & urbanely captivating Baldwin would think about this somniferous recounting of the potent appeal of his original & authentic zeal. Don't get it twisted, the problem is not in the message, but the messenger. With so many excellent narrators available for hire, why must an author feel the need to do it themselves? Particularly when their own voice & delivery is antithetical to the person's, about whom they are writing & speaking? James Baldwin was at times smoldering, but never was he sleepy.

In his prelude, Glaude emphasizes his personal reluctance to immerse himself in Baldwin, let alone become his quasi-biographer. Methinks he may have better served the memory of Baldwin & the USA, had he simply crafted & shared a James Baldwin reading & viewing list for his audience. If you're interested in James Baldwin, do yourself a favor & use the time you'd spend on 'Begin Again,' to experience Baldwin's own original movies, short stories & interviews again, (or especially for the first time.) Because I fear that this book might actually cause you not to do so. Then, with a new or renewed appreciation for Baldwin in actuality, you may be better able to appreciate this book, or not.

But whatever you do, if you're able, read it conventionally, & don't listen to it, because the ideas that are authentically Baldwin, are to me, lost in this heavily stylized & self-aware narration.

PS If you are the author, please take no offense, I know my review may seem harsh. But my goal, (hopefully like yours,) is only to share James Baldwin, in the hope that doing so will help our country & our citizens to love & serve all.

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24 people found this helpful

Best of my 1,000 Audible Titles

Reviewed: 05-06-18

Every written line enchanted; every spoken word magical. It will most surely make you better.

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