16 of 16 people found the following review helpful:
1.0 out of 5 stars
These Recordings are Abridged, November 6, 2009
These recordings are abridged. I have a reading of Emma on 11 CDs. This collection does it in 2. This is a drawback, and it is not evident from the description. The box only mentions it on the back at the lower left although it would be evident from the CD count, I suppose. On the plus side the set includes an unabridged reading of The Watsons, and a CD of readings of Jane Austen's letters, both of which I have not seen elsewhere available in audio. I was looking for Sense and Sensibility on CD. It is her, abridged, in a 2 CD set, also. I'm torn between opening the box, i.e. accepting the item, for the Watsons and Letters, and to hold my S&S desires until I can find a full version; and sending it back. Watch for a further review if I open the box.
Ok, I did open it and listened to the Watsons (unabridged), Sense & Sensibility (abridged) and Pride and Prejudice (abridged). Here's the deal: You don't read Jane Austen for the plot. You read it because of Jane Austen's writing. You listen to it for the same reason. This means there is nothing at all to recommend an abridged version. Here's the problem in a nutshell. At one point in Pride and Prejudice, Elizabeth Bennet regrets all of the saucy speeches she ever made to Mr. Darcy. We regret them too, but for a different reason. She wishes Mr. Darcy had never heard them. Had he been listening to the abridged version, he never would have heard them because they were all cut out. Parts of the abridgement make no sense at all. When Ms. Bingley says Elizabeth is one of those women who curry favor with men by running down members of her own sex in the abridged version, this makes no sense whatever because we have not heard the conversation that led it to it in the novel.
I do not recommend buying this set at all. Had I not opened it, I would return it. There is no point in an abridged Jane Austen. That said, I note this is the only audio version of Sense & Sensibility I can find, except the Project Guttenberg rendition which seems to have each chapter read by a diffent volunteer - a reading that is not up to the performance standard of the professional sets. It is also the only audio version of the Watsons, and the excerpts from what seem to be the early practice sessions of a young Jane for an epistolary novel.These are presented as leters by Jane Austen, but I don't believe that is accurate in the sense of letters being written to someone else. These are letters which practice writing on a brief topic, and they have interesting echoes in her published novels. They are not the equal of any of the writing in the novels, however.
I should probably give this set No Stars, but I don't think that's an option. So, 1 star for the otherwise unavailable material.
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16 of 17 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Kindle-Specific Review - AGB, January 15, 2009
This is a Kindle-specific review by AGB.
Value for money: excellent bargain set of the six great Austen novels, plus the juvenile "Lady Susan". There are some Kindle-specific faults that readers will want to beware (though fewer than in other competing Complete Sets).
Presentation and Format: The pages display cleanly, with the text set fully justified (as Kindle definitely prefers). Two quibbles. First, the Chapter Lists referred to below are set to the left margin and can be difficult to select with the Kindle trackwheel and silver bar way over to the right (temporarily increasing the font size to pick a chapter is a work-round). Second, emphasis within the text that would usually be italicized has been poorly done: "Mr. Bennet, how _can_ you abuse your own children.....". Ugh!
Cover etc.: there's a simple cover for the whole set, but no covers for the individual novels.
Opening Linked Table of Contents: there is a proper opening linked ToC and - most usefully - each novel commences with a list of links to the individual chapters.
(Note: the "Linked ToC" enables you skip to predetermined points in the file - individual books, chapter openings etc. Without a good one, a long or very technical work can be tiresome to navigate on the Kindle.)
Metadata
("Metadata" refers to some hidden coding that publishers insert into the text file to enable Kindle to list and display correctly the essentials of the book - Author, Title etc. Kindle owners are able to correct indexing errors - which are very, very common - via a 3rd party software program called "Mobi2Mobi", but is both annoying and time-consuming to have to do so. )
Author: this is set incorrectly, and will Author Index the book under "J" for Jane not "A" for Austen.
(General Note: although Kindle displays author names in the form "Bram Stoker", in order for him to be positioned in the Kindle Author List under "S" for Stoker rather than "B" for Bram, the Metadata must be set by the publisher in the form "Stoker, Bram". )
Title: displays and indexes properly.
(General Note: although Kindle knows to ignore an opening "The" in a title, it simply takes the first proper word in the metadata title to index the book. Publishers often include words - e.g. "World's Classics:... " - before the proper title of the book that lead Kindle to place it misleadingly in your displayed Title List.)
Search: works properly.
Lookup: works properly.
(General Note: for reasons I don't yet quite understand, a number of Kindle format books - usually at the less expensive end of the range - don't allow Search or Lookup to work properly.)
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