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Hauntology

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Hauntology

By: Merlin Coverley
Narrated by: Alan Turton
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Ghosts and spectres, the eerie and the occult. Why is contemporary culture so preoccupied by the supernatural, so captivated by the revenants of an earlier age, so haunted? The concept of Hauntology has evolved since first emerging in the 1990s, and has now entered the cultural mainstream as a shorthand for our new-found obsession with the recent past. But where does this term come from and what exactly does it mean?
This book seeks to answer these questions by examining the history of our fascination with the uncanny from the golden age of the Victorian ghost story to the present day. From Dickens to Derrida, MR James to Mark Fisher; from the rise of Spiritualism to the folk horror revival, Hauntology traces our continuing engagement with these esoteric ideas. Moving between the literary and the theoretical, the visual and the political, Hauntology explores our nostalgia for the cultural artefacts of a past from which we seem unable to break free.
Praise for the author: “This little book [Psychogeography] does exactly what an introduction should; it examines, explains, and whets the appetite” TELEGRAPH Haunted Paranormal Fantasy Ghost
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A great book! a fascinating theme that is enlightening and inspiring.

BUT as others say why opt for random accents, this is non-fiction it doesn't need to sound like a Hercule Poirot plot. Also as others say, why use accents that have no similarity to the person quoted, it is easy to ascertain what Colin Wilson sounds like so why make him sound like a Yorkshire miner??? also the 'Allo Allo' accents are difficult to understand which defeats the purpose surely.

Accents!!!!

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I agree with those who have complained about the narration. However, it is very good work with solid research and information on the subject. In the absence of the actual book I value this tremendously.

still worth ploughing through

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I found the book itself interesting (I didn’t always agree with its arguments, but it was food for thought nonetheless), and appreciated having such a book — academic/scholarly examination of a theoretical subject — as an audiobook really useful as it allowed me to explore the subject while multitasking.

However, the person reading the book rather let it down at times. He would put on foreign accents when the book quoted writers who aren’t English (and for the record, some of the accents were atrocious), which was laughable at best and irritating always, and there were a number of words he mispronounced scattered throughout the reading). It wasn’t so bad that it made it unlistenable, but it was annoying.

Despite the reader’s iffy performance, I’d still recommend this to those interested in a scholarly discussion of Hauntology. Coverley’s arguments are generally good (I’d take issue with some, particularly his argument that Hauntology is somehow uniquely British, even though some of his arguments contradict this), but otherwise he makes some interesting points.

Interesting Discussion, Iffy Reader

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I have to point out how much I wanted to like this but in the end I had to return it due to the awful narrator. His pronunciation had a staccato quality that meant I was more aware of the reader than the words he was saying. Worst still was his impressions of famous philosphers, breaking into french accents that I couldn't take seriously. I'm going to buy the book.

Poor reading

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The books a pretty good assessment of Hauntology but it gets mixed in with a lot of other ideas, becoming quite jumbled by the end.

Good ideas in a jumbled presentation

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