Space Chronicles

The least helpful review of Space Chronicles.

Any additional comments?

I'm very hesitant to give Space Chronicles a low rating because I like Dr. Tyson as a television host, and I love the subject matter of this book. Plus, I was entertained while listening to it. The problem is that I wasn't very educated by it. I've known 95% of the material covered by it for many years, and that's just from watching the Discovery and History channels. In fact, you would have to be extremely novice on the subject to not have heard it before.

To be fair, I did learn some things about NASA's budget and the government politics that can make or break a NASA project...

...but that's about it.

Another thing you should know before purchasing this book is that it's really more of a collection of articles than an actual book. Due to this fact the same material is covered over and over using the exact same words and phrases over and over (seriously, over and over... Dozens of times in some cases). Honestly, it could have been edited down to about two hours and there would have been no material loss.

Something else that bothered me is how Dr. Tyson inserts his tweets into the narrative. They wouldn't be so bad at the ends of the chapters or something, but they are randomly scattered throughout the book and break up the train of thought in many places. Trust me, it gets very annoying.

Mirron Willis is the narrator. At first I didn't like his voice, (nothing in particular, I just didn't like it) but he's a very competent reader and after a while he grew on me.

That concludes my review.

22 of 24 people found this review helpful

Neil DeGrasse Tyson does it again!

Where does Space Chronicles rank among all the audiobooks you’ve listened to so far?

Of all the books that expand on the love of space travel and the importance being at the forefront of science as a nation. This is the best book I have listened to. I would rank this book in the top 20% of the almost 200 titles I have listened to. But this is a bad measuring method of quality or investment worthiness. Of all the books that I have listened to, few fall in this same category. In fact I can't think of any with the same general topic Neil is tackling here.

Would you listen to another book narrated by Mirron Willis?

Mirron Willis has a great voice and narration. But his lackluster pronunciation of some very prominent men drives me nuts. Also, the V in Saturn V is the Roman numeral for 5, should be read Saturn 5. I would hope that Audible would pick a narrator for a book that has at least some knowledge or interest in the subject mater and would know some of the pronunciations of these terms and names. There are multiple times where it felt like he just guessed at it and kept on going. It feels almost like a lack of professionalism.

Any additional comments?

I blasted Mirron Willis here for his poor pronunciations. But I wonder if the producers should be the ones that need to do a better job? Its just annoying. Its not tomato tomato (That doesn't work in text, but you know what i mean) It's not even close. It's a lack of trying.

5 of 5 people found this review helpful

Robotic Performance

What would have made Space Chronicles better?

The narrator did not sound human. The book itself is a little repetitive, I felt like some chapters were exactly the same as chapters in one of Dr Tyson's other books "Death By Black Hole"

What did you like best about this story?

The chapter about NASA funding and politics was very informative.

What didn’t you like about Mirron Willis’s performance?

He was very monotone in his performance, almost robotic. It made it very hard to focus on what was actually being said.

3 of 3 people found this review helpful

Great book, narrator lacking

Another great NDT book, as always. Huge fan! Met him in Salt Lake 2 years ago. The narrator just sounds so stuck up throughout the entire book. It bothered me every day how pompous his voice sounds in this reading.

3 of 3 people found this review helpful

Poor Read

Would you try another book from Neil deGrasse Tyson and/or Mirron Willis?

yes

Would you ever listen to anything by Neil deGrasse Tyson again?

yes

How could the performance have been better?

If you're going to read a book by an astrophysicist you ought not be scientifically illiterate.

If you could play editor, what scene or scenes would you have cut from Space Chronicles?

some of the repetitious blog posts

4 of 5 people found this review helpful

I couldn't get through the first chapter.

Why can't the author read his own book? Dr Tyson has a great voice, which is something I was looking forward to. This narrator's voice is kind of annoying, and made it hard to focus on the content.

4 of 5 people found this review helpful

Terrible reading cadence

Could not last 5 minutes listening to this book. No judgement on the content. The readers cadence was all over the map.

1 of 1 people found this review helpful

To Infinity and...wait!

I'm a fan of Tyson to begin with so this short review will be biased:
-great content
-great way of expressing scientific ideas to and for us morons
-for science, astrophysics, and space, entertaining and captivating
-great narration
-inspirational
Need I say more?

1 of 1 people found this review helpful

Narrator didn't know what he was reading

Narrator had no idea about space half of the time referring to the Saturn five rocket as the Saturn "v" rocket.

1 of 1 people found this review helpful

Love the Book, Don't Love the Reader

Would you listen to Space Chronicles again? Why?

No. Mirron Willis' reading was so distracting.

What didn’t you like about Mirron Willis’s performance?

His voice is incredibly unique, but that made it incredibly distracting. It almost felt like he was trying to do a NDT impression, but made it a caricature instead. He's the reason I didn't listen to the whole audiobook and instead borrowed the actual book from the library. The content of the book is awesome (as with all NDT books) but the read was distractingly bad.