Kevin

As someone who's always been considered to have a pretty bad memory, this idea of this book certainly intrigued me before reading it. It's both an interesting look into the world of competitive memorization, and helpful in understanding more about how memory functions. In terms of trying to improve my memory personally, I've walked away from the book with some insights into how to more memorably associate things that I try to remember so they'll stick. While that's true, don't go into this book expecting to come away with some secret that's going to improve your day-to-day memory instantly - I'm glad I didn't, because that's not the book's intent. The narration is well done, and I enjoyed Foer's style of writing.

If you've ever seen Neil deGrasse Tyson speak or be interviewed, you'll probably agree that his enthusiasm about the subjects he researches and writes about is quite infectious. Dion Graham captures that prefectly in his performance of the material, without being over-the-top. The content itself is at once awe-inspiring, intriguing, thought-provoking, and humbling. As it is was origially written as a series of individual articles, each chapter gives a good overview of one cosmic phenomenon or another, and they are well tied together in themes throughout the book. I loved listening to it, and I'm sure I'll revisit it again.

I'd definitely recommend this to friends who are interested in the history of what we call the Bible today. I'd known for a long time that the Bible had been put together in a fairly convoluted way, but to hear the details through the words of a textual critic that started as a born-again Christian was extremely interesting. For those that actually believe the original words of the Bible were divinely inspired, it might be somewhat startling to realize that the original words are undoubtedly different in significant ways from any English translation of the Bible today.

This was my first time listening to Davidson, and while he has a nice voice and speaks very clearly, he speaks quite slowly. Using the Android app at 1.25x speed made it MUCH better.

This book definitely kept my interest, as I started it on a Thursday night, and finished it by Sunday.