Basin and Range: Annals of the Former World, Book 1

McPhee is an amazing writer. I love geology, but he makes it positively lush and compelling to listen to. I am so glad Audible added this to their collection. Thanks!!

McPhee does an excellent job of introducing geology. However, despite his excellent prose, pictures and maps would add to the experience.

Worst thing is Nelson Runger's narration--while his avuncular style is well suited to McPhee's prose, the microphone picks up all of his lip-smacking noises. Once I became attuned to this, I couldn't get it out of my mind--he sounded like a dog eating peanut butter. Please, filter this out on your next book.

I fell in love with geology all over again reading the books of Simon Winchester, and thought I would expand into other authors. This was my first try at something I thought would be a little more scientific - boy, was I wrong. The book was the most painfully dull audio book I have ever listened to. The author seems to be relating a number of personal anecdotes, kind of a series of travelogues. While he does introduce some interesting characters in the world of geology, he gives relatively little information on geology. He does sometimes give a few factual details, but then fails to summarize the major principles, leaving the few facts he gives without context, and therefore without much meaning for the listener.

I tried to excuse his bad writing, thinking he was a scientist who didn't know how to communicate. Then I found out he was actually an English teacher crossing over into science. Amazing. The writing was so poor, it seemed to be from someone taking a freshman creative writing class, heavily laden with badly-written, overblown descriptive passages that left me groaning.

The narrator was so bad, I had assumed it was the author, and they had been stuck with him. I was surprised to find this man is apparently a professional reader. His voice is high and irritating, his delivery over-dramatic and completely inappropriate to the text.... I could go on, but suffice it to say, I found it a frustrating experience trying to get through this book.

If you have a basic knowledge of geology and want to learn more (I had one year of it in college way back when), this book won't give it to you. I'm going back to Winchester.

The narrator's voice is slow and rather painful to listen to. I gave up after only 5 minutes. Strongly recommend listening to the _entire_ preview before purchasing, to make sure you don't find the narration equally painful.

Very disappointing, as I loved the book.

I love to study geology and I love good writing (printed or recorded). I gave up on this effort after 40 painful listening minutes. I, too, was an English major but I still value my "little book".