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Reviews tagging 'Death'
What If? 2: Additional Serious Scientific Answers to Absurd Hypothetical Questions by Randall Munroe
2 reviews
iono's review against another edition
funny
informative
fast-paced
3.75
Content Warnings
Moderate: Blood
Minor: Body horror, Vomit, Death, Fire/Fire injury, Alcohol, Injury/Injury detail, Medical content, and Murder
skudiklier's review
funny
informative
lighthearted
medium-paced
5.0
I read this book in a very weird way, where at first I read a physical copy with my partner, and then I read some of it out loud to him, and then we ended up getting the audiobook so we could listen to that while I read the physical copy along with it (and paused it a LOT to fill in gaps to my partner). I have a lot of complaints about the audiobook, but I know I'm reviewing the print version, so I'll put that at the end.
For the book itself: I loved it! I loved the first one, and I was excited to get to read the sequel. I'm not a sciencey person in general but I found this really entertaining and readable and fascinating. I'd definitely recommend it.
For the audiobook specifically: I read the physical book along with the audiobook version, so I was very aware of all the decisions they made. I completely understand that this is a challenging book to translate to audio, and I actually myself read some of it out loud to someone who couldn't see it, so I was very ready to empathize with how hard this is. But I just ended up being so frustrated by the decisions made here (no idea whether they were made by Wil Wheaton or someone else, but I'm assuming it's a combination).
First, they completely ignored and left out most of the illustrations. For the ones that were just illustrating the text, that makes sense. But some of them were more text-based, had jokes, and/or were even necessary/relevant to understanding the text that came after. I was so surprised by some of the ones they just completely left out. On top of that, they *did* read aloud some of them, and it just felt so arbitrary. (To add insult to injury, they also described one illustration that was definitely unnecessary and not text-based, seemingly just because Wil Wheaton especially enjoyed it.)
Leaving out so much of what makes the book entertaining (and even understandable at times) is unacceptable in my opinion. I was reading this along with someone else who couldn't see the book, and I paused the audiobook every 15-60 seconds or so to describe what the audiobook either skipped over or made unclear.
Now, again, I'm not saying this is an easy job or that there's clearly one perfect solution. With all the footnotes and illustrations, there's no way to do it without at least some remaining issues. I fully appreciate this, but it honestly feels like they didn't even try with some of this book. So much of it was left out, and so many decisions were made that I felt were completely wrong. I know that the audiobook would be a different experience from reading the print book no matter what, but this was a whole other level that was very frustrating to experience.
For the book itself: I loved it! I loved the first one, and I was excited to get to read the sequel. I'm not a sciencey person in general but I found this really entertaining and readable and fascinating. I'd definitely recommend it.
For the audiobook specifically: I read the physical book along with the audiobook version, so I was very aware of all the decisions they made. I completely understand that this is a challenging book to translate to audio, and I actually myself read some of it out loud to someone who couldn't see it, so I was very ready to empathize with how hard this is. But I just ended up being so frustrated by the decisions made here (no idea whether they were made by Wil Wheaton or someone else, but I'm assuming it's a combination).
First, they completely ignored and left out most of the illustrations. For the ones that were just illustrating the text, that makes sense. But some of them were more text-based, had jokes, and/or were even necessary/relevant to understanding the text that came after. I was so surprised by some of the ones they just completely left out. On top of that, they *did* read aloud some of them, and it just felt so arbitrary. (To add insult to injury, they also described one illustration that was definitely unnecessary and not text-based, seemingly just because Wil Wheaton especially enjoyed it.)
Leaving out so much of what makes the book entertaining (and even understandable at times) is unacceptable in my opinion. I was reading this along with someone else who couldn't see the book, and I paused the audiobook every 15-60 seconds or so to describe what the audiobook either skipped over or made unclear.
Now, again, I'm not saying this is an easy job or that there's clearly one perfect solution. With all the footnotes and illustrations, there's no way to do it without at least some remaining issues. I fully appreciate this, but it honestly feels like they didn't even try with some of this book. So much of it was left out, and so many decisions were made that I felt were completely wrong. I know that the audiobook would be a different experience from reading the print book no matter what, but this was a whole other level that was very frustrating to experience.
Content Warnings
Minor: Death and Genocide
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