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The Very Best of Willa Cather: My Antonia and O, Pioneers!
- Narrated by: Andrea Giordani
- Length: 14 hrs and 32 mins
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Publisher's Summary
Willa Cather achieved recognition for her novels depicting American life on the prairie frontier. First published in 1918, My Ántonia is the riveting story of pioneers on the Nebraska frontier in the late 19th century. The tale focuses on Antonia Shimerda, daughter of an immigrant family from Bohemia, and Jim Burden, an orphaned boy from Virginia, who formed a lifelong friendship. O Pioneers! (1913), the first of Cather’s “prairie trilogy” of novels, is the saga of the Bergson family who came from Sweden to settle the farmland near the town of Hanover, Nebraska, at the end of the 20th century. The main characters include Alexandra Bergson and Carl Linstrum, Alexandra's brother, Emil, and Marie Shabata.
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What listeners say about The Very Best of Willa Cather: My Antonia and O, Pioneers!
Average Customer RatingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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- M. Hill
- 01-23-22
The reader needs supervision during recording
At the first sentence, I was struck by the thick European accent I could not identify. I stayed with it for half of the first book, granting that the accent works because Antonia is a Czech character. While the reader does have a talent for character voices, her experience with the English language suggests that she has read much but listened little. Words that are not pronounced the way they are spelled tripped her up frequently, and there had apparently been no producer or engineer to correct her during the recording sessions. There were several missed edits where the reader stopped and tried a line again. This is not up to Audible standards.
Ultimately, I abandoned this recording and finished by listening to free public domain recordings of both books.
This recording should be offered in the Plus Catalog. I'm kicking myself for having spent a credit on it.
1 person found this helpful
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- White rose
- 06-19-21
An American classic
If you want to learn about American settlers - the humble ones starting their new lives at rock bottom - Willa Cather's long story, My Antonia, will interest you with its many details of farming and domestic life.
The narrator makes quite a few mistakes in pronounciation which is surprising for two reasons: Andrea Giordani is a very competent reader in English so her mistakes jar. I wonder why these could not have been corrected by her producer.
The final recording has many interruptions which shoud have been cut : the narrator corrects herself and the first mistakes are left in.
Overall this spoilt the recording for me.