Just so you know.

the 'preformance' in this case is a presentation.
I need to add three more words.

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Tinny Sound Made it Very Difficult to Listen To

I'll come back and edit my review once I've finished, but I noticed a tinny sound partway through the second lecture and now it's all I can hear. I am continuing to listen but it's significantly decreasing my ability to enjoy the story and thought others should be aware.

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6 people found this helpful

Great Purchase With Credits

I believe its a bit expensive to buy them as is, but the huge amount of content that you can get with a single Credit with this is amazing! Highly recommend to get started with the great stories and literature of mankind.

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2 people found this helpful

Very good starting point

Stories are important to the human condition. This lecture series covering a wide variety of mythological stories from all over the world was like sipping from an ocean. just enough to whet your appetite for more information. Some myths we are familiar with, others not so much.
I highly recommend this to understand other cultures and histories.

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6 people found this helpful

Myth or Folk Tale

I enjoyed this it was very easy lisyening with the different lecturers. An overview of world myth that opens the door for further study.

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4 people found this helpful

Disappointing African portion in an otherwise enjoyable course

Most of the sections were presented quite well, with dynamic and interesting lecturers who present the subject matter in an accessible way for the casual students. The exception was the portion on African myths. The lecturer was absolutely terrible and the entire section had an amateurish quality reminiscent of the school presentations by our least intelligent classmates that made us all cringe. I highly question this lecturer’s credentials and sincerely wish an actual scholar of African myth and culture could have been found instead. It put an unfortunate damper in the middle of the entire course and almost made me quit listening, or at least skip that portion. I managed to get through it at double speed.

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1 person found this helpful

Great for expanding beyond the stories we know

Growing up in the west, I've heard most of the Greek/Roman stories, but this helped solidify and clarify those myths, then the other lectures about myths from the other parts of the world were just as interesting and informative, very well done.

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Great lectures on various cultures and their myths

Really enjoyed this series of lectures... Except for the African myths section. I was very interested in this body of myths, but the lecturer was absolute trash. He makes so many errors, and stumbles so often over what he's saying, it's hard to imagine that this is the best version recorded. I was almost tempted to skip the whole section, it was so bad and distracting.

All of the other lecturers did a fine job, and overall I'd still recommend this lecture series.

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1 person found this helpful

Effective Collaboration

This course is actually a compendium of five lecture series - each consisting of twelve half-hour lectures - organized regionally (European, Asian/Middle Eastern - including Egypt, African, Far Eastern/Australasian, and N/S American). Each series is fairly complete (if occasionally cursory) and is meant to both review the contents of the stories as told and to draw out the underlying allegorical/philosophical message(s) intended. The result is praiseworthy.
As in any collection, some lectures are excellent, some are "adequate", and a few are actually not useful (even confusing) - but the overall quality of this course is "outstanding". 'Great Mythologies Of The World' compares favorably to courses that I have taken in University.

To be certain, one of the most notable areas of variability is in the delivery: Professors Kathryn McClymond, Julius H. Bailey, Robert André LaFleur, and Grant L. Voth were all given commendable technical support from Audible Originals Inc, but were also obviously instructed to read with careful diction and more slowly than they normally would (I found setting playback speed at 1.10X was required to restore a more "natural" delivery). Unfortunately, speeding the playback doesn't correct for all of the deficiencies - the overenunciation persists, for example.. but for some lecturers more than others (McClymond is brilliant - while Bailey is awful at this). Inconsistency thus plagues the recording somewhat.

Taken altogether, the advantages of the multi-lecturer approach outweigh the drawbacks. This audiocourse rates a solid 8 stars out of 10. I can unreservedly recommend it to listeners looking for an edifying, wide-reaching (if perhaps introductory) exploration of mythology from multiple cultures.

NOTE:
• The project includes a lecture laying out the best discussion of the Biblical Book of Job that I have ever read
• The appended PDF is incredibly helpful
• I was fortunate enough to get this product included with my subscription (undoubtedly coloring my review). But even were Audible to ask for a Credit, I judge that it would be worth it

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Good but expansive

Overall good, but almost overwhelming in its scope. Unlike other courses, this one used multiple professors, so perhaps why it didn’t hang together as well. That’s probably necessary for such a wide scope, but I think I would have enjoyed a series of 4, each with one professor, than this mega course. But I can’t argue with the value.

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