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  • Regeneration

  • The Rescue of a Wild Land
  • By: Andrew Painting
  • Narrated by: Roger Clark
  • Length: 11 hrs and 25 mins
  • 4.2 out of 5 stars (39 ratings)

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Regeneration

By: Andrew Painting
Narrated by: Roger Clark
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Summary

In 1995, the National Trust for Scotland acquired Mar Lodge Estate in the heart of the Cairngorms. Home to over 5,000 species, this vast expanse of Caledonian woodlands, subarctic mountains, bogs, moors, roaring burns, and frozen lochs could be a place where environmental conservation and Highland field sports would exist in harmony. The only problem was that due to centuries of abuse by human hands, the ancient Caledonian pinewoods were dying, and it would take radical measures to save them.

After 25 years of extremely hard work, the pinewoods, bogs, moors, and mountains are returning to their former glory. Regeneration is the story of this success, featuring not only the people who are protecting the land and quietly working to undo the wrongs of the past, but also the myriad creatures which inspire them to do so.

In addition, it also tackles current controversies such as raptor persecution, deer management and rewilding and asks bigger questions about the nature of conservation itself: What do we see when we look at our wild places? What should we see?

©2021 Andrew Painting (P)2021 Tantor
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What listeners say about Regeneration

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  • Overall
    4 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    3 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    4 out of 5 stars

A great book but its reading is flawed

The book takes you on a vivid minds-eye journey to a remote corner of Britain. The prose is beautiful and the science is rigorous but the there are simply too many jarring moments when the reader, who otherwise has an excellent theatrical voice, mispronounces relatively common words like 'eyrie', 'goshawk' or 'fritillary' Even the totally everyday word 'ant' is pronounced weirdly to sound like your mother's sister. I still recommend the audiobook, but wonder if more corrective feedback could have been given to the reader.

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  • Overall
    4 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    3 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    5 out of 5 stars

A good book, but a poor choice of narrator.

A very well written, interesting, enjoyable and informative book. The only thing bringing it down is the narration - which isn't bad, but I found the rather posh sounding English man misponouncing Scottish names, including very basic ones that come up many times such as the Cairngorms, off-putting and a poor choice for this particular book. If I remember rightly the author himself is English, so that itself isn't an issue, but not learning how to pronounce the names of the places in the book properly felt rude and oblivious.

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  • Overall
    4 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    1 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    5 out of 5 stars

Good work at Mar Lodge

Really good to hear about the conservation work at Mar Lodge. Well researched and current. However whilst speaking with a Scottish accent the narrator mangles many of the place names and species names. Surely something easily advised on. Or choose someone not putting on an accent to narrate?

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  • Overall
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    3 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    5 out of 5 stars

A must for Scots interested in their environment

Wonderful book so interesting and well written. Sad that another RP narrator doesn’t bother to look up how to pronounce Scottish place names. I wish publishers would insist on this.

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  • Overall
    3 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    1 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    5 out of 5 stars

Great book, but awful narration

A fascinating book - well written, interesting and relevant. However, the narration is dreadful, with the reader inventing pronunciations seemingly at will. It completely detracts from the story and is very annoying, particularly as some of his worst efforts are repeated regularly. It seems at times like he’s wilfully pronouncing things oddly for comedic purposes.

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  • Overall
    3 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    2 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    3 out of 5 stars

It was ok

Narrator mispronouncing Scottish hill/place names ruined it a little. Otherwise it was quite an interesting book.

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  • Overall
    3 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    1 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    5 out of 5 stars

Get a reader who can at least pronounce Cairngorm!

Fascinating story, very well written but an appalling choice of reader. He has no idea how to pronounce most of the names including Cairngorm - this is a serious problem for a book about North East Scotland.
I really wanted to hear the book but I had to keep taking breaks because the narrator was so bad

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  • Overall
    4 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    3 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    4 out of 5 stars

Great book but not best-in-class

I enjoyed this book, but it has a factual feel to it... unlike Isabella Tree, James Rebanks, Derek Gow, Dave Goulson, etc. who manage to write so engagingly that it feels like fiction.

I also question the choice of narrator. For me, the highly polished received pronunciation feels misplaced. I'd accept it if the author spoke this way, but he doesn't. That being said, the narration is fine.... still very listenable.

I recommend this for seasoned natural history readers who have read everything else... but fo the novice there are better books to start on.

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  • Overall
    3 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    1 out of 5 stars
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    5 out of 5 stars

Excellent book, terrible narration.

This was a deeply interesting and well written book, and would have been highly enjoyable to listen to if narrated by someone else. Instead, it was a struggle to get through. The narration sounded like an AI generation rather than a real person - there were so many odd pronunciations of normal everyday words, Americanisms of some words but not others, weird timings and emphasis on parts of the word or sentence that made it sound clunky and artificial. Even the tone was unsettling - it was somewhere between a newsreader delivering a particularly grizzly bit of news about some atrocity, and Gandalf telling the fellowship why he would not take them through the mines of Moria. Such an odd choice of narrator for a nature book, as the guy clearly had no interest or knowledge of nature (so many incorrect pronunciations) and I had to Google him to discover whether he was a real person or not after the mangled place name pronunciations. Finally, the editing was poor - not only because it failed on picking up any and all of the above, but also because there were many occasions where the word had been slurred, words were read in the wrong order so that they didn't make sense or words were repeated. I feel sorry for the author as anyone reading these many poor reviews will surely be put off buying his otherwise excellent book!

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  • Overall
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    2 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    5 out of 5 stars

Great book, dodgy narration

Really loved the book, such an important message and story. The narrator took some getting used to and found his pronunciation of many words absurd.

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