S/D: Audiobooks

Have you heard her read Daniel Deronda?

No, but it's on my list.

I've just sent back a book because the narrator sounds like a robot. Are they actually doing this yet, I wonder?

Oh man, I just listened to The Path to Power, the first part of Robert A Caro's biography of Lyndon Johnson, narrated by Grover Gardner, and it was GREAT. Compelling, funny, informative, so very long. Really excellent stuff. I highly recommend it.

I’ve gone off these a bit

― Pierrot with a thousand farces (wins), Tuesday, 4 December 2018 17:11 (four years ago) link

Like I still listen to them but I feel like I enjoy them most often despite the readers, who can feel like a nuisance intermediary for the text - the tunnel was the book that really turned me on to these and as a rule a good book read by the author is best, I find a lot of these actorly types approach every work of literature as though they’re Stephen fucking Fry reading Harry fucking Potter, all storytime cadences and squawking cartoon voices

― Pierrot with a thousand farces (wins), Tuesday, 4 December 2018 17:17 (four years ago) link

This is still kind of where I’m at tho I go back and forth. I haven’t listened to anything this year & cancelled my audible sub ages ago. The silly voices are a real obstacle, I always like when an author reads their work relatively free of affect and I supply the characters’ voices just as I would when reading print books.

A funny thing I’ve encountered a few times is when an American narrator will be reading an American book set in America and because there’s a character named sergeant o’rourke or Bobby Macfuckface or whatever they feel they have to attempt a horrible faux Irish accent for this person & you’re like… I think this character is actually just American mate, you don’t need to do this

I am in the middle of a long-ish McCartney biog but the narrator is reading every other phrase almost with one eyebrow cocked, so it's got this weird air-quotes-ish feeling.