For audiobooks, does it matter who reads them?

I really enjoyed Patrick Tull's reading of Master and Commander; as I've mentioned in another thread, I quit listening for other reasons (too distracting while driving, plus I want to read before I listen).

My birthday is next week, and my present to myself (plus spending the money my mother always gives me) is going to be all of the Sherlock Holmes stories read by Edward Hardwicke. I would have bought some of these sound unheard anyway, but I've already listened to the samples available online, and they're absolutely marvelous. :)
 
elgarak said:
Yes. Stephen Fry does great readings, no matter what. It's evident he loves literature, likes to do it justice, and is very knowledgeable all around, so he knows how to emphasize.

Sometimes I think readers are hired guns. They come in a studio, given a text, and drone on. They don't do preparation and read the book through before they do the recording.

There's a big voice-over industry here in Germany due to dubbing everything. A lot of actors earn their money this way, and there's easy money to be made doing audiobooks and porn dubbing.

Except that they approach jobs like I describe above, and no one cares.
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Jim Dale, eh. It's not as if the name isn't mentioned at the beginning of each volume... Well, it has been some time.

The one German narrator I actively seek out is Christian Brückner (who, among other standard roles, dubs all of Robert De Niro). A powerful, elegant voice, and happily very much present in radio dramatizations and audioplays.
 
Olowkow said:
Generally, books read by the author are not great, but I recently listened to Lawrence Krauss' Universe from Nothing, and he did a fairly good job.
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I agree with you, but feel obliged to note that Neil Gaimon was excellent in his reading of The Graveyard Book. When an author does a very good reading, you can feel that every word is important, every phrase chosen for a reason. It really brings life to the whole work.
 
I think David Sedaris is a good reader of his own stuff. Not really surprising, I suppose, since he's a regular radio speaker, but worth noting if you like his stuff.
 
I'm pushing upwards of 800 books in the audio collection right now. There is beyond doubt a huge difference in the narration quality with some readers far above the crowd.

My absolute favorite reading was the late Ron Silver of Roth's American Pastoral. The man just named it. You got lost in his voice from start to end.
 
I used to 'read' a lot of books on tape when I was effectively driving for a living. The reader matters a lot.

Frank Muller was far and away my favorite. Any book that was even slightly moody was read by him rather than some other reader and it made a difference. All Quiet on the Western Front, The Gorky Park series, and many more were brought to life by him.

There were others I thought were OK, but some were awful. The worst were the ones who were trying to read the book as fast as possible to cram into as few tapes as they could. The even worse were the ones that had to do the gawdawful short lived paperback action stories that lacked a single original quality. The readers of those books always seemed to be bad actors trying too hard to impress a casting crew.

Celebrity readers rarely impressed me. I prefer they left it to the professionals.
 
The only audiobook I have listened to was Derek Jacobi reading the Iliad. IIRC it was on about 10 cassette tapes and it was absolutely outstanding. I know I wouldn't have read it, the repetition would have got to me but hearing it read the repetition was rhythmic and soothing rather than annoying which makes sense give the oral tradition it came from.
 
A bad reader can destroy a good book, and an excellent reader can make even awful garbage sound like an epic story. Or at least make it hilarious.

50 Shades? No.
50 Shades read by Gilbert Gottfried? Amazing.
 
SpitfireIX said:
I really enjoyed Patrick Tull's reading of Master and Commander; as I've mentioned in another thread, I quit listening for other reasons (too distracting while driving, plus I want to read before I listen).

My birthday is next week, and my present to myself (plus spending the money my mother always gives me) is going to be all of the Sherlock Holmes stories read by Edward Hardwicke. I would have bought some of these sound unheard anyway, but I've already listened to the samples available online, and they're absolutely marvelous. :)
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My finger has hovered over the "Purchase" button a couple of times for these. As a fan of the Granada TV series with Hardwicke and Brett I'd be fascinated to hear whether these work for you.
 
As long as the person reading the book doesn't sound bored. That's what usually kills it for me.

Also I think Brian Blessed should really do audiobooks.
 
Lots of good comments and suggestions.

I checked samples of each on Audible. For example, Frank Muller, a narrator, can be entered into the search field and you can then hear samples of his reading by pressing the little green arrow beneath the book cover. Authors and book titles are also searchable.

The nice thing about Audible, you can just return a book within a year if you don't like it, no questions asked.

As long as the person reading the book doesn't sound bored. That's what usually kills it for me.

Also I think Brian Blessed should really do audiobooks.
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He does. There are two narrated by him on Audible.com:

http://www.audible.com/search/ref=a...ian+Blessed&filterby=field-keywords&x=11&y=15
 
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Does it matter? Great gods in Hell, YES! There are audiobooks on Librivox.org I can't stand due only to the reader (I know that because I've also read the text myself, and found it enjoyable). And there are others where the reader enhances it tremendously--for example, "The Sea Wolf"'s reader is perfect. A bit annoying at first, but the voice really works. And there's a guy who reads Chesterton that will probably forever be how I hear his works.
 
Going back to Frank Muller: The best compliment I could make about him as a reader was

"He made Anne Rice books interesting".
 
Dinwar said:
And there are others where the reader enhances it tremendously
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I've only listened to one that I got from librivox. Different chapters were read by different readers which I found difficult to accept. If a reader isn't that great, you can get used to it, but when they are interspersed with someone you like better, it makes getting used to them a repeated task....

There are so many commercial offerings that I can get from the library that I haven't tried another from librivox, but I might give some Chesterton a go from what you've said.
 
Lolly said:
I've only listened to one that I got from librivox. Different chapters were read by different readers which I found difficult to accept. If a reader isn't that great, you can get used to it, but when they are interspersed with someone you like better, it makes getting used to them a repeated task....
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Yeah, I hate that. There are a few where they have one person reading it straight through, and those are always superior, I've found.

Though to be honest, Librivox has been giving me problems recently. I've been having trouble loading the webpages. Not sure why--it's happening on multiple computers, so I'm pretty sure it's not me.
 
Dinwar said:
Though to be honest, Librivox has been giving me problems recently. I've been having trouble loading the webpages. Not sure why--it's happening on multiple computers, so I'm pretty sure it's not me.
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Librivox is using a new system and there have been bugs. If you were using Firefox and it was this problem that you were experiencing:

"The catalog isn't working - It either leads to a blank page or an actual author's/reader's page but without any books showing."


They are saying that it was fixed a couple of months ago. If it was that particular problem and you are still experiencing it (with Firefox) this is what they were advising:


a) In a new tab, enter "about:config" in the address bar
b) search on or scroll down to find "security.mixed_content.block_active_content"
c) double click the result line to disable for the browser (or right click and select Toggle)
 
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