Wednesday, February 11, 2015

Authors' Love for the Narrators of Their Audiobooks

We all know I'm a sucker for a good audiobook but it hadn't occurred to me to wonder how authors may feel about the way their books are literally brought alive by narrators.

You can read some of their fan mail at Audible. I admit I loved seeing Jonathan Maberry and John Scalzi praise the voices I've come to love as those of their characters.

2 comments:

  1. My sons and I are huge audiobook fans! It hit me like a thunder bolt one day that my older son - former reluctant reader with visual processing deficits - would benefit from hearing books while he was reading along with them. First, I read aloud while he read as well. Then we started checking them out from the library. We were hooked! Harry Potter series, Gregor the Overlander, Charlie Bone series, Mysterious Benedict Society, etc. Road trips are infinitely better because of audiobooks. That said, the narrator can make or break a book for us. We couldn't listen to the Shiloh sequel because the audio was awful and the reader's voice dropped way too low too often. We discontinued listening to The City of Ember series because the narrator was just annoying. Seriously. Bah. Our favorite, Favorite, FAVORITE narrator is Jim Dale, the reader of the Harry Potter series. I want him to narrate my life! :)

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    1. Agreed on so many counts! I was unable to listen to The Haunting of Hill House because the narrator also did The Hiding Place in a masterful reading which left me unable to hear anyone but Corrie Ten Boom in her voice. I have many favorites ... Neil Gaiman, David Timson, Juliette Stephenson ... but many are associated with series such as those I mentioned above (Kobna Holdbrook-Smith is brilliant when reading The Rivers of London series by David Aaronovitch). Jim Dale is a particular favorite first of all because of Pushing Daisies and secondly because of Harry Potter.

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