@lunalein@bookstodon My favorite narrator is Kevin Free (murderbot & ballad of black tom).
For nonfiction, I like listening to authors read their own work (braiding sweetgrass, h is for hawk)
When listening to an audiobook I say, "I read the book"
@lunalein@bookstodon I read it after James Rebanks The Shepherd's Life. I'm eagerly awaiting his wife Helen's new book - The Shepherd's Wife, it's been getting great reviews.
@lunalein@bookstodon I’m a recent convert to audio books. I tend to listen to non fiction mainly. I don’t have a favourite narrator. I’ve never stopped listening because I didn’t like a person’s voice, but I usually sample the audio before purchasing, so know what to expect. When I talk about audiobooks I say I’ve listened to them, not read. I still read daily and it’s a different experience. I listen to audio books in bed
My wife and I joke that we’ll listen to anything read by Scott Brick. He mostly does sci-fi. I also enjoy Simon Vance — he has done a bunch of the Aubrey-Maturin and then did the Temeraire books, which are a similar story but with dragons. It felt great to hear it all in the Queen’s English.
When I started with audiobooks, I thought I would only listen to memoirs read by their authors. And those were good experiences — Maya Angelou, Obama. But… as I’ve tried to listen to more genres, “read by author” has sometimes been a dealbreaker. Some people just don’t have the skills and others have voices that grate over time.
Yeah, I usually just say I read them. I don’t listen to anything that requires intense concentration or footnotes. It’s been an experiment over time. I’m honestly still a little embarrassed by it all but it helps me read so many books that I wouldn’t have had time to read otherwise… so I can’t say I regret it.
@albnelson@lunalein@bookstodon I mostly listen to audiobooks while I do routine tasks such s housework, driving, or taking walks, which is my main form of exercise. I usually listen to less complex books because my attention tends to drift. I read more complex books (mostly on my phone) as a rule.
A great audiobook reader makes so much difference. One I love is Dion Graham, who reads Dave Eggers’ books. And yes, I can’t keep listening to a bad reader.
I just finished Isabel Allende’s latest historical novel, and the reader was generally solid. But his imitation of female voices for dialog was so cringey. And he kept mispronouncing Valparaiso!
Listening to a book is still reading it. Unless it’s a dramatization.
@lunalein@bookstodon With fiction, I usually don't love when the author reads their own work, but I loved Louise Erdrich's narration of her novels 'The Sentence' and 'The Night Watchman' - her voice is so soothing and her dry humor is wonderful. I also loved Maggie Gyllenhaal's reading of Anna Karenina, and Virginia Woolf's 'Orlando' read by Clare Higgins.
@lunalein@bookstodon I love a good audiobook! A good narrator can really elevate the listening experience. I loved Jim Dale's reading of the Harry Potter series. I think he's won awards for it? Julia Whelan also does nice work. I think the best overall narration I've enjoyed, though, would have to be Lenny Henry's narration of Anansi Boys by Neil Gaiman. It is an absolute treat and I can't recommend it enough.
I consider listening to an audiobook "reading." I don't differentiate. #bookstodon
@1dalm@lunalein@bookstodon it's been a while since I've listened to the series, so can't really agree or disagree with you. In his defense, though, he did come up with something like 200 unique voices for it. There's no way he's going to nail them all. 🤣
@lunalein@bookstodon On the opposite end of the spectrum, the guy who narrates Rick Riordan's Percy Jackson series is TERRIBLE. My kids got into the series on a road trip, though, so we're stuck with him.
@lunalein@bookstodon Understandable. I listened to the recordings long before anyone knew J. K. Rowling was a TERF POS. I think it was around the time the last two movies came out, so 2010 or 2011? I was still listening to CDs on my old Discman at the time. 😉💿
@dbsalk@lunalein@bookstodon Yes. Listening to an audiobook is reading, and to think otherwise is ableist. I've read tons of books this way throughout my life as a blind person.
@bookstodon@starry1086@dbsalk agree, it is 100% an equally valid way to “consume” a text! i’m more curious about whether/when people make the distinction in casual conversation. i tend to fumble when describing my current audiobook as something i’m reading or listening to.
@lunalein@bookstodon@starry1086 As I said, I don't differentiate. If I absorbed the material and can have an intelligent discussion about it with informed opinions, then it shouldn't matter how the material was actually absorbed. I just say I that I read the book.
@lunalein@bookstodon I do say I've "read" a book after listening to an audiobook. I say that because I don't think anyone wants to hear me differentiate "well actually, I listened to it on the audiobook format". That seems annoying.
But favorites/unfavorites? Not as a hard rule. I do sometimes think someone fits a book or doesn't. Some books go fine with a more clinical reading. Others do better with character voices, etc.
@lunalein@bookstodon
I love audiobooks, and yes I say I read that book.
Great narrators.... Richard Ferrone, Robert Petkoff, Jim Frangione, Susan Ericksen, Angela Dawe, Holter Graham, the list goes on.
A new dimension in audio I've found is Graphic Audio. I'm just getting into it so I may be wrong, but I think it tends to be Sci-fi and fantasy but the few I've bought a great.
@lunalein@bookstodon LOVE audiobooks. Andy Serkis reading The Hobbit and Stephen Fry reading Sherlock Holmes have been two standouts to me for their diverse characterizations.
How the Word Is Passed by Clint Smith is extraordinarily impactful.
@lunalein@bookstodon
I love audiobooks, and yes I say I read that book.
Great narrators.... Richard Ferrone, Robert Petkoff, Jim Frangione, Susan Ericksen, Angela Dawe, Holter Graham, the list goes on.
A new dimension in audio I've found is Graphic Audio. I'm just getting into it so I may be wrong, but I think it tends to be Sci-fi and fantasy but the few I've bought a great.
@BonnettsBooks@bookstodon i am also not the biggest Ethan Hawke fan, but his Paul Newman documentary was really good so maybe his best stuff is off camera (okay he was excellent in First Reformed, too).
@lunalein@bookstodon I’ve very rarely given up on a book because of the narrator. I think matching an author well to a narrator long term can be so good - Peter Caulfield narrates all Jonathan Coe’s books and is just so right! I’ve been blind over 10 years and honestly thought the discussion around whether audiobooks could be described as reading would have disappeared by now but, no, here it is again. Of course it’s reading the book, it’s just another format!
@sarahmatthews@bookstodon oh, i totally agree that it’s reading the book in terms of experience, but i am curious if that’s how people describe it, or if they use different words.
@lunalein@bookstodon I love audiobooks! In the pandemic before times when I commuted 30-45 minutes to work I listened to a lot. I say I've listened to a book instead of read. Not so much now since I work at home. I don't follow narrators, I just listen to books I think I'd enjoy. I also never buy from Audible because Amazon screws over narrators and authors. I get books from Chirp, they have great deals and a huge selection. My recent favorite is House in the Cerulean Sea, a fantasy story.
@lunalein@bookstodon Yeah. I do have have set of favourite narrators. Some where I tried books in genres I normally wouldn’t read because I like the narrator that much. There are also narrators I avoid, there’s a bunch of reasons for that. Some I just dislike their accent. Others it’s a bland monotone reading.
Not always because of narration skill.And yeah, I do say I read books that I’ve only listened to.
@lunalein@bookstodon
I'm not a huge fan of audiobooks (I've got the voices going internally when I read), but I'll definitely pick up something read by an actor whose work/voice I love, especially in poetry. (Listening to the Richard Burton readings of Dylan Thomas when I was a teenager probably shaped this).
So I've recently got hold of the abridgement of Paradise Lost just for Anton Lesser's reading, and an abridgement of Malory's Morte d'Arthur for the wonderful Philip Madoc. And Jim Norton reading James Joyce. I've read all of these, and the Malory's the least significant to me as a text.
And sometimes I've tried listening to a wonderful voice, great actor and given up because the material wasn't doing anything for them either. The extraordinary Michael Jayston, whom I could watch in anything, seemed to record some rather boring books.
@paulcowdell@lunalein@bookstodon James Earl Jones did an audiobook of the New Testament years ago, and listening to it was quite relaxing. Years later, Denzel Washington, Samuel L. Jackson and several other actors collaborated on a dramatic reading of the entire Bible.
@paulcowdell@lunalein@bookstodon When I read any James Bond novel, my mind‘s default voice for Bond is Sean Connery, even if Roger Moore, George Lazenby, or someone else starred in the movie version.
@JMaverickJacks1@lunalein@bookstodon I've just seen a boxset of CD readings of the Bond novels by Rufus Sewell, with Samantha Bond doing The Spy Who Loved Me. That was really tempting, even though I'm not particularly interested in revisiting the books.
@cturnbow@paulcowdell@lunalein@bookstodon I loved Rufus Sewell in “Dark City,” a 1998 sci-fi thriller that “The Matrix” ripped off. “Matrix” had better visual FX, but a soul-numbing fixation on Gnostic philosophy that justified mass killings of innocents and that likely paved the way for QAnon to ignore objective reality and to push treason on Jan. 6, 2021. By contrast, Sewell’s “Dark City” is a cool yarn without boring speeches or deadly politics.
@JMaverickJacks1@lunalein@bookstodon I don't regard them as audiobooks, because they were radio dramatisations, but to my ear the greatest audio Holmes/Watson are the BBC adaptations with Clive Merrison (Holmes) and Michael Williams (Watson). Well worth a listen.
Not so good as captures of Conan Doyle, but highly recommended for lovers of Great Voices, are a few Holmes/Watson radio adaptations done in the '50s with John Gielgud (slightly miscast) as Holmes and Ralph Richardson. Richardson, particularly, was extraordinary.
@lunalein@bookstodon Will definitely quit listening to even a favourite book if the narrator doesn't work for me. There's a few mystery/detective series that I love, but cannot listen to because of the narrator.
Will listen to almost anything with a good narrator, those voices! - Anton Lesser, Martin Shaw, Joanna Lumley...
Also prefer memoirs/autobiographies read by the authors themselves - Michelle Obama, Judi Dench,... "Read by the author"
@lunalein@bookstodon I am so fussy about narrators, they can really make or break an audiobook for me. I love Maya Lindh's reading of Will Dean's books, she is just perfectly Tuva for me, and I probably wouldn't have been so invested in the series without her. I always try and sample new narrators before committing. I'll switch to eye-based-reading if I don't get on with them but am interested enough in the book to continue.
I subscribe to Audible.com and listen to audiobooks often (I also listen to several podcasts every week).
I do not follow any specific readers.
I have never stopped listening to a book because of the reader.
I usually say I "listened to" a book. When I refer to a group of books, for instance that i I read fantasy novels, I use the term to include both those I listen to and those I read.
@lunalein@bookstodon Every day! I use the Libby free library app. I listen to nonfiction in the morning and fiction in the afternoon. At night I use favorite old fiction to fall asleep.
Chris Kipiniak, who narrated most of the #Raksura series, is one of my favorite narrators. I did stop listening to the 5th & final book, The Harbors of the Sun, bc Kipiniak wasn't narrating and the new guy changed the pronunciations. And voices. One or the other could have been OK... but both?
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