SBD: audio books again
Oct. 6th, 2008 02:12 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
jmc_bksIt's Monday! Celebrate! Rejoice! Or not, y'know. Because, well, it's Monday.
It's also SBD, which is worthy of celebration.
Borrowed two audio books from the library on Saturday. And both of them must be returned this evening, unlistened to. Not because there's some sort of three day time limit, but because the narrators just didn't work for me.
I know lots of readers picture characters in their heads -- they must, otherwise why all of the threads on various reader and author boards about casting different characters. I'm always interested in seeing who others would cast, but don't suggest anyone, because I just don't *see* the characters in my head that way. Maybe I just lack imagination. <shrugs> Generally speaking, I don't "hear" characters voices either, except to the extent that an author uses dialect in the dialogue or mentions a specific accent.
This should make listening to audiobooks simple, shouldn't it? Yeah, no. While I don't have a particular voice in mind for characters, the first few words out of a narrator's mouth are make or break, and seem to break more often than make. Narrators that other listeners love...eh, not so much of the love from me. Listeners seem to uniformly love the duo who read Suzanne Brockmann's books. Eh. And they appreciate the slight voice changes of the narrator of the In Death uses for different characters. The narrator of His Majesty's Dragon had everything nailed, except for the odd intonation that he used for dragons as they spoke.
When it comes to nonfiction, I haven't encountered the same problems. Haven't decided if the nonfiction books have simply been better cast, or if I have different expectations of those narrators. Performance vs information providing. Do I expect a performance of some sort for the fiction? Certainly I do not expect it for the nonfiction, so maybe this is just another example of genre expectations leading to different results....just in an odd sort of way.
I thought that perhaps I was being picky about voices. But it looks like I'm not alone -- check out this article about audiobook casting.
ps I have no book-specific SBD because I've not read anything new. Nothing really appeals. Which is ridiculous if you consider my TBR pile. But what I really want to read (The Vorkosigan Companion) hasn't arrived yet.
pps I watched all of the episodes of True Blood yesterday in a marathon. In the company of three people with whom I shared the books back before Alan Ball optioned them. I'm...not entirely sure what I think of the series, TBH. However, I've succeeded as a book pimp -- my copies of the first three books of the series have made it through three people, and on to the fourth, and there are two more people waiting to borrow them next. [These are people who don't read for pleasure. And who don't buy books, or visit the library regularly. I feel like I've done a major good deed, getting them to pick up a book. Three books!]
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Date: 2008-10-06 09:59 pm (UTC)My favorite book reader: Stephen Fry, followed by Stephen Briggs (Pratchett books). Must be the Stephen thing. Also the woman who reads Cotillion and Donata Someone. Peters? I guess I'm an elitist.
We do a lot of audio books through our library online because you don't have to go to the library to check them out and they expire on their own so we never pay late fees. Lovely to be so lazy.
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Date: 2008-10-09 02:12 am (UTC)My library has some online/downloadable audiobooks, but not as many as they have discs for. Also, the format is not iPod compatible, so I have to listen at my computer. Normally, I do other stuff at the computer, and listen to audiobooks on the commute, so the online library hasn't gotten much of a work out from me yet.
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Date: 2008-10-06 10:01 pm (UTC)