Best readers I have listened to are:

Sandra Burr readings took Nora Roberts’ descriptive narratives to the next level

Simon Prebble & Dick Hill I think are two of the best male readers

Anna Fields who read Susan Elizabeth Phillip’s book was a fantastic reader, unfortunately passed away last year. I will miss her reading the next Phillip’s books.

Cristine McMurdo-Wallis whose version of the JD Robb books are better the Erickson version, IMO. The tone of her reading is darker and gives the story a little more edge.

When I encounter a bad reader I revert back to the traditional way and read the book instead. One unfortunate example is Don’t Look Down – bought the audiobook, so excited when I got it, popped in the car and hmmmmmn uh hmmm. The female reader was okay but I couldn’t stand the male reader, I didn’t think his voice reflected the character of the hero. So not wanting to ruin the Jenny’s book, I had to stop after the second chapter, got the hard copy and opted to read it instead.

Also, a lot of people love the Patrick guy who does Suzanne Brockmann’s audiobooks, but I keep wanting to ask him to swallow, gargle, or cough, but get that dang frog out of his throat already. I can listen to it but he drives me a little crazy.

If you have M/F POV scenes, getting M/F readers is nice too, but not wholly necessary.

Oh, good diction. Critical. Basically someone who can act well with just their voice.

Victor Slezak read “Envy” by Sandra Brown and he was simply out of this world.

And my favorite Brit reader is Davina Porter – she is simply fantastic beyond the pale. Her reading of the Outlander series by Diana Gabaldon just cannot be beat!
I will listen to ANYTHING she reads in audio format!

Barb

I found it! The control for the speed of the audiobook playback is on the iPod, not in iTunes. So, anyway, for those who listen to audiobooks on the iPod, from the initial screen, go to Settings>Audiobooks>slower,normal, faster.

Jenny, enjoying the game.

The Forums. Oh, God. There is nothing wrong with the code. The server insists it’s a problem on our end. There is no problem on our end, we have been through the code and it’s fine. Their guy and our guy got into it, our guy asked their guy if he was on crack, and Mollie said, “Good time to switch servers.” We should be up on the new server tomorrow. And since it’s the same server as my website and this blog, from now on when one goes down, they’ll all go down. Because We Are Efficient.

And I now have a list of readers to recommend to Brilliance and another list of audio books to try. As always, you are all terrific and helpful and I exploit you shamefully. Thank you.

So to show my gratitude, I gave you a game to play in the next blog. I’m warning you, it’s worse than solitaire for being addictive.

Rats!

One thing I would like to see added to audio books is a very brief intro by the author. Nora is starting to do that , right ? As a listener I’d enjoy that.

Two examples:

Jim Dale, the reader of the US version of the audiobooks for Harry Potter, does a fantastic job overall. However, for some unknown reason he did this very gutteral, phlegmy voice for Narcissa Malfoy. Her description in the novel is quite ethereral and nearly fairy-like. And she sounded like a Russian man with a head cold.

In the latest J.D. Robb book, the reader made the incredibly sexy Roarke sound like the lucky charms leprachaun which is not remotely sexy and instead made me laugh hysterically every time Roarke had a line of dialogue. Peabody sounded like she had a mouth full of marbles and Feeney was a super from the Bronx.

The Jim Dale complaint didn’t ruin the book for me as Narcissa is a minor character that only appeared in two scenes. The J.D. Robb book was such a disaster I Had to return it to the library.

Just my thoughts!

I no longer listen to full cast audios, but that has more to do with wanting to draw out the experience. A book that takes 6 hours to read is cut down to about an hour when it is converted to a cast recording. That’s barely enough time to get anything done.

Same with The Road, which we listened to on the way to Corpus Christi this winter (from Minneapolis). Long, drawn out, unending misery and hopelessness. I can read books like that, I went back and read it after we got back and liked it, but I just can’t bear with the reader while he goes through all that misery.

(You notice when I’m not alone the book choices get much manlier. Actually, even when I’m alone these days because I was out painting the garage listening to Welcome to Temptation and the dudes next door turned off the jackhammer or powersaw or whatever it was JUST at a crucial moment and totally cracked up through the fence. Ahem.)

I should go get the audio of DLD, though. My boyfriend might be willing to listen to it and I listened to eight hours of the Dalek Wars on the last trip so he owes me.

For the Sue Grafton alphabet mysteries, I was really loving Mary Peiffer as the narrator. She read all the books up through N is for Noose, I think. She really got Kinsey and read the books well. Then I got the next book, read by a new narrator. Her voice was great, and I believe she reads well. But, she sounds an awful lot like Ellen DeGeneres – not just the voice, but the intonations and the funny inflections. It was like listening to Dory from Finding Nemo. Her voice was great, and there are many books I’d enjoy if she read them. But, Dory and Kinsey Millhone are EXTREMELY different personalities. It was all wrong, and I won’t listen to any of the rest of the alphabet series. I’ll read them, but I couldn’t get past the first 10 minutes of that audiobook, because the narrator simply didn’t fit.

Non-fiction is an entirely different beast.

Diane: If I’d known about the time-honored tradition of throwing books at the wall, I probably would have done it with “Violin.” And that’s probably the only book I have read that I would have considered doind someting that drastic.
I couldn’t bear to send it to a friend in Iraq — I thought that would be cruel, but I did just donate it to the library after years of glaring at it for taking up room in my bookcase. But man. All I could think about was screaming at the character to call the damn morgue already. I probably don’t need to say I didn’t finish it.