I've been having a really good time listening to books on cd. With about a 35-45 minute trip, one-way, to work, I've been able to go through these pretty quickly.
"Anansi Boys," "19 Minutes," "S is for Silence," "The Mermaid Chair" and a couple of 'Temperance Brennan' books are the few I can remember right now.
It takes some amazing skill to be able to read these books, create various accents for the male and female characters and convey the emotions needed. My favorite "reader" so far has been a Mr. Lenny Henry, who read Neil Gaiman's "Anansi Boys." He was fantastic, switching from British voices, to Jamaican, male and female.
I've heard that the gentleman who reads the 'Harry Potter' series, Jim Dale, is equally fantastic. I have put myself on the library's queue for the audio books, starting with 'HP and the Sorcerer's Stone." Alas, (earwax) I am 13th in line. *sigh*
I recently picked up some of Kathy Reich's 'Temperance Brennan' books on CD. You know Brennan. The lead character in the "Bones" tv series. Let me just say, the name and the profession are pretty much the only thing the books and the series share. The book-version Brennan, the original, actually has feeling. She gets disgusted at the crime scenes, bile rising in her throat. She has emotions, she was married, she has a child, she's an alcoholic. T.V. Brennan is not a very sympathetic character. I don't like tv Brennan. She a social idiot. The book one, again the original one, is much better.
My most recent "listen" was "Break No Bones," and I wanted to chuck the whole thing out of the window. The reader was, I am sorry ma'am, horrible. I hated her voice. It made me cringe, like nails on a chalkboard. She was all "breathy" and "whisper." When she did the different male and female voices, she was fine. It was when she was narrating, not reading dialog, that I wanted to drive my car into a ditch. She made a few errors too. The funniest being this: She was reading the description of someone's boat. Boats have these things called live wells. (Live pronounced like "Live from New York, it's Saturday Night.") You keep the fish alive in there; live well. She read it as 'Live,' like "Live your life to the fullest." The boat had a live (long & prosper) well. I cracked up at her gaffe. I was SO glad when that cd set was over. Listening to her made me realize that even *I* could do that job.
So, do you have a favorite reader? A book on cd you remember that you loved? Let me know, so I can put it on my queue.
3 comments:
Oh my gosh, yes we have a favorite reader! On the big road trip we listened to a couple of the Little House books. Yeah, I know they are supposedly children's books, but the reader, Cherry Jones, was sooooo good! We all really enjoyed listening to her. I believe she did the whole series.
We have listened to a couple of Star Wars books on CD, most were mediocre. The worst was the novelization of Attack of the Clones. Even I couldn't stomach the reader's interpretation of my heroes voices. Ack!
Yeah, those ones Hendel mentioned were great! My son, Jacob, likes books on CD - we enjoyed the Red Wall series a few years back, read by the author, Brian Jaques - they were excellent. :o)
Do you read / like Janet Evanovich? I just listened to Finger Licking Fifteen and fell IN LOVE with the narrator. She is so funny and does the voices amazingly well. I forget her name tho... Lorelei something...
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