Audiobookers: Titles That Were Better in Print?

[Tangent]

@Thudlow_Boink

Okay, here’s one of the other direction: I tried to read John Scalzi’s Agent to the Stars, but after a couple of chapters I thought “meh” and gave up on it. But a while later I listened to the audio version, narrated by Wil Wheaton, and thought it was wonderful. Wheaton really makes the main character (a Hollywood agent, who is the first-person narrator) likeable and relatable, and makes the humor work.

Wheaton also does an excellent job on the Ready Player One audiobook. And the book is such a geek lovefest that he was the perfect choice to read it.

[SurrenderDorothy]

I liked Neil Gaiman’s Fragile Things better in regular book than audiobook. Not because he didn’t do a good job reading. Mostly, it was just that I like to skip around in books of short stories- flip past the ones that don’t capture my interest and come back to them later, re-read the ones I liked, and so forth.

I also got Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children on audiobook from the library. This book has pictures that go with the story, which I didn’t realize when I started it. The narrator is also painfully bad- a good portion of the book takes place in Wales and the Welsh accents were just awful. It wasn’t a fantastic book either way, but the book version was better.

[Musky_Moon]

I recently picked up the audio for Spider Robinson’s The Callahan Chronicles. It was a disaster. The narrator tried to do accents for each character and failed miserably. I’d rather get an audiobook that comes off like a radio show, with various actors doing the parts. Unfortunately, there aren’t many of those. One recent exception is the audio for World War Z. It is superb. The guest list is mind-blowing.

[congodwarf]

I don’t have any audiobooks that don’t work in print because I only buy audiobooks of books I like so much that I’d like to listen to them too. But, I have a few that I can’t stand in audio format (audible has a return feature now but either it’s really new or I never noticed it before because I totally would have returned these books)

1. I absolutely love all the Discworld print books and all but 2 of the audiobooks. The audio versions of Equal Rites and Weird Sisters are absolutely horrible. The woman reading them has a totally irritating voice, her “voices” are aweful, and her reading is annoying. I love these books but I absolutely can not listen to the audiobooks. Nigel Planer and Stephen Briggs both did absolutely wonderful jobs on the books they did and I wish they’d reproduce those two books with one of them.

2. The LOTR and Hobbit books - I actually very much like these but there’s a whole lot of singing and I can’t stand the way the narrator sings. He sings every song to the same tune.

3. Phantoms (Dean Koontz) - I will listen to this one because the narrator isn’t too bad but the way he does the voice for Lisa is incredibly annoying.

4. Tick Tock (Dean Koontz) HATE the narrator. I absolutely will not listen to this book.

5. The Hitchhiker’s Guide - The first book narrated by Stephen Fry is perfection. The second two are by Martin Freeman. I love Martin Freeman. He’s a great actor. I just really don’t like his narration style. I might like his books if the first hadn’t been done so perfectly by Stephen Fry but Martin Freeman just can’t compare (and some of his pauses and full stops seem oddly misplaced, like he’s having breathing issues while speaking). However, I will listen to the second two because I like the books and even a horrible Martin Freeman is still better than the lady from the early discworld witch books.

Now that I’ve been hyper-critical, I have to say some good things:

Obviously I like all but 2 of the Discworld audiobooks. The Redwall books are also perfection (ensemble cast which was totally necessary for these books). The guy narrating 1984 and the one narrating The Shining are so well cast that they actually sound in the audiobook the way I imagined them sounding before I even heard them for the first time. One that surprised me was Edward Hermann narrating The Tommyknockers. He was really good in that audiobook and even though the book is not one of my favorites, I listen to it quiet often just because he makes it pleasurable to listen to. It took me twice listening to the book before I fully came to appreciate the wonder that is Barbara Rosenblatt narrating the Alexandra Cooper book Likely to Die (the only one of the series that I have on audiobook). She is GOOD. Now that I fully appreciate her, I listen to the book at least once a month.

• I am a rereader. I have gone through so many copies of 1984 that I bought the audiobook to save money on all the replacements. If I like a book a lot, I will read it dozens of times without getting sick of it. I do the same with audiobooks.

** I actually do have something slightly resembling a life (school and work basically) so I don’t spend as much of my life listening to audiobooks as it might seem. I actually usually listen to them to help me fall asleep. It helps to keep my mind from going into overdrive (which leads to very bad insomnia). I might listen to a chapter or 4 before I fall asleep, every night.

[CalMeacham]

@Musky_Moon

I recently picked up the audio for Spider Robinson’s The Callahan Chronicles. It was a disaster. The narrator tried to do accents for each character and failed miserably. I’d rather get an audiobook that comes off like a radio show, with various actors doing the parts. Unfortunately, there aren’t many of those. One recent exception is the audio for World War Z. It is superb. The guest list is mind-blowing.

Spider Robinson himself, though, does a fabulous job of reading Heinlein’s Rocket Ship Galileo.

[TV_time]

The Kinsey Milhone alphabet series has had a couple of readers. One was quite good and one was rather bad and really put me off listen or visually reading them for a while.