Some authors ought to be banned from reading their own works. To my surprise, Hemingway is one of these.
To call T.S. Eliot reading his own poetry a “soulless robot” is an insult to soulless robots. He’s terrible.
John McPhee reading his own book sounds like someone who has just been shown the script for the first time. He seems to have no idea what’s coming next, or what inflections to use. Did he even write his own book?
Michael Lewis did a bad job of reading his book Liar’s Poker. It sounded amateurish.
A few more Good readings – John Lithgow did a fabulous job on Tom Wolfe’s Bonfire of the Vanities. He varied the voices on the different characters, turning it almost into a dramatic reading.
James Doohan did something similar in his readings of Star Trek novels. He does an amazing job impersonating the other Star Trek actors.
Spider Robinson, a huge Heinlein fan himself, did an amazing job reading the audiobook version of Rocket Ship Galileo. RSG is arguably the least of Heinlein’s juveniles (it was the first of them, and Heinlein was obviously still trying to figure out what he was trying to do with what would become a series). It’d avoided re-reading it for years. But Robinson’s reading is extremely good – he’s as good as any professional reader, and probably better than some. I’ve listened to the book countless times.
Phil Dragash did a full reading of Lord of the Rings. He does all the voices, used Howard Shore’s music, and you will find it hard to believe just one guy did the entire thing. Free of charge.
He had to pull the copies off his website due to the fact that he did the whole thing with no rights to the book or the music.
They are amazing if you can find a copy, though. The only way to read Lord of the Rings for me now.
This is what I am again listening to and it is true. There is no other way to experience them that is better than Stephen Fry’s read-aloud of them. It’s incredible.
I was carrying a paper copy of On The Road in my art bag, but I was losing interest since I’d read it years ago.
Then I found the audiobook, read by Will Patton. It’s like I’m reading (/hearing?) Kerouac for the first time!
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(NB: One of my favorite things to do with a long audiobook is to pick up the paperback, too. I can switch off reading a chapter on a park bench, then listen to the next chapter while walking around the park.)