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Best and Worst Audiobooks and Narrators
Trike wrote: "Hank wrote: "I thought Perdida Weeks did an amazing job with Circe. I am pretty sure she added a full star worth of quality."I concur with this, too. I’m sure I liked the book bet..."
I saw that in your review and made a point of watching an episode. I liked it but I am not much of a tv guy so I haven't watched another....I might watch more... but I might not.
The narrator for Gideon the Ninth, Moira Quirk, was incredible. A bit slow, but nothing that 2.5x can't solve!
I can add Hugh Bonneville, Jason Isaacs, Sophie Okonedo, David Tennant and Alexander Vlahos to the pool. I listened to the H.G. Wells SF collection narrated by them and all 5 were absolutely brilliant in bringing across the Victorian atmosphere and tongue-in-cheekness. It was a great pleasure to listen to them.
I’ve read a few HG Well’s already, but that Audi collection looks too good to pass up! Makes the monthly subscription worth it for sure!
Gabi, I’ve always been disappointed I haven’t seen Jason Isaacs in more films. He was one my favorite actors that I was first introduced to from Harry Potter. I thought he would have been a good Sherlock about 10 or 15 years ago. He’d still probably be good as Dracula.
I have to add Kathleen Gati to my I-adore-them list. I just listened to her performance of "The Bear and the Nightingale" and already after a few minutes I was like "I don't care what the book is about, I want to listen to this voice forever … please marry me!" ^^'
Gabi wrote, Diane wrote: "I’ve read a few HG Well’s already, but that Audi collection looks too good to pass up! Makes the monthly subscription worth it for sure!"Thanks for the tip. Just picked this up. Although I have the ebooks for the novels, prefer to listen and really starting to appreciate ability to read and listen. I'm on the yearly subscription and agree that it is worth it.
Soo wrote: "I'll have to check out Jayne Entwistle. That's a good list. Though I cannot stand Kramer. I avoid him if possible."Jayne Entwistle is fabulous in the Flavia novels overall, but I haven't heard her narrate anything else.
Gabi wrote: "I have to add Kathleen Gati to my I-adore-them list. I just listened to her performance of "The Bear and the Nightingale" and already after a few minutes I was like "I don't care what the book is a..."She’s one of those actor/singers I mentioned upthread who tend to be really great at narration. She was terrific in Arrow last year, and I know she’s been on soap operas forever. She plays a lot of Russians and similar Eastern Bloc characters for some reason.
No one has commented here in at least a year! So here goes:I recently listened to The Fate of the Fallen narrated by Nick Podehl and was flabbergasted. I actually had to check who the female co-narrator was when the first female character came up. I was astonished that it was all Nick Podehl! He did a lot of accents convincingly and his facility in creating female and child voices was amazing. I will be checking out his other narrations, especially if any are a group read from the past or in the future.
I also found Anika Noni Rose a wonderfully facile narrator. She’s an actress who has a foot in several different cultures and does various NY accents very well. I listened to her narrate Shadowshaper, a group read and she made the book, to be honest.
kobna holdbrook-smith is doing such an amazing job narrating the rivers of london series.
I have really liked the GraphicAudio Audiobooks of Brandon Sanderson's Stormlight Archive books and Warbreaker and from authorMichael J. Sullivan Age of Myth. They are more expensive than usual Audiobooks but imo worth the money since their dramatized version makes the story really alive and interesting.
DivaDiane wrote: "No one has commented here in at least a year!"Thanks for reviving this thread! In 2020, over half of my reading was via audiobook, and I am continuing that trend now. It's my preferred method, honestly. 5 of the 8 books I've finished this year have been via audio. (Of course a large number of those are nonfiction or memoir style, or true crime, or social justice/anti-racism type books, so many are not read by the usual audiobook readers, at least that I've noticed.)
An absolute stand-out of my listens since the last time I was here in this thread though was Circe, read by Perdita Weeks. It was so amazingly well done.
Exit West was, in my opinion, better on audio read by the author (Mohsin Hamid) than it would be in print because of the style. In my review, I mentioned letting it wash over me and just take it in, but that it would have been less enjoyable to read. I'm very particular about authors reading their own work, but I enjoyed this one quite a bit.
One I definitely did NOT like at all was Hillary Huber reading The Library at Mount Char. I really enjoyed the book, but the reading of it is no bueno.
The last time I commented in this thread, I'd only listened to a couple of audiobooks. I still haven't listened to all that many, to be honest, and don't listen to much SFF, for whatever reason. But here are a few I really enjoyed:Hitchhiker's Guide and Restaurant, by Stephen Fry and Martin Freeman, respectively. Interestingly, I liked Fry's narration better than his character voices, and for Freeman it was vice-versa.
If you like Austen (and I understand, not everyone does), Rosamund Pike's versions of S&S and P&P are delightful.
I've listened to a couple of Vance's narrations and he is excellent, very good at evoking emotion. I'm looking forward to listening to his versions of Rice's vampire books, and some other things that I doubt anybody here cares about.
Rob Inglis's narration of LotR makes the intolerable almost tolerable.
For simple/fun listening, Nigel Planer's narration of Hogfather, and Emily Gray's of the Parasol Protectorate, are great. Quick listening, and funny.
Beth wrote: "Rob Inglis's narration of LotR makes the intolerable almost tolerable."I don't know why I was reminiscing about my Rob Inglis LOTR listening last night, but ... wait, I'm sure I've told this before? Hang on ... searching ... yup, here and here! :D
(Heyyyyy Tom Bombadiiil!)
Simon Vance is SO good. If you're into it, he reads the Millennium Trilogy (The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, The Girl Who Played with Fire, and The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest) and they are amazing. I haven't really loved any of the Lord of the Rings audiobooks I've tried. They are either too much (full cast dramatization) or not enough (Inglis, sorry to say). I think that series is just not for audio for me. The songs and lays already make my eyes glaze over when I can just skim or outright skip over them... I don't see how audio would improve that. LOL
HOWEVER, I just found that there's a new audiobook version of The Hobbit, read by Andy Serkis, and THAT I think I'd enjoy immensely.
That is an amazing memory you have, Anna. Half the time when I go to post something, it feels like I've said it somewhere before, but I wouldn't even know where to start looking for it.
Becky, Early in the 1st lockdown in the UK, Andy Serkis did a live reading of the Hobbit on YouTube, only stopping to go to the bathroom, eat and sleep. I only listened to a bit of it and it was amazing. I bet it’s still there. But the actual audio production is probably even better!
DivaDiane wrote: "Becky, Early in the 1st lockdown in the UK, Andy Serkis did a live reading of the Hobbit on YouTube, only stopping to go to the bathroom, eat and sleep. I only listened to a bit of it and it was am..."Oh nice! I love the quality of his voice. I was listening to the sample on audible, and I was sad when it ended. It was really good!
Najaf wrote: "kobna holdbrook-smith is doing such an amazing job narrating the rivers of london series."Oh he really did. I wasn't that impressed with the story but thanks to his voice and performance I finished it.
So, stumbling in here late, but an author cold-messaged me yesterday, and wanted to know about my "preferences and thoughts on audiobook narrators (for example, do you prefer a single narrator for the whole audiobook, or do you like dual narrators when there are several main characters?". So I told him the following, and just wanted to put it out there for general consumption as well.
---- -
"Author",
Glad to pitch in a little.
Busy day today, so this may be quick: average narration, to me, is unobtrusive you don't notice that they are not the character and they don't flub their lines with mispronunciations, and the editors are very careful about inserting sound effects. And the only music is in the publisher prelude or afterlude(?). Great narration may stand out a little, with just some added sparkle.
Poor narration, as mentioned, is usually something distracting, like pronouncing a word wrong, or choosing an accent or pacing that clashes with the voice/behavior/background of a character.
I also listen at 1.2x speed, or some close approximation.
First preference: a single narrator with a variety of voices: Bronson Pinchot (e.g. Glory Road), Wil Wheaton (e.g. his rendition of Lock In). Scott Brick (e.g. many recent Clive Cussler (I think), and most recently for me The Quantum Thief) does a good performance but I hear less distinction between his in-book characters.
A story with alternating POVs can have two distinct narrators (I listened a recent example that I cannot recall now), but that's a rarity. I'd also be clear that it is multiple points-of-view, not just multiple characters.
Ensemble casts or dramatic presentations have always proved too distracting for me. I guess I want to be just on the cusp between "read-aloud" and "forgot this was text originally".
Good luck & God speed!
Thank You Mike! I knew in my heart that while I will not buy a book narrated by by Bronson Pinchot someone must have the inverse relation with Mr. Pinchot, he narrates quite a bit and I knew the free market wouldn't let me down like that.
I've only recently gotten into audiobooks, but some narrators that impressed me were:-Yetide Badaki The Death of Vivek Oji
-Natalie Gold Dreamer's Pool
-Anna-Maria Nabirye Girl, Woman, Other
And the worst narrator I have encountered so far:
-Simon Vance Under the Greenwood Tree
He gave most characters the shrillest voice possible and also just made them sound like idiots? Actually awful. I just looked and shockingly there are over 500 results in Audible from him. Did he narrate every book ever? Guess I have a lot to avoid...
(I'm guessing due to the volume of audiobooks he has narrated, this is going to be an unpopular opinion- but hey what can ya do? 😅)
Hey Don, I listened to The Halloween Tree narrated by Bronson Pinchot and it was brilliant really well done. I don’t usually or didn’t used to pay much attention to who was narrating but I went back and looked him up (because I was like, hey! I know that name, but from where?!?) and was really surprised. He can obviously do other characters.
Since I’ve been listening to more audiobooks this year, I have a lot more opinions than I did when I posted near the beginning of this thread 3.5 years ago. My main opinion hasn’t changed though – I much prefer a subtle narrator to an in-your-face melodramatic one. I’ve also found that I seem to read things differently in my head, especially dialogue, than narrators often do. I’ll sometimes hear the words the narrator is reading and think to myself that I never would have read those words with that tone. I sometimes feel like characters would be much more likeable in my head than they sound in audiobooks.Here are some narrator thoughts from my experiences this year…
Narrators most people seem to like but I did not:
● Ray Porter in We are Legion (We are Bob). Every sentence is… read with emphasis and… dramatic pauses. Sometimes… even when it doesn’t make sense. It was exhausting to listen to. After listening for an hour, I felt like I’d spent an hour in a meeting with my most boisterous colleagues.
● Peter Kenny in The Last Wish. He read with a sing-song cadence that seemed really strange to me, and added odd emphasis to nouns directly following an article. By the end of the book I didn’t notice it as much, but after the first five minutes or so, I actually had to pause the book so I could sit and laugh without missing the story. And he made Geralt sound like a dopey cartoon dog, which didn’t work for me at all.
● Claudia Alick in Three Parts Dead. My biggest complaint was her inconsistent dialogue voices. There was one character whose voice kept popping up (to the perspective of my ears, anyway) even when he wasn’t in the vicinity. Toward the second half of the book, there were also several sequences where every other sentence in prose sections were read with a different tone, bouncing back and forth until I felt like I was in a bad dream sequence. I also didn’t feel like the narrator’s tone really suited the story. My very first impression when I started listening was “Mary Poppins, is that you?” But I don’t know, maybe that’s what they were going for. The gleefully cheerful tone while reading a story involving necromancy and witchcraft did create an interesting juxtaposition, I guess.
Narrators I listened to this year that I especially liked:
● Daniel Thomas May in Foreigner. Perfect, understated, unobtrusive reading with well-differentiated character voices. He sort of faded into the background so that I could listen to the story without giving any thought to narration style. Of all the audiobooks I’ve listened to this year, this is the only one where I just heard the story without constantly being aware I was listening to an audiobook.
● Emily Gray in Soulless. I’m not a fan of romance novels, and I hadn’t realized this was a paranormal romance until I started listening, but her narration for it was perfect. I think her reading added more humor to the story than I would have gotten out of it in print.
● Mary Robinette Kowal in The Calculating Stars. She wasn’t perfect, most of her male voices were a little over done, but she did a really great job of conveying the emotion of the story. Since she was also the author, I also spent less time second-guessing how she chose to read various things.
Thoughts on Multiple Narrators
The audiobook I’m currently listening to, Six of Crows, has 7 different narrators which is a different experience for me. All the narrators I’ve heard so far are fine, but I think I would prefer a single narrator. Each one voices a different POV, but the problem is that the POV characters are all together in the same scenes for the most part, so each narrator is voicing all the same characters with different voices. I prefer a single narrator so that I can just get used to a single, consistent voicing for each character. It probably would have worked better for me if each narrator voiced their own character’s dialogue too, regardless of who the POV character was at the time, but I guess that would have been much more difficult and expensive to produce.
I *hated* the Six of Crows audio for that exact reason! I think I might've mentioned it in this thread. If I remember correctly, one of the narrators changes in the sequel and does a horrible voice, or maybe there was just more of that character. I'm not sure, it was a long time ago.Emily Gray + Parasolverse = the best! ^_^
edit: I have not mentioned it in this thread, maybe it was in the SoC thread. Not gonna look for it, it's not important :)
At first I thought it would be fun to have different narrators, but I've learned my lesson. :) I do like the story though, at least so far – I’ve listened to about a third of it. I’ll probably follow up on it in print someday.
Emmett wrote: "And the worst narrator I have encountered so far:-Simon Vance Under the Greenwood Tree
He gave most characters the shrillest voice possible and also just made them sound like idiots? Actually awful. I just looked and shockingly there are over 500 results in Audible from him. Did he narrate every book ever? Guess I have a lot to avoid..."
Oh nooooo! I haven't listened to that book in particular but I have listened to quite a few he's read and I don't think that experience is the norm for him. Usually I find his style to have a gravity and seriousness that I really like, but he is a Performer (one of the few I like for audiobooks), so maybe he was adapting to the style or tone of the book?
I'd say to give him another chance before completely writing him off. Or listen to samples on Audible for free. You did make me laugh regarding him reading every audiobook out there. He's quite prolific! LOL
Intersting, Emmett! I've listened to a couple of Simon Vance's audios, and they're nothing like you describe, Tigana especially was a beautiful experience. He's actually one of my favorite narrators :D
Diane, I listened to The Halloween Tree recently also and absolutely agree. He was excellent. I can still hear his voice and style.
Dawn wrote: "Intersting, Emmett! I've listened to a couple of Simon Vance's audios, and they're nothing like you describe, Tigana especially was a beautiful experience. He's actually one of my favorite narrator..."He reads quite a few of GGK's books. :)
YouKneeK, I understand what you mean with Peter Kenny and his narration of the Witcher books. I don't like the dialect he's given Geralt at all, and he does have a strange flowy way of speaking. I often stopped listening and read the physical instead because he took me out of the story, especially the last book I opted to eye-read mostly.On the other hand I absolutely LOVE all the dialects he gives the various species, especially I find the Welsh sounding dwarves absolutely hilarious XD I adore his Dandelion, too ^^
A narrator I find completely unbearable is Adjoa Andoh. She's makes the dialogue sound so hysterical to the point I can barely hear what she says. By now I'm actively avoiding listening to books she's narrated, which sucks as there are some I'd like to read at some point.
Dawn, I’m so glad it wasn’t just me! I did like his narration of most of the other human characters fine, including Dandelion, but I actually had trouble understanding the words for some of the non-humanoid creatures. Especially when he was making them sound all enraged and spluttery. I also found myself wanting to lean away from the speakers the audiobook was playing through to avoid the spit. ;) His narration did evoke some vivid images, though! I think that was the first audiobook I experimented with this year, so I likely had more trouble with it than I would have if I’d had more experience.
I somewhat agree about Andoh. Mostly because I absolutely hated how she narrated Ancillary/Radch. I've also listened to some books narrated by her that I liked, so it depends on the book I guess. I tend not to preorder anything narrated by her, just in case.
I see a chance to complain again about Grover Gardner ruining Penric for me! I could handle him doing Miles V. But I just HATED the nasal southern drawl thing he did for Penric. Made him like that rooster looney tunes cartoon character. So I have to wait fir hard copies for Penric 😞
Rachel wrote: "I see a chance to complain again about Grover Gardner ruining Penric for me! I could handle him doing Miles V. But I just HATED the nasal southern drawl thing he did for Penric. Made him like that ..."That nasality is why I can't listen to any of the books he reads. It just doesn't work for me and I don't understand why he's so popular!
I like Grover's Penric :D I don't like him as much for Vorkosigan.
YouKneeK wrote: "Especially when he was making them sound all enraged and spluttery. I also found myself wanting to lean away from the speakers the audiobook was playing through to avoid the spit. ;) His narration did evoke some vivid images, though!"I had a similar experience with Joe Morton's reading of Invisible Man. It was just too over the top, stammery, animated and so all over the place volume and cadence-wise. One minute he'd be nearly whispering, and then he'd build up to Southern Baptist Preacher without a microphone. I switched to reading, and then I could actually 'hear' the story and not just the performance of it.
Rachel wrote: "I see a chance to complain again about Grover Gardner ruining Penric for me! I could handle him doing Miles V. But I just HATED the nasal southern drawl thing he did for Penric. Made him like that ..."Here, me! I can't stand his reading neither (goes for Penric as well as for Vorkosigan) - I fear most of the books out of those two series were perhaps better than the 3 stars I gave them cause of the audiobook narration.
DivaDiane wrote: "Hey Don, I listened to The Halloween Tree narrated by Bronson Pinchot and it was brilliant really well done. I don’t usually or didn’t used to pay much attention to who was narrating but I went bac..."Bronson Pinchot also did Matterhorn and he was fantastic!
Don wrote: "Thank You Mike! I knew in my heart that while I will not buy a book narrated by by Bronson Pinchot..."What's that all about?
Rachel wrote: "I see a chance to complain again about Grover Gardner ruining Penric for me! I could handle him doing Miles V. But I just HATED the nasal southern drawl thing he did for Penric. Made him like that rooster looney tunes cartoon character..."
Ah say -- Ah say -- Ah say, Ah resemble that remarhk, Rachel! And, that Foghorn Leghorn, he is just an obscure footnote in history to the true master of Suh-thern Rhet-or-ic, Senator Beauregard Claghorn of Allen's Alley.
Becky wrote: "One minute he'd be nearly whispering, and then he'd build up to Southern Baptist Preacher without a microphone. I switched to reading, and then I could actually 'hear' the story and not just the performance of it."LOL, he sounds like another narrator I would do best to avoid! And I definitely understand what you mean about being able to ‘hear’ the story.
YouKneeK, that's the only one I've listened to by him, so I don't know if everything is like that. Maybe it's just the nature of this particular story. I got the impression that it made an impression on him, and that it was a favorite, and he wanted to bring it to life, as it were. Many people love it for that. I'm just not one of them. It was far too distracting!
Becky wrote: "One I definitely did NOT like at all was Hillary Huber reading The Library at Mount Char. I really enjoyed the book, but the reading of it is no bueno.."That's so funny, haha! Because I would list Hillary Huber and her performance of The Library at Mount Char as one of the absolute best ever.
I love Moira Quirk. She narrates Gideon the Ninth and The Midnight Bargain. I think I mostly love her accent haha, but she does an amazing job. I could absolutely keep all the characters in Gideon straight because she made them all sound so different.
Nicole Lewis also did an amazing job performing "The Space Between Worlds."
Kristenelle wrote: "That's so funny, haha! Because I would list Hillary Huber and her performance of The Library at Mount Char as one of the absolute best ever."To be fair, I think that I'm pretty finicky when it comes to audiobook readers, AND it was a re-read, so I already had formed character traits from my first time through that her reading just didn't match, so it felt wrong and off to me. The way she read Jen was especially irksome. It's entirely possible that had I listened first, I would have liked it much more.
I've listened to a lot of audiobooks during the last couple of years and I think a good narrator can really add to the story immensely by bringing the characters to life.That goes so far that I can't imagine certain characters being read by anybody else. In my imagination, Kobna Holdbrook-Smith IS Peter Grant and James Marsters IS Harry Dresden.
I love Will Patton's narration of some of Stephen King's books, he has such an relaxed and warm voice.
I also always like to come back to books narrated by Luke Daniels and Mathew Lloyd Davies, mainly because I like what they do with different voices and accents.
And I really came to appreciate Steven Pacey's narration of Joe Abercrombie's books, The Blade Itself and so on. Although that one wasn't love at first listen and it took me a while to get used to his style.
Some more recent discoveries are Moira Quirk's narration of Gideon the Ninth and Andy Secombe, who is just amazing in the Frey & McGray series by Oscar de Muriel
Agreed, Hans. I was SO disappointed when one of the books of The Expanse series wasn't read by Jefferson Mays. He is so great for those, and I can't imagine anyone else doing them. So I'm glad that he was able to redo the audiobook. (Speaking of which, I should probably get back into them if I plan to finish before the events they predict actually get around to happening. LOL )
Michael Page reading the Lies of Locke Lamora is fantastic. The way he pronounces the Italian names is amazing. I feel like this book would be a lot slower if it wasn't for his performance. I especially like his voices for Chains and Bug. I'm not completely satisfied with Kate Reading on her Stormlight for Brandon Sanderson.
Suzy Jackson in How to kill a demon king was fun. The book wasn't serious so her performance was well accepted.
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There are narrators that I dislike to some extent, but there is one that's on my blacklist and I will never, ever again listen to a book read by her: Julia Emelin. I had the horrible experience of listening to Uprooted read by her. For those who are not aware, the novel takes place in some fairy tale version of the Kingdom of Poland. And someone had the "awesome" idea of employing a narrator with a thick Russian accent. I found that outright insulting. For people who are not aware of differences between Slavic languages, it 's like having a book taking place in Spain read by a narrator with a thick French accent.