10-05-2014, 10:41 AM | #16 |
o saeclum infacetum
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I recently finished my worst-narrated book ever, Emperior Dowager Cixi as narrated by Jolene Kim. Bad enough were the mispronunciations and the way she'd correct herself when she misspoke (and where was the producer?!), but unendurable was her habit of breaking up the text where there were no punctuation marks. So it was hour upon hour of jerky pacing with pauses where they made no sense whatsoever. I'd have abandoned it except I was listening to it for the lit club and I wasn't able to read.
There are a few scathing comments at Audible, so it's not just me. I borrowed it from OverDrive so I can't weigh in, but at least I didn't blow a credit on it. |
10-05-2014, 08:57 PM | #17 |
Aging Positronic Brain
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Grover Gardner reading Shelby Foote's The Civil War. He was so slow.
William Dufris, however, I listened to for the nine books of Taylor Anderson's Destroyermen series (so far). He has been excellent! I was very surprised that a couple people didn't like him. Last edited by RDaneel54; 10-05-2014 at 08:59 PM. Reason: To correct autocorrect error. |
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10-05-2014, 09:03 PM | #18 |
Bookaholic
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For many narrators it can often depend on the book they're performing. At least that's my experience.
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10-05-2014, 09:11 PM | #19 |
monkey on the fringe
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10-06-2014, 02:09 AM | #20 |
Wizard
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It's a shame we couldn't have Shelby Foote reading Shelby Foote's Civil war. He had a wonderful voice.
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10-06-2014, 10:39 AM | #21 | |
o saeclum infacetum
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"Fastering", I've found, makes a lot of books enjoyable that would have had me pulling my hair otherwise. Non-fiction in particular almost always benefits from a nudge up to 1.25X. |
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10-06-2014, 11:42 AM | #22 | |
monkey on the fringe
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10-06-2014, 01:10 PM | #23 |
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Chipmunk chatter is what it sounds like to me. I can't deal with bumping up the speed, anymore than I can fast-forward through a movie. I've tried a couple of times when I'm considering a 30+ hour book, but it doesn't work for me. Maybe if the Clip Zip had some reasonable incremental increases ...
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10-06-2014, 01:41 PM | #24 | |
o saeclum infacetum
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And yes, it can be the clincher for some of the longer books. Sooner or later, I'll get sick of even the most enthralling book once it hits 20 hours, say. This is why my Clip Zip is mostly gathering dust. |
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10-06-2014, 02:58 PM | #25 |
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I've found myself using 1.25x, and even 1.5x, when the narrator is really, really, reading slowwwwwly. I don't mean just speaking slowly, but dragging each word ouuuuut. Often when I speed it up, it normalizes the speech for me.
Speeding it up does give it an odd sound quality otherwise, kind of like odd little blurps, so I prefer to keep it at 1x unless I just can't take how far the words are being drawn out. |
10-07-2014, 08:02 AM | #26 |
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Not a worse narrator ever per se but something that drives me batty in an audiobook production is the inclusion of musical interludes in between chapters or worse still at dramatic moments. This pulls me out of the narrative and is a pet hate. My current listen is 5th in the Virgil Flowers series not sure why they've put music on this one and not the previous books in the series
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10-07-2014, 09:02 AM | #27 |
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In Sweden we have two philosophies of narrating, depending on if it's a commercial audiobook or an audiobook (called a "talbok") produced by the Swedish Agency for Accessible Media. The talbok are narrated with as neutral a reading style as possible so as not to influence the interpretation of the text more than is necessary.
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10-07-2014, 11:22 AM | #28 | |
Aging Positronic Brain
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I saw him on a plane to Memphis once. I was too shy to say anything. Later, I heard him say in an interview that he wasn't too crazy about being approached for autographs, etc. Glad I was shy. |
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10-07-2014, 11:25 AM | #29 |
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10-07-2014, 11:32 AM | #30 | |
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