Sunshine Challenge #3: Share Your Squee: Audiobooks

[stonepicnicking_okapi]

Prompt #3 is Share your Squee

I like audiobooks, and I listen mostly to mysteries and classics of Western literature. Here are some voices I’m listening to.



Cyril Hare read by Chris MacDonnell

I’ve listened to two works by Cyril Hare [Untimely Death and An English Murder] and I’m waiting anxiously for my library to acquire the MacDonnell version of Tragedy at Law, which is supposed to be Hare’s best work, featuring his detectives, the mild lawyer Francis Pettigrew and the very competent Inspector Mallett. MacDonnell’s voice is perfect for the historical and legal world of these stories.

Frankenstein read by Simon Vance

Simon Vance is the Webster’s Dictionary of professional narrators. He is the standard by which I measure all others. And like other really, really good professional narrators, such as Simon Prebble and David Timson, he is, far and away, the best there is in terms of simply reading a story well and making you forget he’s even there. When I see his name, I know I don’t have to worry about not liking the reading of whatever it is.

Catherine Aird read by Robin Bailey

This is my current comfort listening. No one does Aird’s DI Sloan & DS Crosby of the Calleshire Chronicles better than Robin Bailey who did at least the first five of the series. I listen to them over and over. They are available (with varying quality) on youtube. I recommend highest The Complete Steel also known as The Stately Home Murders. What he does best is the banter between Sloan and his superior Chief Inspector Leeyes. Bailey died in 1999, and the rest of her stories are narrated by others who are serviceable but not brilliant.

I’ve talked about others in other posts. My favourite actor-narrators are Cumberbatch [Ngaio Marsh’s Artist in Crime and Death in a White Tie and Scales of Justice]; Dan Stevens [Agatha Christie’s Murder on the Orient Express and And Then There Were None] and Bronson Pinchot [Highsmith's Strangers on a Train].

POC. I should listen to POC narrators. I did like Neil de Grasse Tyson’s narration of Astrophysics for Busy People, unfortunately it was a book where I was too dim to follow the material (despite the lovely voice) and returned it after three chapters.

Women? I should listen to more women narrators. If anyone has recommendations, please offer them. I do like Jennifer M. Dixon who does Josephine Tey’s Inspector Grant novels. British (or at least non-American) female voices are always preferred.

There are many actor-narrators that I adore as actors but hate as narrators, and there are some actor-narrators whose voices are so distinct that it makes it sort of impossible to forget who is talking. But the point of this is to talk about squee so I’m not going to mention them unless a commentor does.

Comments

[smallhobbit]

I've you to thank for getting me back into audiobooks when you recommended Benedict Cumberbatch and Inspector Alleyn.

I've added Cyril Hare to my library 'to read' list.

[stonepicnicking_okapi]

Great.

I don't know what your voice sounds like, but I friend-cast it as Jennifer M. Dixon's, the one that reads the Inspector Grant novels. And I know I can't hope to know what debriswoman's voice, but there was an episode of Edwardian farm where an older lady tells Ruth Goodman in a very debriswoman's way that she (Ruth) will never make a decent lace-maker and it sounded like something debriswoman would say and the way she would say it.

Great. He was a judge, so the solutions hinge on a particular point of law, though the setting isn't usually (or wholly) a courtroom. I did buy a copy of Tragedy at Law from abebooks, but I'm still holding out that my library will pick up the audiobook version. Chris MacDonell does a great job with the voices. And Pettigrew is an average barrister but Inspector Mallett is very competent and Pettigrew's wife isn't an idiot and she is kind to her husband and helps the case along at points (in Untimely Death).