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

[jesse_the_k]

David Oyelowo reads John Le Carré's The Mission Song and it's wonderful. Oyelowo is brilliant at accents, and there are scores of them, beautifully deployed. His beautiful voice embodies Le Carré's jaded viewpoint.

[stonepicnicking_okapi]

I just put myself on the library waiting list for it! Thank you so much for the rec!!

Yep! I'm another audio fan. I gravitate towards audio

[jesse_the_k]

when I'm reading a book outside of my own cultural experience. Why wonder how that name is pronounced or how the joke is delivered when I can enjoy an expert narrator?

I've recently enjoyed these titles:

Trevor Noah's reading of his own memoir, Born a Crime

Ruby Dee reading Zora Neal Hurston's Their Eyes Were Watching God

Sherman Alexie's reading of his own memoir, You Don't Have To Say You Love Me. The narration is great; the story is SO PAINFUL that I had to stop reading halfway through. (Alexie had to cancel the book tour because it sent him into a depressive spiral.) He does a great job narrating his YA novel, The absolutely true diary of a part-time Indian, which I adored (and I'm not a YA reader).

The last two link to my favorite place to buy digital audiobooks--Libro.fm (No kickbacks.)

Re: Yep! I'm another audio fan. I gravitate towards audio

[stonepicnicking_okapi]

Right. Absolutely. And when (like with the Calleshire Chronicles) you have different narrators narrating the same characters you can starkly see what a difference it makes. I think that Robin Bailey actually makes jokes or injects humor into the text by his inflection and speed and tone and the others just don't.

And yes, I won't say how I thought Inspector Maigret was pronounced until I heard it. And that's only French!


I could only find Ruby Dee on that Libro.fm [thank you for the rec of that site. No money to the Bezos!] so I'll probably pass for now. That is one of my favourite books so it might be worth investing and buying it. Maybe Christmas. My library doesn't have it and I couldn't find it bootlegged on youtube.

I will try the Trevor Noah book, too. My library has that. My sons' father is Rwandan. So my kids also have a mixed American-African backgrounds.

Thanks so much for the recs!