Outside of a Dog: Kate Nepveu’s Book Log
Outside of a dog, a book is man’s best friend. Inside of a dog it’s too dark to read.
[originally part of an audiobook roundup post, which is where the comments all are, and split up for MT import; use the previous links]
The current audiobook is The Curse of Chalion, because I was going through these 6-8 hour audiobooks too quickly. The narrator isn’t so good at the female voices, but his portrayal of Cazaril is growing on me, and I like the book quite a bit. After that, I may try some Austen, or maybe The Orchid Thief. Anyone have favorite unabridged audiobooks to recommend?
[originally part of an audiobook roundup post, which is where the comments all are, and split into five parts for MT import; use the previous and next links]
The other new thing, also from the library, was Carl Hiaasen’s Hoot, read by Chad Lowe. Hoot is my first Hiaasen, and probably my last unless he writes another YA, as Chad tells me that his adult novels tend to have bloody and unpleasant endings for the bad guys. This was both well-read and well-written; it was the one that tempted me to drive around the block to keep listening. Chad’s summed up the premise of this in his own book log entry (of the print version), so I’ll just say that I liked the oddities of the characters and the way that they mostly stayed odd, and also that Roy (our point-of-view character) actually had a good relationship with his parents. It’s nice to see that the absent adult is no longer a necessary characteristic of the YA genre.
[originally part of an audiobook roundup post, which is where the comments all are, and split into five parts for MT import; use the previous and next links]
One of two new things I listened was to Stephen King’s “L.T.’s Theory of Pets”, a one-hour live reading of a short story, from the library.
The King was well-read as always, but I’d somehow acquired completely the wrong impression of it from the CD jacket, which made it a distracting hour. It’s certainly got its strong points—who hasn’t known that their pet likes someone else better?—but on the whole, I think I would have liked it better with an actual resolution.
It is quite bawdy, by the way, if that bothers you.
[originally part of an audiobook roundup post, which is where the comments all are, and split into five parts for MT import; use the previous and next links]
Another set of four short books I listened to is Full Cast Audio’s performances of the Circle of Magic books, by Tamora Pierce. As the name suggestions, these are narrated by the author, but with a different actor for each major character. In addition, these are YA novels, with the Circle of the title made up of four young mages, and those parts are played by young people (though not as young as the characters).
Obviously, this is a cool way to do audiobooks if you can manage it. (Pierce has a longish essay on the recording experience that I found interesting.) It’s more natural-sounding, and if you’ve cast properly, it will reduce the “which character is that?” confusion that even good readers sometimes fall afoul of. For the Circle books, some of the casting was very good indeed; particularly spot-on were Niko and Rosethorn of the adults, and Tris and Sandry of the kids (for the first three books; different actresses were used for the fourth). Of the other kids, there was nothing wrong with the actress playing Daja; it’s just that the “lilting” accent her character has seems to translate as “snippy and sarcastic” to my ear. The other main child character, Briar, was also played by someone different in the fourth book, who was somewhat stiff.
I actually know these books quite well—they’re comfort reads—but as the first set I listened to, they were still an interesting example of how listening is different. There turned out, for instance, to be a key scene in one book that I’d been mis-visualizing, somehow managing to skim over a couple of key words every time. And they were a good example of the perils of audiobooks: I’m going to hear Daja with that annoying lilt in my head from now on, where before I had no clear idea what it sounded like, and that was just fine. (I don’t usually visualize appearances either, or try to figure out what music sounds like.)
I’ve taken to listening to audiobooks on my iPod during my commute, some from the library, some from Audible.com. My prior audiobook experience had been limited to solo trips to Massachusetts, but these are turning out to be a good way to decompress and keep me awake.
So far on this new spate of listening, I’ve only listened to two things that I hadn’t read before. I am a die-hard re-reader, as you will have noticed, and actually I’m finding listening to books to be a good way of re-experiencing them, because I tend to skim when I get really involved in what-happens-next. (I’m planning to try The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings (the unabridged Rob Inglis versions) after the turn of the year; I think it might be an interesting way of getting back to the text.) On my daily commute, I find that new stuff is almost too involving—I’ve yet to circle the block so I can listen to the end of the chapter, but I’ve been tempted; also, if I’m distracted for a moment by traffic, it’s slightly inconvenient to skip back and listen again.
On the other hand, I sometimes feel guilty about spending so much time on familiar works. A sort of compromise is to listen to things that I’ve read before but don’t remember well. Douglas Adams’ first four Hitchhiker books turned out to be a good example of this: I had no recollection of the third, Life, the Universe, and Everything. None whatsoever. Which is somewhat odd, since it’s the most like an actual book of the first four, with a plot and pace and a reasonably coherent story. (The first in particular is lumps of exposition with a beginning and a (very abrupt) end; it doesn’t have so much middle, as I’d seen remarked about the adaptations for the forthcoming movie. But when it’s such cool exposition, you can get away with it. The fifth is not a book; it’s a giant slap in the face of the reader, an abomination whose very existence pains me. ) I’d remembered Life as the least good of the first four, and I’m still not sure what I think of it, but I think now I’ll remember what it’s about.
(I’m weird and like the fourth the best, always have, probably because I’m a sap and slightly uncomfortable with the misanthropy in the others, particularly the second. I really don’t want to hear why you dislike it, if you do, because I want to keep it as my favorite.)
Adams, by the way, is very bad at transitions, and this flaw is really pointed up by the audio format. The worst is one transition in Life, because it simply isn’t there; I thought maybe I’d spaced out, or the audio file was glitchy, but no, the book has the same lack.
These are read by Adams, who does a fabulous job of it. There are a few minor infelicities: in Restaurant at the End of the Universe, his voices for the robot characters are run through some kind of special effect filter, which makes the lovely confrontation between Marvin and the war robot unfortunately hard to follow; the overall sound quality isn’t quite as sharp as more recently recorded audiobooks; and occasionally they seem to speed up a bit, as if to fit on a certain number of tapes. But overall I liked these a lot, and I’m quite looking forward to getting the Dirk Gently books, which I also don’t remember at all (these are all available from Audible).
[split into multiple posts for import into MT; hit “next”]