what do you listen to?

Suisan and jmc brought it up. What kind of books do you listen to on tape/disc? What will you refuse to turn on?

I usually do kids books because I don't want to wear head phones and I know that an Elmore Leonard's casual "fuck dis" won't get blurted. It's not that I care. The kids are usually Deeply Offended by bad language. (They know what's due to them and a mother who listens to obscene words is reason to dial 1-800-894-5533.) We get our tapes from the library so we're not up on the very newest but still. . .

Some books I like on tape:
Simon Jones reading Bartimaeous
The woman who reads Septimus Heap (I can't find her name! Dang it!)
Stephen Fry reading Harry Potter
Tim Curry reading the Unfortunate Series. . .I didn't much like these books until I heard them on tape and got off on the way Handler plays with language--Actually Tim Curry reading anything, even when he hams it up too much.
Lynn Redgrave reading Inkheart
Nathaniel Parker reading a Colfer book.


GROWN UP BOOKS I can listen to with kiddies around:
Any PG Wodehouse read by Jonathan Cecil or Alexander Spencer. I don't like Ian's Carmichael's Bertie, though. Too comic-actor.
Phyllida Nash reading Heyer.

Simon Brett read by Simon Brett--although the language can be iffy.

Comments

  1. Stephen1:35 PM

    Maybe it's just me, but I find listening to audiobooks about as appealing as reading orchestral scores. WIth a really good book no narrator can do all the characters as vividly as the voices in my head, and if I get distracted or interrupted it is such a pain to get back to where I was.

    Dramatisations are fine, but somebody else just reading it? Not my cup of (Earl Grey, no milk, no sugar, no lemon) tea.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Kate3:09 PM

    not even wodehouse? read aloud? wodehouse is best served that way, I say. Anyone else...meh. Maybe.

    I got into reading aloud and being read to only after I had kids and had to read to them.

    ReplyDelete
  3. jmc4:16 PM

    I adore Stephen Frye. He's worth finding a copy of the HP audio books :)

    ReplyDelete
  4. Suisan4:23 PM

    I love the Unfortunate Events on Tape series. But I wouldn't say that *I* listen to it. Just overhear it from time to time.

    I was trying really hard to think of what the last book on tape was that I had heard. The Hobbit I think. Hearing all those stupid dwarf songs was just awful. I can read them as poetry on the page, but to hear some ancient Brit fluster and plop his way trhough them made me nuts. (And on CD you cna't really fast-forward through them in the car.)

    Before that, the last one I heard was the entire New Testament as read by James Earl Jones. That was actually fun.

    I always wanted to HAVE READ the Bible, but was not interested in setting aside the time to read it, in the present tense, so to speak. Listening to James Ponderously Narrate The Gospel was actually quite lovely.

    Can't think of any other book that screams, "Read me outloud" just at this moment.

    ReplyDelete

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