Only, like surgery and haircuts, audio narration really is best left to the professionals. I’m not particularly apt at delegating, so I can appreciate the logic in thinking sure, I can write the book, design the cover and read the audiobook. The reading was monotonous in the very best passages. The voices all muddled together, there were far too many audible tape pauses and odd intakes of breath. I actually spent the first few hours of The Secret History cringing. In fact, for most Scandinavian books there’s pleasure in listening to them that never translates to reading them off the page ( Jo Nesbø aside, whose books I’ve never been able to get into in any medium). I’m not sure that the character of Boris, for example, would have been so perfectly endearing had Pittu not done such a great job with his accent.Įqually, my love of the Stieg Larsson series (books one and two at least I was bored by the time I listened to The Girl Who Kicked the Hornets’ Nest) was grounded in Saul Reichlin’s reading and his exquisite pronunciation of the Swedish place names. David Pittu’s reading of The Goldfinch was beautiful. Having listened to hundreds of audiobooks, I feel I know a good sounding one. They are entertainers, they use their speaking voice as their job.

Lowe, Fey and Lynch however, share a track record of performance. In 2011 I, uncharacteristically, listened to three author-read memoirs in a row - Rob Lowe’s Stories I Only Tell My Friends, Tina Fey’s Bossypants and Jane Lynch’s Happy Accidents - and thought them each excellent. There were too many characters that smeared together and I’m not particularly interested in Classical Greek which became an irritating character all of its own.īut the biggest problem lay in the narration the out loud kind.įor the record, I’m not anti “read by the author” audiobooks. More than just not enjoying it however, I actually strongly disliked it. I simply didn’t enjoy it anywhere near as much as I did The Goldfinch. I rarely feel that much love and enthusiasm for anything, so to sustain it across an artist’s entire oeuvre seems unlikely.Īnd I think this at least partly explains why The Secret History - Tartt’s New England college romp - didn’t work for me. I think that there’s always going to be a slight let-down factor in partaking of an artist’s other works. Their album Boxer was my entry in my view, it remains their best. Publisher: Penguin Random House Audio Publishing Group Edition: Unabridged. I thoroughly enjoyed Grand Budapest Hotel for example, but my first Wes Anderson film - which today is still up their with my all-time favourites - was the first of his I saw: The Royal Tenenbaums.ĭitto my favourite band, The National. But when a misunderstanding arises, their lifelong friendship suddenly threatens to tear apart. I think there’s something to be said for our entry point to an artist being pretty much untoppable.

The secret audiobook free