The Ink-Pot and the Palette

Who here likes audiobooks? Can I ask you some questions?

What's important to you in a reader/narrator/actor--particularly in fiction? Have you ever figuratively thrown an audiobook across the room because some particular thing about the reading bugged the crap out of you?

For example, do you value voice quality above all? Can't stand certain types of voices? Would listen to Alan Rickman reading the phone book?

Or is vivid characterization most important? Do you like really dramatic character readings? Or are subtle variations enough for you to keep track of the story?

How much do you care about authentic dialect, accents, and accurate representation of, say, foreign words in a text? 

What about male versus female voices? Have you ever felt that an audiobook would have been improved by an actor of a different vocal gender? 

And pacing: do you use the playback speed control on your audiobook app if someone is too slow? Too rushed?

Here's why I'm asking: I'm thinking seriously of hiring a voice actor to create an audiobook of Restraint. I know what I like, but in the long process of workshopping the novel I've learned that my taste is pretty specific, maybe even alienating to people who might like my work if I opened it out a bit more.

I can't please everyone, of course, but if I'm gonna shell out for this production, I'd like to get a sense of your taste, too, and try to meet it.

( Listening to fiction )

( Listening to nonfiction )

( Watching TV )

( Watching a movie )

( Reading things )

And, a propos of very little:

My fellow Fanmericans - The State of Our Union is...#SuperSleepy is canon! May God ship you & may God ship the United States of Fanmerica

(@TheOrlandoJones tonight on Twitter)

( Currently on the beside table, Kindle app, and Audible player: )

And in lighter reading: I'm back on a Supernatural kick. roxymissrose has some great classic recs here--Amnesia fics. It's a whole category. God, I love fandom.

Current audiobook: I Am Malala: The Girl Who Stood Up For Education And Was Shot By the Taliban, by Malala Yousafzai. I bought it on the strength of Malala's speech to the United Nations, and because the audiobook reader is Archie Panjabi.

Malala's personal story is interspersed with political, geographical and historical detail. It's hard to escape a sense that this young woman is being swept along by the western publicity machine--maybe willingly, as she makes no secret of wanting to be the next Benazir Bhutto--but her story comes across as authentic all the same. I've learned more about Pakistan and the Taliban in a few hours of listening to this audiobook than I picked up in all the years after 9/11.

Malala herself reads her prologue, and it's interesting that Archie Panjabi, in reading the rest of the book, chose to replicate her youthful tone and, to some degree, her accent. It's very nicely done.

Current book: Captive Prince, Volume 2 by S.U. Pacat. It's good--everyone who recommended it was right. Self-published on Amazon and now picked up by Penguin, it's a fast-moving sort-of-medieval-alternate-universe where there's a lot of slavery and a lot of non-heterosexual sex and a whole lot of political intrigue. There's a long, slow-burn romance between the two leads (the captive prince of the title, and his captor, the crown prince of the enemy state) that is really compelling. The characterization of the crown prince is fascinating, and I can't be the only reader picturing Tom Hiddleston playing him. (Yes, Tom's too old. So what.)

My only real quibble with it--one that I hope an editor at Penguin will help sort out--is that it's slightly under-written. Its narrative is so stripped down, and so many characters, important places, plot points and political factions are introduced with less than a full sentence, that I've felt completely lost a few times. Had to go back and re-read Volume 1 and half of Volume 2 before I could continue. Not that I minded.

In fact I'm not quite finished with Volume 2 and I'm trying to stretch it out, because there's a Volume 3 that isn't out yet.

I just finished Michael Pollan's newest book, Cooked: A Natural History of Transformation and I liked it so much that I went back to Chapter 1 and started it over.

( Cooked )

Note: the audiobook is read by the author, who does a terrific job. And there's a story in it about a pig named Kosher. Kosher: The Porcine Prometheus.

It's a really good book.

I just finished listening to The World Until Yesterday by Jared Diamond, he of Guns, Germs and Steel fame. It's...I'm not quite sure what it is. Four books in one, I guess. Lots of cultural anthropology about New Guinea, a diatribe about diet and exercise, a warning about not romanticizing small non-state societies, and a bit of a rant about logical vs illogical safety precautions.

I think I enjoyed it despite its multiple personality disorder. Diamond makes a fairly good case for selectively adopting the wisdom of our hunter-gatherer brethren into our WEIRD (Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rich, Democratic) lives: aspects of their child-rearing methods, elder care, and (surprisingly) safety standards, and a big chunk of their diet.

The World Until Yesterday is alternately amusing, interesting, and tiresome--really a mixed bag--but overall worth a read/listen if you're into this kind of "let's look at humanity's long history and draw some conclusions for modern life" type of thing, which I am.

The audiobook is very competently and unobtrusively narrated by Jay Snyder.

Here's an outtake from my reading of John James's The Great Field. It was too silly to throw away. Length: 17 seconds.

In the last few days I've been indulging what seems to have been a pent-up appetite for mainstream media.

( Books, shows, movies... )

Stress, weakened eyesight, busy-ness, online activity, sore hands, fanfic, annoyance at technology, an internet-induced attention deficit, and probably a few other things have all conspired in recent years to curtail my reading of books.

Lately, though, I've sort of taken it up again, this book-reading thing. ravurian has heckled me into a bunch of it, actually going so far as to send me books.

I was gonna list a bunch of them here, but then I got all knotted up over fiction vs nonfiction and paper books vs ebooks vs audiobooks, and then I realized that if you count audiobooks, I've never stopped "reading", and if things like lectures and podcasts count as audiobooks, my absorption of material has been pretty good all along.

And of course, if you count fanfic, which...why would you not, really?...well, I read more than I thought I did.

But still, I was sitting up in bed last night with a nice bright reading light on, and a cat nearby, and a real book* in hands whose achy joints I was completely ignoring, and it was really nice.

*Nights in the Gardens of Spain by Witi Ihimaera.

I just finished Connected: The Surprising Power of Our Social Networks and How They Shape Our Lives, by Nicholas A. Christakis and James H. Fowler, and found it such compelling food for thought that I turned around and dived into What Technology Wants, by Kevin Kelly.

Sometimes I get in these moods.

( Connected )
( What Technology Wants )