Great covers, terrific intentions, flawed concept. Authors reading their own work can be amazing or awful. The whole concept of the audio-book (which I know these aren’t, really) bothers me. I had a friend in School who hated reading but could quote long stretches of the Lord of the Rings because he would listen to it every day on his way to school. He would never consider actually reading the book though, using, like, hs eyes. But then I see how its reconnects with the ancient storytelling traditions which are the wellspring of all fiction, also. The first stories were audio experiences. Gah.

I want to hear those audio clips. Hemingway! (there is an interview with him up at the Paris Review website too but its very dry).

Great post.

The authors reading their own work is only a small chunk of releases. Most of it is actors and noted orators reading stuff. I agree audiobooks are no alternative to reading but you can’t write-off spoken word altogether with that idea.

If it wasn’t already written down it would be different?

I want to read aloud to my kids but that doesn’t mean I don’t want them to read by themselves.
I’d say some writing is greatly improved by being read aloud by a good speaker.

That Carl Sandburg reading cover is soooo great.

Y’know I don’t think I have ever actually had or listened to audio books, i’m sorta surprised that no one has ever given me one as a present or anything cos books was always the thing I was into as a kid.

I’m not writing it off totally, I’m just dubious. Bad writing is improved – maybe – by a good speaker. How can anyone improve on an interior voice?

And reading aloud to kids – who can’t read – is obviously very different from adults – who won’t read – listening to audio-books out of laziness…

Audio books are only bad in an abridged form and even that’s dependent on who’s voicing them. Otherwise I’d say they were better than regular books, and the blind agree with me.

“How can anyone improve on an interior voice?’

V funny. Spoken like a true unsocialite.

Are films of books as inadequate as audiobooks?

Depends on the film, innit?

“Better than regular books”? If you aren’t blind – and I’m assuming you read this thread, rather than having it read to you, but correct me after this comment is read to you if I’m wrong – care to expand on that? Any particular reason why they’re better?

No I am sighted. My comment was a flip one and not meant to be taken altogether seriously. I could have put one of them smily faces there but you don’t see those in a lot of books. Hence the power of the spoken word.

I think if it came down to it I would probably just prefer to listen to an audio book than than actually read it especially if it was spoken by the author, but I’d settle for the fruity voiced tones of an actor or “actor” I liked. Just my personal opinion. I’m sure the world at large would disagree.

“I would probably just prefer to listen to an audio book than actually read it”

V funny. Spoken like a true actor-in-a-radioplay.

I’m going for a middle ground between the two of you. Since that middle ground is rather large I don’t see me missing it.

I just think that when you read a book (a work of fiction, anyway) that so much of the book exists in the space between you and the book, and an audiobook robs you of some of that. The character’s voices, how they sound – your imagination fills that in. Even the rhythm of the prose is governed to a great extent by how quick a natural reader you are. But with an audiobook you have an actor or whoever and you get his interpretations of how characters should sound, which may be great, but, for me, can’t be as great. You go at his or her pace, you get his stresses of words, his pauses.
Which I suppose is a good argument for authors reading their own work, and I’m back right where I started…

bse, clean out your mailbox, mails keep bouncing like Midnight Marauders. And how come there’s no link to the Gat in this forsaken place? Sheesh.

I should have sorted my email now Matt. Gat is linked under music but it only shows 5 links at any one time in each category. Reload and you’ll see it.

On the internal voice versus spoken word, I’d chip in with “I didn’t know what Asterix sounded like until Bill Oddie did it”.
I would chip that in but I really believe I haven’t reread an Asterix book since I heard him do it.
Of the above I’d quite fancy hearing Catch 22. My internal voiuce just isn’t up to it. And what a cover!

…and then later Bill Oddie was replaced with Craig Charles. Good point.

I am disgusted. Have I been transferred into a parallel universe where Willie Rushden ISN’T the voice of Asterix?????

Nutjobs the lot of you.

[...] Caedmon’s Ernest Hemingway Reading LP sounds an awful lot like Colonel Walter E. Kurtz’ recordings in Apocalypse Now. The gatefold sleeve contains extensive notes on the recordings, written by Mary Hemingway and Hemingway’s biographer A.E. Hotchner (subject of the film King Of The Hill). Unlike almost all Caedmon records which are of superb sound quality, this LP contains home recordings. A.E. Hotchner writes: One of Ernest Hemingway’s deadliest enemies was The Microphone. The Camera ran it a close second, but The Microphone was the blackest villain that stalked his life, and despite the persistent blandishments of radio stations, television producers and record companies, he successfully fended off all efforts to put him in the grips of The Demon Mike. But Over the years, under special circumstances, Ernest did record a few things for me on an old Webster wire recorder the he kept in his finca in Cuba, and on a transistorized pocket recorder called a Midgetape which we took on our travels. These wires and tapes, imperfect though they are, are virtually the only record we have of his voice. (The one exception is his acceptance of the Nobel Prize which was recorded by a Havana radio station.) This album contains, in addition to the Nobel acceptance, five recordings made during 1948-1961, which was the span of time I knew him. [...]