Audiobooks

The Problem With Multiple Narrators in Audiobooks

/ Nicola @ Thoughts on Fantasy / 29 Comments
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I love audiobooks, and listen to them regularly. In my experience, most audiobooks have one narrator who reads the entire book. However, it’s also common to have two narrators, particularly if there are two main point of view (POV) characters. Often a male voice artist will read the male character, and a female artist the female character. As long as the narrators are good, I enjoy both of these arrangements.

However, I’ve occasionally come across audiobooks that have four or more narrators, one for each POV (I’m sure it helps that I love fantasy, a genre well known for having many POV characters). It sounds great, right? Each character gets their own unique sound and you get to listen to a variety of voices. Unfortunately, I’m rarely as impressed by multiple narrators as I am by one or two. Here’s why: Continue reading →

The Magic of a Brilliant Book Brilliantly Read: The Gentleman Bastards Audiobooks

/ Nicola @ Thoughts on Fantasy / 15 Comments
Book cover segment from The Republic of Thieves, Random House, 2013. (NPR Books)

The Gentleman Bastards is a much-loved fantasy series that is particularly popular in audiobook format. Fans who’ve listened to the audiobooks regularly recommend them, the narrator Michael Page has won awards for his performances (including his narration of The Lies of Locke Lamora), and author Scott Lynch has made no secret of the fact he thinks Page does a brilliant job: Continue reading →

Book Stats for 2016

/ Nicola @ Thoughts on Fantasy / 15 Comments

I love bookish statistics, and what they reveal about people’s reading habits. I enjoy it when I come across them on other blogs (for example on Magic of Books), so even though I didn’t read a huge number of books in 2016 compared to other people I know, I thought it might still be fun to see what the stats on the humble selection I did read look like… and to satisfy my nerdy appreciation for graphs and charts. Continue reading →

Audiobooks with Unusual Accents

/ Nicola @ Thoughts on Fantasy / 4 Comments
Photo by Yasunari Nakamura (CC BY-NC-ND 2.0)

I’ve been listening to audiobooks quite regularly for at least two years now, but the other day I encountered something new in my listening experience. I bought an audiobook in the usual fashion with my Audible subscription, downloaded it, hit play… then did a double take. Continue reading →

5 Awesome Fantasy and Science Fiction Audiobooks

/ Nicola @ Thoughts on Fantasy / 8 Comments
Photo by Jeff Golden (CC BY-SA 2.0)

I’m a big fan of audiobooks. I’ve previously told the story of how I fell in love with them on this blog. I still read hard copy books, but I like the flexibility audiobooks allow me to do other things while “reading” and how the story really comes to life when narrated by a great voice actor. I have an Audible subscription and I listen to between 1 and 2 audiobooks a  month, which may not sound like a lot, but when each one can last for between 8 and 30 hours (most being around the 10-18hr mark) it equates to a lot of time spent listening.

Amidst all of this listening, I find particular books stand out. Continue reading →

How Did You Read Your Books Last Year?

/ Nicola @ Thoughts on Fantasy / 13 Comments
Photo by Nicola Alter (CC BY SA 4.0)

This is going to be a very brief and non-very-fantasy-focussed post, but I’m curious to hear about other people’s reading and book buying habits.

For interest’s sake, I decided to work out stats on what format I read my books in last year (with the help of Goodreads). Here is the spread: Continue reading →

Confessions of an Audiobook Convert

/ Nicola @ Thoughts on Fantasy / 4 Comments
Photo by Nicola Alter (CC BY SA 4.0)

If you’d told me a year ago that I’d be looking forward to mundane things like morning commutes and chopping onions, solely because that meant I could binge on an audiobook… well, I wouldn’t have told you you were crazy, but I’d probably have nodded and smiled and filed you away in the weird person trying too hard to sell me something category. I’d have maybe agreed to give the whole “listening to a book” thing a try, but it would have been grudgingly and with scepticism.

In fact, I’d say I had a definite prejudice against audiobooks, even though I’d never listened to one. Why? As an aspiring author, I’d started going to readings.

Continue reading →