Dear Audiobook author...
Jul. 12th, 2006 08:34 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
neadodsDear Audiobook Author,
I was all excited at the idea of reviewing audiobooks. I could listen to a book while I caught up on sewing, exactly the sort of multi-tasking I like to do. But then I started actually listening and it all started going pear-shaped.
At first I blamed your reader, who care-ful-ly e-nun-ci-a-ted each syl-la-ble, making it sound like the story was being read by Stephen Hawking, or an oddly avuncular dalek. No prose could survive that flattening. (Particularly in comparison to the tie-ins I've just been listening to. Hardly the strongest books in the new Who line, but David Tennant is impressing my socks off with his vocal range.)
But then I realized that it would take a machine to read something that starts as excitingly as:
She could not get rid of those old clothes. The scraps might be used for making a quilt. She could make a quilt for her son. Then she realized that her son was dead, killed in a car accident with his wife. It would be odd to make a quilt for a dead person. People might talk. She could make the quilt for her grandson.
Not even a paragraph into the horror novel and I'm thinking "please let her die horrifically. Soon." I've bitched about this kind of thing before. Unless your name is Terry Pratchett - and he rarely disappoints me this way - if the first paragraph sucks, I'm not sticking around for the second.
Dude! Here are some syllables for you: char·ac·ter·i·za·tion. Or how about plot de·vel·op·ment? ten·sion? I'd even settle for fore·shad·ow·ing.
Mov-ing on,
Moi.
I was all excited at the idea of reviewing audiobooks. I could listen to a book while I caught up on sewing, exactly the sort of multi-tasking I like to do. But then I started actually listening and it all started going pear-shaped.
At first I blamed your reader, who care-ful-ly e-nun-ci-a-ted each syl-la-ble, making it sound like the story was being read by Stephen Hawking, or an oddly avuncular dalek. No prose could survive that flattening. (Particularly in comparison to the tie-ins I've just been listening to. Hardly the strongest books in the new Who line, but David Tennant is impressing my socks off with his vocal range.)
But then I realized that it would take a machine to read something that starts as excitingly as:
She could not get rid of those old clothes. The scraps might be used for making a quilt. She could make a quilt for her son. Then she realized that her son was dead, killed in a car accident with his wife. It would be odd to make a quilt for a dead person. People might talk. She could make the quilt for her grandson.
Not even a paragraph into the horror novel and I'm thinking "please let her die horrifically. Soon." I've bitched about this kind of thing before. Unless your name is Terry Pratchett - and he rarely disappoints me this way - if the first paragraph sucks, I'm not sticking around for the second.
Dude! Here are some syllables for you: char·ac·ter·i·za·tion. Or how about plot de·vel·op·ment? ten·sion? I'd even settle for fore·shad·ow·ing.
Mov-ing on,
Moi.
