I'm not usually a big books-on-tape kind of person. I read pretty fast, and I've never had a long enough commute that books-on-tape particularly appealed. However, I think I have to make an exception for these. Salon reviewed Tim Curry's audio recordings of the Lemony Snicket books, and I'm sold. You can even listen to an MP3 snippet of A Series of Unfortunate Events #10: The Slippery Slope.
The most the average audiobook has to offer is convenience. You can absorb a book on tape or CD while driving, exercising, cleaning the house or doing anything else that requires your eyes to be occupied elsewhere. And the most the average audiobook consumer can hope for is that the recording won't mess with the book too much. A reader who's stilted or stagey, or -- and this is my own pet peeve -- a male reader who adopts a breathy, high-pitched voice for the dialogue of female characters can make the audio version of a good novel unendurable. If you read quickly, even an acceptably performed audiobook can feel like a frustrating slog. Plus, you can't easily flip forward or back in the text, or skim through long passages of landscape description, the way you can with print.
But an audiobook that actually adds to an author's work? That ideal once seemed as remote and fabulous a creature as the unicorn. Or so I thought, until a friend gave me Tim Curry's performance of Lemony Snicket's "A Series of Unfortunate Events #6: The Ersatz Elevator." […]
For those who are already Snicket fans, don't miss Quidditch.com's Incomplete Guide to Lemony Snicket Allusions. Some of them are awfully danged obvious, but others are interesting.
Posted by rv at November 14, 2003 03:58 PM to book