The people who make audiobooks must be an unimaginative lot, as most of the time they have only one person reading the book out, and this can get confusing if you are hearing long conversations (or if you have the attention span of one of those annoying little dogs, like me), so would it really kill them to make audio books with actors as separate voices. Or, if you don't like who is reading out an audiobook, you could change the voice, eg from male to female, or deeper voice or higher...-- froglet, Feb 18 2005 Audiobook dramatisations. http://www.amazon.c...ook%20dramatisation [DrBob, Sep 20 2014] Umbralogical parallax something or other https://archive.org...ategoryInventor.mp3the link is to an mp3 file of the story.. [not_morrison_rm, Oct 04 2014] There are definately different classes of audiobook readers. The best ones are quite good radio actors that use distinct voices. I just finished China Run read quite well by George Guidall.
Oh, but + for the idea. Bring back radio plays.-- Worldgineer, Feb 18 2005 I've never listened to an audiobook precisely for this reason (I, too, have the attention span of a small annoying dog). But if they made them with different voices, I'd probably give it a go.-- Machiavelli, Feb 18 2005 <bark> <croak> <meow> <hello! in tadpole speak>-- po, Feb 18 2005 <bark><croak><meow> back! [po]-- froglet, Feb 18 2005 I work at a talking book library and am constantly listening to books on tape. I would much rather have a screen reader like JAWS read the books to me than an actor. The difficult thing about listening to an actor's tone of voice is that it is always just good enough not to allow you to use your imagination, which is the point of text -- to allow you to use your imagination. Better even than JAWS would be if they would employ people who cant read very well to read the books on tape, reading one word at a time so that there was very little thespian interpretation. This would kill two birds with one stone, teaching litteracy and making literature accessible.-- JesusHChrist, Feb 19 2005 AHA! Now we know! A froglet is an annoying little dog. It's been keeping me up nights... : )-- k_sra, Feb 19 2005 I heard "Dune" read this way once, with a narrator and different actors voicing the characters.-- waugsqueke, Feb 19 2005 I heard a version of Hitchiker's Guide that had this, but I believe it was abriged (gasp).-- Worldgineer, Feb 19 2005 just rent the dvd and put a towel over the TV with the sound up. or better yet sit in the closet with the door open slightly so you can still hear the audio.-- benfrost, Feb 19 2005 [mumbles in tadpole speak]-- normzone, Feb 19 2005 I have an audiobook player under my pillow. I find it helps me get to sleep to have a familiar, calm book playing over and over.
The best reader in the world is Frederick Davidson. He sounds like different people. He can read a conversation between Bertie Wooster and his Aunt Dahlia, with both voices full of character, accent and humour. (He also recorded under different names.)
I cannot abide monotone readers now.-- baconbrain, Sep 20 2014 Shedload of old SF adaptions for radio, google "X Minus 1"..been keeping me entertained for a couple of weeks...they're stashed on archive.org-- not_morrison_rm, Sep 20 2014 Thanks, [not_morrison_rm]!-- baconbrain, Sep 20 2014 You can volunteer to read almost any book whose copyright has expired. Go to librivox.org
If you get a group together to read these texts in many voices, I doubt they will object.
Mark Twain, Pg Wodehouse, And other popular authors stuff is here.-- popbottle, Sep 24 2014 Not exactly fitting but, whilst rifling through the lubutu apps I found Ebook2cw, which is a program to "converts ebooks into Morse mp3/OGG", as you do.
So, if you could get someone with a very dexterous fist, they could do the different Morse fists, as it were.-- not_morrison_rm, Oct 08 2014 random, halfbakery