What is the best e-book, not because of the content, but because of the reader voice?

Wild Bill@midwest.social to Ask Lemmy@lemmy.world – 74 points –

*audiobook; corrected

Do they do anything particular with their voice or tone in order to enhance the story?

62

My copy of the Hitchikers Guide to the Galaxy, narrated by Stephen Fry. It is relentlessly british.

Gilbert Gottfried reads 50 Shades of Gray

Fun story: my boyfriend and his sister used to live together and we'd all party at their place. After months of his sister crushing hard on this guy she worked with, she and him had gone to her room for some alone time. Her asshole brother decided that was the time to blast this audio directly through her bedroom door.

8 years later and they're still dating so I guess it worked.

Listen to samples of books read by Stephen Fry. He's among the best reading voices out there.

Any of the Terry Pratchett audiobooks that were read by Nigel Planer! Most probably know him best as Neil from The Young Ones in the 80s but he's been in a ton of things since then including a few of the live action Discworld tv specials! He really has a great talent for bringing the books to life usind the right amount of humor that series really needs!

American Gods, full cast

And sandman. Kat dennings as death is perfection.

Wil Wheaton brings a lot to the books he narrates, but the best combo I've heard so far is John Malkovich reading Breakfast of Champions.

Dear god no. Wil Wheaton has the most grating, whiny, nasal voice I've ever heard, immediately puts me off any book he narrates. He only has one reading style which doesn't translate at all between different books

Anything I've listened to with Ray Porter reading it. His intonation is great and just brings that something extra to the stories. In particular Project Hail Mary and the Bobiverse books. He also did Paradox Bound, which felt like a fine time travel story but his portrayal of the voice of the "faceless men" made the character 's menace come to life for me in a way I don't think would be captured in text.

Anything with George Guidall.

He has a deep, resonant voice. I don't know how else to describe it, but it's very comforting.

He has done probably hundreds of audiobooks but one series I remember him doing was The Cat Who... line of mysteries. Very lightweight but fun books.

The Alan Partridge autobiography's voiced by Steve Coogan as Alan Partridge but I suppose you'd only like it if you'd seen enough Alan Partridge.

I listened to Dubliners by James Joyce narrated by irish actor Andrew Scott (Moriarty in Sherlock) and it was hands down the best narration I've ever heard.

A stitch in time by Andrew Robinson. Written and narrated by the actor that played Garak on DS9.

Neil gaimon is always good with his narration. The audible books that include a full cast are absolutely superb.

Bonus points for nigel plainar as solo narrator for his discworld books. Does an amazing job.

Thandiwe Newton is an amazing reader! Her rendition of Jane Eyre is stunning. I’m currently working my way through her reading of War and Peace and it’s equally gorgeous.

She has a voice for each character and helps one dig into the stories. Listening to her, I’m not brought out of the story thinking of her as an actress.

I’d listen to her read the phone book!

Simon Vance is my personal favourite narrator. The Dune audiobooks have a cast of narrators/actors but I wish Simon voiced the whole books, he's amazing. The way he intonates adds so much to the text, but doesn't ever get annoying. His acting for the characters is great too.

He also narrated Scaramouche and I genuinely can't tell if I liked the book or his narration of the book.

Gideon the Ninth. Hands down. The book is 100% strong female POV, which I usually like, but as dude, I was missing a lot of subtlety. My kid lent me their audio book and holy shit, Moira Quirk does an absolutely fantastic job. The characters jump right out of the speakers and into my brain, highlighting all the understated humor that I was missing. 10/10, wish I could hear it again for the first time.

Jim Butcher's The Dresden Files, read by James Marsters (Spike, from Buffy the Vampire Slayer).

Marsters does a unique voice for most of the characters, and it's a treat. I repurchased Ghost Stories because the narrator had changed and the Marsters version was released afterwards.

There's a studio called SoundBooth Theater that does whole ass performances.

Currently listening to Dungeon Crawler Carl, by Matt Dinniman, narrated by Jeff Hayes. And it's awesome. He does the scoffs, laughs, sings in character voices, has crazy sound effects and music, etc.

Luke Daniels and Andy Serkis both really bring that extra to the books they narrate.

That's the guy! Luke Daniels performs the Magic 2.0 books (i made another comment about this).

Dude could do (maybe does?) voice over work and make bank.

I loved the first few Magic 2.0 books that came out.

When it starts, the narrator (Luke Daniels) says "performed by..." and my first thought was jerk off motion.

Ten minutes into the book, and yeah, it's a performance! Not just making his voice high pitched for females, but some characters sound like they are being read by an actual VO artist.

Edit to add name.

I used to be bad at listening to audiobooks. ADHD brain would go way off for unknown amounts of time without realizing I wasn’t listening.

Then in 2017 I had eye surgery and decided audiobooks were the best form of media consumption, so I practiced focusing on them. Magic 2.0 was the series that clicked for me. Now I listen to dozens of audiobooks each year. I’ve finished 55 so far in 2024.

So yeah, Luke Daniels will forever be a favorite of mine! Though he only has a handful of truly unique voices so you’ll start hearing familiar characters in the wrong series sometimes, lol.

Tolkien’s work is wonderful as audio books just ‘cause they’re written like they should be presented as an oral history. Lots of editions exist out there.

Going to give a less well known book here, but figure some of Lemmy would appreciate it. Wrath Goddess Sing is a good book made amazing by a narrator who was actively working with the author.

World War Z is phenomenal as an audio book. Absolute all-star cast of readers with a great story, 1000x more entertaining than the movie.

Eduardo Ballerini reading Jess Walter’s The Cold Millions

I highly recommend Super Powereds by Drew Hayes, largely because of Kyle McCarley’s narration. They’ve been my “comfort books” for over 5 years, getting around 10 listens from me despite the series being ~179 hours. (I never listen at 1x speed, though.) He has a unique voice for every single character, which is frankly insane because there are ~65 recurring characters and over 150 total different speakers in the series. He makes it so easy to get into.

Also, there’s at least one mysterious moment where a character is not named. Thanks to the voice he does, audiobook listeners were able to conclusively determine which character that was.

Travis Baldree has also become a favorite narrator of mine. The Cradle series is great, and it just wouldn’t be the same without Travis’s performance.

No one has posted an example of one read by the author, so I will: Born a Crime by Trevor Noah. Funny, insightful, and a truly incredible autobiography in his own voice and with full knowledge of all the languages he can speak.

If you like romance literature, I can name a few, but suffice to say, my favorite narrators are really great at lending each character their own tones, inflections, and cadence, while not being too disracting to listen too.

In traditional reading, you get used to the idea that (") before a sentence indicates that what follows is said aloud by a character, and you often don't need any context to figure out who said what. And the (") at the end indicates that what follows isn't said by them. Your brain hardly even notices them and yet you very rarely are reading dialogue without knowing its speaker, unless its the purpose of the author that you don't.

Any narrator who can help convey the concept of quotation marks as seamlessly as my brain can while reading text is very appreciated in my books.

No answer just curious as well, I’d love a good text to speech function. There are so many books I want to “read” but don’t have audiobooks for them, I have a hard time focusing on text for very long, so it hard to get through longer things.

I use moon+ reader pro on Android for text to speech.

Steven Pacey reading Joe Abercrombie's First Law series is outstanding. The books themselves are among my favourites, but Steven makes them even more special. He has different voices (and accents) for the characters and manages to stay consistent with them. His pacing is also excellent.

Came here looking for this. Was not disappointed 🙏

Astrophysics for People in a Hurry cause its read by NdgT

Merlin Sheldrake reading his Entangled Life is one I've listened to numerous times. Delightful, educating. Always uplifting.

His pace is a little slow, so I listen to him at 1.10 or 1.15 speed.

That said, the content carries better with his voice as it is his experiences he's written about. And he's a decent musician

Dungeon Crawler Carl, Jeff Hays is fucking amazing.

I'm going to be controversial.
I think the best audiobook is text to speech.
I prefer to not filter any stories through an other person. I want the raw data from the book, without any other feelings and impressions added to the original.

AI readings are demonstrably terrible.

More butchery of the English language I've never heard.

This is why I said that I am going to be controversial.
Text to speech is only going to be better with time.
My most important preference is to have the text delivered without reader bias towards its contents. And that's only possible with computer speech.

Understood & I hear you. Some people's voices, candor and pace can put me right off listening, make me want the words without their voice. Unfortunately, with a well voiced & read book, I'll listen far longer than I can bring myself to focus on actual reading. Though reading the words makes them stick in memory differently, mostly better, than listening for me.

Do you have preferences about which text to speech engine that you use?

I like Google tts. I tried Samsung's one and I just couldn't find a good pitch/tone that I liked from it.

Even when the author coached the narrator? I know of at least one audiobook where the author used the narrator’s voice to fill in what words on paper couldn’t

That sounds like a special scenario.
Tho I'm not sure if a book needs a narrator it can be still called a book instead of a theater piece or voice play.

It didn’t need a narrator, but care was taken to ensure a unified voice between author and narrator. Great audiobooks generally strive for something like that where the performance adds rather than detracts