Audiobook pet peeves

[Prrambulate]

Just for fun, what small things grate on you in an audiobook, and sometimes even stop you from finishing it?

A while ago I listened to The Guest List by Lucy Foley and now, after experiencing “Jules”, I have a permanent aversion to posh, highly clipped female voices in an audiobook.

Male narrators reducing female characters to horrible high pitched voices is another!

Oh yes, agree with the falsetto males!

I can't listen to anyone who sounds spitty or breathy. Worst of all though is incorrect intonation because the narrator has no understanding of what they are reading.

And...weird long...pauses. IN. Randomplaces.

I hope the producers of audiobooks read this thread! It's honestly not rocket science - your only brief is to get someone who can narrate properly 😂.

Ok my contribution:

Female narrators who make every man a gruff weirdo.
Male narrators who make every woman sound like Des Lawson.
Any narrator who makes children sound effing annoying.

Have to say, on a positive note I thought Sarah Winn did the child's voice in "When God was a Rabbit" really well. First I have heard.

When they speak in different volumes so it either hurts your ears or you can't hear but obviously don't want to be fiddling with the volume control.

When the author reads their own book. Look, you may be able to write but that doesn't mean you can perform well. Please leave it to the experts.

People like Dawn French and Graham Norton who can write a good yarn but you don't really want to listen to those voices for ten hours!

Again have to say Sarah Winn did hers exceptionally. Very impressed.

Love Audiobooks but producers please audition thoroughly!

when characters make a phone call and they add a ‘phone call’ sound - Ruth Galloway series does this.

we know they are on the phone, it’s totally unnecessary.

When you can hear them swallow loudly.

When the author reads their own books - dreadful.
I agree with everything said. My favourite narrators are Robert Glenister and Kobna Holbrook Smith - they’re so talented you get completely lost in the story.

I find it hard to find audio books I like because of how often the female characters sound stupid.

Lack of intonation. I was looking forward to the newest Karen Pirie book but had to return it as the narrator had one tone - flat and boring.
She read (for example) "oh my god he's got a gun" in the same dull tone as "Karen made herself a cup of tea"

Oh why didn't they stick with the brilliant narrator who read the other books in the series?

When the producer doesn't spot that the actor is mispronouncing a word (Carey Mulligan pronouncing Magdelen College in The Midnight Library incorrectly - also bizarrely unable to pronounce ibuprofen.

AND when an actor makes a terrible fist of an accent (the attempted Yorkshire in the Emma Donahue Learned by Heart).

When they pronounce certain words incorrectly.

Eg. Shone - pronounced like shown....

Rifled - pronounced riffled...

When a long series uses different narrators and they give the characters different accents from previous books....

I hate flat intonation as well. Also, weird pauses in sentences, I had to return a book narrated by Damian Lynch because of this.
My favourites are Kobna Holbrook Smith, Steven Pacey, James Marsters, Zara Ramm and most of the narrators who have read Stephen King's books

I’ve noticed the “shown” for “shone” so often it made me wonder if I was mispronouncing it all these years!

Changing reader half way through a series usually for a worse one.

Not having every single Trollope book read by Timothy Westwood available. Tut tut.

Chapters not aligning with what's shown in the "chapter" pop up list.

Riffled and rifled like a PP I too now worry I'm wrong in pronouncing it as Rifle-d (but I'm not!)

One reader pronounced Berkshire as it's spelled. Is in not pronounced Barkshire??

Actors like Miriam Margolyse who does the dialogue brilliantly but cannot read prose argh so disappointing

When you can hear them swilling saliva around in their mouths.

I’m currently re-listening to Dragon’s Green by Scarlett Thomas which is brilliantly read by the wondrous Roger Allam and they’ve done something really weird with the chapter boundaries so that after the last line of, say, chapter 4, he immediately says ‘chapter 5’ without pausing for breath as they’ve not left a few seconds in between. It’s very odd!

Another one is when there are multiple POVs (and narrators) in a book, but all the characters have different accents. The accent work inevitably becomes botched and the characters don’t sound anything remotely like each other from one chapter to the next! But I suppose that can’t be helped…

I also love it when the narration is so natural and immersive that you can no longer envision someone sitting there reading a book. Rory Kinnear (and the Hawthorne series) had that effect, and a few others too (narrator of Simon Serrailer as mentioned before, Eleanor Oliphant too).

Oh yes - chapters not matching what's in the book is a bug bear of mine as I like to switch between audio and physical book sometimes.

Also narrators who read sooo slowly that 1.2x speed sounds normal!

Books where there are lots of footnotes or references and they get read out.

Robert Glennister (as pp) is GENIUS in the Strike books - you genuinely forget that there is a gruff bloke voicing the young woman.

reminds me of Joan Hickson narrating Miss Marple i loved as a kid - she was a well spoken elderly lady who ho could voice every part from posh colonel to shady young man.

@anythinginapinch YES riffled! I thought I had got it wrong as well. It’s happened in so many books - I love thrillers and there is a lot of riffling - or not ffs.

I listened to a book by Lucy Foley where one of the narrators was painfully slow, so 1.2 speed was a must. And then as soon as it switched to another character’s POV I had to scramble to change it back to normal speed. Back and forth until the end of the book!

I like to listen to non fiction history books and they are often read by people who sound like a robot/AI. The intonation is weird and they often mispronounce place names especially if they are non British.

I've got July 1914: Countdown to War by
Sean McMeekin. It's incredibly boringly narrated. Very off putting. It gave me a terrible impression. Then I found a Sean McMeekin lecture on YouTube and he's great; really engaging. It's unfortunate because the subject matter is pretty detailed; 480 pages covering one month so you want to feel involved.

With some of these history/non fiction audio books I assume they just can't afford to get anyone good when not that many people will listen.

I think it was in the Wheel of Time sequence, where despite the narrators staying the same, some characters names were pronounced differently in the second book. It was so frustrating.

• especially if they are non British.

The place names I mean

Music. Stop trying to tell me how to feel using random bits of music - let the text speak for itself. In any event, if had I wanted to listen to music I wouldn't have chosen an audiobook.

When the author reads their own book. Look, you may be able to write but that doesn't mean you can perform well. Please leave it to the experts.

Except for Michael Rosen. Since hearing him, I don't want to listen to anybody else reading his books.

English actors reading English books set in England, where the text has been altered to suit an American audience. Even if American listeners are momentarily confused by words such as 'flat', 'trainers', 'mobile' and the like, can they not just have a quick Google and expand their world a little? It's really insulting to assume they're so very stupid, and very jarring as a Brit to listen to a storyline involving a woman in London donning her 'sneakers', grabbing her 'cell phone' and leaving the 'apartment'.

Juliette Stevenson the Queen of narrators.

Just listened to Maggie Gyllenhall narrating The Bell jar-amazing

Loving audible atm