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!

Yes mispronunciations really break the spell. Girl. Woman. Other. was littered with these and it didn’t do justice to the book at all.

Loving all your recommendations for good narrators. I feel I would follow a good narrator to the ends of the earth.

My recommendations are Alyssa Bresnahan reading ‘Eileen’, she was perfect as the weird and cold Eileen and Romola Garai reading Hot Milk, which was so sparingly performed, she did such a great job for leaving the listener to absorb the text.

This is how Americans pronounce those words

There are actually two separate words - riffled and rifled. Literally on the page spelt differently hence pronounced differently

riffled you find used a lot by American authors and not much at all by Brits

Unfortunately the narrator has to read what is written on the page and a lot of audio producing studios are US based so unless they use a British director as well they may not make the change or be allowed to, if the writer is American and has used American terminology. Audiobooks don’t tend to be re-read or re-produced like some hard copy books are

I direct audiobooks so always interested to see threads like this in case I can learn from them.

agree with pronunciations - MOST of the time if the studio has used a half decent director it’s their job to ensure all pronunciations are correct, as well as consistency between characters, narrators and series.

I’ve put in a lot of work in the past jumping into established series and sifting through old books to make sure we have consistency with accents, voices and pronunciations.

when you hear mouth noises that’s an editing issue not the narrator’s fault

I do think the odd mistake needs to be forgiven - for the big publishing houses there is an editor and then QA so they should catch everything, but at the same time we often catch typos in the recording despite the manuscript having gone through multiple edits and in fact both the actor and I not noticing the typo when in prep.

I also direct a lot of authors and on the whole agree they shouldn’t read their own work! Lovely as they are - so many of their books would be a million times better narrated by a
professional!

my top narrators to listen to (and work with) are:
El Potter
Rebecca Lowman
John Lindstrom
Dion Chapman
Bahni Turpin
Adenrele Ojo
Fiona Hardingham
James Marsters
Vikas Adams
Hillary Huber
Dominic Hoffman

I generally like it when nonfiction authors read their own work. I mean, they understand the topic and presumably have some enthusiasm for it, so I can forgive a less than perfect voice.

I did listen to Arnold Schwarzenegger read his own book, which was... interesting... but it would hardly have been the same with someone else reading it!

@Citygirlrurallife that's a really interesting job!

I don't have many bug bears myself, my main one is when I download an interesting book and can't get past the first few minutes because it's narrated by the same American man with a flat intonation and he just drones on and on..!

@Citygirlrurallife what an interesting job!!

Another thing that really annoys me is mispronounciation of Celtic words

One audio book (a Karen Maitland) had Samhain produced Sam-hayn and not Sow - in (like the female pig)

One of the Strike books had the name Oisin mispronounced.

These errors are so jarring, yet so easy to prevent!

I agree with you - which is why more publishing houses should use directors 😉

The Strike books look like they were produced by Hachette who don’t always use directors but I would have thought for those ones they would have…

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

And the flipside: female narrators putting on deep boomy voices for male characters. Came across this a few times recently. Wish they'd just read all the characters in their normal voices instead of trying to 'voice' them!

I listen to a lot of American books, but cannot bear it when the narrator is male and quite camp... even if the story is about a gay man. I just cannot. Totally fine if it's a character on screen though.

Favourite American narrator: Sean Crisden. What a voice.

I listened to Geneva by Richard Armitage. Love him as an actor but narrating his own book didn't work for me, and alongside the usually fantastic Nicola Walker - it was all just awful!

Robert Glenister is my favourite and am recently partial to Angus King in the JD Kirk novels.

Don't like it when they're too slow.
Women who are narrated by men and sound like Life of Brian.

When a great narrator reads some of a series, but a terrible narrator reads the rest. I can totally understand how this happens but it’s so annoying! I want to listen to the Lindsey Davis Falco series, and the first one is narrated by the brilliant Christian Rodska. Then the next load are narrated by Gordon Griffin and he’s just sooo ponderous and dull, I really tried and I listened to half the book in case he settled into it, but it was unbearable. He reads loads of them, then a few of the later ones are the good narrator again, then back to the bad one.

And the poorly edited pauses at the start / end of chapters or sections. They zip on into the next bit with no indication that there’s been a huge scene change, new section, when a slight pause would do it. Or when CHAPTER FIVE comes rushing in just as the narrator is closing her mouth on the final word of the previous chapter.

When one of the characters is supposed to be english and the narrator puts on an accent like dick van dyke in mary poppins.

@Citygirlrurallife - it may be how Americans pronounce those words but these are English accented readers and it is WRONG. 😀😀😀

I was coming on to say stop Richard Armitage reading books!!
All I can see/hear is the dreadful vicar of Dibley boyfriend.....I can't concentrate on the book....

I love Davina Porter reading the Outlander Series. All the characters have their own 'voice'. Dreading book ten as Davina has now retired. I just hope they find somebody as good.

Already mentioned but I HATE it when the audio book divisions don't match the book chapters - why???

Also agree that some (not all) authors shouldn't be reading their own books. I listened to a Jordan Peterson book (I know he's divisive but it was interesting) and it was like being harangued for hours.

Narrators who perform "whisper" and "screaming" cues literally.

I'm either straining to hear the dialogue or frantically reaching for the volume button in the car or headphones.

KEEP THE VOLUME LEVELS STEADY!

Fair enough!

I'm an author whose books are on Audible (well, most of them, anyway). One of them is narrated so badly that even I can't listen to it (with that publisher I was given no say as to who narrated. With my current publisher I listened to audition tapes and chose a narrator and now keep the same one, because she is BRILLIANT!). The badly-narrated book has some Latin phrases which the narrator had clearly never heard before, and she ruined the humour in the book by mispronouncing words. I was horrified when I heard it. I did ask for it to be re-recorded, but my publisher wouldn't. All it needed was for someone to have been listening along and saying 'I don't think you got that one quite right, would you like to have another go?'

It has made me very very wary of audiobooks, although everything has gone swimmingly from that book onwards.

@Vroomfondleswaistcoat That must be so frustrating!

1. men doing female voices
2. badly done accents
3. and I know this is my problem, but whenever it's an actor with a regional accent that says 'bath' instead of 'Barth' I find myself mentally correcting them each time (I know, I know they're not wrong, it's regional) and it's annoying I do it but I do!

Authors reading the book. Classic example is Phillip Pullman reading his dark materials with an annoying strained/breathy voice. I was so glad he got Martin sheen to read the book of dust, it's a million times better as a result.

American text to speech style narrators. The person who reads jack reacher is awful and every time it reads "he said' there's a big pause. So "don't do it jack.....HE SAID" "Well hi jack....SHE SAID"

Crazy accents! I'm Irish and have to stop listening to some audiobooks when they try to do the accent. Sometimes it's fine though - Stephen Fry does a good Seamus Finnegan in HP imo.

There was an absolutely nuts voice in the white kimono. The woman narrator doing the old sea dog voice was mad as a box of frogs. Couldn't listen and had to return.

Whispers voices 🤢🤢🤢. It's the same on the radio - Lauren Laverne does it sometimes and there's a Welsh woman on radio 1 who does it constantly. For some reason I cannot bear it ans have to switch off when they do it! Yes, I have issues clearly 😂