Audiobookery
So, having to spend 3+ hours a day commuting has made audiobooks a more attractive option of late. This is generally good, as it's easier than hunting radio stations, and the local library has an arrangement to get digital audiobooks online in WMA or MP3.
It also highlights for me the vital role of the reader in an audiobook. You really do need someone who knows how to handle the material. The fellow who read A Brief History of Time had a charming accent, but clearly didn't understand many of the sentences he was reading, and that made parsing them much more difficult as a listener. Sometimes it's something simple - I can forgive the reader of The Name of the Wind for not reading certain paragraphs with the same intonation I would, mostly, but to this day I remember that he seems to believe that "[X] took the King's Shilling early this year" is read with the sense of "[X] took the King's Shilling early this year, as opposed to when he took it last year" rather than "[X] took the King's Shilling at an early date in this year."
Those tended to be brief issues and easily glossed. And if you're not an historian, the meaning of taking the King's Shilling might be unclear. Likewise, in listening to Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell, I suppose it was a bit much to ask that the reader know how to properly pronounce "Daoine Sidhe."
It is, however, not too much to ask that the reader of a fantasy novel know better than to pronounce the word "Sidhe" as "See-'day". Especially if said reader can approximate the correct pronunciation of "brugh". And frankly, the sheer profusion with which the term Daoine Sidhe occurs in Chapter 46 was such that I had to turn the iPod off. It was physically painful, and if I had heard the reader say "Day-ow-'ee-nah See-'day" one more time, I might very well have yelled loudly enough to be heard outside the car. Or the state.
It is my dearest hope that the author sticks to the word "fairy" in the rest of the novel, as in the previous chapters, as it's otherwise quite enjoyable.
This blog post originally uploaded at Dreamwidth. I would quite appreciate it if you would comment there, either with your own DW account, or OpenID.
others already have.
It also highlights for me the vital role of the reader in an audiobook. You really do need someone who knows how to handle the material. The fellow who read A Brief History of Time had a charming accent, but clearly didn't understand many of the sentences he was reading, and that made parsing them much more difficult as a listener. Sometimes it's something simple - I can forgive the reader of The Name of the Wind for not reading certain paragraphs with the same intonation I would, mostly, but to this day I remember that he seems to believe that "[X] took the King's Shilling early this year" is read with the sense of "[X] took the King's Shilling early this year, as opposed to when he took it last year" rather than "[X] took the King's Shilling at an early date in this year."
Those tended to be brief issues and easily glossed. And if you're not an historian, the meaning of taking the King's Shilling might be unclear. Likewise, in listening to Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell, I suppose it was a bit much to ask that the reader know how to properly pronounce "Daoine Sidhe."
It is, however, not too much to ask that the reader of a fantasy novel know better than to pronounce the word "Sidhe" as "See-'day". Especially if said reader can approximate the correct pronunciation of "brugh". And frankly, the sheer profusion with which the term Daoine Sidhe occurs in Chapter 46 was such that I had to turn the iPod off. It was physically painful, and if I had heard the reader say "Day-ow-'ee-nah See-'day" one more time, I might very well have yelled loudly enough to be heard outside the car. Or the state.
It is my dearest hope that the author sticks to the word "fairy" in the rest of the novel, as in the previous chapters, as it's otherwise quite enjoyable.
This blog post originally uploaded at Dreamwidth. I would quite appreciate it if you would comment there, either with your own DW account, or OpenID.
others already have.