I just finished Yesteryear. Would not recommend. A friend liked it and loaned it to me or I wouldn’t have bothered finishing it. I thought the ending was not a surprise at all – instead I was surprised by so many people saying they were surprised by it – and it was the only part that I halfway liked. Really hated all the characters.
I can acquiesce to calling listening to audio books reading. My husband likes to consume books that way. I don’t think it is technically the same because reading is visually taking in information, or in the case of Braille done by touch. We already have a word for taking in sounds with our ears and it’s called listening. But if people who listen to audio books want to call it reading it’s no skin off my nose. If I listen to an audio book (used to do it a lot when the kids were young) I call it “listening to an audio book”.
And yes the narrator or cast makes a HUUUUUUUUGE difference. I have been known to love a narrator (Bahni Turpin) so much I sought out other titles she also narrated. I think not liking the narrator is more akin to not liking an actor rather than not liking a font. There might be some movies people would just not go see because they don’t like that actor, or a movie they would go see just because they do like that actor.
Oh, I think a bad reader can ruin a book. There’s a version of Don Quixote where the reader mispronounces Dulcinea’s name. Robin Hobb’s has different readers for different books and one important character’s name is pronounced differently depending on who is doing the reading. Some high pitched British voices I just have trouble understanding.
Other books are improved by reading. David Sedaris should always read his own work, and I think Sara Vowell’s quirkly style works better out loud as well. John Scalzi did a really interesting thing with one of his books where he has a character named Chris who can only interact with the world through a robotic body. He deliberately had two versions of the book one with a woman reader the other with a man. Since the story is told in first person, listeners made assumptions about Chris’s sex, but if you read the book you never find out.
But an actor is integral to a movie, which is visual. And someone will say they don’t like a movie based on an actor, but not that they don’t like the screenplay. A book author doesn’t include the audiobook narrator’s voice as part of her creative process, nor should she. She writes the words, not how they sound when spoken out loud. I just think it’s highly unfair for someone to judge a book based on the person who happens to be reading it out loud to them rather than the story, characters, theme.
I agree they’re not judging the book, they’re judging the audiobook. Big difference. An audiobook narrator is integral to the audiobook exactly the same way that an actor is integral to a movie. A performance by an audiobook narrator and a performance by an actor can make or break both.
Sort of an aside back to books from topic of listening vs. reading . . .
Dion Graham’s performance of the books in Colson Whitehead’s Harlem Trilogy is one of the all-time great narrator performances
I’ve listened to the first two of the Harlem Trilogy and the third just became available so I’ll listen to that next. Now that I think about it the narration is excellent, but I guess I naively assumed this is because the books are excellent.
I don’t love everything Whitehead has written (I wasn’t thrilled with Pulitzer Prize winning Underground Railroad, for instance) but the first two books of the Harlem Trilogy are terrific, and I expect the same of the third. These books seamlessly transport the reader into settings with which they may not have intimate familiarity, one of the attributes I most value in good fiction
Audiobook narration is not an easy skill. Many authors would drop their pen (computer) if they knew they had to sign up to narrate their piece of written word.
I once attended a presentation by two audio book actors. They took their roles very seriously, just like if they had gotten an acting role. This pair worked closely with the author to get exactly what she wanted.
Some Broadway actors do audio book work as a side gig. I think those would be very good at it.
Oh my, I just finished “Strangers: Memoir of a Marriage” by Bell Burden and I thought it was great. I know some people didn’t care for it, but I did. Excellent writing and excellent self care by a strong woman.
I finished The Calamity Club by Kathryn Stockett over the weekend. I found it awfully long and I considered quitting it during the first 20% or so of the book. That said, I was fully invested by halfway in and ended up giving it 5/5 on Goodreads based on the second half of the book.
I’m on a waitlist for it along with dozens of other wannabes - and I’ve heard many raves about it but I admit to over 600 pages. That is A LOT of story.
- and I’ve heard many raves about it but I admit to 
over 600 pages. That is A LOT of story.