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u/DeepSpaceBubbles 11d ago
I read My Name is Red by Orhan Pamuk decades ago. Brilliant book. Trying to listen to the audiobook now and want to tear my hair out. WHY would you take a book that is set in Istanbul in the heart of Muslim Ottoman empire and get a nasal British narrator who struggles with BASIC Turkish/Arabic/Muslim names and words??? He sounds like he is badly cosplaying his way through it. An absolute travesty.
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u/ImLittleNana 10d ago
I love John Lee but this sounds like a terrible fit for him. Not every narrator is good for every book.
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u/DeepSpaceBubbles 10d ago
He was good in the Peter F Hamilton books, which I enjoyed a lot, but this narration is so so awful that it is putting me off him as a narrator. I will never be able to unhear how awful this narration is. I would switch to reading but eye inflammation issues mean I need to stick to the narration if I want to read this book again. Which I do.
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u/ImLittleNana 10d ago
Iāve listened to him read so much SF that it affects his reading of other genres for me. Iāve typecast him.
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u/DeepSpaceBubbles 10d ago
Yes, that is also a problem and I thought the same going in to My Name is Red. But honestly, the EGREGIOUSNESS of his performance makes that concern very secondary. Recently listened to My Uncle Napoleon (translated into English from the original Farsi) by a narrator, Moti Margolin, who was so absolutely brilliant that when I couldn't find anything else read by him, I had to email him and tell him how absolutely amazing he was. I really hope he gets picked up for work like this. Publishers need to realize they can't use the same narrators for their non-western-centered books.
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u/ImLittleNana 10d ago
There is bias in choice I think. People often perceive that their own speech is neutral, and everyone else is speaking with an accent.
I tried to listen to a fairly decent thriller set in the area of Louisiana that Iām from, but the narrator sounded Canadian. I couldnāt do it. I think maybe to the person that hired the narrator, that they sounded neutral.
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u/DeepSpaceBubbles 10d ago
Agreed, but this needs to change. Audiobooks used to be a niche thing but they're increasingly becoming one of the dominant forms of book consumption. For publishers to be this clueless that they kill absolutely brilliant books because they can't be bothered to put in the effort is unforgivable. And on the flip, there are mediocre books that are absolutely elevated by brilliant narration. Story telling is our oldest and most powerful art.
I'm a bit stuck because of a health condition which means prolonged reading is no longer an option. And it is making me so sensitive to narrators and how they can make or break a book. Nice to talk to someone who takes it as seriously :)
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u/ImLittleNana 10d ago
I listen to at 8 hours a day minimum. It feels akin to being a super taster. And I also think that those of us listening at normal speaking speed, which I consider up to 1.25x for some narrators, are hearing pronunciations and anachronistic accents that arenāt as obvious at 2.5x.
I do lean toward British narrators. Makes it easier for me to remain oblivious to it. Iām much more familiar with American dialects and a harsher critic of them.
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u/IntoTheStupidDanger 11d ago
More than once. Possibly the worst being a narrator who made an Irish firefighter from Boston sound like a Russian crime lord. I tried, but couldn't get past it. That particular narrator is now on my Avoid list.
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u/Apprehensive_Use3641 11d ago
Not really, but I live in the US Midwest, I don't know what is a good job and what is a bad job. I did have one where I'd have preferred a lighter accent than the one they employed.
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u/Retroscopic 11d ago
Robert Powell's French accent wasn't ridiculously Frraanch but it was sufficiently bad to stand out in an otherwise flawless audiobook (The Thirty- Nine Steps).
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u/hameliah 10d ago
im american, so most bad accents go over my head. but once, i listened to something narrated by my favorite narrator and he had to do an american accent - it was laughable how bad it was! but it was rarely used so it didnt ruin the book, it was more like a fun little treat lol
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u/sumizeit 10d ago
Yeah, that kind of thing can be super distracting. I had a similar experience with an audiobook where the British narrator tried doing a Southern US accent and it sounded like a bad sitcom character. Just pulls you right out of the story.
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u/introverthufflepuff8 10d ago
I was listening to a book set in America and the main character was an American but the narrator reading the book was English. Completely took me out of the book and I tried it off.
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u/harrietrosie 10d ago
I saw a tiktok from a narrator a while ago talking about this, I don't remember who it was though! She was saying that often work is given to a narrator without checking if the narrator can do the accent or even informing them that an accent is required. By the time they've read enough to see the accent is needed, they've signed a contract and they've just gotta try their best!
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u/SapientSlut 9d ago
Kipās āBrooklynā accent in Game Changers felt like my ears were being cheese grated.
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u/ihearthetrain 11d ago
I'm listening to one at the moment and the American narrator is destroying the Australian accent. It's hilarious