I've listened to some audiobooks recently that I haven't felt interested in blogging about: Blood and Chocolate by Annette Curtis Klause (good book but pretty awful audio, IMO, because it was way too overly dramatic in tone throughout the entire performance) and Twisted and Speak by Laurie Halse Anderson (both solid performances, and I liked Mandy Siegfried even more in Speak than in Lockhart's books). But I felt compelled to blog about my most recent audiobook: Feed by M.T. Anderson. The book has been out for quite a while now, so if you've read it, you know how amazing it is, both intellectually thought-provoking and emotionally engaging (and I'm not a sci-fi fan at all). But the audio production and performance is probably my favorite ever. David Aaron Baker gives a fantastic performance as Titus. I thought the friends' voices were a little overly Valley girl/surfer boy-ish, but he did an excellent job at portraying the emotion and differentiating all the character voices. And every time there was a feed with news or ads, they used different people to perform them and added music. Whenever the characters were chatting, they had some kind of echo effect so that you could tell they were hearing it inside their heads instead of out loud through their ears. Awesome. This is an example where the audio really adds something to the book instead of just reading it well.
Monday, November 19, 2007
Audiobook Love
I've listened to some audiobooks recently that I haven't felt interested in blogging about: Blood and Chocolate by Annette Curtis Klause (good book but pretty awful audio, IMO, because it was way too overly dramatic in tone throughout the entire performance) and Twisted and Speak by Laurie Halse Anderson (both solid performances, and I liked Mandy Siegfried even more in Speak than in Lockhart's books). But I felt compelled to blog about my most recent audiobook: Feed by M.T. Anderson. The book has been out for quite a while now, so if you've read it, you know how amazing it is, both intellectually thought-provoking and emotionally engaging (and I'm not a sci-fi fan at all). But the audio production and performance is probably my favorite ever. David Aaron Baker gives a fantastic performance as Titus. I thought the friends' voices were a little overly Valley girl/surfer boy-ish, but he did an excellent job at portraying the emotion and differentiating all the character voices. And every time there was a feed with news or ads, they used different people to perform them and added music. Whenever the characters were chatting, they had some kind of echo effect so that you could tell they were hearing it inside their heads instead of out loud through their ears. Awesome. This is an example where the audio really adds something to the book instead of just reading it well.
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2 comments:
I read this book and really liked it. But, I think this is one of the few I think I would have enjoyed more on audio, based on your description.
Also, the main character really was pissing me off towards the end.
Yeah, I was really frustrated with Titus, like when he deletes her memories and lies to her about it. But the audiobook was fantastic, and the fact that Titus was flawed and they fought and couldn't seem to get beyond their emotions was made it seem so real and complex to me.
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