As you all know, I’m really having difficulties getting into books at the moment. It’s just an ‘End of the Year and Tired’ thing, hopefully things will pick up soon. I hope so as I have some great looking stuff on the pile waiting to be read! :o)
One of the things I’m doing to get round this is to try listening to audiobooks instead. I’ve had mixed results so far but at least I’m keeping the momentum going and that’s a good thing!
‘The Gathering Storm’ weighs in at a bulky twenty six CDs in audiobook format, a quite incredible thirty four and a half hours worth of listening all in all. Just so you don’t all end up waiting forever for a full review I’m going to be giving you lucky people occasional updates of where I am with this monstrous undertaking…
The first two discs are mainly about telling us where all the main players are and what they’re doing. I’m not as big a fan of the ‘Wheel of Time’ as certain others but even I can see that there are two people writing this book now. The good news is that Brandon Sanderson is very much after letting telling Jordan’s story and keeping himself out of the picture as much as possible. There are two names on the book but it’s all about the name that counts. I’m looking forward to getting into this some more, we find out what the storm means and I want to know what happens next!
I’m having trouble with one of the narrators though and that’s not such a good thing seeing as I still have a long way to go. Kate Reading is ok but Michael Kramer’s voice and tone follows a set pattern that you can almost set your watch by. This has meant that I’ve found myself listening to his voice more than what he is actually saying resulting in multiple rewinding of the CD…
It’s not looking good so far but I’ll definitely stick it out for a bit longer and see where it takes me. If I get my reading mojo back then I’ll probably put the CDs down and pick up the book. Wish me luck!
Good luck!
ReplyDeleteMy re-read is really my listening to all the books again in audiobook format before reading TGS. I know what you mean by the set pattern, but... I find that the male voice actor has a wide range of different voices that I appreciate. I actually feel that perrin and mat and rand and lan and rhuarc and nerim and so on all have different voices/cadences/nuances. What clinches it for me is that I feel he does the female voices justice too (which I think the female actress has a harder time accomplishing for the male characters).
Every so often I zone out, but I think it's more from being distracted and focusing on other things (like driving) rather than because of his voice.
-khaled
One of my favorite audiobook duos was for Lian Hearn's Tales of the Otori series. Brilliant narration and worth listening to on audio even if you've already read the books. The female reader is pretty good, and the male reader is phenomenal. Chillingly good.
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