A good narrator lets me get lost.

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Earlier this year I was prompted to think about who were my favorite audiobook narrators. It was soon revealed how very many I have! I was glad the request was for the narrators who I find truly add to the reading experience, and not the ones to avoid, because that would not be as pleasant an activity as I was engaged in, perusing through the titles I have listened to.

I’m thankful that the “bad” narrators are much fewer than the good. A good narrator lets me get lost in the story, and the bad ones are distracting in the various ways they draw one’s attention to their reading instead. I will list the narrators along with one or more books that made me love them:

Ralph Cosham (Geoffrey Howard) in How Green Was My Valley and many C.S. Lewis books, e.g. the Ransom Trilogy.

Peter Bishop in The Witness of Poetry.

Mike Fraser in The Timeless Way of Building.

Ellie Heydon in Mary Stewart novels.

 Arthur Morey in The Technological Society.

Andrew Sachs in Silas Marner.

Tom Stechschulte in Up and Down California.

Julie Harris in Out of Africa (unfortunately abridged).

Derek Perkins in G.K. Chesterton books.

Flo Gibson

Flo Gibson, in books about adventurous women, such as A Lady’s Life in the Rocky Mountains, and Letters of a Woman Homesteader.

Eleanor Bron in Elizabeth von Arnim books.

Neil Hunt and David Rintoul in Nevil Shute novels.

Stefan Rudnicki I first heard reading The Aviator, and I thought he was perfect for that story told in the first person. I began searching on Audible to see what other books he had narrated, and that is how I came to read Blitzed: Drugs in the Third Reich.

I started listening to a Joseph Conrad novel done by him, and was amazed at how differently, but also smoothly, he narrated that character’s voice — and not just the accent.  Seeing that he was the narrator of the Ursula LeGuin novel City of Illusions made me willing to try it, and his narration of The Captive Mind was just right for conveying Czeslaw Milosz’s writing voice.

Stefan Rudnicki

The protagonist of The Aviator is Russian, and I wondered if the narrator was Russian — how did he get that accent so well, but not overdo it? That’s why I researched Stefan Rudnicki more than any other narrator, and I learned that he was born in Poland. I also found this video in which he, along with other skilled veteran readers, leads a Round Table Discussion with several relatively new narrators, on the topic of improving their narration.

The whole narration “industry” is fascinating. It seems that participating in it is a satisfying way for older actors to keep working, at a pace that fits their slower stage of life. From reading reviews, I can tell that we listeners don’t all appreciate the same narration style. Are any of these your favorite narrators, too?

20 thoughts on “A good narrator lets me get lost.”

  3. I don’t have a single favorite narrator, because I don’t favor audio books. I tried a few, but just didn’t enjoy the experience. I suppose part of the issue is that I’m not much of a multi-tasker. Friends say, for example, that they listen while driving, but I can’t do that. If I concentrate on my driving, I miss chunks of the story, and if I get caught up in the flow of the story, I could easily miss a child on a bicycle.

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    1. The “auditory gate” is not my preferred way to receive information, so there is a very small set of audiobooks that I can stay focused on listening to, whether I am multitasking or not. If I’m listening in the car, I often have to backtrack in the recording as much as a minute to catch up, because I easily take my whole attention for things I’m seeing on the highway, and forget about the recording entirely. Certain types of stories or non-fiction books demand too much attention for various reasons, and then there are the narrators who are so “distinctive” that they are distracting.

      I used to read in bed in the middle of the night, when I couldn’t sleep, but I don’t need to do that anymore. Even most kinds of housework require my full attention, so my enjoyment of audiobooks is much restricted from what it used to be. I wouldn’t have written about these narrators if another blogger hadn’t put the question out there, about our favorites.

      Oh, I forgot — I have taken to walking on a treadmill in my house sometimes, and that is when I mostly listen these days. That was problematic with some books that seemed to be recorded at too low a volume. But I was given a splendid Bose wireless speaker which has made a huge difference, and made it easy to keep listening while I wash the floor, etc.

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  4. I was trying to add this, but your site is acting wonky for some reason and I can’t
    make paragraph breaks.
    So: there’s also this. I’ve had other friends suggest listening to audio books while in bed, or while just sitting around at home. But I never read in bed, and if I am going to read, I much prefer a printed book. The voice of a narrator feels somehow like an intrusion, shaping my perception of what’s written by intonation, and so on. It’s an interesting thing to consider.

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  6. One last comment: the issue’s been identified, and as usual, it’s WordPress. When I try to make a paragraph break, it doesn’t show up in the comment box, but it does appear when I post the comment.

    Of course I’ve alerted the authorities!

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  7. I don’t particularly enjoy listening to audio books. I like to actually read, to see the written word. My grown children also tend to be visual so maybe it’s genetic. Who knows.

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  8. Re your comment on my blog. I get the “error has occurred” message fairly often but now ignore it because whenever I’ve gone back to check ( after getting that message) my comment has gone through in spite of it.

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  9. You’ve listed several of my favorites, but heard from entirely different genres! I first heard Mr Rudnicki in Enchantment and Ralph Cosham in many of Louise Penny’s Inspector Ganache series. Most all of my listening was done during the decades of long commutes to/from work. You’ve piqued my interest in some of the titles you’ve enjoyed!

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  10. I am not keen on audiobooks, but I love the way Barbara Caruso read Under the Tuscan Sun; she brought it to a whole new level with her musical voice. And I did listen to David McCullough’s John Adams, read by Nelson Runger. He was good.

    I remember, many years ago, awake in the middle of the night, with the radio on the classical music program. They played Oscar Wilde’s The Happy Prince, read by John Gielgud. It is prose (of course), but I was entranced – he made it sound like poetry. I will never forget it. Perhaps if I heard it now I wouldn’t be affected in the same way. Who knows?

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  13. My friend Dick Hill and his wife, Susie Breck, were narrators for years and worked with some wonderful writers. I think they both would have been very good. Since I can never concentrate on audio books, I don’t know other narrators!

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