{"id":2339,"date":"2013-06-30T14:21:56","date_gmt":"2013-06-30T18:21:56","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.law.harvard.edu\/tatar\/?p=2339"},"modified":"2013-06-30T17:56:37","modified_gmt":"2013-06-30T21:56:37","slug":"are-audiobooks-making-a-comeback","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/tatar\/2013\/06\/30\/are-audiobooks-making-a-comeback\/","title":{"rendered":"Are Audiobooks Making a Comeback?"},"content":{"rendered":"
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\"\"<\/a>http:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2013\/06\/30\/business\/media\/actors-today-dont-just-read-for-the-part-reading-is-the-part.html?pagewanted=all<\/p>\n

I just finished listening to Claire Messud’s\u00a0The Woman Upstairs<\/em> in my car, and I am now a true believer in audiobooks. (The book is great, by the way, and Wonderland figures prominently in it, as a kind of thematic tilt-a-whirl). \u00a0When you listen to a good book on the road, suddenly:\u00a0Traffic? \u00a0No problem. \u00a0Long red light that you sit through for two rounds? \u00a0Who cares? Long stretch of highway? \u00a0Great! \u00a0It’s fascinating to me that audiobooks are making a comeback, perhaps in part because actors, as the New York Times\u00a0<\/em>article points out, take reading seriously, seeing it as a craft requiring special skills. \u00a0I love Jeremy Irons reading\u00a0Lolita<\/em>, but I had given up on audiobooks after a couple of dull readers made me regret paying for what was at that time cds. \u00a0Now I’ve just ordered a couple of Neil Gaiman books (he makes his own recordings), and I’m also going to try Meg Wolitzer’s\u00a0The Interestings.<\/em><\/p>\n

Here’s an excerpt from Leslie Kaufman’s article in the\u00a0NYT<\/em><\/p>\n

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Mr. Davis cautions that narration is not for everyone. \u201cYou need endurance, patience, and you need to do a lot of research,\u201d he said. \u201cI am in the booth from 9 to 4 and the average book could be three days to seven days.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n

The upside, for him, has been a connection with authors like Bret Easton Ellis and Oliver Sacks and also a tremendous amount of freedom to define the project artistically. \u201cI feel like they have a great respect for what I do,\u201d he said of Audible, his most regular client.<\/em><\/p>\n

His style is more restrained than Ms. Kellgren\u2019s. \u201cYou paint the whole picture but you are very controlled,\u201d he said.<\/em><\/p>\n

\u201cA fan once said to me that my narration was like \u2018a modern version of sitting around a campfire listening to tribal elders,\u2019\u00a0\u201d he added. \u201cThat is what makes me feel I am on the right track.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n

Well, not quite around the fireside, but a good audiobook makes you feel as if the reader is right there with you.<\/p>\n

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http:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2013\/06\/30\/business\/media\/actors-today-dont-just-read-for-the-part-reading-is-the-part.html?pagewanted=all I just finished listening to Claire Messud’s\u00a0The Woman Upstairs in my car, and I am now a true believer in audiobooks. (The book is great, by the way, and Wonderland figures prominently in it, as a kind of thematic tilt-a-whirl). \u00a0When you listen to a good book on the road, suddenly:\u00a0Traffic? \u00a0No problem. \u00a0Long […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2125,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2339","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/tatar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2339","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/tatar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/tatar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/tatar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2125"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/tatar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2339"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/tatar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2339\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2343,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/tatar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2339\/revisions\/2343"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/tatar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2339"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/tatar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2339"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/tatar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2339"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}