[mahogany]

> Second, do you ever shake the feeling that having a book read to you is somehow qualitatively not as good as reading it from the page?

Why would it be? I get where you're coming from, as I generally prefer reading over audiobooks, but it may be good to remember that story-telling began as an oral tradition. I don't see why reading a story would be superior to having someone tell you a story. I doubt The Odyssey was a lesser experience before it was written down.

We live in a time where we predominantly use and prefer the sense of sight, especially as a means of information transfer, but maybe we should let hearing have some fun too. :)

[hamburglar]

> I don't see why reading a story would be superior to having someone tell you a story. I doubt The Odyssey was a lesser experience before it was written down.

Well I don't think it necessarily has to be lesser, especially if it's designed to be verbally delivered, but it's a different art form, and it's not how most literature was created to be delivered. So it seems fairly obvious that you're going to lose something in the translation. The question is just whether or not that something that is lost is significant enough to care about.

[mahogany]

> Well I don't think it necessarily has to be lesser, especially if it's designed to be verbally delivered, but it's a different art form, and it's not how most literature was created to be delivered.

That's a fair point. However, when I write, I often read it aloud in my head, so I'm always "checking" that things sound good verbally in a way. I'm not sure how common that is, but it does seem to me that since writing is ultimately modeled after speaking, it's intimately linked with it.

Back to the audio books, I will say that I've had a hit or miss experience. Not only does the quality depend on the writing itself, but it also depends heavily on the narrator. An example of an audio book I listened to recently which I think is fantastically done is Moby Dick narrated by William Hootkins. The narrator injects a passion and perspective that I originally did not pick up on while reading it.

[hamburglar]

As an example, I've noticed when reading books to my kids that certain styles of writing lend themselves very poorly to being read aloud. An example is when the writer chooses to write pieces of dialog as alternating series of quotes missing directions like "Fred said" or whatever. Just literally what is said by each person in quotation marks. It's hard to read this aloud and convey who is saying what without trying to do funny voices or adding in the "stage directions" yourself.

[AlbertCory]

Funny. My books do have a lot of dialog, and when I was considering narrating them myself, I realized that it's not as easy as it looks. People do have to do the voices. A good narrator is used to it.

When you audition narrators on ACX, you provide a two-minute sample for them to read. I picked one with all three of the major characters, male and female, to hear how he did it. My guy is good.