Audio Books

I agree with that it’s all only story telling but the narratives voices mustsound not only realistic in everyway, and so saying there’s nothing like the real thing, is there?So thedelivery is of paramount importance, otherwise the listener will lose interest very quickly. like you I used to listen to B.B.C. World broadcast and Voice of America before the internet thingy came along. the BBc preseners spoke distintivly clearly with a rather clear precisely clippedpronuncedbritishupper class posh accented English although sounding neutral and yetclear as crystal bells, not truculent as the real plum in the mouth slurpy kind. I know there have been childrens books on CD available for years and my kids had them, Alice in Wonderland and others did not have that awful computer voice over sounding phonics that drive me totally insane within a few moments of listening to them, they sound like my satnav that I use when travelling around inthe city as the voice has difficulty with certain vowels consonants as you correctlystated. You are also correct about there been free audio books available on the internet and not all of them are computer generated voices which are not worth the trouble in myopinion, but there are some good ones available as Podcasts on Itunes and elsewhere, although the ones that i have listened to are read by real live professional people chosen for their control of voice delivery and clarity of speech, even though they have regional accents, whether American or from anywhere at allfor that matter. To get back to the VOA programmes on shortwave radio their delivery was muchslower in pace than in normal real time speech thatis extremelyannoying for anyone other than a person learning English as a second language. The audio books that I haveheard come with as many as eleven or more CD’s and can beanywhere betweenten to perhaps more than twenty hours of listening time, can you imaginehow torturous that would be to listen to throughout the entire lenght of the books storyline, one would have to be either a glutton for punishment or be stunned indefinetlydue to symptoms ofShellshockalthough not quite brain dead but in a dazed conditionyet functunal enough to be mistakenly said by those around them to be coping,nothing else that acts as a remedyfor it perhaps, buta well aimed laser guided coconut to the cranium would do the trick nicely I soppose.Oh yes, I almost forgot to mention the fact that they cost every bit as much as their paperback counterparts, which is why I procure mine from the local public library, he, he.