A choice of recent audiobooks

How do you like a book to be read? There is the way my wife reads to me with her normal, unaccented voice throughout, just as she reads to me from the newspaper, say, letting the words on the page establish in my brain what the author intended — or so we hope.

At the other extreme there is the fully acted and dramatised reading with old voices, foreign accents, all speaking angrily, casually, suspiciously, humorously etc. I hate this sort of reading. I feel irritated and patronised, as if the reader is saying, ‘Obviously you and the author can’t get it together on your own but don’t worry, I am here with my great understanding and dramatic skill, not to say artistry, to deliver the goods; aren’t you lucky? There are of course less extreme modes of reading, but with any but the ‘straight’ there is the danger of a third party, the reader, getting between the author and the listener. There is also the problem of consistency or the lack of it.

And how do you feel about music? When my wife is reading to me and we get to the end of the chapter, I don’t want some chap rushing up and snatching away the book while he does some music for eight seconds or so before allowing her to continue, nor do I want this chap to insist on giving 15 seconds or more recital before we are allowed to start a book or another story in a collection.

I suppose the argument is that the musical interlude gives you time to turn off without unwantedly hearing the next bit, or time to turn on, pick up your drink and get settled again before the words start, but I’d still rather not have it.