Listening to the previews I found the first 5-10mins incredibly annoying (at which point I would usually give it up as a crap job) but persevering I realised that the narration sounds different to how I would read it because the POV character is different to me.

Now that’s not necessarily a bad thing but it puts a degree of seperation into the story that I dont feel when I read. To me audiobooks seem to describe the occurances experienced by a character which I can listen to and think ‘that’s interesting/entertaining/etc (to me)’ or ‘that’s awful/exciting/etc (for the character)’ but not ‘that would suck so much/be so awesome – what would I do if I were in that situation’ like I do when I read. I think listening to someone else portray a character, be it visually or audially (is that even a word?) reinforces the fact that the character is not you. I can observe the characters in a film or audiobook but I can inhabit the characters in books I read no matter how far removed they may be from my experience.

So I suppose the point is that although I think that the readers did a good job and the audiobooks sound entertaining I will never buy them because even a good audiobook is only a finite representation of the infinite possible interpretations a good book. I’d rather read it myself, with my own emphasis and pace finding the relevence of the story to my life and experience.