Simon Vance does a superb job reading every character in Patrick O’Brian’s Master and Commander except one: the central character Jack Aubrey.
I just finished listening to Blackstone Audio’s unabridged version of Master and Commander, and the book keeps getting better each time I experience it. I first read it about ten years ago, then a few years after that I listened to Patrick Tull’s unabridged audio recording from RecordedBooks.com.
I finally finished listening to the Don Quixote audiobook narrated by George Guidall, and it remains my favorite book of all time. It took almost five months to listen to (I have a very short commute to work), but it was worth the time. Guidall is deservedly known as the king of audiobooks, and his reading was masterful. In a book full of dozens of characters, he managed to give each one a separate personality and voice.
I don’t want to say too much about the story itself, since the people at Tilting at Windmills are reading Don Quixote right now. One thing I will say, however, is that the second half of Don Quixote is far superior to the first half. I enjoyed the first half, but most of my fond memories come from the second half. It’s funnier, more interesting from a literary point of view, and really develops the character of Don Quixote and Sancho Panza.
Naxos Audiobooks has released a video trailer of Neville Jason recording War and Peace. It’s fascinating to watch him act out the book as he reads. I never realized that audio book narrators actually read from books. I always thought the book was made into a script before recording. But you can see for yourself that he’s using a hardcover copy of the book, and has even dog-eared some of the pages: