Audiobooks: Do you prefer one narrator over another? Jim Dale or Stephen Frye?

For fiction I prefer actors reading versus authors. For nonfiction I prefer the author

Love Hugh Fraser reading Agatha Christie’s Poirot. I like Jim Dale but I could not stand his Hermoine.

Jim Dale for the Harry Potter series by J.K. Rowling and Lisette Lecat for The No 1 Ladies Detective Agency series by Alexander McCall Smith are my favorites!

Jim Dale

Anything by Bahni Turpin is AMAZING.

Simon Vance is always excellent. I heard him first in the Aubrey-Maturin series by Patrick O’Brian, but I’ve also heard several other of his recordings since then. For the most part, I think most commercial audiobook readers are at least competent and some are outstanding.

The only one I’ve never been able to get on with is John Lee, who obviously satisfies a lot of listeners because he gets a lot of work. I’ve only tried him on two recordings, but they both drove me crazy. His reading of “Master and Commander” by Patrick O’Brian almost put me to sleep (and I was driving at the time, so that was not good — I had to pull over for a three-hour nap before I was alert enough to drive). I stood his recording of “Under the Volcano” by Malcolm Lowry slightly better, but the man just simply could not properly pronounce ANY of the Spanish words. He sounded like a stereotypical British tourist at the Canary Islands or the Costa del Sol. I returned that one to the library before getting more than halfway done.

I also have several favorite volunteer narrators at the audiobook site LibriVox, chiefly Elizabeth Klett, Tadgh Hynes, Karen Savage, David Clarke, Martin Geeson, Peter Yearsley, etc.