Content-Type: text/shitpost

I complained recently about a miscast audiobook narrator. I mentioned I had preferred listening to Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, read by Sir Christopher Lee. But this is a pretty high bar. I am not so hard to please.

On the same trip, I also enjoyed listening to Frances Hodgson Burnett's The Secret Garden (1911), read by Kara Shallenberg. I hadn't read this myself in about forty years, and although I had liked it, I also remembered it being somewhat overwrought. I was apprehensive about listening too it because I was afraid I might find it embarrassing. But it was fine, and M. Shallenberg was a large part of why. Her reading was straightforward and unaffected. Many of the characters speak in Yorkshire dialect — this is a plot point — and here Ms. Shallenberg, who sounds like an American, had another opportunity to mess things up terribly, but didn't. I would be delighted to hear M. Shallenberg read Ancillary Justice. Thumbs up!

I also listened to a big chunk of The Scarlet Pimpernel, read by Karen Savage. Ms. Savage has a pleasant voice and a British accent. She is able to give the different characters different English and French accents, which sounded authentic to me. When she speaks French, it sounds to me like French, and not like someone who does not speak French trying to speak French. Maybe a British or French person would detect defects, but I didn't. Also thumbs up.

(Odd coincidence: I said that I thought the narrator of Ancillary Justice, Celeste Ciulla, would be a better fit for What Katy Did or Eight Cousins. Karen Savage has recorded both of these.)