With many thanks to young Sophie for joining us last week, Gary and I fired up our microphones and chatted about a veritable miscellany of SFnal stuff, including audiobooks, recommended reading, and such. As always, we hope you enjoy the podcast. If all goes to plan, we’ll be back next week with Paul Cornell.
NB: My apologies for a technical hitch about an hour into the recording. You’ll know it when you get to it.
Interesting title discussion, guys, but isn’t “Sea Hearts” even more girl-only than “Brides of Rollrock Island”? The word “heart” is pretty much universally used to indicate a romance novel.
BTW, the original Finnish title of Sinisalo’s book was “Not Before Sundown”. It was changed to “Troll” for the US market, probably because the publishers felt that the US public wouldn’t know troll mythology well enough to get the reference.
Gary- “Dont put a title on it that says ‘boys dont read this'”
Ah, you dont need a title for that, you can just put it in the YA section…
Just kidding (I think).
I’m an avid audiobook listener. I have a 30 minute commute each way to work and I run at lunchtime so I listen to, on average, 25 books a year. It’s about the only way I can “read” so many books a year. This year I was able to get through Martin’s A Song of Ice and Fire novels. This would have been the only way I could have read it due to the other demands on my time and the length of those novels.
Jonathan, I too tried to listen to Stephen King read THE GUNSLINGER years and years ago and I had the same reaction you did. When I tried again recently with a different narrator the experience was so much better. Once again, I was only able to “read” The Dark Tower series because I was listening to the audiobooks.
And the narrator is definitely key to the experience. It can be very jarring when listening to a series and the narrators switch between books for one reason or another. Characters no longer speak the same way any more. So I guess that argues to your point that the experience is much different than the one you would have created on your own when it’s just you and the book. But since it is the only way I can experience many of the books these days it is a penalty I’m willing to take.