Why George Guidall Is the Undisputed King of Audiobooks

I'm sure multitudes of people like his style of reading, but I have found it to be incredibly slow and frustrating to listen to. He reads.... with ...... far too many..... pointless..... pauses. One can have meter and flow without the slow.

It's not exactly the same thing, but I much prefer the way that Dan Carlin (Hardcore History podcast) uses his voice to create atmosphere and draw me into the story.

"There’s a rhythm to speech in terms of what’s implied. If it’s raining in the book, there’s got to be something about the voice that evokes the rain."

He really does provide great quality. I have listened to quite a few audiobooks read by him and I often feel like I am not doing them justice when I am doing something else besides listening. It has led me to realize that I should listen to good audiobooks more consciously, and to instead rely on podcasts or librivox* books for easy listening while cleaning or cooking.

* = Not to put down the efforts made by the hundreds of volunteers reading books for this great project, they have led to great audiobooks, but there are also quite a few that are not up to professional standards.

His voice reminds me of Geoffrey Palmer's, whose reading of The Man Who Was Thursday for the BBC is excellent.

My main problem with audiobooks are the narrators, especially in fiction; I give up on about 2/3 of the books for that reason. I have a similar problem with TV shows like The Walking Dead - the acting is just too mediocre. Maybe I'm a snob, but it literally yanks my suspension of disbelief away.

I don't think I ever listened to one read by Guidall, though; does anyone have a recommendation?

I loved how this wasn't a story about some twenty year old Hotshot CEO of some fad company I had never heard of that has just brought out an iPhone app for audio books, but about a real, old-school professional actor who is successful in an honest profession.

I've enjoyed two books read by Guidall, but I spent several years of my commute listening to Patrick Tull read Patrick O'Brian's Master & Commander series, and I'm not sure any other narrator will ever match that for me. It feels like your British uncle is telling you stories about his time in the Royal Navy.

I went to youtube and looked up a clip of him reading, and indeed it was who I expected. My dad listened to a lot of books on tape when I was growing up, and this guy's voice was ubiquitous. It provided a nice moment of nostalgia.

As an adult now though, I much prefer Rob Inglis, whose recording of The Lord Of The Rings is more or less the authoritative way that work should sound, so far as I'm concerned. His volume of work, though, doesn't compare to Guidall so far as I can tell.

One of my favorites is David Clarke, who did a superb reading of The Count of Monte Cristo,[1] which is one of the most amazing books I've ever read.

[1] - https://librivox.org/the-count-of-monte-cristo-version-3-by-...

I much prefer Tim Gerald Reynolds and Steven Pacey.

Listen to these previews for each of them respectively. They were able to bring the characters to life in a way that Guidall was never able to for me.

Steven Pacey: https://www.audible.com/pd/Sci-Fi-Fantasy/The-Blade-Itself-A...

Tim Gerald Reynolds: https://www.audible.com/pd/Sci-Fi-Fantasy/Age-of-Myth-Audiob...

About 20 years ago I had a twice a week commute of about 3 hours. I worked my way through the bulk of Lillian Jackson Braun's "Cat Who ..." book as read by Mr. Guidall. Even when I was reading from the dead tree version I'd still hear it in his voice.

My favorite audio books, however, were of Roger Zelazny reading his own Amber books. He obviously wasn't a professional voice artist, but he really brought these non-standard fantasy novels to life with his, literally, authorial voice.

I only have them on actual cassette tapes, I suppose I should look around and see if they are available as digital files.

I'm quite fond of John Rafter Lee, personally:

http://www.audible.com/search?ref_=a_pd_Classi_c2_1_narr&sea...

I've been hooked on his voice ever since I heard him as Trevor Goodchild in the 90's MTV Aeon Flux cartoon.

Can anybody identify the PDF annotation app that G. Guidall is using in this picture?

https://static01.nyt.com/images/2017/08/15/arts/00AUDIOKING2...

My vote would be for Richard Poe:

http://www.audible.com/search/ref=sr_1_1_nsrch?searchNarrato...

For me the best was Richard Matthews reading "A Short History Of Nearly Everything"

I don't know George Guidall, what I don't know too is why there's so little audiobooks in 2017, specially in French.