Stephen King gushes about audiobooks; take a look at his 10 favorite audiobook productions

 

I've always liked and admired Stephen King. His writing is crisp and powerful and he can still shock, amaze, and  freak me out after all these years -- what more can be asked of a literary relationship?

After running across an old article of his from Entertainment Weekly, however, I've officially leapt from casual admiration to slavish adoration: not only does Mr. King love audio books as much as I do (take a look at my list of 10 favorite audiobook productions here), he defends them in a manner that brings the book lust in my blood to its feet in a standing ovation.

According to Mr. King, sage:

Some critics -- the always tiresome Harold Bloom among them -- claim that listening to audiobooks isn't reading. I couldn't disagree more. In some ways, audio perfects reading....Audio is merciless. It exposes every bad sentence, half-baked metaphor, and lousy word choice...the spoken word is the acid test. They don't call it storytelling for nothing.

Mr. King goes on to deliver a few more well-timed and well-deserved back-handed slaps to the tiresome Mr. Bloom ("Bloom has said that 'Deep reading really demands the inner ear...that part of you which is open to wisdom. You need the text in front of you.' Here is a man who has clearly never listened to a campfire story.") and to detail those annoying bugaboos that plague audiobook lovers everywhere: stuttering CDs, abridgements (the bane of the book world), and  lousy readers that can strike a good story dead faster than Zeus with a thunderbolt.

Here are the 10 audiobooks that Mr. King lists as his favorites:

1. American Pastoral
Philip Roth (Read by Ron Silver)

2. Lonesome Dove
Larry McMurtry (Read by Wolfram Kandinsky)

3. The Harry Potter novels
J.K. Rowling (Read by Jim Dale) - Note from the Book Examiner: Am I the only person in the entire universe that had a few beefs with Jim Dale's interpretation of some of the characters? I am a devoted Harry Potter fan and read and listened to all seven books, but there were several parts of Mr. Dale's reading that drove me nuts, most notably Hermione Granger's voice (he made her sound like a twit, which she most certainly was not) and that bit near the end of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows when Mrs. Weasley takes on Bellatrix, shouting out, "NOT MY DAUGHTER, YOU BITCH!" which I thought Mr. Dale avada kedavra-ed horribly. That was a huge emotional climax in the final battle, and Mr. Dale chose to read it "NOT MY DAUGHTER," pause "YOU BITCH!" as if they were two entirely separate statements. Any self-respecting mother, however, (and that's Mrs. Weasley if there ever was one) would have connected the sentiments, the "you bitch" being a natural extension of the "Not my daughter" statement. O.k., so I might be a little nitpicky (which is what my sister and husband shrieked at me when I stopped the CD at this point and began to hold forth while we were all listening, rapt to know how the story would end). Is there anyone out there who has heard the Stephen Fry interpretation of the stories? I would gladly sell my soul to the devil to obtain copies of Mr. Fry's performances of the Harry Potter books, were it not for the fact that my soul would scarcely bring in enough money.

4. That Old Ace in the Hole
Annie Proulx (Read by Arliss Howard)

5. Back When We Were Grownups
Anne Tyler (Read by Blair Brown)

6. Enduring Love
Ian McEwan (Read by Steven Crossley)

7. Aubrey/Maturin novels
Patrick O'Brian (Read by Patrick Tull)

8. Angela's Ashes
Frank McCourt (Read by Frank McCourt)

9. Oryx and Crake
Margaret Atwood (Campbell Scott)

10. American Gods
Neil Gaiman (George Guidall)

Take a look at the Book Examiner's picks for audiobooks so good they make the print versions seem almost boring by comparison.

Go here to read the entire Stephen King audiobook article. By God, do I love that man.