{"id":6250,"date":"2014-09-13T23:28:07","date_gmt":"2014-09-13T23:28:07","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/soundslikewish.wordpress.com\/?p=6250"},"modified":"2014-09-13T23:28:07","modified_gmt":"2014-09-13T23:28:07","slug":"voice-work","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/soundslikewish.org\/?p=6250","title":{"rendered":"Voice Work"},"content":{"rendered":"

On Thursday, the WordPress writing prompt was “Voice Work”:\u00a0 who would you like to do a voice recording of your blog?<\/p>\n

It got me thinking about audio books, a book pleasure I enjoy from time to time.\u00a0 The delight of this kind of ‘reading’ is in the hearing.\u00a0 The voice of the reader combined with an excellent novel is the best kind of one-sided conversation.\u00a0 Usually an actor is chosen as the reader, but hearing him read is streets ahead of seeing and hearing actors interpret a novel as film (well, for me it is).<\/p>\n

Take, as an example of a highly-recommended audio book, Dances with Wolves<\/em> read by its author, Michael Blake.\u00a0 My husband and I listened to it on a long drive and often found we didn’t want to get out of the car.<\/p>\n

\"danceswithwolves\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Then there was The Collector<\/em>, written by John Fowles, narrated by James Wilby.\u00a0 Creepy story.\u00a0 A butterfly collector decides to collect something less morally acceptable.\u00a0 The reader played the part so well that I don’t think I could trust him in real life.<\/p>\n

\"The<\/p>\n

And recently, on another long drive interstate and back again, we listened to The Book of Ebenezer Le Page<\/em> by Gerard Basil Edwards, a story about a long life on the island of Guernsey, written by a Guernsey man, and read by Guernsey-born Roy Dotrice.\u00a0 It was so good that we’ve replayed parts of it just to hear the narrator’s voice and the quirky dialogue, where verbs aren’t always conjugated and h’s are dropped when they exist and added when they don’t.\"The<\/p>\n

I tried to imagine someone (not me) reading my blog posts, but I drew a blank.\u00a0 But something else sprang to mind: a book I’ve translated which will be available next year.\u00a0 That<\/em> is something I’d like to hear read aloud.\u00a0 The story, Spiridion<\/em>, is set in an 18th-century monastery where goodness is punished and females play no part.\u00a0 So my reader would have to be male, for the only female in this book is the author, though she’s a writer with a man’s name:\u00a0 George Sand.\u00a0 She wrote in French, but for my English translation I would choose, perhaps, an eloquent Englishman.\u00a0 Or Australian, because I’m Australian.\u00a0 But then, perhaps not, since there are no 18th-century monasteries here;\u00a0 an Australian accent might not be credible.\u00a0 I’d need someone who sounds like he could have lived in the 18th century, from a country where monasteries have been around for a millennium.\u00a0 How about an actor I’ve seen in a film of the same genre?\u00a0 Say, Sean Connery.\u00a0 Hmmm.\u00a0 Did you see him in The Name of the Rose<\/em>?\u00a0 Yes, he’s the one.\u00a0 I’d pick him.<\/p>\n

*****<\/p>\n

\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

On Thursday, the WordPress writing prompt was “Voice Work”:\u00a0 who would you like to do a voice recording of your blog? It got me thinking about audio books, a book pleasure I enjoy from time to time.\u00a0 The delight of this kind of ‘reading’ is in the hearing.\u00a0 The voice of the reader combined with … <\/p>\n

Continue reading “Voice Work”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[157,1],"tags":[241,641,642,643,156,69,644,255,2,463,568,645,646,647,3,270],"class_list":["post-6250","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-french-literature-and-translation","category-uncategorized","tag-19th-century-literature","tag-audiobooks","tag-dances-with-wolves","tag-ebenezer-le-page","tag-french-literature","tag-george-sand","tag-gerard-basil-edwards","tag-john-fowles","tag-literature","tag-novels","tag-postaday-2014","tag-roy-dotrice","tag-spiridion","tag-the-collector","tag-translation","tag-writing"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/soundslikewish.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6250","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/soundslikewish.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/soundslikewish.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/soundslikewish.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/soundslikewish.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=6250"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/soundslikewish.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6250\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/soundslikewish.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=6250"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/soundslikewish.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=6250"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/soundslikewish.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=6250"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}