My most favorite reader is Barbara Rosenblat because of her amazing ability to do a different voice for every character. She narrates the Amelia Peabody series by Elizabeth Peters (among others) and does a FABULOUS job!!! And if you've ever read the series, you'll know that's no easy task! Each book has dozens of characters. And the series spans many years in which many characters grow up, while others will appear in one book then be gone for 4 or 5 books then reappear! And Ms. Rosenblat does it all flawlessly! I have gotten on my library website and looked up her name and gotten books just because she is the narrator! The accents, the inflections, the dialects, and personality she puts into each character's voice are amazing and make each person in the book unmistakably distinguishable from the others! I think this is a crucial skill for narrators of books with a lot of dialog! Some of my other favorites are John Keating who narrates the Ranger's Apprentice series and Patricia Conolly who read The Star of Kazan. I love listening to any audio books that take place in Germany just because I love the way the names of the people and places sound! I am also a big fan of full-cast recordings... but used in the right way. I am listening to The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society right now, and I love that each letter-writer has his or her own specific voice that matches their personality and where they live!
Not to be mean or anything, but I really didn't care for the narrator of The Hunger Games books, or the Twilight series, and though I liked the voice of the Harry Potter narrator, the way he read Hermione's lines gave me a twitch!
OK. That's all. (I think... those last two paragraphs were added after I typed my sign-off!)
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