B. Weaver

Unlistenable

Revisado: 03-17-25

I am fascinated by this period of English history and I've always liked the works of Alison Weir, but within the first few minutes the narrator, Maggie Mash, began reading quotes from some Italian clergyman in a ridiculous accent that was like fingernails on a chalkboard and I nearly drove my finger through my device in my desperation to end this torment.

Why do narrators do this? I'm far from the only person with this complaint. Nearly every other review, just on this book, mentions how unpleasant it is. But it's not just Maggie Mash and not just this book. Audiobook reviews are full of complaints from listeners about narrators affecting the imagined accents of people they're quoting and they're almost all negative. The producers of audiobooks need to get a memo out to all of their narrators "Don't do accents! People HATE it when you do that! Just read it in your natural voice! It's not like they don't understand that the king of France was French!"

I literally got no more than fifteen minutes in and only got that far because I thought "It's the Wars of the Roses. How many non-English persons are likely to be quoted?" As it turns out, more than I could bear.

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The Narrator Ruined it for Me

Revisado: 03-05-25

While I'm interested in the subject, I was not able to get far with this audiobook because the narrator has the disagreeable practice of affecting accents when he reads quotes from various people.

NOTICE TO NARRATORS: When you affect a fake French accent you don't sound like Charles de Gaulle. You sound like Pepe Le Pew. There are no acting awards for narration. Don't do accents! They don't make anything about the experience of listening better. Just use your normal voice.

Anyway, between the accents and also the fact that he reads as if he's afraid he's going to wake someone up, the narrator has made this pretty much unlistenable for me and I'm going to return it.

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The Mistake So Many Speakers and Narrators Make

Revisado: 09-20-24

Professor MacNeill has provided a competent course on the basics of Darwinian Evolution and the history of Charles Darwin and his work. Unfortunately, he makes the mistake so many audiobook narrators make of reading quotes in what he imagines to be the author's native accent.

I'd like to take this opportunity to say something to anyone considering a career in narration or voice-over. If you are someone who is good at performing "foreign accents", I have news for you. No, you're not. You don't sound like the person you're quoting. You sound like a non-native speaker doing a bad impression of what you imagine the person sounded like. In other words, just like what you are. Your bad fake accent doesn't add any clarity. It doesn't make what you're saying "come alive" or any such nonsense. It doesn't help. At all. It just grates on the ears of your listeners. Don't do it. Use your normal speaking voice and everything will come through just fine.

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Narrator Really Detracts

Revisado: 07-19-24

I don't mind someone pronouncing "Julius Caesar" the way it is almost always said in English, even though in his day it would have sounded more like "YOU-lee-us KYE-ser." He sticks with the conventional pronunciations with names like Cicero and Cato., and that's to be expected, It's harder to ignore though with names like Gaius, which Tom Parks pronounces "GEY-oose." In fact, with some names I have to wonder what he thinks he's doing. Did he scroll through a guide on Latin name pronunciation five minutes before he started reading? He takes this to extremes with any names ending in "-us", which ending he turn into "-oose". In his reading voice, Marcus Brutus becomes "Mar-KOOSE Broo-toose" and Lepidus is given this bizarre rendering of "Luh-PEE-doose". It's really jarring and several times I just wanted to turn it off.

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Great, Except for Narrator's Fake Scottish Accent

Revisado: 07-31-23

An excellent installment in Peter Ackroyd's series on the History of England, Unfortunately, narrator Clive Chafer recites quotations of King James I in what has to be the worst fake Scottish accent I've ever heard. It's so bad it makes the portions where he does it nearly unlistenable.

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Never Dull

Revisado: 03-08-23

I could listen to Sir David talk for days, but hearing him tell the story of his own life is a real treat. A revelation of the inner workings of the BBC, as well as a seemingly endless treasure trove of amusing anecdotes.

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No Music

Revisado: 01-10-22

My only complaint, but the one that made it unlistenable for me, is that there is no accompanying music with which to reference it. I shouldn't have been surprised, since acquiring rights to recordings or arranging performances especially for a book like this would probably have been prohibitively expensive (although The Great Courses manages it for their music lectures). If you have a huge catalog of Beethoven's works it might be worthwhile, but lacking that, I just couldn't follow it.

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Finally Finished It!

Revisado: 08-09-21

We had to read this in high school but I never got far into it. Now I’ve finally finished the whole thing at it’s truly as horrifying as I’d always heard.

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Informative, But the Narrator!

Revisado: 06-01-21

A good history of Ancient Rome. I’ve studied Rome for years and there’s a lot here that was new to me. The narrator, however, doesn’t appear to be sufficiently familiar with the subject to know how to pronounce Latin names. In his reading, “Gaius” becomes “Gay-us,” “Marius” becomes “Merry-us,” etc. etc..

The real kicker was when he pronounced “Latium” as “Lay-shum!”

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This Narrator is Making My Ears Bleed

Revisado: 11-17-20

Like, I suppose, many people who bought this, I first heard about it when the character of JFK mentioned it in the movie “13 Days.”

First of all, if you are looking for a book about World War I in general this is not it. “The Guns of August” is not about World War I so much as the *beginning* of World War I. It only covers first weeks six weeks of the conflict. Barbara Tuchman does a really great job of covering these first critical weeks in extensive detail and if I were going to complain about her work it would be that she relates events but doesn’t really examine or reflect on them.

But then there’s the narrator.

John Lee has the disagreeable habit of trying to perform in the supposed accent of the people he’s quoting and unfortunately, like many actors, he’s both not as good at doing accents as he apparently thinks and unaware of how seriously annoying fake accents are. I really wanted to finish this but it took a lot of determination and I had to take numerous breaks from it because I simply could not bear to listen to another minute of the words of Ferdinand Foche as performed by Pepé Le Pew. His German accent sounds like every other bad German accent out there. The same goes for his Italian accent and there was at least one figure quoted who appeared to be either American or Canadian and, as typically happens when voiced by a Brit, sounded like Edward G. Robinson. I found myself fantasizing about buying the paperback version and hunting Lee down just so I could swat him upside the head with it and yell “Just READ it, ya C*NT!”

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