I’m always astonished by pronunciation gaffs in audio books. I don’t expect the readers to pronounce everything correctly, but I do expect an audio editor to do some follow up. I mean, retakes have to be a necessity when recording 20 hours of reading, so I can’t figure out why these blips aren’t picked up.

Some of them are just accents. The guy reading Philip K Dick’s “Second Variety” pronounced “robot” as “robut” which annoyed me to no end, and I have it out for anyone who pronounces “again” as “aGAIN.” But in The Time Traveler’s Wife, the man reading Henry’s parts pronounced a drug as “vi-CO-din” but every good Green Bay Packer fan knows Brett Favre’s drug of choice is pronounced “VI-co-din,” with the stress on the first syllable, not the second.

Even more alarming was in Stephen King’s Dark Tower series where George Guidall twice said, “with Roland winding his horn,” pronouncing that third word with the long I as in “he was winding his watch” instead of the correct pronunciation, as in “a bad wind blowing.” This is especially weird considering that winding a horn like you would to a clock or watch makes no sense, where as the true meaning is “to add wind to, i.e. blowing.”

By the way, I’m close to finishing The Time Traveler’s Wife, and my verdict? It’s okay. I’d give it a B. As the book wears on, it becomes less about the interesting conundrum of time traveling and more about domestic unrest, which I found, erm, less interesting. Add to this the fact that I totally don’t buy the Gomez subplot/drama, and the longer the story goes the more suspicious I am about why Henry’s time traveling needs to be kept a secret. Niffenegger is wise to this second point, and drops in a few lines about why Clark Kent doesn’t just admit he’s Superman to Lois Lane; to which another character responds, “Because it makes a better story if he keeps it a secret.” Cute metafiction maybe, but that doesn’t rebut my complaint. I wanted this book to be a third shorter.

I’m about half finished with Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell and this one just keeps going from strength to strength. So far, I’d give an A+ and I don’t expect that to change. The real magic here is Clarke’s writing. She has a wonderful sense of when to throw in asides or when to directly address the reader. And it’s just a lot of fun. The Ladies of Grace Adieu and Other Stories definitely makes my “books wanted” list.

The novel stands at 55K words and writing is akin to pulling teeth, or putting my shoulder to boulder. I’m 2K words behind schedule for this week, which means I need a big day today to make up for it. Most of Wednesday and Thursday was spent thinking instead of writing because I didn’t know where to take the penultimate chapter. I finally figured out one way to go, but I’m not convinced it’s the right way. Words on paper is the most important part, though, so I soldier on.

Current Mood: Fine, I Guess |
Currently Listening To – Beck – “Midnite Vultures”