If you want a miserable experience reading Tolkien, do this one thing
The value of a good narrator
Audio
Voice in the machine
As text-to-speech technology improves, we shouldn't forget that narration isn't just reading a book: it's a performance
Inaudible
An audiobook narrator spent two months creating a new audio edition of Dune, only to discover that the entire project was a scam
Andy Serkis is recording The Lord of the Rings audiobooks
A year ago, Andy Serkis set up a fundraising effort to help a pair of UK charities in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic, in which he read the entirety of J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Hobbit in a straight, 12-hour shot. Soon thereafter, HarperCollins brought him on to
Audible backtracks after outrage over return policy
Announcing New Worlds: The Story of Frank Herbert's Dune
Warner Bros. has released the first trailer
[https://www.tor.com/2020/09/09/dune-movie-denis-villeneuve-frank-herbert-trailer-watch/]
for its upcoming adaptation of Frank Herbert’s Dune. The trailer looks really
fantastic: a faithful adaptation that really takes the source material
seriously. The original novel is one of my favorites, and I’ve
The streaming wars comes for the bookshelf
Hello!
I’ve been realizing that this newsletter is a bit scattershot when it comes to
topic, and I like the ability to bundle together a random assortment of ideas.
This week, I’ve got some thoughts about the technology side of reading: some
recent news about audiobooks from two
Endless Universes and Genre Soundscapes
Hello!
It’s been a fun couple of days. If you’re on Twitter and have Verified status,
you probably found that you couldn’t post the other day for a while. Twitter
experienced a major security breach
[https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/jgxd3d/twitter-insider-access-panel-account-hacks-biden-uber-bezos]
, and it seems
Andy Serkis will record a new audiobook edition of The Hobbit
In May, Gollum actor Andy Serkis powered through a 12-hour reading marathon (a Hobbitathon) of the entirety of J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Hobbit. Now, he’ll go back behind the microphone to do it again, for a new edition of the fantasy novel’s audiobook.
This new edition