Then read about a THOUSAND books OUT LOUD to ACTUAL PEOPLE in person and see what they think. Or maybe just live in our society and listen to how people TALK. Take an acting class or two, or better yet, do some improv.

And TAKE NOTES on what YOU like, and what kind of narrators get great reviews and which get panned and which ones win awards. Make sure you listen to books for toddlers and books for elementary school kids and middle schooolers and teens and adults. But if you want to BE an audiobook narrator/performer, the very first thing you MUST DO is listen to about a thousand (LITERALLY, one thousand) audiobooks from every genre you can stand to listen to, with male performers, female performers, full cast audio, etc.

And really, the person who should be criticized most heavily is whoever did the producing, because that person should have seen to it that they hired someone who knew what they were doing. Possibly worse.) _ ORIGINAL REVIEW, written BEFORE reading Kirby's website (sorry, Kirby, You're a great guy, I'm sure, just not for me): You know, I hate to criticize someone's craft, because they probably were trying their best, and maybe they just didn't know any better.

(BTW, the AUTHOR apparently didn't care for Kirby's narration because he read the rest of the series himself. I'm kinda feeling sorry for him now, but I gotta try to save SOMEONE from this audiobook. So, well, we all have our Things, so keep in mind when you read the following review that when I wrote it, I had NO IDEA who this guy was (and that he had done other books, and improv, and all the things). He looks like a nice guy, he really does, and I'm sure he IS! But I couldn't stand his 'performances' - not in one other sample I tried. and traveled and worked abroad, and NO ONE TALKS LIKE THAT. His accents and dialects are overdone and cartoonish, his reading is abysmally predictable in cadence and prosody, and his performances come to my ear as completely overwrought and phoney! I've lived all over the U.S. Has This Narrator Ever LISTENED to an Audiobook?!Įdited: HOLY CARP! THIS NARRATOR IS APPARENTLY WELL-LIKED if you can believe his webpage! I'm flabbergasted because I listened to his other samples and I find them ALL to be.uh.NOT to my taste.

Ashfall by Mike Mullin