I was looking at a blog post [2] from Overdrive – our vendor for the Digital Media Catalog [3] – the other day on audio book narrators. That got me to thinking about how important the narrator can be to an audio book. A great narrator can make a less than stellar book better while a terrible narrator can make a well written book terrible.
One source for suggestions is our Better in Audio [4] list. These are titles that are improved by listening. Several of my favorites are children’s/YA titles:
[5]
[6] 
[7] 
[8]
Philip Pullman’s His Dark Materials [5] series and Tamora Pierce’s [6] books, which are both Full Cast Audio [9] recording (meaning multiple people voice the characters), Jim Dale’s [10] excellent reading of the Harry Potter [7] series by JK Rowling and the Peter and the Starcatchers [8] series by Dave Barry and Ridley Pearson.
Do you have any favorite narrators? Have you ever listened to a book, just because you like the narrator?
