[issybird]

I'm not sure I can pick a worst ever. I recently abandoned The Red Tent read by Carol Bilger; her arch tone irritated me beyond measure. I felt bad about it, too, because it was recommended to me by a nephew who generally suggests good books and he loved it. I'll try the print version eventually, but it may have been spoiled for all time.

My pet peeve is mispronunciations and unfortunately they're legion. I recently listened to a book read by Gildart Jackson and not only did he mispronounce many proper names, he did so inconsistently. Mather, for example, as in Cotton and Increase, rhymes with "rather" and not "bather," but he switched back and forth. In the first section, he said the name of a local river, the Piscataqua, correctly each time it occurred, but in the second section he consistently got it wrong. What happened there?

Even the gods occasionally have feet of clay. My heart cracked a little when Nadia May mispronounced Lady Mary Coke's name. And it turns out that Frederick Davidson also mispronounces the single most mispronounced word in audiobooks, "flaccid." It's not flassid, people; it's said exactly the same as the "acci" in accident. Eventually I caught Simon Vance although I understand why he got Sault Ste. Marie wrong.

Still, Nadia, Fred and Si are in a different category altogether than someone like Xe Sands, a popular narrator who nonetheless butchered The Romanov Sisters. I would never listen to a book read by her again.