Male or Female voice?

[Catlady]

Originally Posted by pidgeon92

I just started a Wally Lamb novel: We Are Water, and each character has their own chapters and their own narrators, gender appropriate. I'm about 90 minutes it, and so far it is very well done.

I've been listening to a bunch of books that follow this pattern. I don't know if it's coincidence or if the alternating first-person chapters are a hot trend just now for writers. But when the book is written this way, it really makes sense to use multiple narrators.

[Sweetpea]

I prefer if the main character is male that a male is reading, and vice versa. I don't care if a male reads with a female voice or the other way around, as long as it's done well.

[sakura-panda]

I guess I haven't listened to enough books since I do not have an opinion either way. I know I like *good* readers; I've fortunately had only one that was a *terrible* reader, but up until then I thought that all readers were selected purposefully for each book.

I have not yet listened to any books with multiple narrators, but I expect that the change in readers would be more distracting than having only a single voice.

[moyogi2]

I have listened to a couple of hundred audiobooks on my daily commute over the past few years. I don't really care if it is a female voice or a male voice, as long as they read it well, with differentiation so I can tell who is speaking. Luke Daniels is very good, Dick Hill is great for the Jack Reacher books. A good reader makes me forget about the narration and lets me immerse myself into the story. Bad narrators make me quit listening and return the book. A good example is Artie Johnson doing the new Carl Hiaasen book - just awful.

[BenG]

If I'm not mistaken the Song of Ice and Fire books alternate between male and female narration depending on the chapter's POV. It doesn't switch within the chapter itself though.

[CRussel]

Originally Posted by moyogi2

I have listened to a couple of hundred audiobooks on my daily commute over the past few years. I don't really care if it is a female voice or a male voice, as long as they read it well, with differentiation so I can tell who is speaking.

Agreed. I've been listening to audio books since the mid-1980's with Books On Tape. I've had male readers and female readers. Most have been good, a few have been great, some have been acceptable, a few might have been good for a different book, but were a bad fit for the specific book/author, and a couple have been simply awful. There is no correlation between good and gender. That being said, I prefer a male narrator for a lead character who is male, and a female narrator for a lead character who is female. But far more important is the ability of the narrator to forget about acting and TELL ME A STORY.

Which probably explains why I could listen to Donada Peters/Nadia May/Wanda McCaddon read the London Directory. The same for David Case/Fredrick Davidson/Edward Raleigh.

[AdamJ]

With me, I don't care male or female voice. Theirs voice just is good, this is enought.