The Joy of Audio Books Narrated by the Author

WEST PALM BEACH, Fla. - July 8, 2019 - PRLog -- Amazon Audible finally sold me a subscription last week when I was preparing for a 14-hour train ride to visit my sister in Brussels.  I searched Audible for my favorite authors.  Lately, my favorites are J.K. Rowling and Elizabeth Garden; two authors who survived domestic violence, raised children as single-mothers, and succeeded beyond their hopes and dreams.   I divorced three years ago because I was the victim of an alcoholic husband, and now raising my two boys, I turn to the stories, to the voices, of women like Rowling and Garden because they have the traumas I have dealt with, the fear that I had, and still have, for my boys depend on me and they are my life.   I lucked out by finding two books that totaled 13 hours of listening, which would leave me one hour to eat lunch.  They were Rowling's "Quidditch Through the Ages" (3:10) and Garden's "Tree of Lives" (9:45).   I have read both of these books in paperback, but I am the type of person who reads (or listens to) a good book ten times without getting weary of it.

These two authors are probably #1 and #2 because their personal life-victories put them on a level of depth that stirs my admiration.

I was expecting to enjoy Rowling's book more, because the paperback was such a thrill; and Garden's book was also a great pleasure, though slightly less intense for me at the time.   My audio-book experience of the two titles was dramatically different, in favor of Garden's "Tree of Lives."  How could that be, I wondered, because Rowling is the creme de la creme for so many people; yet her audio-book didn't stir my soul the way that Garden's did.   The reason was pretty obvious.  Garden's "Tree of Lives" was a "Narrated by the Author" audio-book.

Rowling's was narrated by a man named Lincoln.  He is a dramatic English narrator with an accent so thick that it licked you on the face like a dog coming from the rain.  Lincoln most-likely earned between 100 and 300 GBP per hour to narrate the book, as those are the going rates according to what I've heard.  But he was just acting the story.  Garden, who cares enough about her book to read nine hours and 45 minutes of it for her readers to enjoy, wasn't "acting" her book, she was "feeling" her book, "reliving" her story, her life; and the emotion comes through.  It is powerful.  Now that I have an audible account I will be a frequent listener of audio-books.  But I will only listen to Narrated by the Author books if I can help it.

Listen to a sample, or purchase, Elizabeth Garden's author-narrated audio-book, Tree of Lives at Audible.com: https://www.audible.com/pd/Tree-of-Lives-A-Novel-Audioboo... (https://www.audible.com/pd/Tree-of-Lives-A-Novel-Audioboo...)