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The Lord Of The Rings: The Unabridged Audiobook


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Been going through this for over a month now, mostly an hour or 3 a day during work.

 

My first audiobook, I've been considering the format as a substitute for reading for a while now.

 

Read by Simon Inglis, recorded in the 90's this, as far as I know, is still the only licensed unabridged audiobook of Tolkien's massive tome.

 

Inglis strikes the right tone in reading from the book rather than trying to act it out.

Hearing it read aloud really brings home how this is book prose, and why this was deemed  unadaptable for decades.

His different accents are well done and his voice in general strikes has just the right mixture of scholarly and rustic. At times sounding not unlike Jim Broadbent.

 

For today I stopped after the Rhohirrim were escorted through the woods by the Púkel-men. Theoden will perish tomorrow.

 

Anyone else familiar with this audiobook?

 

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At one time I thought I had bought an audiobook of FOTR, but it was a radio play or something and I didn't much care for it.  I'd be very interested in an unabridged audiobook, as I found the prose kind of difficult to work through the first few times.  I may enjoy it more hearing it.

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3 hours ago, Quintus said:

How does the listening experience compare to the reading of LOTR? 

 

Its much easier. Passages that are hard to get through reading it are less hard when they're being read to you. Even Treebeard went by quite well, as did the Paths Of The Dead.

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On 7/6/2018 at 6:07 PM, mstrox said:

At one time I thought I had bought an audiobook of FOTR, but it was a radio play or something and I didn't much care for it.  I'd be very interested in an unabridged audiobook, as I found the prose kind of difficult to work through the first few times.  I may enjoy it more hearing it.

 

There are two "radio plays" of LOTR. The BBC Radio one (w/Ian Holm as Frodo), which is excellent, and the "Mind's Eye" American version which is, er, not. In fact the latter is to be avoided at all costs.

 

For the real deal though, the unabridged recording by Inglis (and it's ROB Inglis, Stef), as Steef says, is outstanding.

 

11 hours ago, Bilbo said:

The pronunciations in the Silmarilion audiobook are... strange.

 

Indeed. But The Silmarillion has a different reader than the LOTR.

 

For a delightful rarity, seek out the long out of print reading of The Hobbit by Nicol Williamson. It's fantastic (though sadly, abridged).

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5 hours ago, Nick1066 said:

 

There are two "radio plays" of LOTR. The BBC Radio one (w/Ian Holm as Bilbo), which is excellent, and the "Mind's Eye" American version which is, er, not. In fact the latter is to be avoided at all costs.

 

For the real deal though, the unabridged recording by Inglis (and it's ROB Inglis, Stef), as Steef says, is outstanding.

 

 

Indeed. But The Silmarillion has a different reader than the LOTR.

 

For a delightful rarity, seek out the long out of print reading of The Hobbit by Nicol Williamson. It's fantastic (though sadly, abridged).

 

Yeah I think it’s Martin Shaw that does the Sil.

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7 hours ago, Nick1066 said:

 

There are two "radio plays" of LOTR. The BBC Radio one (w/Ian Holm as Bilbo), which is excellent, and the "Mind's Eye" American version which is, er, not. In fact the latter is to be avoided at all costs.

 

 

The BBC one has Holm as Frodo, doesn't it? With John Le Mesurier as Bilbo? I really enjoy that one

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50 minutes ago, Bofur01 said:

 

The BBC one has Holm as Frodo, doesn't it? With John Le Mesurier as Bilbo? I really enjoy that one

 

Right you are! No idea why I wrote Bilbo. This place kills the little grey cells.

 

Fixed.

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8 hours ago, Nick1066 said:

the "Mind's Eye" American version which is, er, not. In fact the latter is to be avoided at all costs.

 

For, let me guess, trying to retcon the american accent into antiquity?

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49 minutes ago, Chen G. said:

 

For, let me guess, trying to retcon the american accent into antiquity?

 

Bad acting, awful accents, poor sound effects and amateurish production. It sounds like it was recorded in a bathroom, because a large part of it was. The pronunciations are all wrong, and the Hobbits are all made to sound and act like children.

 

The only thing that really sets the Mind's Eye production apart is that it happens to be the only adaption to feature Tom Bombadil (and it's readily apparent why this is). 

 

All that said, I vaguely remember listening to this version as a kid, and enjoying it.  But today it's more or less unlistenable. 

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I totally understand why you'd want to replace reading with listening, but what I often find irritating is the voices of those narrators. I had to stop Game of Thrones because of that and Inglis is no different to me. I'm too picky.

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7 hours ago, Stefancos said:

I got used to his vocal interpretation quite fast. Interesting that some of his pronounciation of certain names sounds more English then in the movies. Isildore instead of Isildur etc.

They should have hired a vocal coach to instruct the actor the proper Tolkien pronunciation for the names in the book. Which is to say the way we Finns pronounce them that actually coincides with the way they are supposed to be pronounced e.g. in Quenya and Sindarin.

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I believe they did have a coach and that the pronounciations are mostly correct.

 

One of the few pronounciation mishaps I can recall is actually Sir Christopher Lee pronouncing "Khazad Dum" literally, with the kh functioning as a voiceless velar fricative. While Khuzdul is modelled after semitic languages which prominently feature such a fricative (e.g. my first name), I seem to recall this being inaccurate to the pronounciation guide produced by Tolkien.

 

But than, later in the film, McKellen pronounces it correctly.

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A small gripe I have with the movies is how they keep pronouncing the "th" in Dwarf names like it was the tongue-between-teeth sound nonexistent in Khuzdul, instead of the "hard t" plus "h" combo. But tehcnically neither Thrór, Thráin or Thorin are the actual Khuzdul names, so it's a passable workaround that characters more well-versed in Elvish or Envish-derived languages would pronounce them like that. Much worse is how no Hungarian voice actor or dubbing director has ever understood what that English "th" sound was in the history of mankind, so in the dub, the important dwarf is Sorin, son of Sráin, son of Srór.

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Since the dwarf names appearing in the Hobbit and consequently in LotR are mostly derived from the Völuspa list of dwarves in Edda, I think the Norse pronunciation is the one to use. Plus these are probably public dwarf names, their private secret Khuzdul names reserved only for their closest kin. 

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12 hours ago, bollemanneke said:

Yes well, nothing is worse than Mortensen saying 'Isildur' or 'Mordor'.

 

Transylvanian!

6 hours ago, Incanus said:

They should have hired a vocal coach to instruct the actor the proper Tolkien pronunciation for the names in the book. Which is to say the way we Finns pronounce them that actually coincides with the way they are supposed to be pronounced e.g. in Quenya and Sindarin.

 

And he should have been taken to the lore masters and taught the ancient words. For the power and wisdom that shone still from them was dimmed when compared to the Elder Days, yet in the waning of the world they had power still. For those who studied long....

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The Game of Thrones audiobooks can be challenging. Roy Dotrice's gruff voice in some ways really suits the material, the problem is that he makes every character, including Arya, either sound like 70 year or man with a chest infection or the wicked witch of the west. Not much range there.

 

On the other hand, I can whole heartedly recommend the Harry Potter audiobooks...either the "American" version read by Jim Dale, or the U.K. one ready by Stephen Fry.  Though calling the former the "American" version is a little misleading, as both narrators English. I've listened to both, and as much as I love Stephen Fry, I actually prefer Jim Dale's version because he literally does a different voice for every character, and they're all excellent. Fry is good, of course, but it's basically Stephen Fry's voice for all the characters.  Jim Dale's Harry Potter is probably the best experience with an audiobook I've ever had.

 

 

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I love reading, but nowadays have less and less time for it. I haven't dared to make the jump from the fun, self-paced active and creative experience to the passive one where all my attention is required at all times to get the full thing. 

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