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4.45 AVERAGE
4.45 AVERAGE
Great stories, great narration...
This fabulous new audio collection from Audible includes all the short and long stories, set out in the traditional order. Fry gives a short introduction to each of the five books of short stories and individually to each of the long ones. The collection runs to over seventy hours, so needless to say I haven't listened to it all yet, but will have great fun dipping in and out of it over the coming months and years. I started by listening to The Valley of Fear.
In the intro to this one, Fry puts the book into its historical context, telling the story of the Molly Maguires, a secret society active among the immigrant Irish coalminers in Pennsylvania during the 1870s; and of the Pinkerton agent who infiltrated them, ultimately leading to their destruction. He points out how soon after the Civil War this was, and that the bosses of the Pennsylvania mines were effectively their own law and could hire people of their own choosing to enforce it. He also tells the other side of the story – the appalling working conditions and extreme poverty of the workers. He manages all this without giving any spoilers for the story to come. An excellent introduction – brief, but interesting, clear and informative.
His narration of the story itself is great! He had to compete with my favourite Holmes narrator, the wonderful Derek Jacobi, so he was going to have to work hard to convince me. And I found myself laughing sympathetically because ACD didn't make his task an easy one. Almost every character has his accent described, usually something like “half-English, half-American” or “Chicago with a hint of Irish” or “German overlaid with the twang of the new country”. And then there are the characters who are not who they first seem, so that when their true identity is revealed, they change to their real accents. I must say Fry did brilliantly with all of them and, despite there being a pretty huge cast in this story, he managed to differentiate them all quite clearly. There are two characters with straight Irish accents, so to make them different, he made one sound Northern Irish and the other Southern, both done totally convincingly. Even Inspector MacDonald's Aberdonian accent got a high pass mark from me. He brings out the humour and the warmth of Watson's character, and makes the adventure parts suitably exciting without over-dramatising them. I always think you can tell when a narrator loves the material he's reading, and Fry's strong affection for the Holmes's stories comes through clearly.
There was an issue at first with there being no adequate indexing but Audible has now rectified this by issuing an accompanying PDF which tells where to find each story.
My love for the Jacobi recordings remains, but these are just as excellent, and the little introductions are a great addition, making this a fabulous collection which I highly recommend to all Holmes fans out there.
NB The audiobook was provided for review by Audible via MidasPR. Lucky me!
www.fictionfanblog.wordpress.com
This fabulous new audio collection from Audible includes all the short and long stories, set out in the traditional order. Fry gives a short introduction to each of the five books of short stories and individually to each of the long ones. The collection runs to over seventy hours, so needless to say I haven't listened to it all yet, but will have great fun dipping in and out of it over the coming months and years. I started by listening to The Valley of Fear.
In the intro to this one, Fry puts the book into its historical context, telling the story of the Molly Maguires, a secret society active among the immigrant Irish coalminers in Pennsylvania during the 1870s; and of the Pinkerton agent who infiltrated them, ultimately leading to their destruction. He points out how soon after the Civil War this was, and that the bosses of the Pennsylvania mines were effectively their own law and could hire people of their own choosing to enforce it. He also tells the other side of the story – the appalling working conditions and extreme poverty of the workers. He manages all this without giving any spoilers for the story to come. An excellent introduction – brief, but interesting, clear and informative.
His narration of the story itself is great! He had to compete with my favourite Holmes narrator, the wonderful Derek Jacobi, so he was going to have to work hard to convince me. And I found myself laughing sympathetically because ACD didn't make his task an easy one. Almost every character has his accent described, usually something like “half-English, half-American” or “Chicago with a hint of Irish” or “German overlaid with the twang of the new country”. And then there are the characters who are not who they first seem, so that when their true identity is revealed, they change to their real accents. I must say Fry did brilliantly with all of them and, despite there being a pretty huge cast in this story, he managed to differentiate them all quite clearly. There are two characters with straight Irish accents, so to make them different, he made one sound Northern Irish and the other Southern, both done totally convincingly. Even Inspector MacDonald's Aberdonian accent got a high pass mark from me. He brings out the humour and the warmth of Watson's character, and makes the adventure parts suitably exciting without over-dramatising them. I always think you can tell when a narrator loves the material he's reading, and Fry's strong affection for the Holmes's stories comes through clearly.
There was an issue at first with there being no adequate indexing but Audible has now rectified this by issuing an accompanying PDF which tells where to find each story.
My love for the Jacobi recordings remains, but these are just as excellent, and the little introductions are a great addition, making this a fabulous collection which I highly recommend to all Holmes fans out there.
NB The audiobook was provided for review by Audible via MidasPR. Lucky me!
www.fictionfanblog.wordpress.com
Fantastic collection of classic Sherlock Holmes novels, narrated perfectly by the incomparable Stephen Fry.
challenging
mysterious
relaxing
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
Complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Complicated
The audio version read by Stephen Fry was excellent, including his own commentary and insight. The voices he does are amazing. I slowly listened to these over about 6 months and enjoyed them immensely. While the formulaic nature of the Sherlock style story got predictable, I was always delighted by the creative crimes and solutions.
This was all the Sherlock Holmes stories in audible. I listened to at least half and then decided to give up the subscription as I wanted to try something else
Timeless classic I had never read and I'm pairing it with the BBC television series. YUM!!!!
It was great to go through these stories again, especially to see how they line up with the Sherlock TV episodes. Haven't read them in many years, so I got to be surprised by some of the endings again.
adventurous
challenging
dark
funny
informative
mysterious
tense
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Plot
Strong character development:
Complicated
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Complicated
Well, I did it. It took me the whole year, but I finished both volumes.... good grief that was a lot. Probably 1500 pages in all, I think I took it on in the correct manner - a story a week. Sometimes 2. The Boheimian Adventure was probably my favorite, and the Redheaded league my second. My biggest surprise was how intrigued Doyle was with the American West, and his knowledge of Mormons. I'm pretty sure he didn't take his tour of the U.S until AFTER his writing career, when he moved into his search for his mothers spirit as a Medium.