"You suck! You're no Jim Dale!"

This just made me laugh and laugh. Quite the budding aesthete isn't he?

This just made me laugh and laugh. Quite the budding aesthete isn't he?

He has opinions. He's also a Pushing Daisies fan so we're well acquainted with Jim Dale's voice. Plus, the audiobook for Goblet of Fire alone is like twenty hours long. We've spent a lot of time with Jim's voice.

I will also note that while I don't really like Dale's voice for Luna, his Prof. Sprout is something we imitate with great satisfaction. You haven't lived until you've heard him declaim on "Bubo Tubers pusssss."

I found a website that had Stephen Fry's readings of the HP books, and I'm curious to compare them.

I have listened to both. I tend to prefer Dale, but they are both excellent. Dale does more "voices," which as you pointed out is great when the voice is good, but distracting with the ones he doesn't rock. Fry reads it more like a dude with an awesome voice reading you a book. Which can be nice because it just gets out of the way of the story and lets you soak it up a bit more.

Thanks, Gris, that's an excellent and useful comparison.

I do love Dale's take on Dumbledore, McGonnigal and Hagrid. His posh drawl for Malfoy is a perfectly apt choice since Rowling mentions it all the time, but it's mildly distracting for me since (a) I'm used to Movie Malfoy; and (b) my ear's not really attuned to British accents so that I automatically give that drawl its set of snobby associations.

The audio version of Skulduggery Pleasant is lousy. The reader does most of the voices completely wrong to the way they sound in my head. Not tonally as much as the attitude; like, a sentence that I always read as sarcastic was read as tentative and meek. I cannot abide audiobooks not agreeing with me.

Well, Stephen Briggs does a good job with Pratchett. I also got the audiocassette for an abridged version of L.A. Confidential as done by David Straitharn for a dollar. Good value, plus I'm driving down to LA next week.

I've listened to both Fry and Dale, and I'd say Gris nailed it. There are a few Dale voices that grate on me, but they are more distinctive.

I'd recommend The Golden Compass for a good audiobook listen it has a cast rather than a single reader, which is great.

I mostly liked Dale, but his Hermione and Luna voices just didn't work for me at all. I really liked his voices for everybody else, though, and he was great at describing action.

I have found Pratchett makes for excellent audiobook reading. I'm currently most of the way through Small Gods.

I just finished Soulless. I think some people here have enjoyed it as well.