Bad audiobooks

[Anonymous]

DCUM has had multiple discussions of good audiobooks but I am also curious about which audiobooks DCUM thinks we should avoid, not because of the book itself but because of the narration. I think that a bad narrator can kill the experience of what might be an otherwise good book. I will start with two recent books I had to stop because I couldn't deal with the narration. I ended up checking out the paper versions from the library and enjoyed the books once I wasn't listening to the terrible narration.

Sourdough by Robin Sloan. The narrator was breathy and ditzy-sounding, which the main character was not. But I could have dealt with that. What really killed it for me was the fact that the narrator pronounced many of the SF Bay locations completely incorrectly. I really wonder how something that sloppy got through. "AlamAYdah" for Alameda ruined the experience for me every time she said it. I had to stop the audiobook. "No" Valley?!? Argh.

Where'd You Go, Bernadette by Maria Semple. In this case there wasn't anything problematic about the narration itself, but listening to an epistolary format novel in audiobook form was painful. The narrated "To:" and "From:" for the emails grew so tiresome. I thought the book itself was a lot of fun, but the audiobook took the fun out.

What are yours? What should we avoid because of the narration?

[Anonymous]

I can't stand George Guidall's reading style. I've avoided (or read) dozens of books I'd like to listen to once noticing that he's the narrator.