UNABRIDGED VERSUS ABRIDGED. It is a discussion as old as audiobooks.

It is partly about simple commerce – unabridged audiobooks can seem high priced, though the hours fly by. But it is also about convenience: I think there is still a place for abridged texts, for not everyone wants to listen to twenty-eight or thirty hours of a novel.

However, I am glad to say that the advent of downloads, and a greater appreciation of the full work, has seen the audience for unabridged texts on audiobook grow.

This has resulted in trips down memory lane for me, because I find that not only are we doing novels which we did in abridged form in the early years of Naxos AudioBooks, but we are recording them, often, with the same actors – though sometimes a new voice takes up the baton.

This is true of two of this month’s recordings: Virginia Woolf’s To The Lighthouse read by Juliet Stevenson and The Adventures of Tom Sawyer read by Garrick Hagon.

It is a coincidence that we are releasing new unabridged recordings of these masterpieces with the original readers, but in both cases, the abridged recordings were the first to introduce us to readers who have featured regularly on Naxos AudioBooks in the decade and more that followed.

Read the rest of this entry »

HOW IMPORTANT – HOW TRUE? – are newspaper/magazine reviews of new audiobooks? After all, they are but one person’s response to a book and its performance.

Since we began, Naxos AudioBooks has received a continuous stream of good reviews, and 2008 has been no different: there have been numerous plaudits worldwide, but particularly in the UK and US.

WE WERE ALL EXCITED when the possibility of recording Anne Enright’s Man Booker Prize winner The Gathering emerged, with the help of Julian Batson (of Oakhill Publishing – the NAB library supplier).

All authors will tell you that it is difficult for them to know who should read their novel, for the author inevitably hears the words already. This is especially true of Anne Enright, who was, for many years, a radio producer and therefore accustomed to working with the spoken word.

Surprisingly, she knew exactly who she wanted to read The Gathering – Fiona Shaw! Fortunately, with Macbeth and a wonderful recording of Lewis Carroll’s Alice novels for Naxos AudioBooks behind her, Fiona was only too pleased to pick up the challenge – especially as she had a few weeks’ break from her world tour in the National Theatre production of Beckett’s Happy Days.

Fiona was finishing in the States when we contacted her, and she bought the novel and read it on the plane. She was totally absorbed by the lively, imaginative writing, as well as stirred by the intensity of the family story, and looked forward to getting into the studio.

Read the rest of this entry »

The 2 Naxos Audiobook collections of Plutarch’s lives (NA628912 for Greek; NA630212 for Roman) change Plutarch from dry-and-dusty-author-on-shelf to an exciting and vivid observer of history. In the Greek set, the first disc gives the history of Sparta – and you’ll find out that the Spartan life depicted in the recent movie “300″ wasn’t far off the mark. The section on Brutus and Caesar in the Roman Lives gives sense the Shakespeare’s oft quoted “et tu, Brute” when you find out that Brutus was supposed to have been Caesar’s son, and not just a close friend who had turned to the bad side. No wonder those words carry such shock in those few syllables. 

The structure of Plutarch are parallel lives – instead of just the life of Caesar you also get the parallel lives of his contemporaries and friends - and that helps you to place the historic figures in context and to understand living relationships.

These are the books that authors until modern times were familiar with – and you’ll be surprised at how many concepts you thought you knew the source of actually come from Plutarch in the 1st century. Hear about Pyrrhus (track 129 in Greek Lives) and the true irony of a Pyrrhic victory will surprise you. A great and surprisingly wonderful set of audiobooks!