Readers, How much do they matter?

I listen to a lot of audio books.  My eyesight has deteriorated in the last several years and they have become my primary source of "reading."   It's been an adjustment for me because I have had to change reading habits that have developed during the previous 60+ years and replace them with new ones.

This has not always been a bad thing.  At first I had to get a firm grip on my wandering attention span and teach it to focus.  Becoming adjusted to having a book read to me instead of allowing my eyes to skip merrily along bouncing from one sentence or paragraph to the next was at first the hardest thing for me to do.  Listening I discovered was entirely different from reading.  I was being forced to go at the reader's pace, hearing every detail and often, if the reader was good enough, absorbing every nuance.  Things that I had skimmed over in my headlong race to the finish.

And because I have a very inquiring mind I began to wonder who these readers were?  It seems to me that audio books are becoming more and more popular.  There certainly are more of them available than there used to be.  I can even download them electronically from my library!  How cool is that?  

I started my quest to learn more about audio book readers where I always start when I have a question.  Teh Google.  And as always I was then in a position to find out more than I ever wanted to  know in the first place.  

Readers of Audiobooks are not just out-of-work actors filling in and supplementing income until a real job comes along.  This is a whole new industry that has seemingly sprung up out of nowhere as the demand has increased. There are about a zillion sites that are advertising for audio book readers but after clicking on some of them most are sites that will train you for a fee.  And this is OK since if I wanted to become one this is certainly what would I have to do,  However I don't feel right about promoting a commercial site here by posting their link so if anyone is interested, or even wants to become one they can find it for themselves by Googling.

As with everything else to do with reading, we all have our favorites.  And that goes for readers, as well as authors and genres. As I happily make my way through my increasingly large inventory of audiobooks I have discovered that the reader is more important than I thought.  Well, to be honest I never even thought about them until some of them started irritating me.  But when I started paying attention I discovered that they can make all the difference in whether I enjoy a book or not, or they can ruin a book that I  probably would have otherwise enjoyed had someone else been the reader. And they can infuriate me by spoiling an old favorite by not sounding at all like the voice that has already developed in my head that I have already firmly bonded with.

I am a lover of series and if it's one I have been following it drives me crazy when the publisher changes readers.  Some readers have become THE voice for characters if they are reading books in a series.  It doesn't matter if the reader they changed was good or not, it's the change that upsets me.  For instance, I adore Cornwell's Richard Sharpe Frederick Davidson books does a brilliant job of reading these books. I became hooked on them when the series started playing on TV.  Changing reader's would be like replacing Sean Bean with some other actor.  It just wouldn't work.

Two of my favorite series are:

Jacqueline Winspeare's Maisie Dobbs books that are read by Orlagh Cassidy; and the Mary Russell/Sherlock Holmes mysteries read by Jenny Sterlin.  

If either of those voices changed I'm afraid it would really throw me off.

For non series books I have a list of personal favorites and periodically I will click on their name link on audible.com to see what they have done recently.  That can, and has led me to purchase a book.

John Lee is one of my favorite readers.  He did a wonderful job with: Noble House, by James Clavell, The Three Muskateers  by Alexander Dumas and Fall of Giants, by Ken Fowlett

And I could not write a diary about readers and leave out Lonesome Dove, by Larry McMurtry and read by Lee Horsley.  Mr. Horsey's superb reading skills had me tasting the dust, feeling the heat, holding my breath in terror as the indians crept up and sobbing when one of the characters died.

So, what about you?  Do you have favorite readers that you follow like you do authors?  Ones that will make you at least consider buying a book if they are the reader?  My inquiring mind wants to know.