It got worse. Not long after the point in the book I was at when I was relating yesterday's blog, the readers hit on the idea that they should tell me when there's an ellipsis in a sentence. Meaning that when a sentence reads on paper "It would do...for now," what I hear is "It would do elipsis for now." They also do that for open and close paragraph, but for no other form of punctuation. I get the feeling that by the end of the book, they're going to be spelling out every word for me, and reading every single punctuation mark, and possibly ending every with something like "J-O-H-N space W-E-N-T space H-O-M-E period printed on recycled paper page 127."
If anyone out there has any justification for that, please give it to me.
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Tuesday, January 25, 2011
Monday, January 24, 2011
From the "They Just Didn't Care" Department
I mentioned before that I like to listen to audiobooks while I'm driving. A while ago, I got downloaded a stack of Robert A. Heinlein audiobooks, and I've been going through the ones I hadn't listened to before. The quality of the recordings vary widely. A lot of them come from the Library of Congress, some initiative they had for books for the blind. I'm guessing they're in there because they're probably public domain.
Currently, I'm listening to Methuselah's Children, and I feel confident in saying that it is the worst audio recording I've ever listened to. Each track in the book appears to be read by a different person, and it seems clear that each one is reading the book for the first time. The reading is flat and emotionless, with all the warmth of someone reading a shopping list out loud. And it seems that everything was done on the first take, as you can hear the woman doing the reading stumble over words, and repeat parts that she messed up. In one particular case, the woman even sighed in exasperation before re-reading one line. They also read off each page number, which I don't understand at all. It's like on TV when you see a character pretending to be a bad actor, and their lines are delivered like "Well, I must be going. Exit stage left. Oh, sorry, I wasn't supposed to read that part."
In particular, it seems like the reader for Track 3 hadn't so much as glanced at her part before reading it to the recorder. There's awkward pauses at least once a sentence, more if the sentence contains words not normally used in English conversation. She even managed to mispronounce Heinlein's name at the beginning of the track. Normally I would wonder what the director was thinking when he or she was working on this book, but it's obvious that there was no such director, of if there was, they were fast asleep the entire recording. I can't say I blame the director, either. The readers managed to make daring death-defying escapes sound not only boring, but tedious. They read what the main character had for breakfast and a description of him taking down an armed cop with equal gusto, which is to say none at all.
What makes this especially annoying is that I've listened to some audio books that were done very well, with readers who brought a sense of pride and craft into what they were reading. A lot of them are accomplished voice actors, and give each character their own voice, from tone to timbre to accent. The people reading Methuselah's Children sound like they're doing it as a punishment.
I've heard other audiobooks done by multiple readers, but those were cases of giving narratives by different characters a distinct flavor. It adds to the sense that you're being told the story from different perspectives. In the case of this book, I find myself dreading if the next reader can possibly be any worse than the one before.
One good example of an audio book done right would be the Harry Potter audio books. I understand there's a couple different versions: the British audio books, read by Stephen Fry. Some may know Fry as the other half of Fry and Laurie, the latter of which is famous in America as Gregory House. I haven't listened to them, but I understand they're very good. The American audio books are done by Jim Dale, who, if you'll excuse the pun, is a veritable wizard of voice acting. He's so good at doing voices for the characters that you'd swear there's four or five other people in the room with him. One thing that really impressed me is that he can do convincing female voices. Most voice actors have trouble doing voices of the opposite sex. Women voiced by men sound shrill or like high-pitched men, while men voiced by women tend to sound like they have bad head colds or chew gravel daily.
It should come as no surprise that the women doing this audiobook don't even bother with voices. Hell, sometimes it's difficult to tell when they switch from dialogue to narration, as they don't even bother to pause between paragraphs. They even switch between different sections of the book without pausing, which a couple times had me wondering why one of the characters was suddenly the President of the United States. They do the same when stating page numbers (I still can't figure out why they're telling blind people what page they should be on), sometimes not even pausing when the page change occurs mid-sentence. So you'll get sentences like this. "We have to get out of page 42 here as soon as we can." Which is a very jarring experience, leading me to wonder why the person on the other end of that dialogue doesn't ask "Why did you just say 'page 42?'" At least, that's what I'd ask the reader if I could.
Currently, I'm listening to Methuselah's Children, and I feel confident in saying that it is the worst audio recording I've ever listened to. Each track in the book appears to be read by a different person, and it seems clear that each one is reading the book for the first time. The reading is flat and emotionless, with all the warmth of someone reading a shopping list out loud. And it seems that everything was done on the first take, as you can hear the woman doing the reading stumble over words, and repeat parts that she messed up. In one particular case, the woman even sighed in exasperation before re-reading one line. They also read off each page number, which I don't understand at all. It's like on TV when you see a character pretending to be a bad actor, and their lines are delivered like "Well, I must be going. Exit stage left. Oh, sorry, I wasn't supposed to read that part."
In particular, it seems like the reader for Track 3 hadn't so much as glanced at her part before reading it to the recorder. There's awkward pauses at least once a sentence, more if the sentence contains words not normally used in English conversation. She even managed to mispronounce Heinlein's name at the beginning of the track. Normally I would wonder what the director was thinking when he or she was working on this book, but it's obvious that there was no such director, of if there was, they were fast asleep the entire recording. I can't say I blame the director, either. The readers managed to make daring death-defying escapes sound not only boring, but tedious. They read what the main character had for breakfast and a description of him taking down an armed cop with equal gusto, which is to say none at all.
What makes this especially annoying is that I've listened to some audio books that were done very well, with readers who brought a sense of pride and craft into what they were reading. A lot of them are accomplished voice actors, and give each character their own voice, from tone to timbre to accent. The people reading Methuselah's Children sound like they're doing it as a punishment.
I've heard other audiobooks done by multiple readers, but those were cases of giving narratives by different characters a distinct flavor. It adds to the sense that you're being told the story from different perspectives. In the case of this book, I find myself dreading if the next reader can possibly be any worse than the one before.
One good example of an audio book done right would be the Harry Potter audio books. I understand there's a couple different versions: the British audio books, read by Stephen Fry. Some may know Fry as the other half of Fry and Laurie, the latter of which is famous in America as Gregory House. I haven't listened to them, but I understand they're very good. The American audio books are done by Jim Dale, who, if you'll excuse the pun, is a veritable wizard of voice acting. He's so good at doing voices for the characters that you'd swear there's four or five other people in the room with him. One thing that really impressed me is that he can do convincing female voices. Most voice actors have trouble doing voices of the opposite sex. Women voiced by men sound shrill or like high-pitched men, while men voiced by women tend to sound like they have bad head colds or chew gravel daily.
It should come as no surprise that the women doing this audiobook don't even bother with voices. Hell, sometimes it's difficult to tell when they switch from dialogue to narration, as they don't even bother to pause between paragraphs. They even switch between different sections of the book without pausing, which a couple times had me wondering why one of the characters was suddenly the President of the United States. They do the same when stating page numbers (I still can't figure out why they're telling blind people what page they should be on), sometimes not even pausing when the page change occurs mid-sentence. So you'll get sentences like this. "We have to get out of page 42 here as soon as we can." Which is a very jarring experience, leading me to wonder why the person on the other end of that dialogue doesn't ask "Why did you just say 'page 42?'" At least, that's what I'd ask the reader if I could.
-Long Days and Pleasant Nights
Monday, January 3, 2011
To Hell with Money
A friend of mine has this phrase he'll use when he hears or sees something that pleases him, or he thinks it cool. In much the same way that Paris Hilton might say "That's hot," he'll say "That's money."
The phrase really bothers me. A large part of it is the implication inherent in the statement that money is not simply something that has worth, but that it is also worthy. In my opinion, taking something that has intrinsic value, and comparing it favorably to another thing that has no intrinsic value, cheapens that thing.
Of course, I know there are some people who would squawk at the idea that money has no intrinsic value. This world is full of people who bow to and worship at the altar of money, forgetting that money is not a thing in itself, but a shared hallucination. Money only has value if both parties involved agree it does by mutual consent. If I were to offer a dog a choice between a $10 steak and a $20 bill, which would he prefer? The $20 bill has no value to him, while the steak is a tasty meal. I couldn't explain to the dog that with the $20 bill, he could purchase 2 steaks. The $20 bill only has value because the butcher and I have both accepted the fiction that it does.
Some may argue that a dog and a person are not the same, and I shouldn't expect a dog to understand what a human does. So here's another example, which I'm paraphrasing from a book. If you were stuck on a desert island, would you rather have a sack full of cash, or a sack full of potatoes? A silly question, you might be saying, as the answer is so obvious. And yet you have to be pulled out of civilization to make the answer so obvious. The money is useless to you (no intrinsic value) on a desert island, while the potatoes can be eaten (intrinsic value), and with some luck, can be planted and cultivated into even more potatoes. While the merits of a potato-only diet are arguable, they certainly have more nutritional value than money, whether it's paper or coinage.
Traditionally, gold has had value to us because it's shiny and rare. That's pretty much been it for most of human history. Recently, some practical uses have been found for gold; it's conductivity makes it useful in electronics, for instance. But it would be absurd to claim that the ancient Babylonians were coining gold because they knew that in 6,000 years, we'd find a way to use the stuff.
Having said all this, I don't really have anything against money. I accept that it's a useful way to attain goods and services, and certainly more practical in an urban setting than keeping a bunch of livestock I can barter. Though if the Revolution comes tomorrow, I may find myself wishing I had a couple pigs to slaughter just in case. But it's not really something I can believe in, and certainly nothing I can ascribe higher values to and invoke its name to show my approval of something.
I was talking to a friend once, the same friend as I mentioned in the beginning, in fact. I told him that I don't believe in ghosts. He asked me why, and I said that I've never seen one. He countered with "do you believe in 1 million dollars?" His point, I'm sure, is that I've never seen 1 million dollars, either. And of course was the unspoken assumption that I absolutely must believe in 1 million dollars, or the fraud of money would be exposed for what it is. I gave it some serious thought, and I have to say, I don't believe in one million dollars. You may as well ask if I believe in a character in a novel. It's just an idea.
Hell, in this modern age of electronic banking, when a paycheck can pass from a corporation's account to the bank account of the employee via direct deposit, and from there to the grocery store's bank account via a debit card, without ever having become anything other than an electronic trail the entire time, can money really be said to exist? As I understand it, we don't even back our money on the gold standard, the silver standard, or any other hard currency. Our money is backed by credit. Money doesn't even have a physical existence anymore, except for those increasingly rare times we convert it from binary code into cash. No, I don't believe in 1 million dollars. But I do believe in steaks and potatoes.
The phrase really bothers me. A large part of it is the implication inherent in the statement that money is not simply something that has worth, but that it is also worthy. In my opinion, taking something that has intrinsic value, and comparing it favorably to another thing that has no intrinsic value, cheapens that thing.
Of course, I know there are some people who would squawk at the idea that money has no intrinsic value. This world is full of people who bow to and worship at the altar of money, forgetting that money is not a thing in itself, but a shared hallucination. Money only has value if both parties involved agree it does by mutual consent. If I were to offer a dog a choice between a $10 steak and a $20 bill, which would he prefer? The $20 bill has no value to him, while the steak is a tasty meal. I couldn't explain to the dog that with the $20 bill, he could purchase 2 steaks. The $20 bill only has value because the butcher and I have both accepted the fiction that it does.
Some may argue that a dog and a person are not the same, and I shouldn't expect a dog to understand what a human does. So here's another example, which I'm paraphrasing from a book. If you were stuck on a desert island, would you rather have a sack full of cash, or a sack full of potatoes? A silly question, you might be saying, as the answer is so obvious. And yet you have to be pulled out of civilization to make the answer so obvious. The money is useless to you (no intrinsic value) on a desert island, while the potatoes can be eaten (intrinsic value), and with some luck, can be planted and cultivated into even more potatoes. While the merits of a potato-only diet are arguable, they certainly have more nutritional value than money, whether it's paper or coinage.
Traditionally, gold has had value to us because it's shiny and rare. That's pretty much been it for most of human history. Recently, some practical uses have been found for gold; it's conductivity makes it useful in electronics, for instance. But it would be absurd to claim that the ancient Babylonians were coining gold because they knew that in 6,000 years, we'd find a way to use the stuff.
Having said all this, I don't really have anything against money. I accept that it's a useful way to attain goods and services, and certainly more practical in an urban setting than keeping a bunch of livestock I can barter. Though if the Revolution comes tomorrow, I may find myself wishing I had a couple pigs to slaughter just in case. But it's not really something I can believe in, and certainly nothing I can ascribe higher values to and invoke its name to show my approval of something.
I was talking to a friend once, the same friend as I mentioned in the beginning, in fact. I told him that I don't believe in ghosts. He asked me why, and I said that I've never seen one. He countered with "do you believe in 1 million dollars?" His point, I'm sure, is that I've never seen 1 million dollars, either. And of course was the unspoken assumption that I absolutely must believe in 1 million dollars, or the fraud of money would be exposed for what it is. I gave it some serious thought, and I have to say, I don't believe in one million dollars. You may as well ask if I believe in a character in a novel. It's just an idea.
Hell, in this modern age of electronic banking, when a paycheck can pass from a corporation's account to the bank account of the employee via direct deposit, and from there to the grocery store's bank account via a debit card, without ever having become anything other than an electronic trail the entire time, can money really be said to exist? As I understand it, we don't even back our money on the gold standard, the silver standard, or any other hard currency. Our money is backed by credit. Money doesn't even have a physical existence anymore, except for those increasingly rare times we convert it from binary code into cash. No, I don't believe in 1 million dollars. But I do believe in steaks and potatoes.
-Long Days and Pleasant Nights
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