December 31, 2012
I recently was diagnosed with thyroid cancer (I'm fine! I'm fine!!), but with the stress, the surgeries, radiation, and life adjustments I was having a lot of trouble reading. My attention span couldn't take looking at a page and piecing words together and making sense of them. But I LOVE BOOKS. And a recovery without reading was...well terrible to imagine. So I started an Audible account and started listening.
My usual reading is 90% Regency romance and 9% Fantasy/Sci-Fi/Urban Fantasy and 1% something like The Help. So I bought a couple of romance novels and learned - I hate female readers. I don't know what is wrong with me, but their voices grate and loose my attention. Authors that I love, heck comfort reads I have on my Keeper shelf had me bored and frustrated.
Then I realized that my first jaunt in 2007 was listening to James Marsters read the Harry Dresden Novels - well at least 1-4. I LOVE Marsters voice and that's the reason I got addicted to Jim Butcher's wizarding P.I. Luckily for me all the Dresden books are now out on Audible so I started listening to them. And I've moved onto a number of Urban Fantasy novels with male readers like Kevin Hearne's Iron Druid series, or Lish Mcbride's Necromancer books. I'm addicted to the Kim Harrison Hallows series, but can I listen to the female reader drone on? Nope.
So what is it that makes female voices so annoying to listen to? I'm a woman. I love female singers. I adore female actors and poets. Why am I so sexist against female audio book readers? Am I alone? I'm determined to find a female reader I like. There must be at least one. There are male readers I can't listen to either, so maybe I just keep getting female duds. I'm on the hunt, but until then I look at all female read audio book titles with dread.
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