Dream Book-Narrator Match-Ups
Just as matching actors to the right characters can make or break a movie, pairing narrators to books can make or break an audiobook. In this giveaway sponsored by Random House Audio and their site TryAudiobooks.com, we wanted to know: what’s your dream book-narrator match-up? You know, who’s the actor or actress (or professional audiobook narrator, if you’re familiar with them) that you’d love to have read one of your favorite books?
You guys came up with quite a list! Some of you obviously put a lot of thought into your choices. Others followed the simple formula of favorite voice + favorite book. There are even a few pairings that are….not exactly obvious choices. Interesting, but definitely unexpected.
It’s not all that surprising that the person you most want to narrate your audiobooks is the super-dreamy Benedict Cumberbatch. If you all had your way, he’d narrate all of the Sherlock Holmes books, Northanger Abbey, Good Omens, The Phantom of the Opera and Frankenstein. A close second on the the most-frequently requested narrator list is James Earl Jones. He was mentioned as narrator for Midnight in the Garden of Good & Evil, The Jungle Book, and Doctor Sleep.
Neil Gaiman and Alan Rickman are both mentioned more than once as narrators, too. Take a look at their picks and all the rest:
Wil Wheaton and Ready Player One. So I’m not sure if that’s in the rules because he did in fact read Ready Player One for the audio book and he did it LIKE A BOSS.
Colin Firth reading The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry
Rebecca Lowman reading The Giant’s House by Elizabeth McCracken
Alan Rickman and The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy
Davina Porter reading Winter Sea by Susanna Kearsley
Neil Gaiman reading Kavalier and Clay by Michael Chabon
Jim Dale reading Peter Pan
Home Land by Sam Lipsyte, read by Marc Maron
Peter Dinklage reading The Tin Drum by Günter Grass
Samuel Weldon Johnson’s God’s Trombones performed by James Earl Jones, Maya Angelou, Sidney Poitier, Morgan Freeman, Whoopi Goldberg, Samuel L. Jackson, and Oprah Winfrey
Pride and Prejudice read by Matthew McConaughey
The Signature of All Things read by Emma Thompson
Keith Morrison to narrate The 100 Year Old Man Who Climbed Out of the Window and Disappeared
Pride & Prejudice read by Orlando Bloom
James McAvoy reading Heart of Darknesss
The Lord of the Rings read by Neil Gaiman
Stephen Fry reading Atlas Shrugged
The Aviator’s Wife narrated by Barbara Rosenblat
Anthony Hopkins reading Horns (and The Shining!)
The Warmth of Other Suns: The Epic Story of America’s Great Migration narrated by Dr. Neil deGrasse Tyson
The Blue Dahlia by Raymond Chandler, read by Calvin Motes
Jeremy Irons reading The Brothers Karamazov
Alan Rickman reading ‘Twas the Night Before Christmas or When I Saw the Learn’d Astronomer
The Picture of Dorian Grey read by Stephen Fry
Perdido Street Station by China Miéville read by Malcolm McDowell
The Mysteries of Udolpho read by Kate Winslet
Idris Elba reading We, the Drowned
The Lord of the Rings read by Sir Ian McKellen
Ira Glass reading Running with Scissors
Pat Conroy reading Prince of Tides
Daniel Sharman reads Breaking Dawn By Stephenie Meyer
Marina Diamandis reads Ellen Hopkins’s CRANK trilogy.
Tom Hiddleston reading Regeneration by Pat Barker
Pierce Brosnan reading anything by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
Charlotte’s Web read by Clint Eastwood
Jeremy Irons reading the Yellow Pages
Jane Eyre read by Davina Porter
John Malcovich reading Gravity’s Rainbow
Michael Kramer and Kate Reading narrating The Sleeping Dragon (actually the entire Guardians of the Flame series)
Alex Turner (from Arctic Monkeys) reading On the Road
John Hurt reading The Brothers Grimm
Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk read by Rob Wriggle
Jude Law reading The Shooting Party by Isabel Colgate
Jenna Lamia narrating Whistling Past the Graveyard by Susan Crandall
Ari Fliakos to read Lullaby or Choke by Chuck Palahniuk
Any book read by Jeff Goldblum
Are there any match-ups that we missed? Who would be your ideal narrator, and what book would you have that narrator read?
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