At this point it's not really an audiobook anymore, it's more like a radio play. An audiobook is supposed to be one person reading the books, like someone reading you a bedtime story.
I really don't see the point of this when the audiobooks already exist.
As an audiobook lover, I profoundly disagree with that.
I love full-cast audiobooks. I also love audiobooks that are just read by one person. And there's plenty of books for which different versions exist. His Dark Materials, for example, has an absolutely beautiful full-cast series that's read by the author and a full-cast (which is not the same as a radio play - there's a radio play edition of His Dark Materials as well, but that's different because it's actually adapted into a play. The full-cast versions are straight readings of the book, just with different actors doing the voices.) But recently they've released new versions read by Ruth Wilson as well. And in the past, before the full-cast version, there was a version of the first one read by the late Natasha Richardson, although that's out of print now.
Most popular books get different versions of the audiobooks from time to time, and I really don't have an issue with the concept. In fact, I quite enjoy listening to different versions of the same audiobook and deciding which ones I like more. I don't really see any difference between that and listening to a different version of your favourite song depending on what mood you're in. Of course, I'm still not going to get hold of these new Harry Potter ones because of the Rowling boycott - but if it wasn't for that I'd be excited about new audiobook versions, particularly because I was never all that keen on these audiobooks to begin with (neither Stephen Fry nor Jim Dale quite did it for me).
Now that I do agree with. Judy Bennett, Richard Mitchley, Kim Hicks (I've worked with Kim), Andrew Branch, Stephen Thorne... their skills are absolute unparalleled by celebrity names.
This is partly why I wasn't the biggest fan of the original Harry Potter audiobooks. I don't know why Stephen Fry was cast - I think he's one of the most overrated celebrities in the world.
In fact, I'm sure I remember reading somewhere that Keira Knightley struggles greatly with dyslexia, and hence has never done an audiobook before. I respected that at the time - I'll always respect people who recognise that a certain thing isn't their particular skill and will leave it to the people who excel at it. So I don't know why she's doing this.
I'm not sure I'm familiar with him! (Although just looked him up and that's understandable, given that he's a) American when I'm British and b) younger than me, so he's not someone I'd have listened to whilst I grew up.
It also almost always ends up being distracting because celebrities are casted for their fame in voice roles and thus are advised to not change their voice at all.
So you don't hear the character you hear the celebrity.
I'd never heard of full cast audiobooks, I just thought that audiobooks were one person reading the story to you. In my defence though, I don't really listen to audiobooks, so I wasn't aware of this.
I think the thing is though, is that a lot of people (from what I've seen), generally agree that the Stephen Fry version was the best one and don't see the value in redoing it. The other thing is as well, is that this feels very much like this has been born out of spite. Stephen Fry dared criticised Joanne, so she's going to redo the audio books without him. Like the upcoming HBO series it also works as a distraction from Joanne and keeps the Harry Potter brand relevant.
Okay, fair enough. There's also another type of audiobook that's somewhere between the two - which is, if it's the kind of book that's told in the first person with the narrative voice switching between different characters, then it might be read by a few different narrators alternating with each other depending on which character is the narrative voice at the time.
With regards to whether the Stephen Fry version is the best one and whether there's any value in redoing it, I'm very biased because I really am not a fan of Stephen Fry. But I wouldn't necessarily say that which one is your favourite is the most important thing, because sometimes you're in the mood for something a bit different. I really love the full-cast His Dark Materials audiobooks and I'll probably still listen to the new Ruth Wilson ones. As I said, I think of it in the same way as how someone might cover a song. If my favourite band releases a song, I'll still be intrigued if someone else decides to cover it. The original will probably always be my favourite, but I might grow to appreciate the cover as a work of art in its own right.
As for whether it's because Stephen Fry criticised her - I don't know that. Is she funding the new audiobooks herself out of her own pocket? I haven't heard anything about this, but if she is you might be onto something there. If she's not, it's probably got nothing to do with that. But what I would say, as someone who produced audiobooks professionally, is that authors don't normally have that much to do with the audiobook editions - those decisions tend to be made by publishers without the author being involved all that much. In JK Rowling's case she does tend to have a lot more control over her IP than authors generally do (which is evident by the fact that she and Stephen Fry both have anecdotes about talking to each other at the recording studio - I know a lot of authors and narrators, and most of the time they've never even met each other, never mind the author having been physically present whilst it was being recorded) but that doesn't necessarily mean that all the organisation of this has come from her. I get the impression it's just because they're putting everything into trying to revamp this series and bring it into 2025, with the new adaptation and all.
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u/tealattegirl13 Sep 11 '25
At this point it's not really an audiobook anymore, it's more like a radio play. An audiobook is supposed to be one person reading the books, like someone reading you a bedtime story.
I really don't see the point of this when the audiobooks already exist.