Robert E. Howard Readers discussion

Not sure if anyone else listens to audio books and recordings of REHs works. Sometimes I have to take long drives sometimes on business or to visit my son in Lubbock, TX at school. If I'm going alone I like to listen to the recordings of the Del Rey books but I have others as well. I have all 3 Conan books (The Coming of Conan,The Bloody Crown of Conan, and the Conquering Sword of Conan. I also have "The Horror Stories of Robert E Howard" which I currently am listening to. I also have some others that were amateur recordings of Breckinridge Elkins and a couple of horror stories. The best I ever heard though was a recording on vinyl which I purchased at a store in Philadelphia back in 1982. It was recorded in 1975 by Moondance Productions, Inc, Box 425, Wilmington, VT 05363 and was authorized by Glenn Lord. Unlike the Del Rey and other recordings, this one had 4-5 actors playing the different roles including a narrator. It was made for radio but I don't know if it ever got air-time. It has two stories; The Tower of the Elephant and The Frost Giant's Daughter. I would love to hear more recording done in this manner with sound effects and all.

I'm a huge fan of audio books. They're most of my reading lately, but I haven't been thrilled with any of the REH ones I got from the library. The ones I tried listening to were by Tantor Media.

Tantor Media is the company that recorded the Del Rey books. I like the fact that they have recorded the books but the Conan books were all narrated by Todd McLaren and I'm not that taken with them either. I like the "Horror Stories" read by Robertson Dean much better but nothing comes close the the vinyl record done by Moondance Productions. The amateur recordings of Breckinridge Elkins are not professional and the narrator leaves a lot to be desired.

I like audio books, but they do have to be well read by a skilled narrator. I've wondered about the REH books and how they were done.

I don't recall exactly what I didn't like about them, but I am very picky about the reader & don't care for most Libervox recordings due to the untrained voices. Some material & writing is better suited to audio than others. Orson Scott Card says he writes to be read out loud & it sure seems to be the case. I had to quit one the other day due to poor writing. Every single sentence of dialog had "he said/she said" in it. Very annoying. Even worse when the sentence was a question & "he said" instead of 'asked'.

I don't want to steer anyone away from the Trantor recordings as I enjoy listening to them on a long ride and the narrators are good but I would much prefer a radio type audio with actors and sound effects like Moondance Productions did. Of course I read that the reason those recordings were made was for radio play. I'm not sure if they ever got air time anywhere.
I remembered I have a cd of Mark Finn and a troupe of actors doing one of the Steve Costigan boxing stories that wasn't bad.
BTW the Trantor recordings have everything from the books including the introductions.

Let me clarify that the audio book I quit was High Profile by Robert B. Parker, one of the Jesse Stone mysteries. Tom Selleck has starred in a couple. They're candy reads, but even so I can't take some forms of poor writing. The reader was good & didn't try to pitch his voice to distinguish between characters, just kept a low key, easy listening voice that I liked.

I have a bunch of the Old Time Radio programs. Some are great, others are kind of a hoot. I love The Shadow & others in short doses, but the quality is usually pretty poor on the older shows. That's a shame because the Lux & Mercury Theaters were both well done with some top notch stars & the stories are usually well edited for length & content. The later ones like Ray Bradbury Theater, XMinus1, 2000x, & such are better quality.

Short books & stories with limited characters make good audio productions. I was very impressed by a couple of Card's; Treason & Ender's Game. Card actually read one part in the latter.

When the number of characters gets larger, it doesn't always work for me. I think it's because the producers use just a few readers & often they don't seem to do as well with multiple parts. Of course, single readers can use multiple voices & some can be grating. Others great. Jim Dale reading Harry Potter is a joy to me. Others don't like all his sound effects & odd voices, though.

I recently listened to the first 6 of David Weber's Honor Harrington series. The reader gave odd national accents to the characters. Sometimes people from different planets both had Scottish accents, other times people from the same planet had different accents. It was jarring.

I have a couple of old cassette recordings. One is William Shatner reading the first section of Asimov's Foundation Trilogy. I enjoyed it and they used some sound effects as well.
Rene Auberjonois did a reading of Zelazny's "The Last Defender of Camelot" and "The Horses of Lir". Very well done and as you mention Jim, those stories are short with very few characters so it works real well.
I have several of the old "Shadow" recordings as well. I like the radio versions because of the different actors portraying the characters. That's the way the Moondance productions of "Tower of the Elephant" and "Frost Giant's Daughter" are done as well as sound effects. One of my favorite Conan lines is from "Frost Giant's Daughter" when Conan tells the Heimdul the Vanir that "Not in Vanaheim, but in Valhalla will you tell your brothers that you met Conan of Cimmeria!" It was well done! It is kind of annoying when the actor changes his voice for a female. It doesn't quite do it for me. I'll have to check out Orson Scott Card's audios.

I found that archive.org has a lot of OTR & other audio books. I listened to a lot this past fall. I listed them & the link to them in this review:
https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...

Audio books now comprise most of my reading, but that has also doubled. I was averaging about 125 books a year until the past couple when I started really listening to a lot & now I've read over 200 books for the past 2 years. Something like 3/4 of them are audio books & I'm getting a lot of other stuff done, too.

Yesterday I turned a nice cherry burl bowl while listening to a factual book about conspiracy theories & how they have shaped history. I use a small MP3 player (Sandisk) that clips to my shirt & use earbuds. With my ear protectors on over top of them & I can run any machinery & still hear the story just fine. If I need to think, I just tap the player on my chest & pause it. Generally, it is running though so the hours pass by very efficiently.