tongue tied

I listen to a lot of audio books during my commute, and I've developed a new found respect for those readers. I can't even get through Sammy The Seal without tripping over every other word, much less stay coherent hour after hour. I know they don't do it all in one take, and in some of the less-polished works it's painfully obvious where the cuts are made, but it's still impressive.

Sometimes even the authors read it themselves, which is a mixed bag. Neal Stephenson has a pleasant voice and can make his books feel like he's just chatting to you. On the other side of the spectrum, Stephen Hawking actually read his own book, Black Holes and Baby Universes and Other Essays. It's like listening to a Dalek explain theoretical physics. Almost as bad was Ray Bradbury reading Fahrenheit 451, who sounds so much like Andre the Giant that I kept expecting him to shout, "I am the Dread Pirate Roberts!"