{"id":561,"date":"2007-11-12T17:12:24","date_gmt":"2007-11-12T17:12:24","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/steelypips.org\/weblog-test\/?p=561"},"modified":"2024-02-04T17:21:31","modified_gmt":"2024-02-04T22:21:31","slug":"dahl_chocolate","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/steelypips.org\/weblog\/2007\/11\/dahl_chocolate\/","title":{"rendered":"Dahl, Roald: Charlie and the Chocolate Factory<\/cite>"},"content":{"rendered":"

I listed to Roald Dahl’s Charlie and the Chocolate Factory<\/cite><\/strong> as read by Eric Idle. I don’t think I can say anything new about the book overall: its fantastic inventiveness, its peculiarity, and its cruel streak are all much-remarked. So instead I’ll make a couple of comments about the listening experience.<\/p>\n

Idle does a very enjoyable job generally, but I wish the producer had managed his volume better. Generally, when a character whispers on the page, the reader should not<\/em> whisper, because it’s too hard for a listener to make out the words. (Ditto shouting, though that’s more a matter of sparing the listener’s ears.) Experienced audiobook readers manage the intensity of their reading rather than the volume, which works much better.<\/p>\n

The other thing about listening is that it made me wonder where the book was supposed to be set. I’d always assumed it was in Britain, as Dahl was a British writer and it has that indefinably British air. However, though Idle gives Charlie and his family British accents, the money Charlie finds in the street is a dollar bill, and some of the other children have American accents. It’s a bit peculiar, though only distracting in the slower pace of an audiobook.<\/p>\n

I don’t remember a thing about the sequel, and look forward to rediscovering it.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I listed to Roald Dahl’s Charlie and the Chocolate Factory as read by Eric Idle. I don’t think I can say anything new about the book overall: its fantastic inventiveness, its peculiarity, and its cruel streak are all much-remarked. So instead I’ll make a couple of comments about the listening experience. Idle does a very … <\/p>\n

Continue reading “Dahl, Roald: Charlie and the Chocolate Factory<\/cite>“<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[15,118],"tags":[183],"class_list":["post-561","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-sf-and-fantasy","category-single-narrator-audio","tag-dahl-roald"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/steelypips.org\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/561","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/steelypips.org\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/steelypips.org\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/steelypips.org\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/steelypips.org\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=561"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/steelypips.org\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/561\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2768,"href":"https:\/\/steelypips.org\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/561\/revisions\/2768"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/steelypips.org\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=561"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/steelypips.org\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=561"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/steelypips.org\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=561"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}