Saturday, May 16, 2015

In praise of the Dale audiobooks

I know I have been quite critical of the Jim Dale audiobooks of the Harry Potter novels. It is usually much easier (and more popular) to find fault in things than it is to praise them and I all too often fall victim to the lure of being critical.

I am now in the middle of book five -- The Order of the Phoenix -- and, despite the faults with Dale's delivery that I have documented in earlier posts to this blog, I am thoroughly enjoying the experience.  He is, overall, an excellent reader and brings the stories to vivid life for me.

During the course of listening to the first four and a half books, I have laughed out loud often and gasped in surprise several times. I have been so enthralled that I have been unable to shut off the CD player, even when I was supposed to be starting my work day and I have found myself taking every opportunity to get back to the story throughout the day.

I find it something of a miracle that, in the two months I have possessed this 124-disc collection, comprising about 153 hours of reading, I have already managed to listen to more than 80 of the discs (representing more than 100 hours). That's just amazing!

One of my favourite aspects of Jim Dale's reading, believe it or not, is the way he vocalises Dobby saying the name "Harry Potter". I cannot even begin to describe it but I think it is absolutely perfect. It makes me smile every time it comes up.

Another aspect of the audiobooks that I particularly like has nothing to do with the recordings themselves -- it's the artwork that decorates the CD cartons. I have not yet been able to discover who the artist or artists is/are but the little drawings are fantastic. They are wonderful visual representations of the characters from the stories that, in my opinion, capture the essence of the Potter books much better than do the films.

I'm not sure if I am allowed to reproduce them for you on this blog but I will try to find them somewhere online for you. They really are pretty wonderful.

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