The next installment in my great road trip audiobook marathon is one I’ve had in my library for a while. Not too long ago, I read (or listened to) a handful of Gaiman books, but for whatever reason, I didn’t get to Anansi Boys.
Like many of Gaiman’s books, mythology forms the basis of the story. He takes the Anansi trickster stories and riffs on them. In this particular one, Anansi’s son Fat Charlie is shy, non-magical, a disappointment to the god. But when Anansi dies of a heart attack, Fat Charlie learns he has a brother he didn’t know about–Spider.
The book is the story of the hijinks that ensue once Spider enters Charlie’s world, and how their joint adventure shows both Charlie and Spider their real selves.
On many of Gaiman’s audio books, he does the recording himself, and those are wonderful. In this case, another actor handles the narration and does a fair job. But I was frustrated at what felt like wild inconsistencies in the characters’ voices and accents. Because of distractions on the road, I was trying to keep track of the dialogue by the voices when I missed a dialogue tag, but that wasn’t always possible with the inconsistencies.
So this may be one I would recommend reading directly instead of listening to on audio. That said, the accents for some of the characters were hilarious and that would have been lost on me if I read it myself. So there you have it; it’s both good and a problem.
I have just one day of driving left, and one final audio book ready to go. And it’s a much longer one than my drive tomorrow. But I’ll start it and see how it goes. But for tonight… Game of Thrones and sleep.
Like many of Gaiman’s books, mythology forms the basis of the story. He takes the Anansi trickster stories and riffs on them. In this particular one, Anansi’s son Fat Charlie is shy, non-magical, a disappointment to the god. But when Anansi dies of a heart attack, Fat Charlie learns he has a brother he didn’t know about–Spider.
The book is the story of the hijinks that ensue once Spider enters Charlie’s world, and how their joint adventure shows both Charlie and Spider their real selves.
On many of Gaiman’s audio books, he does the recording himself, and those are wonderful. In this case, another actor handles the narration and does a fair job. But I was frustrated at what felt like wild inconsistencies in the characters’ voices and accents. Because of distractions on the road, I was trying to keep track of the dialogue by the voices when I missed a dialogue tag, but that wasn’t always possible with the inconsistencies.
So this may be one I would recommend reading directly instead of listening to on audio. That said, the accents for some of the characters were hilarious and that would have been lost on me if I read it myself. So there you have it; it’s both good and a problem.
I have just one day of driving left, and one final audio book ready to go. And it’s a much longer one than my drive tomorrow. But I’ll start it and see how it goes. But for tonight… Game of Thrones and sleep.
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