Douglas Adams

[arethinn]

Lately, I've been listening not only to the radio show of Hitchhiker's, but to recordings of Adams himself reading the books. I've been somewhat confused by the fact that he is clearly reading the UK printings (evidenced by certain vocabulary words), and yet pronounces "Z" (as in ZZ9 Plural Z Alpha) as "zee" rather than "zed", "zebra crossing" as "zee-bra" rather than the "zeh-bra" I'm used to from Red Dwarf, etc. All in all very enjoyable, though. Hearing him make the screaming noises of agony for Arthur and Ford at the Vogon poetry reading was particularly amusing. I'm slightly disappointed that he seems to have been imitating the radio/TV voices, though, rather than coming up with his own interpretations for the characters. (Then again, as he is supposed to have written the radio part of Arthur specifically for the actor who played it, maybe imitating that voice is "his own interpretation", in a way.)

ObNothing: user icon created from my own photo of spinny light shiny bits at tyrsalvia's most recent party.

Comments

[twopiearr.livejournal.com]

have you heard the recording of a live reading he did in NYC?

in the preamble to that he says he only has five voices: quiet sport, loud sport, quite posh, loud posh, and australian - but given that there aren't actually any australians in hitchhiker's, you have to work it out from just the four.

[arethinn]

No, I didn't know there was such a thing. Sounds neat!

[twopiearr.livejournal.com]

Tis.

Cheap, too (http://www.audible.com/adbl/store/product.jsp?BV_SessionID=@@@@2108223452.1091391839@@@@&BV_EngineID=cccjadcmdmigjjicefecegedfhfdhfi.0&uniqueKey=1091392474160&pageType=preliminaryResults&productID=PF_DOVE_000029)!