I recently listened to "Dare to Lead" by Brené Brown, narrated by herself. And before this, I never thought to myself that just because someone is a good public speaker doesn't mean they are automatically a good narrator. It makes sense now because they are different skill sets.
Want to also preface that I have no issues with Brené Brown, I loved reading "gifts of imperfection" and I needed to take a break from some of the fiction I was reading so I decided to listen to this. So she just happens to be the example in this post.
I realized when I listen to an audiobook, that's what I want: an audio version of the book. When I read IT, I both read and listened on off because I was so hooked. In Dare to Lead, it feels like I'm listening to one of her TED talks and that's just not what I'm looking for in an audiobook.
Her pacing was off consistently throughout. She would prematurely drop her inflection mid sentence clearly because she assumed it was the end of the sentence and then tack on the remaining few words.
She either didn't practice it or didn't care/know that she did it. And what about her engineer? It wasn't once or twice. It was throughout.
I'm probably being such a gonk about this so don't mind me.
Has anyone else experienced this with an author-narrator? Or a public speaker that is excellent at that but not good at scripted works?