Today's snailmail brought me perhaps the fourth or fifth analogue talking 
book I've been sent that was read by Ted Stoddard, whose voice is very 
breathy and whose style of reading is somewhat slow and includes frequent 
tiny pauses where none is called for.  I much prefer to listen to nearly all 
the other readers or to Eloquence.  Speeding him up raises his pitch 
unpleasantly.  Perhaps Mr. Stoddard will become less objectionable when 
digitalized, but his inappropriate pauses will alas remain.

  A couple of years ago I e-wrote to my talking-book advisor, "  On side 2 
of Grace Hopper's biography I find Kerry Dukinis pronouncing
"Norbert Wiener" as if it were spelled "Norman Weiner."  She'd evidently
never heard of that famous MIT mathematician nor adequately learned German
pronunciation."

  Somewhat earlier I e-wrote to the BTBL in Sacramento, '  In regard to 
"Augustus," read by Fred Major, I have to report that Major
often pronounces "the" as "thee" before a consonant, and he, for example,
like those who've read to me about Greek philosophers with names ending in
s, confusingly pronounces "Augustus's personality" like "Augusta's
personality." He also often mispronounces the indefinite article as a long
a, and I suspect that he mispronounces various words, such as "basalt,"
"Iulius," and "Philipi."'

Although many of those who record the talking books are wonderfully good, 
playing the various characters of stories with well chosen distinct voices, 
some others don't rise up to the level of a computer bvoice.

  Nelson 


    VICUG-L is the Visually Impaired Computer User Group List.
Archived on the World Wide Web at
    http://listserv.icors.org/archives/vicug-l.html
    Signoff: [log in to unmask]
    Subscribe: [log in to unmask]