Also narrators in the West are often voice actors by trade, or just actors of theatre and film doing voice work on the side. E.g. Steven Fry's narration of the ‘Harry Potter’ novels is gorgeous, Tim Curry's of ‘A Series Of Unfortunate Events’ is also very good, Jeremy Irons' voice and demeanor is a perfect fit for Nabokov's mood and writerly lyricism in ‘Lolita’.
Generally, I went through quite a bunch of unknown-to-me narrators, and had few qualms—whereas in Russian it's a gamble whether a reading will be tolerable. ‘Grassroots’ narrators sometimes have quirks that they apparently consider charming, but in practice are off-putting. Or narrators break into stereotypical kitschy voices, especially with old-time material like Dostoevsky: e.g. for orthodox priest characters. Or the production is just crappy.
Notably, best narrators in Russian seem to be either professionals hired by proper publishers, or straight up actors. Namely, Mikhail Gorevoy, Alexey Bagdasarov, Evgeny Ternovsky (Михаил Горевой, Алексей Багдасаров, Евгений Терновский). And for example, the magnificent many-voices narration of ‘The Good Soldier Švejk’ by Bagdasarov, Alexey Kortnev and others. Vladimir Samoilov's reading of ‘The Gulag Archipelago’ is incredibly good and touching on a whole different level, and he seems to be an old-time Soviet actor. Klukvin is also a treat to the ear, but again when the production quality is there, like with ‘Master and Margarita’.
A notable counterexample is Marshall Rosenberg's reading of his own ‘Nonviolent Communication’—regardless of the book's merit, his gentle and melancholy speech is a welcome break from the ‘in your face’ attitude tiring out my ears.
Fry's reading was good, but he's got nothing on either of them. It was also inconsistent. There's even a passage in book three where he appears to give Hagrid Hermione's voice. On top of that the voices he gave to women in general, were too shrill for my liking.
This sounds magnificent, and definitely the way I want to listen to Asimov.
McKeever apparently was no small name too: “was an actor, narrator, and recording artist. He narrated hundreds of books. For more than 15 years, he contributed monthly to Braille Monitor, the leading publication of the National Federation of the Blind, and became known as the “voice of the blind.”
Loads of audiobooks of bestsellers in English are narrated by big-name actors. Often ones who also do a lot of theatre and bring that dramatic flair to their readings. Look at the Chronicles of Narnia, for instance: its narrators are Kenneth Branagh, Alex Jennings, Michael York, Lynn Redgrave, Derek Jacobi, Jeremy Northam and Patrick Stewart, all known from stage and screen for their powerful voices.
It's a shame he won't be around to finish narrating the series. Then again, at the rate George R. R. Martin is going, neither will he be around to finish writing them.
In books 4 and 5, his voices for established characters, like Arya and Tyrion also went off the rails pretty frequently.
Still, even in his advanced age by that point he was better than John Lee, in my opinion.
The BBC Radio iPlayer app I use almost daily is full of radio plays. It’s definitely a British thing.
In terms of "celebrity" narrators (other than those named Wil Whedon)... I enjoy James Marsters (Spike from "Buffy the Vampire Slayer")'s work on the Dresden Files series. I would listen to pretty much any book those two performed.
Scott Brick being the most well known, probably, although there are several others.
There are also excellent cast based readings, like Cory Doctorow's last novel Walkaway (which had among other people Amanda Palmer in it).
There are also some excellent cast based reading Audible. American Gods comes to mind.
Rob Inglis for Lord of the Rings
I can, but that's probably because I partially rely on audiobooks (in addition to eBooks with text-to-speech) because of blindness.
> There were once radio plays, but with the demise of radio, audio plays barely exist nowadays in English
Agreed that unfortunately, the amount of radio plays being produced has dramatically decreased (excuse the pun). But I mostly notice this in English speaking nations other than the United Kingdom like Canada and the US. In the UK, radio drama is still very much alive, with the BBC and third parties like Big Finish producing a ton of great content.
I'll take the bait of your disdainquiry though. Richard Poe's reading of "Blood Meridian" is a masterpiece.
Tim Gerard Reynolds and Moira Quirk have done really good work and I'm more likely to buy books that have their names attached. Some other commenters have mentioned other favorite narrator's of mine as well, so yes, this English speaker can.
I can't really say it's my favourite audiobook series, but the one I seem to be listening to relentlessly is Winnie the Pooh. The version I have is narrated by Dame Judi Dench, and the characters read by well known actors such as Stephen Fry, Geoffrey Palmer and Sandi Toksvig.
Anne Hathaway for Wizard of Oz, David Tennant for How to Train Your Dragon, James Marsters for Dresden Files are all _amazing_.
We refer to him by name, it's not "Hey, you wanna pick up where we left off in Chamber of Secrets?", it's "Grab a snack and let's enjoy some Jim Dale, shall we?"
the style is that of a light novel, so much more adapt to narration and internal monologues and even leitmotifs for supporting cast voices
Audiobook interpreters like Игорь Князев or Александр Клюквин are household names to Russian speakers. Can any English speaker remember the name of the interpreter of their favourite audiobook? Only when it's the author himself, I guess. And only because of the abysmal quality.
There were once radio plays, but with the demise of radio, audio plays barely exist nowadays in English while they still strive in Russian.
This largely due to the difference in markets. English-speaking market is dominated by corporations and is severely policed.
Russian-speaking market is grassroots, uncensored and abundant in small producers / new names.
P.S. Aside from the hard-to-find recordings from 1960..1990ies, French audiobooks are even worse.