All depends on the reader 21 September 2014 Reviewer: Gail from USA
180 of 348 people found this review helpful
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This is a great service, & I encourage everyone to support it. The downsides: some readers are just plain bad to the point of being incomprehensible. Mispronounced words, jerky delivery, ignored punctuation, annoying cadence. I've only listened to books in English. Some non-native English speakers have recorded these. Most have been unlistenable. Probably these readers have been told that they speak English very well, & they most certainly do. That doesn't mean they read very well. Non-English intonation, mispronounced words--some non-English speaking readers mispronounce English, French, and Latin words in a work for example--leading one to wonder why they choose to attempt this. Add to the mix that some of these are just plain bad readers, & it is excruciating. Of course, one can choose simply not to listen. But this choice is annoying when the reading is a collaborative effort, starts out with excellent readers, the book gets interesting, & then a reader or readers take over which make the rest of the book well-nigh incomprehensible or painful to hear.
The preservation of books read with huge mispronunciations (I've logged 50/chapter) seems counterproductive. It also means that listeners must choose with caution to avoid disappointment. It also means that the number of books actually listenable to is greatly smaller than those recorded.
In summary, I would recommend LibriVox to a friend.
