I read this novel on holiday.  As you can guess from the title caving is a major theme in this tale de nos jours.

Anyone else read it? Opinions?

It was serialised on Radio 4 a couple of years ago, as a Book at Bedtime IIRC. I think I would have got bored and given up half way through if I had actually been reading it, but it was OK listening to someone else read it while I was doing something else.

[Does anyone else agree with my position that having a single narrator read an author's actual words (albeit abridged in most cases) is far preferable to a dramatisation where the words are spoken by different characters as if the book were a play script?]

Nick.

It was serialised on Radio 4 a couple of years ago, as a Book at Bedtime IIRC. I think I would have got bored and given up half way through if I had actually been reading it, but it was OK listening to someone else read it while I was doing something else.

[Does anyone else agree with my position that having a single narrator read an author's actual words (albeit abridged in most cases) is far preferable to a dramatisation where the words are spoken by different characters as if the book were a play script?]

Click to expand...

My kids sometimes rather I read them a story at bed time,  than read it themselves. I think they would draw the line at having a troup of actors in their room reading the different parts.

Peter Burgess said:

It was serialised on Radio 4 a couple of years ago, as a Book at Bedtime IIRC. I think I would have got bored and given up half way through if I had actually been reading it, but it was OK listening to someone else read it while I was doing something else.

[Does anyone else agree with my position that having a single narrator read an author's actual words (albeit abridged in most cases) is far preferable to a dramatisation where the words are spoken by different characters as if the book were a play script?]

Click to expand...

My kids sometimes rather I read them a story at bed time,  than read it themselves. I think they would draw the line at having a troup of actors in their room reading the different parts.

Click to expand...

Mine insist on different voice characterisations - and woe betide me, if the next night I don't use the 'correct' voices when reading the next chapter.

I read thrillers to my missus when she's painting her ceramics.  She doesn't like me doing characterisations ever since I read a book to her where the chief characters were a Scotsman and a Mexican.  I do them anyway, just to wind her up.  It's got to be done, hasn't it?

I remember, many years ago, B.F.B.S. Radio serializing the wartime memoirs of one Terrence Alan Milligan, read by Himself. He did all the voice characterizations too...It was just like an episode of the Goon Show, minus the rest of the cast, ( Though Seacombe did do a cameo as Himself when Spike recounted the "Flying Gun" Incident, when They first met. ). It was also broadcast Un-Cut, with no bleeps or gaps.