The voice of Charlton Griffin is the voice of Sherlock Holmes. If you wish to hear a classic read, particularly one requiring British accents, pick Griffin. He reads, performs great texts, and his choices in emphasis, intonation, or characterization present new possibilities to the student.
Audiobooks are a blessing to the commuter, the busy teacher, and the person who missed the books he should have read, back when he should have read them. Charlton Griffin has been blessed with a voice that is capable of many characterizations or personalities (though his Americans can all begin to sound alike). Most important, Griffin reads the book and does not get in the way of the text as say the regrettable reader of the American audiobook version of the Harry Potter series does.
Listening to a book read by an artist like Griffin reveals new elements in the text. When I read a book many times, I often “edit” the book the same way each time. I skip the parts I do not like or at least hasten through them. Listening to a book being read forces me to attend to each part of the text as the author intended me to do. The artist has come to the work as a whole, thought about performing that work, and made choices. He presents the work and nothing is left behind or forgotten.
Yet this is not all a thoughtful reader like Griffin does. He makes choices in the speed in which he reads a line or the intonation he uses. He can give his Holmes a lilt that shows humor in a line that I might read differently. This makes me pause and think. The reader, the listener, the text produce something new each time the text is heard. I am hearing Homer as a true rhapsode thinks he should be heard now. The performance may be digitally captured, but my personal experience is different each time. If I have read a text many times, say Homer’s Iliad, then Griffin can bring fresh insight in how he read the particular translation he is performing. Griffin is presenting a way of hearing a text where emphasis can change or suggest meaning.
Griffin is not a tyrant, but a teacher. He has looked at a work as a whole and decided how it should sound as it goes. Most of us read as we go and so we miss the way the work might hang together. Griffin reads a work with the end in mind. Often a book builds in energy, especially one that is very long like Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. A bad reader plugs along without knowing where the Gibbon is going, but Griffin knows. Charlton Griffin keeps us going, even in the not so great bits of great books.
If I must prepare a class, then I read the book again regardless of how many times I have read the book. That is being responsible. If I can, I also listen to Charlton Griffin read the text, that is being joyful. I am thankful for the artistry of Charlton Griffin. Give him a listen.
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