http://faerye.net/post/books-have-voices Comments on "Books have voices" - Faerye Net 2007-06-09T22:50:34+00:00 http://faerye.net/post/books-have-voices#comment-2115 Re: Who else? 2007-06-09T22:50:34+00:00 2007-06-09T22:50:34+00:00 <p>You may be right about E. Thompson. Although the list may actually be called &#8220;People I secretly want to be when I grow up&#8221;, and V. Woolf would thus be on it, tho&#8217; I don&#8217;t fancy drowning myself and Vita S-W has never drawn me over-much.<br /> <br /> Hmm. I would have to cast my mind back to discover whether I&#8217;ve noticed such a big shift in narrative voice twixt books and movies, but it does represent one of my fears about movies based on books, and one of the reasons I avoid some of same.<br /> <br /> Perhaps it&#8217;s because I don&#8217;t have much of a telephone job, these days, but I haven&#8217;t experienced the &#8220;Ma&#8217;am&#8221; very much within recent memory. Perhaps you should tell them you prefer to be addressed as &#8220;Your Grace&#8221;. That&#8217;s nice and gender-neutral, <em>n&#8217;est-ce pas</em>?</p> felicity http://faerye.net/post/books-have-voices#comment-2112 Who else? 2007-06-07T06:38:50+00:00 2007-06-07T06:38:50+00:00 <p>Who else is on your list of empowered British females with a slightly romantic flair? Jane Seymour just wasn&#8217;t going to cut it.<br /> <br /> I was reading something lately-<i>To Say Nothing of the Dog</i>, a moderately good sci-fi stuck mostly in victorian times-and though it was a first person male narrator, I kept feeling like it was a female voice. Dammed annoying I tell you. Almost as annoying as the numbers of people I call on the telephone who call me Ma&#8217;am. I mean, I&#8217;m not sure I even like &#8216;sir&#8217; most of the time, but ma&#8217;am? ugh.<br /> <br /> On NPR last weekend, on Sound Opinions (two music geeks debating pop music, much fun), they were talking about best all time cover songs and how sometimes musicians just &#8220;make a song their own.&#8221; (The Kingston&#8217;s &#8220;Louie Louie,&#8221; The Byrds&#8217; &#8220;Mr. Tambourine Man,&#8221; Aretha&#8217;s &#8220;Respect,&#8221; etc.) I think actors can do this to book voices too. Not all of us had the luxury of reading High Fidelity first, but if you did you know the change I&#8217;m talking about. That book was British once.</p> EMeta