Burt Reynolds Teaches Survival; Dexter Reads About Dinosaurs
Wednesday, January 13, 2010 at 12:36PM
WViT in Audible, Audio Books, Brad Pitt, Burt Reynolds, Gwyneth Paltrow, Johnny Cash, Paul Giamatti, Paul Newman, Penn Jillette, Samuel L. Jackson, Sean Penn, Uma Thurman

We here at WViT appreciate the art of simple, lo-fi, storytelling — maybe that’s why we’re fascinated by nuances of the voice. In today’s digital age of eye-candy, the practice of no-frills narration without visual whizbangery seems to becoming a dying tradition. Perhaps we’re purists, but as the debate rages about the future of media, how it can be saved, and the dawn of the iPadiTablet, iSlate or whatever it's destined to be crowned, we hope there will always be room for a quality story that lets the imagination fill in the blanks.

That's a reason why we love audio books and, specifically, Audible.com. (Here's our required FTC disclosure: We are no way affiliated, related, married, dating or even acquaintances with anyone from Audible.com, although we do follow them on Twitter — hope that’s O.K.)

Audible's over 140,000 hours of content includes an abundance of narrators — good and bad — and this includes a growing number of recognizable voices such as Johnny Cash, Julia Roberts, Matt Damon, Oprah Winfrey, Uma Thurman, Sean Penn, Hugh Jackman, Neil Patrick Harris, Samuel L. Jackson, and John Krasinski to name a small few. Surprisingly though, there isn't an easy way to find a thorough list of celebrity narrators — that's where we come in. We've pooled our global resources together to figure out who reads what and compiled a few notables in this post. For a comprehensive list, check out our new WViT Lists section. Tell your friends.

Headquartered in Newark NJ, Audible was founded in 1995 by veteran author and journalist Donald Katz. (Side note: In 1997, four years before Apple's iPod revolution, Audible created the world’s first digital audio player with an internet delivery system; it's now on display at the Smithsonian.) Last year, Audible was purchased by Amazon for a reported — less than the cost of Avatar — price of $300 million. Today the company boasts a catalog of over 60,000 audio programs from over 600 content providers.

Now, without further ado, here's the list:

And finally, Christopher Walken reads Edgar Allen Poe's The Raven:

The expanded list of notable narrators can be found here.

Article originally appeared on Whose Voice? (http://www.whosevoice.com/).
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