Dear Mr Praetzellis,
I have just finished listening to your reading of ‘
The Wind In The Willows’, by Kenneth Grahame. I found this way of ‘thanking you’ by Googling your name. I was wondering what you looked like? I have found over the years, some actors, voice over people, etc. look just like what they sound like. Then, of course, sometimes, there are times, I regretted doing that.
Ha ha. As for your good self, I have been diverted and am writing to a ‘face-less’ reader. I’ll get back to searching later.
I thought I would share with you my comments on the YouTube page where I listened to your reading.
They are as follows:
Wonderful narration by Adrian Praetzellis. It is amazing how many voices a person has 'in them' to provide each character with a nearly totally different voice to the next character. As one of the other commentators noted, I, too, could listen to the first chapter over and over. It is a lovely, and smart, idea to have the scenery of the river bank as the back drop. Makes you/me remember where I am, or should be, at times, Johnnie Lawson. Lol. Before I listened to the book, I was under the impression that it was more about Mole and Ratty. I had no idea Toad featured in it so heavily. I had seen an animated version on tv ages ago but when you hear the actual book vs kids animated program, it is quite different.
This is the link to the comment above:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FwVrKLd61Ys&t=22613s
Being a visual artist, myself, I put all my videos on audio tape and listened to them whilst doing my artwork. Then YouTube came along and now we have accessible audiobooks. I did a whole picture to ‘The Maze Runner’ series of audiobooks, online. I figured that four books at 10.5 hours each, that picture took me FORTY-TWO HOURS, at least!! Personally, I was stunned and that is how I explained the amount of time I took to do the picture, all based on how long those books were.
As for your reading of Wind In The Willows, I lay on the couch, mostly in a dark room, with my laptop looking at, and listening to, the riverbank and trickling water sounds, provided by the video uploader, and imagining the faces of the characters your reading and intonations conjured up in my head. A very much enjoyable exercise. I am glad that they have this system for people to thank the readers. Perhaps, it should be better ‘pointed out’ to the public that there is a system to do this. As I mentioned above, I only found it because I was googling for an image of you.
Well, back to Google. Thank you Adrian. I’ll keep my ears out for other books read by you. I know I saw a list somewhere in my travels.
Regards,
Emma