Fry and Laurie Read Daudet and Jerome

This is a tricky one to give a single rating to! Not only are there two authors of different styles there are two readers as well.

Stephen Fry reads Daudet with immaculate timing and his eloquent tones are a joy every time. I did not know Duadet before this, I bought it for the Jerome K Jerome side. I wasn't taken by the Daudet tales, he seems too much of a surreal and strange Aesop Fable spinner, but for grown ups. I never felt comfortable with the tales and never felt as if any were going in a nice direction. The endings were more like trails, and I kept wishing there was another paragraph to round things off for most of the stories.

Hugh Laurie returns to Jerome K Jerome after the magnificent (but too short!) Three Men In A Boat, which is the audio book to top all audio books, if only it was delivered in its entirety. As for this one HL bounds through the different meanderings and pontifications as if he believes every word, and had written them himself as a kind of confessional exercise. It's great fun, very dry and wonderfully amusing. It doesn't match Three Men In A Boat but is a worthwhile addition. I bought this cd for this disc alone, and as such was not disappointed at all and regard the lesser Daudet as an introduction to a new name.

A good pairing of writers, both performed well. I wish more of JKJ's works were available, and I do wish both SF and HL would do more of these cd's! I can only watch and wait.

I was tempted by the Daudet and both discs turned out to be a good read/listen. Short stories, nicely packaged, would make a good gift for s/one with a CD player in the car or if house bound. Not too serious. clear diction nothing 'rude' could give it to your mother and be safe!
Enjoy, I did! And have passed it on to a friend to do the same.

I thought the french stories were very light, they created a lovely mood, but I was left drifting away and not really gripped. Stephen Fry read them with interesting intonations very soothingly. The characters seemed very real and have stayed with me, but Jerome K Jerome wins hands down.

Having seen 'Jeeves and Wooster' and been disappointed by it, I thought this would be similar - samey and slightly nauseating. However I was wrong - this audio cd is one of the most polished I have ever listened to, with good production, enunciation and a compelling narrative.

The first CD is Stephen Fry reading Daudet. Daudet is a little like a French Dickens, although with a little more charm and eccentricity. Nikolai Gogol is probably a better comparison. The stories are based around his windmill and consist of various emotions from sad (Girl Next Door) to comic (The Man with the Golden Brain). Most of the tales are light hearted and all are crammed with a certain French ethos that makes them memorable.

The second CD is Hugh Laurie reading Jerome K Jerome's 'Thoughts of an Idle Fellow'. Though I haven't read 'Three Men in a Boat' (shame on me!) I found these tales were very easy to get into and consisted of Oscar Wilde-esque observations about Love, Food and life in general. Just as Daudet is quintessentially French, so Jerome is English.
With a keen eye and a sharp wit, this CD is soothing in its empathetic spirit and leaves you calm as an Idle man on a long summer evening in Kent.

To conclude, these CD's are well worth purchasing and not just for the narration. They are perfect for a long car journey and are true treasure of their kind. If you like these, do try P.G. Wodehouse or Gogol's Petersburg tales or, better still, leave it as one of those unique Ariadnes threads to cheer a dull evening.