We Compare Audiobook Narrators with Caitlin Arend!

Hey Everyone!

Here is the last of our pre-recorded episodes before we are back with Season Two!! And it is Episode 32, not 31 as AJ said repeatedly in the beginning of the Episode. Also, there is a squeaky chair. Sorry.

On this weeks episode we have a special guest, AJ’s daughter Caitlin Arend! Caitlin is an actor, singer, cosplayer, and and owner of All Aglow Parties and Events in Southern California. Caitlin has a BA in Theater Arts, and many years of experience in theater, both on the stage and behind the scenes building sets and as backstage crew. She worked for Disneyland for a few years, and was “friends with” many characters like Chip and Dale, Jessie the Cowgirl from Toy Story and Judy Hopps. You can find Caitlin online in places like Instagram and TikTok.

On today’s episode, Caitlin is putting her Theater training to work by helping us evaluate Audiobook narrators!

Several shows back, we mentioned that although most of us know that the “In Death” audiobooks are narrated by the amazing Susan Ericksen, that wasn’t always the case. The first narrator for this series was Christine McMurdo Wallis.

These two narrators have vastly different styles, and so we thought it would be fun to do a show where we compare and contrast the two.

Caitlin is an interesting person to help us with this because it may surprise some people to learn that Caitlin has never read the “In Death” series, and knows very little about it beyond the fact that her mom has been very active in this fandom for the better part of 20 years. So, she is evaluating these recordings blind.

So what we did for this Episode was make clips from two separate scenes from “Naked in Death.” We have two 1 minute clips, one from Ericksen and one from McMurdo-Wallis, for each scene. Then we give our thoughts for each clip.

In a weird twist of fate, Cailtin decided she liked the reading from McMurdo-Wallis more than Ericksen. She finds McMurdo-Wallis’ voice more soothing. She did like Ericksen’s reading of Feeney more than that from McMurdo-Wallis, because Ericksen reads Feeney with a very obvious New York accent, whereas there was no accent whatsoever for McMurdo-Wallis. Like Jen, Caitlin prefers McMurdo-Wallis’ more subtle Irish accent for Roarke.

Jen agrees with Caitlin on all of it. She likes McMurdo-Wallis’ less “Lucky Charmsy” Roarke voice, but does prefer Ericksen’s Eve.

Tara really likes McMurdo-Wallis, but not for this series. She feels the pacing for the McMurdo-Wallis recordings are too slow.

AJ feels like McMurdo-Wallis’ Eve was just way too low key and passive, much prefering the more snappy, sarcasic Eve voice. AJ also prefers the more “Irish-y” Roarke voice and more “New Yorky” Feeney voice from Ericksen. Also, AJ feels Susan Ericksen puts more emotion into her reading. There is way more intensity in the second scene for Ericksen, and it seems more appropriate.

Pacing and intensity are key with this series, and we all agreed that the faster pace (and at times more intense) of Ericksen’s narrating works better for a futuristic murder mystery series set in New York. Books like these really do need faster paced narration.

Then Caitlin and Jen go off fangirling a bit about Brenda Song.

The second part of the Podcast is us testing out our fan interview questions on Caitlin, and she’s a very good sport and answers them all.

Here’s what Caitlin is reading right now:

Here are some of the podcasts that Caitlin is listening to:

Here are some of the music that some people would be surprised that Caitlin has on her playlist: