Sara & Cariad's Weirdos Book Club - Audiobooks with Juliet Stevenson

Episode Date: November 20, 2025

This week Sara and Cariad are joined for a very special episode all about audiobooks by the queen of audio narration - BAFTA nominated and Olivier award winning actress, Juliet Stevenson. In this episode they discuss Elizabeth Gaskell, kids books, bully directors, José Saramago, acting and Geordie accents.The Speakies British Audio Awards take place on the 24th November at the Royal Opera House.We’ve partnered with the Best Audiobook: Fiction category. There are some brilliant audiobooks nominated in that category including Intermezzo by Sally Rooney, read by Éanna Hardwicke. Why not go back and listen to our episode on Intermezzo where we talked to the brilliant Aisling Bea. Juliet is also nominated for the Best Audiobook: Non-Fiction category for her brilliant narration of Persian Pictures by Gertrude Bell.Thank you for reading with us. We like reading with you!Follow Sara & Cariad’s Weirdos Book Club on Instagram @saraandcariadsweirdosbookclub and Twitter @weirdosbookclubTickets for Sara's tour show I Am A Strange Gloop are available to buy from sarapascoe.co.ukCariad's children's book Lydia Marmalade and the Christmas Wish is out in paperback here now. Recorded and edited by Naomi Parnell for Plosive.Artwork by Welcome Studio.  Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Hello, I'm Sarah Pasco, and I'm Carriad Lloyd. And we're weird about books. We love to read. We read too much. We talk too much. About the too much that we've read. Which is why we created the weirdos book club. A space for the lonely outsider to feel accepted and appreciated.

Each week we're joined by amazing comedian guests and writer guests to discuss some wonderfully and crudely weird books, writing, reading and just generally being a weirdo. You don't even need to have read the books to join in. It will be a really interesting, wide-ranging. conversation and maybe you'll want to read the book afterwards. We will share all the upcoming books we're going to be discussing on our Instagram, Sarah and Carriads, Weirdo's Book Club. Thank you for reading with us. We like reading with you. This week is very exciting. We're doing a very special episode all about audiobooks. We are huge fans of an audiobooks and we're delighted to say that we are joined by the Queen of Audio Narration Juliette Stevenson.

Oh, we're so excited to have the amazing Juliette Stevenson. She is just, look, you know Juliet Stevenson, but if I need to remind you, she's an award-winning actress, she was in Truly Madly Deeply. She's won BAFTA. She was in Emma, Bend It Like Beckham, Mona Lisa's Miles. My husband has a question. I'm still from Bend It Like Betty. Oh, I mean, the woman is just a fucking legend. So interesting, so clever. Best mates with Alan Rickman. She played Sarah Pascoe's mother in the incredible sitcom out of her mind. She's been nominated for Olivier and she's an incredible political activist. She puts her life. and work constantly aside to campaign for people who do not have a voice. What an incredible human she is. It's also very exciting because we are going to be at the speakies, aren't you, Sarah? The British Audio Awards on the 24th of November at the Royal Opera House. Twit-Too! Friend of the pod, Sally Phillips is going to be hosting and we've partnered with the best audiobook fiction category.

So here are some brilliant audiobooks nominated in that category, including Intermezzo by Sally Rooney, read by Inna Hardwick. and you can go back and listen to our episode on Intermezzo where we talk to the brilliant Ashling Bee. Julia is also nominated. She's nominated for the best audiobook non-fiction category for her brilliant narration of Persian pictures by Gertrude Bell. In this episode, we discuss Elizabeth Gaskell,

kids' books, bully directors, rhythm, Jose Scalamango, acting, and jordy accents. Juliette Stevenson, in the house. Just before recording says, What if I talk too much? happen. Number one, we'd interrupt you. Number two, this episode is in celebration of audiobooks. Yes, in celebration of talking. So we want you talking. We want you talking. Good. Good, good, good. Well, the great thing my family say about when I'm doing an audio book is it shuts me up talking for the whole day

because I'm, yeah, so they like that because they think I talk too much. Because you have to rest your voice. I'm so interested in this because when I was researching for seeing you, some of the books you have done the audio for are so long. Yeah, big ones. Middleman. March. Yeah, middle much. Yeah, big, big hit. But that was my favourite probably. What is it? Why? Because you see, I'm very, I'm quite badly educated. I never went to university. So I'm not very well read. So for me, I mean, I absolutely love doing audio books. I kind of like passion, both reading, recording them and listening to them as a punter. And middlemuch, I wouldn't, I mean, I tried to start reading it about 10 years ago. And I just never got past about page 25. And that took me like two months. And then, of course,

You know, I had to read it as an audio book. And then, you know, it's really hard for the first 50 pages. But then, you know, once you get past that, then you're in. Yeah, yeah. And it's just, I mean, it's a work of such kind of towering genius. But like all really great books, I think it's quite challenging to read. But, you know, there are so many, there are so many different characters inside it. And you have to understand them all in order to play them.

I mean, it's really more like a play in some ways. I mean, at one point, you know, it's all set in this sort of smallish middle, Midlands town. And at one point, there were about 15 or 20 councillors. And they're all men between the age of about 35 and 50. Yeah, how do you do all the different voices? Exactly. So it's kind of, you know, some of them have a bad coal. Some of them are heavy smokers.

Some of them, you know, can't say they're ours. You know, you just go mad trying to find all these sort of, you know. So you're just trying to find a hook for everybody. A hook for everybody. Because you have, the listener has to be able to know who's talking. without effort. Yes. But Julia, so does that mean that you have to prepare

or does it mean that you do that work as you're in the studio, you're sort of rolling? And then does that mean you have to make notes? How do you remember when you go back to a character? So what I do is I pretend to everybody that I've pre-read the novel. But I never have. So that's the first thing.

I start with a big lie. Wow. That's a great audio book. We've all done it. Oh, yeah, I read it. I loved it. Oh, sorry, they'll live a padley at nothing. That literally happened to me

as in the last test, it turned out to be Welsh. But of course, the producer showed the producer up to because he obviously hadn't blocked it either. So we were both sitting there, obviously knowing that we both lied. But we couldn't quite name that, you know, to call it out. No, what I do do, though, I do really prep the characters.

So I study each character and write notes on them, and I usually draw them because you've got a situation like Middlemarch where you're going from one to another quickly. You really haven't got time to read your notes. Of course you can stop and look, but it's boring and lengthy, you know. But if you have it, you can summarise them in a drawing, or sometimes I will cast them. So, well, that character sounds like Alan Rickman, or that character sounds like my dentist or our kids, you know, the kids' primary school teacher in year three or something.

And then you've got a quick, sudden memory of how somebody speaks and you can do it that way. So I do really prep the characters, but I don't really prep all the prose. Right, yeah. And how long would something like Middle March take? you a few weeks and i think that was 12 days or something wow because it's hefty yeah but you are known in the in the biz as like the queen of audiobooks are you aware like everybody lists you as their favorite several people i've spoken to and several people would work in the book industry crib notes one of our um this amazing woman who runs this amazing um newsletter about books for you know

parents who are struggling to find reading is always talking about juliet stevenson is the queen of audio books. Oh, that's nice. I think that's so, like, I was wondering, like, did you, was that something, when you first began audio, but can you remember, like, do you feel like you've got better, or do you feel like you always got audiobooks? You always were like happy to do. Well, I never listened to my own audiobooks. I don't know whether I've got better. I mean, the very, very first one I did, when I was very young, my first ever telejob was playing the lead in Catherine Cookson, since you're too young, both of you to remember Catherine Cookson, but she was a wonderful writer from A one-class woman, Newcastle, Georgian.

Yeah, it was always on ITV. It was called the Malins. I mean that, you know, like you weren't even born, right? It was anyway, it was really popular telly. It was quite sort of, you know, high romance. It was not great, but anyway, they, and I, because I... Girls were always getting in trouble. Always getting in trouble.

Yeah, they all had a streak of white in their hair, the Malins, and they were bad, bad people. And I was a bad girl and ran off with a, you know, farm a son or something. Anyway, it was great fun. But anyway, as a result of that, I got asked to record a Catherine Cookson novel. That was the first one I ever did. And it was the most difficult one. Oh, really? Because I had to play it.

Because Geordie's so hard, right? All the characters are working class. And Jordies. And you know, you might get 20, Jordie, housewife, standing on the street, having a chat. I mean, I couldn't do one, left alone, 20. But no one could be expected to do that. That is tough. Yeah.

I mean, I completely, either did a very bad Jordie or I opted out and did Yorkshire or something. I mean, anyway, it was, you know, I'm sure there were sackfuls of letters complaining. But I just, I did love doing it and thought, oh, there's a kind of bliss in going into a studio on your own and just sitting there with a book and just reading it. I mean, it's bliss. So you find it sort of meditative. Really meditative. I mean, you're in a box. The world is literally shut out.

You're literally free of the noise of the world because you're sound-proved. and you just submerge into this world and as the day goes on you know you kind of you lose touch with all other realities it is a kind of trip you know and I think when you're

as a listener too I get slightly into that state as well because for the listener they do all the visual work don't they when they're listening nobody's sending them images you know when I say the word tree both of you will see a different tree

in your imagination one might see a little sapling one might see a huge oak one might see a you know eucalyptus that grows in their part of the world or whatever so that's true of almost every word they'll hear so everybody can you know direct their own movie in their head when they're listening to an audio book and it's it has that kind of it's why it's incredibly creative in a way you know gives people the freedom to visualize it I suppose as you would if you read it's 10 Tony law used to have a joke about how people not everyone likes reading because some people's acting in their head is bad because that act of imagination I think that is sometimes I don't think it's about I think you know that talk about learning

styles and things I think for some people you know the ingredients don't all add together and that's why it feels like something's missing I find it really difficult to listen I really like looking at language that makes much more sense whereas other people say the exact opposite yeah I think you have it's two completely different forms of reading. Yeah. Because I find when I, I prefer to read,

to look, because I feel like I slip into this, like you said, that state you're talking about, I go there when I'm reading. But when I'm listening to an audio book, it takes me much longer because I think I'm too distracted by everything.

So, but I find listening while traveling, that's when I can slip into that fugue state. But then I, today, I nearly missed a train because I was just absolutely in ancient Greece to sing something. And then I was like,

that's your train oh yeah so it's like it's but it's like the same place in the brain but like two different I mean you're both mums of young kids

I couldn't ever have done it when my kids were little so I wouldn't ever try and listen to an audio book when I was doing anything engaged any part of my brain at all like child care or I only listen to them

like at night when in the bathroom when I'm washing or something or on a drive or when I'm doing something really mindless like chores yeah it could tidy up is a good listen

but you know there's a really funny thing because I mean there's a sort of snobbery around audio book I mean my you know my son says he doesn't consider that I've read a book if I've listened to the audio book version he's a big reader right and I sort of have this sort of argument with him because I say actually for me

I remember books that I've heard as audiobooks much much better than I remember than if I read them and that is weird you think it would be the opposite yeah but I think it's so I've had this like I think it's different parts of the brains but it definitely counts if you've listened how is that Because lots of people are snobby about it So it doesn't count as reading

That's like saying it's not like watching a film If there's subtitles You're reading a film You still saw a film Some twats do argue You haven't seen it in the original French And I think twats is the word Not about your son, Julia

No I'm definitely going to take that home No but I think it depends on the reader Oh, bad audio book is the worst I mean I always listen to the if I can't listen to the What you call it? The preview I think the job is not to get in the way of the writer. So my mission, you know, I've only got really one sort of mission,

which is to not interfere with the writer's relationship to the listener. So that means when I say I don't prep, what I do also prep is the style of the writing. And you think, what, this style requires what exactly? I think this style is really cool. If you're reading someone like Casilla, you know, J.M. Cautier, that amazing. South African writer who wrote disgrace and other stuff like that. His writing is really cool as in chilly, as in almost no adverbs, no adjectives. It's very lean and spares.

It's like a sort of desert landscape, incredibly clear. So that really requires something amazingly unemotional, unemoted. You have to find the style that works for that, Jane Eyre or something, you know, this florid, hundreds of adjectives, sentences that go on for a paragraph. That requires a completely different style. And I think the job is sort of to do that, you know, not to get, to serve the style and not get in the way. That's so interesting, isn't it? Because I just think that's great audio book reading, but you don't always get that.

And I think the ones I've listened to is when I'm so aware of the actor. And you're like, I can really hear your performance. Yeah. And then you get distracted, don't you? Like, oh, I wonder where they trained or what they did or what are they doing that. Whereas the really, the best one I've listened to recently was Tom Lay. by Anne Patchett and it was done by Meryl Streep

and it was just and I'd read the book already and so I already knew it and I had a free credit so I was like oh I just one of our amazing listeners was like oh you have to listen to Meryl and I started listening

and she just did that thing where she was there but not there like I just felt like she was talking to me but she was also just letting me hit the book just was so real and I started listening to that doing like tidy up late night you know kids got to bed

and I would find myself just standing in the kitchen like after I finished tidying just being like I just need a bit more just need Merrill to tell me a little bit more it was such a good read because there's two there's two possible arguments for this in terms of the actor

in that position that I'm imagining because one of them is about could be ego you could think oh this is an actor who wants me to know they are performing this but also I wonder if it's almost a distrust of the writing being strong

enough. I think if you trust, if you're reading Jane Eyre, if you're reading disgrace or a book like that, you don't think you need to add any flourish to keep anyone interested or to strengthen a meaning. Yeah, exactly. Whereas I can imagine that I can imagine that an actor might go, oh, this is very boring. I better have to make people laugh or do a bit more, yeah. Or it might be the producer of course egging them to do that as well. Well, that's it. But you talked about this sort of situation, and, you know, being hermetically sealed in a box, whereas there is another person there

and someone, it's not a director, it's an audio recording expert, but they do give notes. Oh, definitely. I mean, there used to be, you know, always used to be. You had a director, somebody who was producing, directing the book,

and then you had an engineer doing, and now, of course, I don't know, for economic reasons or whatever, very often they're the same person, or producers have had to learn the technical stuff or technicians. Yeah, and you do get some, I've worked with some brilliant ones

who are producers but absolutely have read the book and I have a take on it Yeah I mean I have worked I mean quite there is one studio in London That will be nameless where you know The engineers are just engineers And they've never read the book

And that's kind of weirdly lonely They may be really nice guys But you go in and they haven't read it They don't know what it's about So they're just you know They're pushing the buttons and it's a great job But it is it's weirdly lonely I really love that relationship

It's quite a big relationship You have with producers actually I mean I had one wonderful Diaspeers used to be head of books and everything at the BBC and we did Anna Karenina together and we were both new moms and we were discovering this book together

and we couldn't get through where Anna you know he's Karenin has thrown her out the house but it's her son's birthday and she sneaks back into the house early in the morning to see him just for 10 minutes or something and you know we could I couldn't get I couldn't get through it

and I kept and she said Julia, I'm sorry, but you're actually, your nose is clogging up. Yes. Can we start again? And we had about three goes. And she was in tears and I was, listen, we'll have to skip this. Yeah, skip that. And we'll have to skip that bit and come to it at the end.

Oh, my God. But, you know, she and I, whenever I see her, I kind of feel like we went through Anna Karenina together. You know, it was like a whole. Yeah, that's quite nice. It's almost like a book club, isn't it? Because I know what you mean. Like, when you, I mean, that's why we like talking about books together. Because if you do read something like Anna Karenina, you, you'll read something like Anna Karenina,

you want to talk to someone. Oh my God, I've just read that kind of. And yeah, I can imagine, like you said, when you've got, when it feels like a team and you're going through a book like that together, it must feel really wonderful to be like, oh, we're both living this story at the same time. Yeah, it can be a big, yeah, sharing.

And it's a, and it's not just like reading as a, you know, reading a story. Because even then with a huge book, it feels like it's happened to you in some sense. but it's a performance. If you're the person reading it, it's a one-woman show where you play all of the characters

of Anna Karenina. And that's a huge endeavour, isn't it? I'd love to listen to you do that. I didn't know you'd done that one. Yeah, I'm not sure it's... When it's just farming, that must have been boring. Yeah, the 11 stuff. Well, I think, no, it was abridged.

I mean, I don't like doing abridged books. They used to be loads of them. I think they're actually, they've sort of phased out abridgments. They used to, because it was tapes and CDs. So if you didn't abridge it, you'd have like 24 CDs. So that's why, because I was talking to an audio press about that and it was such a big thing that you just can't physically carry that book around.

But now because of digital, nothing is abridged anymore. Which it's like, oh wow, now you have to read the farming bits. Playing all the parts is the best bit. When you get to play a dog or an old man or a camel or, you know, Or, I mean, like, you know, you get to play men, women, every age, every faith, every, and, you know, you can't. You know, when I started training as an actor, the idea was you just transform and you play anything and everything. And obviously, the world has changed. And now we can't, there's loads of things you can't play, nor should you, because it's considered to be appropriating other people's, you know, life experience, you know, the crazy to, you need to be playing another completely different race or nationality from yourself. Or even a Geordie. Well, those who heard that date would definitely say something. But, you know, now it's almost a case where you can't play Irish if you're not Irish. I mean, and I'm sad about that.

Obviously, there are obvious places where there's no question you shouldn't be trying to appropriate other people. But I am sad that now it's more and more and more, you know, restricted and you kind of really can only play, you know, versions of yourself. Because I think that so isn't the job. Yeah. And the job is so the reason it's humanising in my view is because, Because to play any part, you know, you have to really understand them. You don't have to like them or dislike them, but you do have to understand them

and find out why they are doing what they're doing. And that is such a kind of, in a way, it's political small P. Do you understand somebody is political small P? Because it is to put a frame around their actions and their... But anyway, so, you know, casting is more and more restricted in the industry, but in audiobooks you can still play. I think it's one of those areas where two things are true at the same time. because at one end of the word

it's absolutely true that it's been damaging to certain people to not be represented truly and there were people there who could have done that but the thing with acting is that we watch it for the pretense

that's the enjoyment is admiring how good the pretence is there's an example the book I'm holding actually because I wrote my questions in the beginning of it so it's auditioned by Katie Kitamura

So she's been nominated for the Booker Prize there's a bit in it which is so amazing about what acting is supposed to be and what it's not supposed to be. It's an older actor. Basically, this older actor, I'm imagining him as a Hugh Grant kind of figure. So this actress has never had that much respect for him.

You know, he gets work all the time. But she's never, and then suddenly he's in a film, and it's absolutely breathtaking how good he is. She's never seen anything like it, this performance. He's just upped his game, so incredibly. It's so intense. And in every scene, he sort of has this heartbreaking confusedness, and it's like he's holding on to furniture.

Like, he literally can't hold himself up. and she realizes, oh, I've never really understood how good he is and how did the director get this performance for him and then she's cast with him in something and actually he's in the early stages of dementia and she finds out that this director had put his lines all over the furniture and when he was looking up confusedly, he never knew what he was going to say.

And so it wasn't pretence and so she feels sick about this because she thought she'd seen a good performance and it wasn't a performance. It was reality. which reality, and it's about that's what we want to admire. Is someone doing a performance so good we forget it's a performance? But if it wasn't a performance... Yeah, because you want them to be okay at the end of it.

You don't want to be... That's so interesting. Isn't that interesting? It's really interesting. Because it begs the question then it's like kind of watch... It's almost sort of an act of slightly sadistic to watch somebody... It's not consenting. It's not someone being in control and in control of what they give you.

He wasn't in control of what he was giving. He was living his life. And it was repackished as something else by a director who felt that he was protecting the actor by not making it public. That's super, super interesting. Because, you know, there used to be a school, to some extent there still is, where directors would work actors up. You know, the bullying in the rehearsal room was a big, big thing.

And I won't, but I could name, you know, because I've been working for so long. My generation, you know, all these are lots and lots of directors, very successful ones who would real bullies in the rehearsal room and they would try and, you know, quote marks, get the performances out of actors by bullying them or by diminishing them or I mean I had it done to me once big big time big time and you know I always found it really really offensive on many many levels first of all because of you know abuse should never be tolerated in any

workplace they allowed themselves they entitled themselves to give them that bar but most significantly in terms of what we're talking about because that isn't acting no you know and and I think it's going back to this thing of being allowed to transform. You know, I've never been a sort of cast because I'm like pretty or anything. But when you see really good looking young actors, whatever gender, who get typecast because of their looks, they're often quite not that good, but they look amazing. They look absolutely gorgeous. Yeah, you can't take your eyes off them. Can't take your eyes off them. Yeah. Yeah. And but then, you know, but they're not that great. But then often,

when they get older and they're not cast for that reason anymore and they can't rely on that or that's not they know that they're free of that gaze then often they become really really good um and because they've been liberated from that perception of themselves that the world has that's also really interesting i also think for some of those people who know at the beginning they've been given this incredible opportunity not because they're the most talented if they work really hard on everything that you know you can't control what you look like really but you can feel astonishingly grateful for the and then just work and then you get to practice and learn and get better because you've had the work. That's what you want the journey to be don't you? And then definitely

actors you've seen they've learned on the job. And like especially if you grow up, you get to an age where you're like, oh well, I remember you when you were 20 and I was 20 and I'm watching you're at 40 and you're like, oh wow, just being around film sets, you have definitely improved. It happens with stand-up comedy. I mean if you do your, I know the 10,000 hours thing has been sort of disproved, but if you're constantly working and assessing how well you're doing your work, your work will improve. And the audience deserves better work. What's the 10,000 dollars?

Oh, you know, Malcolm Gladwell. He claimed, and it was sort of based on the Beatles, Rotterdam, where they were playing Berlin, is it? I don't know. Anyway, the Beatles, before they were the Beatles, but they were a band, a four gigs a day. I think it's Rotterdam, but perhaps Berlin. Sure, okay.

And then, and his claim was that's why they were so fantastic as they spent all this time, not just playing individually in their bedrooms, but together, that they jelled so And he had a theory that anyone can be quite good at anything if you practice it for 10,000 hours. But the genius is from 10,000 hours. Yeah, there's no sort of genius is not. He was fighting against genius theory. Well, I kind of am with him a lot of the way. I always say this to students.

I say, of course, talent exists. But the way the word talent is used, sometimes it makes me a bit sick because you think, yeah, it is talent. But there's so much craft. There's so much, you know, going back to audiobooks, there's a lot of craft involved. But, you know, in acting time, there is so much you can learn. And there are so many skills and techniques, tricks you could even call them. But they're just about, you know, if I get stuck and I don't quite know when you're working with a director who can't help you or something.

There's just so many tools that you can use to make a scene play better with your fellow actor or actors. There's so much that can be taught, which is why I am a big believer in training. And I am a big believer in putting the working on discipline. So the 10,000 hour thing, the reason it's been disproved is not because you have to practice It's so that if you practice with that constant assessment, then, so as in, if you sit down with a guitar and you just play it for 10,000 hours, that isn't enough. What you have to constantly listen to yourself.

You have to get other people's feedback. You have to assess what's working, what's not. You can't just keep playing it and think at the end. So it's that it's not just the practice. It is also about honest, objective, reflecting. Yes, yeah, yeah. And that's the thing with acting, isn't it? Because I completely agree with you that, you know,

there's some people who are just talented. But then they also, there's other people who just get, have the opportunities to do the craft. And if you don't get that, then it's very difficult to be able to practice. And funny enough, in Tom Lake, my favorite audio book, there's a character in it. It's about a mom and these three daughters. And at lockdown, the daughters come home in America, to his cherry orchard. And one of them's an actress. And the other two are like a vet and something else in there just living their life.

And the actress is just crying all the time. Because she's like, she's at drama school. She's like, I can't practice my thing. And she's sitting here, the mum sort of talk about her trying to be on Zoom and they try and do their monologues for each other on Zoom. And just that sort of viewpoint of like when you don't have the space to do, to practice your craft. And you don't have the opportunity. It's, yeah, it's really, because you do, like you said,

or that's why, you know, that's why comedy exists. Or like that, I feel like about improv. Because it's like, well, acting didn't, the doors weren't opening that way. So it's like, oh, well, I can go to improv, I can go to sound up, and I can get to play all those characters, like, because I can't go in a room and do that in some way. Because I think of acting as being such a communal experience, as in it's impossible without other people,

but recording an audio book, it almost is. That's almost this one place where you're acting alone. That's so interesting. Because the thing I love best about what I do is collaboration. So it is, you know, I always say to everybody, It's seen on stage, like I'm doing at the moment. And I'm on stage all the time. I never get off.

It's not me. It's not about me. It's not about that act. It's about what happens in the space between us, just like this conversation now. What happens between us, what we're saying, what we're hearing from each other, how we're responding. That's what we're creating in here today. And that's the same on stage. So the energy field is the space between him and me on stage.

And, you know, if you're working in a great company, as I am at the moment, I feel, then there's no greater joy. There was no greater joy than going out with that bunch, you know, and making that happen, telling that story. And every night it's a slightly different story. And somebody's, oh, ho, you know, somebody's coming on with something new or slightly different energy or different perception of this line or this word even. And a tiny change can just, you know, sparks a whole scene. And that's such a joy.

But of course, also, you can have a very unhappy time, you know. And I've been in a situation where I've been really miserable. You've been doing really successful shows, to be honest. And you've been really miserable because there's bad feelings. or somebody's bullying you or the directors, you know, sort of caused unease between the company or whatever. And then I have gone into, you know, cubicles on my own to read an audio book with a sense of massive, massive relief that I can just do it myself.

I'm not dependent on who I'm working with. I'm not going to, you know, be disappointed that the end result wasn't what it could have been because of, you know, mismatch in the casting or, you know, all those things. So it's a kind of, when you're not happy at work, It's a great self, you know. Do you think it's interesting that that audio book performance that you said is very, not quite individual, but I guess islandy. And then the person who's going to listen to it is quite alone at that point.

It's not a theatre audience. And we don't sit down as a group and listen to audiobooks anymore. And so maybe there's something about you being alone with the book and then the person listening, hearing someone alone, like that feels very like, I think they're intimate, doesn't it? That's what makes it work. Totally. So I've just gone through, you know, I've got the last person on the planet

to have gone through all the audiobooks of, you know, My Brilliant Friend, Elena Ferranti. Oh, yes. So we've read them. We haven't read them. Yeah, so who did the audiobook? So she's an American called, I think her name is Hilary Huber. Okay. And when it starts, the very beginning of the first book, I thought, uh-uh.

But it's hard because the book also begins with them being children. Yeah, that's the same with reading, actually. The beginning you go, why do people keep going on about this? Is there not, there's an odd sort of, yeah. Yeah. But because it's an American and you think, well, why should it be an American? You know, and then this is a clash, you know. This is a story set in Naples. Why am I listening to an American? But, and it's a massive butt, because after about 15 minutes, you start to think, oh, I see. Okay. And then she's so, so good. She is so skillful. Oh, wow. She is absolutely, and I'm so thrilled to have a chance to sort of fan her because, she has to sometimes you know she has to find voices

for a dozen, well do you know, you've read the book and dodgy attack like the Italian and dance and young men and eight different you know working class guys from Naples and you always know who's speaking and you can't even quite work out what she's doing because she doesn't do my cheating

you know with lots of colds or coughs or stammer she doesn't do that cheap stuff she just sort of is the person and you just always know who's speaking and she has this slow detach beautiful rhythm. It's completely hypnotic. Now, I've never met Hillary Hooper, but honestly, if I did, I would be kind of, you know, fan-girling her, I'd be all over saying, you know, we've been on this amazing journey together. She wouldn't know who the hell I was, but it is a huge relationship,

right? Yeah, you feel. I felt like that after listening to Tom Lake, I was like, me and Merrill have just, you were like that. We have lived, and I'm going to miss Merrill, and I hope she's okay in her cherry orchard. You feel so attached to someone, like, I guess maybe it's parental as well. But listening to you both, if you, I mean, if you did turn up to the theatre and the only person in the audience, that would be quite embarrassing, you know, but this is, someone is putting on a show just for you. Yeah, yeah. And so it's like, it's not this, oh, God, it's only me here, it's the opposite of going,

I am the entirety of the audience, this performance is all for me. I think the last time maybe that happened to you is when, like, a parent read to you or a teacher might have, like, you feel very special, like, I am being read to. Like, it's a lovely, and it's been all these amazing studies on reading to kids. Have you had a bit about the regulation? So they like monitored heart rate and stuff and, you know, all different things where a parent was reading to a child.

And they basically, as you start reading, you get in sync. The heart rate's getting in sync. And you calm down. Like, everybody can't, like, everything becomes like really rest for. I also have a theory that it might be that because the kid's fucking asleep now, thank God.

So mommy can have a glass of wine. And all of a sudden, she's very regulated. When you're reading, they're like, what's that? Do you both read to your kids? Yes. But that's my favorite. part of the text, it literally is like in 10 minutes.

Yes. They're both asleep. But I used to fall to, I went on reading to my son. He was a terrible. My youngest was a terrible sleeper. So I went on reading to him until he was 15. He'll kill me for saying. But I used to, you know, I should be me too about listening to audio books.

But, you know, because I'm so badly read. I used to, we said we got into really interesting stuff. You know, we were reading, you know, we were reading like really grown up books. And stuff I would never have got around to. So it's actually been a huge bond anyway. But, you know, I would fall asleep because, you know, like, you go. Oh, yes. I would fall asleep and he'd say, Mom! Mom!

Mine hit me. They elbow. Do they? Yeah. They elbowed them. When I was pregnant with my youngest and I would read to my daughter and I, obviously, when you're, it was so tired. I used to literally just like plonk my head on the book. And she used to whack me and I would just be like, and it was such a shocking, horrible, that I had to say to it, I was pregnant. I said, please, you're hitting the baby. Please don't do this. And she stopped. son who's now born

elbows me when I fall asleep or makes noise as he goes when I hear this stuff I want to come around and have a go of your kids

and it's not appropriate they're very small I have this defensiveness leave her alone right I know I'm so tired she's giving you

everything I know but that's the thing and reading with them I would say I'm past the 10 minutes I'm either like we have to do an hour

and then she's and your voice is going and you're so thirsty and you're like I just need to break so we've got really strict boundaries so he only gets

two stories and then if he does he can talk as in like he can make up his own story now if he still wants something else that's so good I was rubbish at boundaries

four picture books I do but with my but daughters now are not chapter yeah so then you're in a situation where she'll say just one more chapter

please one more chapter and also because you love reading I can imagine that's really hard to say no too it's mainly it's to be honest

it's the throat you're just like I just quite I need a break but you know you can understand it because like I mean I can see

because I've been you know I've been in that situation as a mum so I completely understand how brutal kids are when you want to stop and go down and have your glass of wine. But also, can you imagine if you're listening to Meryl Street reading you, your favourite book, and then she stops.

And she said, sorry, I'm really tired. And she says, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, Carrie, but I've got to stop now. Oh, Julia, I was like, I know you want to know what Anna Karenna does, but I just need a bit of wine. Julia, I think it must have been doing lockdown, but Carrie has never. I came to see the play on blindness. Now I say to see the play, but obviously... Yes, but that plays...

And that's as close as you can get, I think, as sort of a theatrical audio book. So it was a book... I had read the book, and it's about a town collectively losing their side. But you read that to us in the dark, but that was a communal experience because there was a whole audience there.

Yeah, so the whole audience, the theatre was blacked out. We couldn't see anything. It had blindfold. And we were told not to move. You're not allowed the toilet because the ushers would have to come and get you. And we had headphones? Yes.

Yeah. So it was one most exciting weeks in my life. We met me, Simon Stevens, who did the adaptation of the book, and that Walter Mayer Maya Johan, the director. And then there's brilliant, brilliant guys, these brothers who do binaural sound, the Ringham Brothers, who become geniuses. And it was in lockdown. And we all met at the dom.

And we had one week to try and find a way. of moving it from, you know, the page into binaural sound. And I'd never work with binaural sound. So by those who were listening. I don't know what it is like from either side to be. That's, we could hear them running, do you remember?

So it's 360 degrees. So if you're, it felt like you were behind us sometimes. So, you know, so if I'm walking around you, you're sitting in the Donmar and when I, when they were, it sounds like I'm walking around you. And when I went to the donmar to listen to the show myself, I pulled my feet in to stop myself tipping over myself.

That's how crazy it was. I did that, but it's very. It was very hilarious that you did. Yeah, it was hilarious. But that's the suspension of disbelief that happens when you're being told a story and it's three-dimensional, it's physically around you, even if it's you. You were sat next to each other, won't we? And it felt like you were behind us.

So many times I was like, oh, like. But then I also had to create, we had a scene in that room where I was like 25 people, you know, rioting. And, you know, we had a pile of chairs. And I just went nuts in this room, flinging all these chairs around. And, I mean, they, it was so fun working out how to tell. story with just sound. It was one of the most creative weeks I've ever had just working with sound. It's brilliant that you brought that up. But it must have helped so much that you've got so much experience with audiobooks because I imagine if that was your first experience of reading

something, you might have, or I can imagine even a very experienced actor thinking, is there going to be something missing here? But if you're confident. Well, it was so joyous because, yeah, I mean, I mean, you know, I'm in my 60s now. It's so brilliant to get to the point where you know you can you just have the confidence to try anything and I don't really give them you know shit if sorry but you know you just can try anything because what's to lose really and it took me ages to get that sort of confidence but we tried everything in that room and then we would just sit and listen does that work that nearly works but what it needs is X or what I think it just needs X or what or it needs a different quality of sound added or and then we so we

we go around the room and say what what what what will work I know maybe if we break these glasses as well and that you know and so we were literally like it was like I don't know making a painting or something throwing another color at the canvas but it was a sound color yeah it was but you know it's interesting you brought that up because I thought that was just because of lockdown but so many people actually went and you think why couldn't that be a thing yeah yeah yeah it was a really good example of so there were limits on theatre you couldn't sit closely by other people you couldn't be in queues you couldn't be in foyeres in bar areas and and it was a really good example of taking those specifications

and fitting the performance to it. So we all sat in distance from each other, the cue was distance, there's no interval, there was no foyer we came in from outside. Everyone kept their masks on. We didn't need to be seen smiling or laughing at an actor because we didn't need to clap them. There wasn't anybody there. But afterwards, I was so convinced I was like,

oh, where's Julia? And then Sarah was like, she's not here. No, it's my answer. I was like, oh, I couldn't. shake that I'd heard you so vividly. I was like, but she must, like, I was waiting for, like, behind the curtain. I had to write about it because when we came back out into, I mean, in my diary, I mean, not professionally, but because when we came out of the theatre, it was like being born.

Yeah. Because we'd been in the dark for so long in a different place. And then we were suddenly in Covent Garden. Yeah. You burst out of a fire exit door. And it's, plus lockdown anyway, into empty street. And, yeah, lockdown going. And the empty streets, just like the streets would have been in the story.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. It was a bit, it was one of those things. It's intense, but also you're like, is this a good idea to listen to this right now as the streets are empty? I wish they would do another one, Julia. Maybe you can tell Simon Stevens because the second book after,

on blindness is the one where they all decide not to vote. Saramago, you mean? Jose Salamago, yes. He's so well read, Sarah. He won the Nobel Prize, actually. Did he? Yeah, he's a really famous writer. No, you know that.

But I don't know how much he gets read in this country. He must do. He wrote a book called, oh, his books are such great ideas. He wrote one called The Double about a man who's watching a film and he sees himself in it as an extra and realizes he's got an exact twin and has to and he starts finding a film of that one maybe so then he starts hiring all of these films that this actor is credited in and becomes obsessed with an actor and and the second one to on seeing and it's such a brilliant idea so there's an election and it's a couple of years after everyone

had this spontaneous blindness they've already been through something really huge and collected and they just all put in a blank ballot and the government doesn't believe they didn't talk about it that it wasn't arranged but all of them when they got there just didn't want to choose between two options they didn't want

and then they like force them and then they take away all of them they stopped doing the bins and they say to them you're not allowed anything from the government

until you do your votes and they weren't they didn't eventually sort of it became a political movement but they just kept going in and going there's no one to vote for here for me and it was like that they could suddenly

What's this book called On Seeing? Yeah because they can suddenly see after blindness What's the one and what's the one about the one you were talking about about the double. I think it's called the double. I'm pretty sure.

Amazing. I must read them. How come you're so well read? Well, why am I? I really enjoy it. That's the only reason. But how do you find the time? Now you've got two little ones and you're working all the time. I don't have as much time as I used to. But it's still, that's my...

You know, when people talk about guilty pleasure and pleasure shouldn't be guilty, it isn't anything lofty. It isn't anything... Sometimes I buy things because I think I shouldn't. know about it, but that attitude never makes me actually want to read it. It really is, it's my Netflix. But I do watch Netflix as well, obviously. I mean, but I, it's, I like being told stories. Yeah, yeah. I like me told stories, yeah. I mean, I think that the greedy little pig for stories. Give it a story. Yeah. But it's funny. I mean, you know, my husband's an anthropologist,

so he's, you know, studying other cultures, other peoples, always. And, you know, mainly like the Inuit in the high northern Arctic and then Bushmen of the Kalahari and the Khorisand. And, you know, in all those cultures and every culture he's ever studied, you know, the oral storytelling is the big thing. Well, it's how our brain evolved in evolution. And we, so I know only from like Bruce Chapwin about the Aboriginal, like sort of the First Nation people in Australia when you're about to go. And they can map out places they've never been to because the stories tell you the geography

of the land. That's right. So they know, so they'll have ancestors maybe six generations back. Yeah. So it's that long since they've been to a part of Australia, which is the equivalent of like here to Siberia, away from them. But they could tell you that's where water is. That's the cave you can sleep in. That mountain's there. There's a smaller mountain behind it. They can map the, you know, it's incredible. So I think, you know, it's something so atavistic. It goes back so, so, so deep into our you know they now know that trauma becomes genetic you know that actually genes can shift and I kind of think that somebody has a trauma and that actually that the impact of that that can be then inherited by their children or their descendants and I kind of think well then how

much have we inherited from you know way back what kind of genetic trail is the need to be told stories or to that that way of telling a story that isn't just read or not that's why I think it's really important to keep screens a bit restrained for your kids because it's If they rely only on screens for storytelling, that whole part of themselves will never be woken up. But also to go back to listening to stories, obviously pre-electricity, it would have been dark, and humans would have, you know, snuggled somewhere, relatively warm and sheltered, and then we'd have heard each other's voices if we drifted up to sleep. There's absolutely no one who doesn't listen to a podcast, the radio, an audio book, to fall asleep. Absolutely. And it keeps your mind busy.

Yeah. You dangle on half to a sentence. It starts to get weird. You're asleep. I listen to the same, now I've used to listen to several stories, but now I've just limited it down to two stories. I only shoot between two stories now when I can't sleep, which is quite often. And that just gets me off every time, every time.

I think the repetition. I'm not even really listening. Yeah, and it can't make you too interested in what's going to happen because you know too interesting. Yeah, that's interesting. That's why kids choose the same book over and over again, like the sense of security they get from hearing the same story, which you know as a parent is nightmarish when you're like, I cannot read this one again.

Like you feel like you're losing your mind and all acts that go out the window. I start becoming a complete drone because I'm like, I'm going to make this so boring so you never ask me to do this. I thought that was so bad. So bad. Some of them are so bad.

But yeah, it is that thing of like needing stories. And I think isn't it interesting that, you know, technology is doing what it does and all of these things, you know, we can have whatever we want. But audiobooks remain like still. So present and useful, and you would have thought, oh, will we still need those? It's like, oh, the joy of being told a story.

Yeah, and it's great that actually it will continue with technology. But now you don't need the CDs and the tapes. Actually, it's a little bit easier to carry these terms on your phone. It's like hitting into AI because you can get an AI voice to read a book. But what I think is really interesting is an AI, I saw something recently, maybe it's on the bookseller saying, like, in terms of translations, it will become very easy to translate a work into like a plethora of languages. that before would have been expensive,

so you would have, you know, the rights would have taken time, you would need to find the German speaker and all of this, and now it will be very quick, so stories will be intently more available. But then you still need, I think, obviously, not the AI voice for this thing to translate,

and how can that AI voice compare to, like, Julia Stevenson, reading you Anna Krenner, needing to stop because she's so moved in that moment. Well, that's a really, really interesting point. So, I mean, I do listen to them all the time. And the other day, I downloaded when I started listening. I thought, was it AI?

Can't start? What's the problem with this? Like, he's reading perfectly well. It's an interesting book. It was a history. It was nonfiction. I was reading research for a show I'm doing. So it was about World War II after World War II.

I thought, what is the problem? Why can't I engage? Is it me? And then I checked it out. And it was an AI reader. And I thought, okay, I went on listening. I thought, I'm going to see if I can get over this problem. Obviously, I'm opposed to AI.

I would be, wouldn't I, because I'm, you know... They're taking the job. Because they're taking our jobs. But I went on listening, I thought, I tried to give it its best shot. I thought, just try not be prejudiced and just listen to this. And it was fine, but what was really interesting was there were no faults. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. You know how I don't really, but you can hear somebody started again the next morning.

Yeah, yeah. Their voice is a bit fresher. They're getting a bit tired. The rhythm changes slightly, just tiny change. You hear a bit of a breath. Human imperfection. Human imperfection. Whereas in this AI reading, there is.

absolutely no human imperfection and also the rhythm never changes god never so everything is in the same rhythm regardless of what's going on which your brain is like that's not how stories are told so is a rhythm i know that we need to like build up to things like yeah that's so interesting that got that got me really interesting because i'm obsessed with rhythm yeah i'm completely obsessed with rhythm in language and how it has the same impact on us as rhythm in music only it's a rhythm of language all good writers will have a good sense of rhythm and if they don't then they're not really good writers and that's why i think you know you have to say shakespeare out loud you can't really study it in your head um if your school doesn't let you make say it out loud because the

rhythm of those lines of his you know contains so much as much meaning as the actual words um but all good writers have great rhythm and that part of what we're being is being communicated it lies in that rhythm and we don't even know why and we don't need to know why yeah it's what you don't need to know why a piece of music a phrase of music moves you it just does and actually even to ask why is in a way to interfere, you know, and I think that's true of writing as well, whereas if, you know, and that any halfway decent reader will understand that and serve the, I mean, like Virginia Woolf, I read a lot of into audiobooks. I mean, her rhythms are incredible. Like, she's like this, she's like the Bach, you know, these huge architectural sentences.

But they have this kind of grandeur, and you have to remember, you have to enable the listener to remember where the beginning of the sentence was. when you finally get to the end. Pick up all these little sub clauses along the way without losing the sense, you know. But yeah, but amazing sort of rhythmic challenge. But once you kind of get it, she's like, it's so rewarding. So Carad and I are going to the award ceremony for the audiobooks.

So now there's going to be the speakeys. I know I was going to go too, but I'm going to be in a straight. We'll send you a picture. Because it is so brilliant. It's going to be recognised the work. of people on top of the writer's writing who take that extra level to make it a really fantastic audio book

and so I was just going to say for anyone listening I went on to the website and what you can do is listen to sort of four minutes of each book so you do get an idea of oh okay this is what the work that the actor reading the book is doing and whether they might also want to listen to the book in its entirety. I'm so chuffed about these awards and I did a little interview with bookseller magazine

and I said you know because actually it's a sort of under underrated form. And also, I hope that they will also, you know, honour those producers who are so unsung. They do so much work. The good ones do so much prep, you know, and they sit there in the booth. They don't get the joy of the reading, but they're, you know, I think it's great that people like that get their, get recognised. And also the industry encouraging more people to put more effort and more thought into it. It's not just a sort of side thing.

So many people now read by downloading the book to listen to or have both. They might have a hard copy and, you know, when you can't physically read, you can wait for a bus and get 10 minutes reading in that way. So also it feels like as well as well as celebrating the people who are doing really well, it feels like, oh, this is an industry in and of itself. Yeah, as well as writer. Do you have a favourite one you've done that if someone's never listened to an audio vote, you'd be like, oh, start here.

And that's a hard question. I mean, it might be Middle March because I think it might. be, I mean, I hate sort of, you know, who's best or what's best. I always find it impossible to answer questions like, what's your favourite or what's your best. But I think Middle March has got to be one of the greatest books written in the English language. I mean, the scale of her achievement is just mind-blown. Carrie has just finished reading it. I'm about 20 pages from the end of middle-a-month. We're going to do an episode of a bit of months, yeah. Wow. Yeah. Well, yeah. I mean, all of you doing that and working so much

and with two small kids. I'm really completely in all. I mean, well, I didn't know you the audio so now I'm quite excited because there's definitely a few bits I would quite like to hear because especially when all the men were talking I was like yeah I'm going to listen to it and then we can talk about it and I'll listen to it yeah but there's one there's one other and you know you know Mrs. I wish I was talking about you know modern contemporary nor but I don't get asked to do enough of those I did quite a few in lockdown but I'm you know but there's one other which is by another I mean I think a really underrated writer which is Mrs. Gaskell Elizabeth Gascoxas oh yeah we did her at university North and South North and South yeah so I

did North and South. How did you? And I think that is, I mean, I think that's just one of the, it's one of the great, great 19th century novels. So we read Elizabeth Gascoe University, I've said we, so I thought, assumed it was both of us, like we're, but it's because she did a really brilliant biography, I think, of Charlotte Brontes. Yeah, probably mostly known for Crownford, but in fact, I think, you know, I think that her greatest book is, is Northern South. It's such an amazing idea, because she takes this sort of quite sheltered, very young woman, a daughter of a clergyman living in Dorset or somewhere green and, you know, green and sort of quite prosperous and, you know, England is meadows and fields and blue skies and, you know, fresh

wind. And she grows up there. And then when she's about 18, 17, 18, her father gets sent to a, you know, ministry in Manchester, right in the, and this takes place in the middle of the Industrial Revolution. So suddenly this young girl arrives in Manchester. And, you know, And then she begins to encounter the poverty and then the conditions in which, you know, working people are having to try and survive. And then the greed and the corruption of the bosses. And then you enter, I mean, so you go with her consciousness, which is completely, you know, a blank page into the horrors of, you know, the growth of capitalism and the industrial revolution. And it's kind of incredible dawning of a consciousness. Wow.

But it's all done. It's not at all polemical. It's just done through. And so, I mean, you've got this amazing range of people, characters, and they're all surprising, and nobody's predictable, and the baddies aren't entirely bad and the goodies, you know, it's just the most genius novel. And so if anybody really wants a warlocking good yarn and, you know, and to be kept captive for ages, because it's really long, like, all 19th century books. So I think this time of year, I think people do want the classics, they want long books, they, you know, it's winter nights, long stories, stories, getting towards Christmas, I think this is a really good time to pick. up, a long, a long book. I don't think I've ever read North itself and I'm not going to it. I'm going to listen to Juliet.

Juliet, this has been so interesting. Thank you so much. And you're so brilliant talking about things. You're such a creative mind. You find everything and it's obviously why you're such a good actor because you just spark with ideas and understanding. And it's nice for you to talk to your mum as well, isn't it? My fake mom.

Oh, my God. Oh, my God. I couldn't get her married off. Oh, Juliet's paid Sarah's mom in the BBC sitcom album out of all. I've got to have such I was thinking of that this morning. I was like, oh my God, I had such fun. That was just so fun. It feels like another time because it was just before lockdown.

Yeah, yeah, I was pregnant. We filmed it. You were pregnant. You were that big bump. Do you know I met the other day that gorgeous actress who played behind a bar in the Babes Club? Oh, Cash. Cash, Holland. Yeah.

She's a brilliant. Cash Holland. When she auditioned, because we would do, I'd written the part for somebody. And, you know, because I'd say this actually to actors because I think self-tapes are so depressing and so hard. But the second Cash started speaking on screen, I was. absolutely astounded by her energy bouncing off the screen and how beautiful she is. Insanely beautiful. And she was just so lovely.

But she came bouncing up. I mean, how many years ago is that five? Yeah. And she came bouncing up and it was such a bond. Yeah. And, you know, I think we had such a ball on that. My phone sometimes, my computer shows me old pictures. And the other day I was like, what is that?

And it was you being having a lap dance from a man wearing a nappy. And I had to scint, I was like, what is that? Because I could just see a man with a nappy. I was like, that's like, Juliet, Stevenson. Oh, it is. It's a kind of genius piece. I mean, I thought it was a kind of genius piece. It was mad.

It was brilliant. I was very, very lucky to do it. Yeah. I'm so lucky to have you come and speak to us. Yeah, we're very lucky. Oh, no, guys, it's so lovely for me. Thank you so much for having me. I mean, it's just all joy. Talking to you about audio books, it's just like joy.

Thank you. Thank you. Thank you for having me. Thank you for listening to The Weirdo's Book Club. The British Audio Awards winner's ceremony, hosted by Sally Phillips, will take place on the 24th of November at the Royal Opera House. You can find more details if you follow them on Instagram at The Speakees. My book, Lydia Marmalade and The Christmas Wish, is available to buy in paperback now

for any brilliant children, age 8 and up. And I'm on tour. Tickets for my show, I Am a Strange Glooper on sale from sarahpastco.com. It's like an audio book. You can just close your eyes. Let's listen to me. You can find out more about what we're going to read if you head to Instagram, at Sarah and Carriads Weirdo's Book Club. And please join us on Patreon for lots more weird and wonderful stuff. We'd love to see you there.

Please do. Thank you for reading with us. We like reading.