Jo Nesbø’s Blood On Snow Nominated For Grammy

Music legend Patti Smith read the audiobook version of Jo Nesbø’s Blood On Snow and has now been nominated for a Grammy in the category of Best Spoken Word Album, which includes audiobooks, poetry and storytelling.

Patti Smith’s English version of the audiobook was released in April, and received a mixed review by the New York Times: “This particular pairing of writer and reader makes it clear that the casting and direction of an audiobook potentially transform the text. Smith’s gravelly, androgynous voice and flat tone are immediately recognizable. She’s a practiced narrator… Her tone and pace are consistent; she calibrates emotion deftly, conveying authorial intent.”

The same review, however, took issue with some aspects of Smith’s delivery: “Pronunciation ­changes words, and in this case the diction slips are not only discordant; when they occur, they both halt the reader and erode his or her trust in the narrator… It pushes his novel toward genre noir.”

“It’s very funny that a little book like Blood On Snow was nominated. It’s also really great that Patti Smith was nominated. She has, to my knowledge, never won a Grammy,” says Nesbø.

“Patti reads the audiobook absolutely gorgeously, so it is fully deserved. She has a very peculiar way of reading, and I think it was the New York Times that was critical that she read with a New Jersey accent. They thought that it did not fit, but I think that it fits the book like a glove.”

The 58th annual Grammy Awards will take place on February 15th, 2016. The nominees for Best Spoken Word Album are as follows:

Blood On Snow (by Jo Nesbø), read by Patti Smith

Brief Encounters: Conversations, Magic Moments, And Assorted Hijinks, Dick Cavett

A Full Life: Reflections at Ninety, Jimmy Carter

Patience And Sarah (by Isabel Miller), read by Janis Ian & Jean Smart

Yes Please, Amy Poehler (& Various Artists)