The Redwall Collection

[Mulchior Lancer]

Well, on the off chance that I come across a stuffed badger...

A friend of mine made me a stuffed badger, though he’d probably fit more in the world of Wind in the Willows if it had a steampunk vibe. Still, I’d have no doubt that Ferahgo would like to fix a dagger between his ribs or poison his water. I’d be sad, as he’s one of the coolest gifts I’ve ever received.

Has anyone here had the chance to listen to any off the audiobooks? It's always a highlight to hear Brian tell the stories himself. I've also made it no secret that I love Billy Maher's adaptations of the songs and poems.

I adore the audiobooks, though I only have one at the moment (Rakkety Tam). Like Schröder, my issue is that they’re so expensive. However, the amount of care put into them is worth the price of admission. The songs are wonderfully done, as are the voices. One of my few complaints is that some of the “young” beasts don’t sound very young at all, but given it’s a small cast performing all of the characters, I’ll give it a pass. Besides, how great is Brian’s narration? He could read the phonebook at make it sound interesting.

My other complaint is that some of the more annoying characters become even moreso in audio form. While in the book of Rakkety Tam, I could skim Brooky’s constant laughing. Not so in audio form, and you get just as irritated with her as the other beasts.

What I like best about these audiobooks is that I can listen to the stories while reading other books. I love reading Redwall, but there are other series that I need to work through. I’m hoping that if I can get more of them, they’ll help me get my Redwall fix while knocking out my book backlog.

I have nine of them on my iPod, Redwall, Mattimeo, Mossflower, Martin the Warrior, Taggerung, Triss, The Long Patrol, Rakkety Tam, and High Rhulain. All of which are truly amazing and a joy to listen to, from the cast of characters to Brian narrating, there are very few things I dislike about them and I ope to get the rest soon.(The fact that they are all around $20 US is high on that list of complaints).

Edit: with some 'quick' math, I found that I have 104 hours, 19 minutes, and 2 seconds of Redwall audiobooks on my iPod. That's about 4 & 5/8 days.

That’s a very impressive collection! Have you considered taking a one-year subscription from Audible? I’m hoping I can do that for Christmas so I can build up my Redwall audiobooks. For the price of six books, you’re getting twelve, which makes them much more reasonable, in my opinion. It’s a big down payment, but it should save you in the long run.

[T.W.]

Actually, the cheapest way of picking up audiobooks is to rent them from the library and then ripping via Windows Media Player. Most libraries are now interconnected within a county. Even if no library in your county has those audiobooks, you can ask to use the statewide system. There's actually a worldwide system, but that's only used for rare books or research. I've got a couple myself, but most of my audiobooks have come from the library.

I agree that some of the voices aren't exactly what I imagined, especially Marc Jacques's voice at Martin and Matthias. The only voice I've actually been disappointed with, though, is Gulo's voice. I expected this deep, guttural voice, but in the audiobook his voice is actually high pitched.

[Schröder]

With other things, I might rip it, but I don't think I'd do that for anything I respect as highly as Brian's work.

[Mulchior Lancer]

Yeah, as much as the prices are a turn off, I don't think I could rip them from my library. I couldn't do that to Brian's work. Even with the books not on Kindle, I don't think I could download the copies that exist online and put them on my Kindle, even though I own the physical copies.

I do agree that Gulo's voice doesn't match what I thought it would be. It is a higher pitch than what I imagine in my mind. Granted, the pitch gives the voice a savage quality to it, I imagine it deeper to fit a wolverine. I couldn't imagine a Badger lord having a similar voice.

[Schröder]

So I have known about my school library's hardback collection, but I noticed the clear absence of Redwall itself, well today I had a 'DOH' moment, when I found the paperback section of the library and found it along with several others that they don't have in hardback. I even slapped my forehead at my own stupidity. But I felt much better about myself when I found this:

(observe the letter under which they were placed)

[Mulchior Lancer]

K? Really? I can't even imagine how K would even come up in the discussion on where to put the series. You'd have to be lucky to stumble into them in the first place.

[Mulchior Lancer]

Did anyone get anything Redwall related for Christmas/the Holidays? I've made one purchase so far that will show up in the coming weeks that I'll make a post about, but I'm saving the other two planned purchases for after the New Year.

The big gift for me this year was an Audible subscription, so my hopes of owning all of the narrated Redwall stories will come true this year... eventually. I have to wait each month for the tokens to come in to order my next books. So far, I've added Salamandastron, Outcast of Redwall, and Martin the Warrior to my collection.

I started Salamandastron and discovered there was a different narrator for this one, Gordon Hall, one of the usual members of Brian's voice cast. He does a good job, but I do miss Brian's narration. Thankfully, after checking the Redwall Wiki, this is the only one that Brian didn't narrate with a full cast.

I think if the cast chose to do so, they could finish the other books lacking a proper narration. However, I'm guessing they wouldn't without Brian there. Still, it makes me wonder how involved Brian was for the recording of Salamandastron.

[T.W.]

Hello everybody! Sorry for the absence, finals and then holiday stuff to do.

For Christmas, my parents did pick me up Get Yer Wack and Yennoworrameanlike from ebay. Those two definitely threw me off. That means I've picked up four of Brian's pre-Redwall writings, including Brian Jacques Meets Paddy Kelly and A Gig wid Brig, one of his records. I also got one of those pre-paid Visa cards for Christmas, so I went to Abebooks and picked up the US hardbacks for The Long Patrol and The Legend of Luke.

In other news, I also got the okay to work on a Redwall themed program at the library I work at this summer. I'm thinking of having a four-week program based around what I think are the most important parts of Redwall; riddles, songs/poetry, storytelling/adventures, and the final week will be a feast of Redwall food. I'll post separate thread to discuss that later.

[Mulchior Lancer]

Hey, great to see you back! Hope finals went okay for you.

You've amassed an impressive amount of Brian's work! I must admit I'm a teensy bit jealous, but that's awesome. I'm interested to hear what you think of all of them after you've read them all. Nice choices for hardcovers as well. Any reason you chose those two specific books?

And that's fantastic that you're doing a summer program on Redwall! You'll have to take a bunch of pictures of it when it happens. Based on the plans you've lined up, it looks like you're hitting all the important parts of the series, especially food. The only thing missing is a lesson on molespeak.

[T.W.]

You've amassed an impressive amount of Brian's work! I must admit I'm a teensy bit jealous, but that's awesome. I'm interested to hear what you think of all of them after you've read them all. Nice choices for hardcovers as well. Any reason you chose those two specific books?

Thanks, I have mostly just been lucky to find those books on ebay. I chose to pick up those two just because they are among my favorite books in the series. Abebooks comes to rescue again and I found both of them fairly cheap.

[Mulchior Lancer]

Okay, so I can finally talk about what I ordered for myself for the holidays, as I just received it today!

So, I first got hooked into reading Redwall in 2010 after The Sable Quean was out. The Rogue Crew loomed over the horizon, and I read that Brian Jacques was planning on a US tour in support for it. Chicago was one of the scheduled stops, so I planned on going to the event and meet Brian in person! I spent the rest of 2010 through the beginning of 2011 reading as much of the series as I could in anticipation for the event. Unfortunately, that never came to be, as Brian sadly passed on in February, 2011. I was devastated. Even though I only began reading the series for less than a year, it had quickly become my all time favorite series.

Fast forward to a few months ago. T.W. in an earlier post here brought up abebooks.com as a great place to buy books online. I’m always interested in new places to buy books besides amazon, so I checked it out. One of the first things I noticed was that you could search for books based on signed copies. Well, this got my brain turning. If I couldn’t meet Brian, then perhaps I could buy one of the books he signed, as that was the closest I could get to having met him.

A few weeks ago I searched for Outcast of Redwall in the U.K. hardcover. It’s tied with Mossflower as my favorite, but I’ve never been wild about the U.S. cover. Sure enough, they had a UK copy signed, and at a price I could afford. Best of all, it looked like Brian didn’t address it to anyone, but just gave his signature, an added bonus! I ordered it and waited, trying to keep my expectations in check just in case something wasn’t right.

Well, it came today, and it’s in near perfect condition! It also contains his signature, as advertised. I couldn’t be happier with it! Apologies for the size of the pictures below.





While I don’t plan on shelling out for more signed copies, I do plan on picking up more UK hardcovers in the future. Thank you T.W. for sharing this site, as it made one of my wishes come true. I recommend going this route if you want a signed copy, and don’t want to deal with a place like ebay. I’ve already ordered The Great Redwall Feast and Redwall A Winter’s Tale to come close to rounding out my collection.

[T.W.]

Wow, when I posted that link to abebooks I thought I was just helping out people fill out their collections. I'm glad that I was able to help you find something that was so important. I remember having the same feeling back when The Rogue Crew tour had been announced. I was really hoping Brian would come to the Pittsburgh area so that I could meet him, but I suppose it was just not meant to be.

I remember getting my first signed copy of a Redwall book. I had ordered directly from the Redwall website's La Dita bookshop because they were having a buy two hardbacks get one book and a Redwall badge free. I picked up a couple books directly from there previously because of sales they had and the books always came with a bookmark and a paper bookplate with Brian's signature printed on it. This time, though, the package didn't come with a bookplate. One of the books I ordered was Mariel of Redwall and I realized why the bookplate wasn't included when I flipped through it. The book had been signed on the cover page by the one and only Brian Jacques. That copy must have been leftover from when Brian was alive and signed all of the books that came out of La Dita.

I think I'm going to be toning down my Redwall collecting, at least for the next couple months with tuition bills and other such things coming out. I've managed to keep each purchase under $25 even for signed, but there are more important things right now. I might pick up The Great Redwall Feast for my summer library program, but that would be it for the next few months.

[Schröder]

I recently picked up MORE audiobooks; Doomwyte, Salamandastron, The Bellmaker, and Eulalia.

[Mulchior Lancer]

Wow, when I posted that link to abebooks I thought I was just helping out people fill out their collections. I'm glad that I was able to help you find something that was so important. I remember having the same feeling back when The Rogue Crew tour had been announced. I was really hoping Brian would come to the Pittsburgh area so that I could meet him, but I suppose it was just not meant to be.

I remember getting my first signed copy of a Redwall book. I had ordered directly from the Redwall website's La Dita bookshop because they were having a buy two hardbacks get one book and a Redwall badge free. I picked up a couple books directly from there previously because of sales they had and the books always came with a bookmark and a paper bookplate with Brian's signature printed on it. This time, though, the package didn't come with a bookplate. One of the books I ordered was Mariel of Redwall and I realized why the bookplate wasn't included when I flipped through it. The book had been signed on the cover page by the one and only Brian Jacques. That copy must have been leftover from when Brian was alive and signed all of the books that came out of La Dita.

I think I'm going to be toning down my Redwall collecting, at least for the next couple months with tuition bills and other such things coming out. I've managed to keep each purchase under $25 even for signed, but there are more important things right now. I might pick up The Great Redwall Feast for my summer library program, but that would be it for the next few months.

You helped me out big time with the recommendation. Just got my next order a few days ago, which had Redwall: A Winter's Tale and The Great Redwall Feast in it. Sad to hear that I wasn't the only one affected by the Rogue Crew tour never happening. At least for us we have the videos people took of his last tour on youtube. They've helped, and it's great to see Brian laughing and having so much fun interacting with the crowds.

Glad to hear you managed to get a signed copy as well! For Redwall collecting, which books are you lacking that you want to pick up? Other than hardcovers, I'm missing Tribes of Redwall: Mice, and the journal.

I recently picked up MORE audiobooks; Doomwyte, Salamandastron, The Bellmaker, and Eulalia.

Nice! How many do you have left to pick up and round out your collection?

[Schröder]

Nice! How many do you have left to pick up and round out your collection?

I just need Mariel, Outcast, Loamhedge, and Sable Quean.