For me, that almost never works well. Unless the author is an experienced speaker or actor, an author reading is usually inferior. It’s a different skill set than writing. Christopher Hitchens reading God is Not Great was great, but he was both a professional writer and a professional orator. And The Golden Compass read by Phillip Pullman and a full cast also worked. But I think those are exceptions.
And as far as fiction goes, I’d literally rather listen to text to speech than a bad human narration. Maybe for poetry author readings are a great thing, but for everything else…
I’ve listened to at least a hundred audio books, and the quality of the narrator makes a huge difference to me. To this date I’m still not sure if I disliked the text of the Handmaiden’s Tale or just the narrator I heard years ago. And conversely, I’m not sure if I actually like American Gods or if I just really love Lenny Henry’s wonderful narration.
