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Roydrowsy posted:Does anybody else have favorite "readers?" Scott Brick. I literally listened to a loving book about the history of salt because he read it. Actually it was a pretty cool book 
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Feb 28, 2012 17:34
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He's got some good Michael Pollan books too.
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Feb 28, 2012 17:40
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The only thing I don't like about Scott is his occasional tendency to make every line sound important
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Feb 28, 2012 18:09
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An audiobook that I really loved is Surely You're Joking Mr. Feynman A really great book about a really great person. Not so much on physics, mostly just anecdotes about life and his style of living. Reviews seem to be mixed about the narration so listen to a sample before you pull that trigger. I've got and listened to: Count Zero Surely You're Joking Mr. Feynman The Areas of my Expertise Enders Game Cell Snow Crash Dune From all those could someone recommend a book they think I might like? Prokhor fucked around with this message at 01:56 on Feb 29, 2012 |
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Feb 29, 2012 01:44
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Enders Shadow - If you only buy one other book in Scott Card's "Enderverse", make it this one. It runs concurrently with Ender's Game, but from Bean's perspective. I've read all of his books in the series, but I just really like Game, and Shadow the most. Yes, I'm biased towards any book he writes. Fucks given? None. A considerable number of Feynman's actual lectures are available for purchase, but I couldn't get into them. I'll have to give them another listen at some point, I have his first three from some past deal or another. More Information Than You Require - the sequel to Areas of My Expertise, and it's written post 2008, so it may be more topical. Also try Bill Maher's books. If you like Dune, stay away from Brian Herbert and Kevin J. Anderson. I've read the next two books, but I never finished the series. If you like Science Fiction, and the Dune universe (and you don't care about canon), try Brian Herbert and Kevin J. Anderson's spinoff books. My "far future" experience is rather limited, sadly, but try Niven's Ringworld series, or the Mass Effect books (no, really) if you want some aliens in the mix. I read Primary Inversion a long time ago, and it's apparently a modest series of books now. I can't help you with the rest. I've only read one book each of King's & Stephenson's, and neither are remotely related. Well, maybe Cryptonomicon, but it's really, REALLY loving long. Mister Facetious fucked around with this message at 05:07 on Feb 29, 2012 |
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Feb 29, 2012 05:02
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Can't believe I didn't know about this thread until just now. I've been on an audiobook kick for the past year. I live in Los Angeles, and the LA Public Library system has a pretty extensive collection -- not just of physical-format audiobooks, but also ones available for download off their website. I have an Audible account that I use in case the LAPL doesn't have something, but I normally don't exceed my allotted 1 credit per month. Anyway, I'm nth-ing the love for the Guidall American Gods reading, Neil Gaiman's reading of his own Fragile Things, Anthony Bourdain's stuff, and the Terry Pratchett ouevre. And I agree with the opinion that World War Z is a really cool undertaking as an audiobook, but loses a lot with the abridgement. Thanks to this thread, over the last 24 hours, I've downloaded God Is Not Great, Lolita, Squirrel Seeks Chipmunk, Anathem, How to Succeed in Evil, and Kraken. I've also added myself to the waiting list for Empire of Blue Water, The Strain, Salt, The Magicians, More Information Than You Require, The Night Circus, and Neuromancer. Y'all have given me recommendations for weeks (if not months) of entertainment. I'd like to return the favor. NONFICTION: McMafia, by Misha Glenny, read by John Lee. A compelling first-hand look at organized crime around the globe. Glenny interviews cops in India, pot smugglers in the Pacific Northwest, a sex slave in Israel, and gives us a look at the less well-known criminal enterprises, such as the caviar cartels of Kazakhstan. John Lee's narration is spot-on, and he doesn't try to cram in different voices or accents. Highly, highly recommended. The Devil in the White City, by Erik Larson, read by Scott Brick. Larson's book tells two parallel Chicago stories: Serial killer H. H. Holmes and his hotel of horrors, and Daniel Burnham and his efforts to coordinate the 1893 World's Fair. If you're like me, you might find yourself surprised at finding the latter more fascinating. Seamless reading by Brick. Get this. Now. Lies My Teacher Told Me: Everything Your American History Textbook Got Wrong, by James W. Loewen, read by Brian Keeler. If you're the sort of person who thinks that civic pride should trump truth, as far as the teaching of history goes, you should probably skip this book. If, however, you believe that blind patriotism is never a good thing, grab this. American history textbooks gloss over (or completely ignore) some of the less-savory bits of this country's story, and Loewen's book (rightly, in my opinion) asserts that those bits not only serve to paint a more complete portrait of the nation, but also have the potential to actually get students interested in history. Letter to a Christian Nation, by Sam Harris, read by Jordan Bridges. Much of a muchness with other, longer, atheistic treatises (although it's much, much shorter than most of 'em). My own main fascination about the book was that it needed to be written at all; it's intended as a response to the hate mail that the author received from self-described Christians after the publication of his previous book, The End of Faith, and it still baffles me how people cannot see how un-Christ-like they're being when they go after someone for saying something they disagree with. Some good prose in places, and a solid reading by Bridges. Shockaholic, by Carrie Fisher, read by the author. Fisher is a very funny lady. However, if you're expecting the voice of Princess Leia, think again -- years of hard living have made her sound more like Marge Simpson. And she would like to tell you about some of those hard-lived years in this short collection of autobiographical essays. If nothing else, check it out for the introduction, in which she refers to herself as a "fucktard". GENERAL FICTION: Cloud Atlas, by David Mitchell, read by Scott Brick, John Lee, Cassandra Campbell, Kim Mai Guest, Kirby Heybourne, and Richard Matthews. An amazing matryoshka doll of a novel. It's essentially six novellas, the first five of which are nested into the next at the middle of the tale, then the sixth is told in its entirety, then all of the previous stories finish in descending order. Each has its own narrator, and each narrator does a great job. I couldn't recommend this one highly enough. Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell, by Susanna Clarke, read by Simon Prebble. One of my favorite audiobooks. Perhaps a bit slow in places, but it's worth the journey. The tale of two early 19th Century English magicians (the wizard kind, not the stage kind), their rise, and their rivalry. Excellent reading by Prebble... up to the point when he mispronounces "sidhe" as "seed-hay". Still, great stuff. The Prestige, by Christopher Priest, read by Simon Vance. The tale of two late 19th Century English magicians (the stage kind, not the wizard kind), their rise, and their rivalry. It's an epistolary novel, and really forces you to question the reliability of the narrators. There's a great sequence where, in the reading of journal entries from one of the characters, Vance "ages" his voice from that of a nine-year-old to middle age. You might have seen the movie, which starred two guys who are best known for playing superheroes. (The book, as is often the case, is way different.) A Long Way Down, by Nick Hornby, read by Scott Brick, Simon Vance, and Kate Reading. Four strangers meet after going to the roof of the same parking garage on New Year's Eve in order to jump off. By turns funny and poignant, it's up there with High Fidelity and About a Boy, in my opinion. The four intertwining first-person narratives are split between the three readers (with Reading taking on both female roles). Well worth a listen. Fluke, by Christopher Moore, read by Bill Irwin. It's a fun book, interesting concept, good characters -- basically like most of Moore's other novels. Irwin's reading, though... you can hear him reach the end of each page. No, seriously, the pauses were driving me nuts until I got used to them. He does a good job with the different character voices, though -- including a supporting character who's a faux-Hawaiian Rasta surfer. MYSTERY/THRILLER: The Devil You Know / Vicious Circle, by Mike Carey, read by Michael Kramer. These are the first two books of the Felix Castor trilogy. If you read comics, you might know Carey as the sole writer for the Sandman spinoff, Lucifer's, entire 75-issue run. Or maybe his current project, Unwritten. If you don't read comics, just know that Carey's a solid, thoughtful writer with not a few moments of genuine storytelling brilliance on his resume. These books follow a snarky, John Constantine-esque exorcist-for-hire through two supernatural mysteries in and around London, and they're both quite good. Kramer... tries. He really tries. And he does well, for the most part. But he's American, and the cast of characters are predominantly English, and even I can hear his narration of Castor slip in and out of region and social class... and sometimes fail to be English altogether. If you can forgive him this, though, the books are well worth your time. The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo / The Girl Who Played with Fire / The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest -- all by Stieg Larsson, all read by Simon Vance. I wanted to find out why a series of novels by a Swedish Trotskyist have blown up as huge as they have in the United States. I wound up plowing through them. I still don't really get why this series appealed to the American reading audience at large, but I really enjoyed them. And Vance's reading, with the genuine effort he puts in to pronouncing the Swedish proper nouns (no idea how he did, but it sounded fine to me), was stellar. The Silver Pigs / Shadows in Bronze / Venus in Copper / The Iron Hand of Mars -- all by Lindsey Davis, Silver Pigs read by Christian Rodska, the rest dramatized by the BBC, with Anton Lesser playing Marcus Didius Falco. The first four books in the Falco series, set in Vespasian's Rome (as well as its territories and protectorates) and revolving around "public informant" Marcus Didius Falco, a first-century gumshoe. I definitely prefer the first, unabridged book to the radio productions -- but the full-cast productions are also quite good. Give 'em a listen, if you're down for some Roman Empire detectivery. Soulless, by Gail Carriger, read by Emily Gray. The first book of the "Parasol Protectorate" series. It's nothing mind-blowing; just a fun little comedy/mystery set in a Victorian England where werewolves and vampires have been integrated as part of everyday society. Lots of extended (and oddly hot) make-out sequences between the twenty-five-year-old "spinster" protagonist and her love interest. Gray's reading enhances the experience of the first-person narrative by sounding every bit the young lady of social standing. THE "MEH" PILE: The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle, by Haruki Murakami, read by Rupert Degas. Maybe I just don't get Murakami's "genius", but the vast majority of the first half or more of this book was just dry and boring as all hell. And then came a really cool WWII story -- yay! And then back to the main story -- boo! And then another WWII story -- yay! And then back to the main story, which suddenly turns kind of weird, although not in a particularly entertaining way. The novel just left me cold. Degas' reading of it was awesome, though. It's almost creepy when he starts performing the role of a sixteen-year-old girl. The reading was what kept me from stopping the thing after four hours of boredom and deleting it from my iPod. If you're predisposed to enjoying Murakami's stuff, check it out. Otherwise... meh. That's Not In My American History Book, by Thomas Ayres, read by Jeff Riggenbach. Not even gonna link it. If Ayres' badly-researched history doesn't sink this book, Riggenbach's stilted and over-enunciated reading does. The two combined just make it a waste of time. This book and Lies My Teacher Told Me seemed to be heading in the same direction, at first... and then Ayres goes off the rails. From what I can tell, he incorrectly states that:
* California is owned by England. The basis for this statement is Drake's Plate of Brass, which was a forgery. * "Taps" was written by the son of Union Captain Robert Ellicombe. The son, a music major, had dropped out of college in order to fight for the Confederacy. Ellicombe came across his son's body after a battle and found the tune scribbled on a piece of paper. Problem is, there was no Captain Ellicombe. * John Smith, of Jamestown and Pocahontas fame, was married with children when he met the Powhatan princess. Smith never married, nor is he known to have had children. There are others that don't ring true, lots of speculation, and an apparent obsession with Bill Clinton getting his cock sucked. Oh, and Wyatt Earp would've laughed at the notion of "gun control". Ready Player One, by Ernest Cline, read by Wil Wheaton. ... ... I loving hated this with a fiery passion. I got about four hours into this Mary-Sue shitwaffle, stopped it in mid-sentence, and deleted it. "Halliday was really into the '80s! Halliday was really into the '80s! Remember Atari? Remember The Breakfast Club? Halliday did! Because he was really into the '80s! And I, a teenager in 2044, am, by consequence, ALSO really into the '80s!" Seriously. gently caress this book.
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Mar 1, 2012 10:21
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Prokhor posted:From all those could someone recommend a book they think I might like? If you liked Snow Crash, The Diamond Age is a great followup, and the audio version is well produced. Also echoing the More Information Than You Require praise a couple posts up.
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Mar 1, 2012 16:49
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Oh look my new credits have arrived. Oh poo poo, they're advertising the stand. I'll get that and one other book in the WOT series. Wait a minute, where the gently caress is the stand? I can get every other book of kings but not the stand? but why would you advertise it if I can't spend my credits on it?!?
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Mar 2, 2012 11:25
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Get the dark tower series instead. Awesome.
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Mar 2, 2012 14:03
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Tithin Melias posted:Oh look my new credits have arrived. Oh poo poo, they're advertising the stand. I'll get that and one other book in the WOT series. Maybe it's a regional restriction? Are you in the US?
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Mar 2, 2012 17:48
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Syrinxx posted:The Stand is here: http://www.audible.com/pd/ref=sr_1_1?asin=B0077DEH7A&qid=1330706864 I'm outside the Us but yeah at this point, gently caress audibles restrictions, I am sick of not being able to use my credit to buy stuff that they're advertising to me.
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Mar 3, 2012 10:21
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Tithin Melias posted:I'm outside the Us but yeah at this point, gently caress audibles restrictions, I am sick of not being able to use my credit to buy stuff that they're advertising to me. At least other companies have the decency to just not show what you're missing.
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Mar 3, 2012 10:27
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The General posted:At least other companies have the decency to just not show what you're missing. Actually, Audible already does this. For example, only two of Michael Pollan's five books are even viewable, for purchase from the U.K. site. Let's face it; when has an american company done any favours for Australia? (Or anyone else in the Commonwealth, for that matter) Mister Facetious fucked around with this message at 21:21 on Mar 3, 2012 |
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Mar 3, 2012 21:17
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Mister Macys posted:Let's face it; when has an american company done any favours for Australia? Pretty sure it's not Audible not wanting to sell it to you, it's that someone else owns the distribution rights and isn't allowing Audible to sell it. And that someone else more than likely is based in Australia (or the UK, or wherever).
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Mar 5, 2012 06:40
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budgieinspector posted:
My one problem with Vance's reading was his take on Blomkvist sounded a hell of lot like Matthew Holness' character Garth Merenghi. budgieinspector posted:
There's a fifth radio play, "Poseidon's Gold". But I bought these, not knowing really what to expect, and I was pleasantly surprised at how humorous these Falco stories are. Something all the same lines are the adaptations of Simon Brett's Charles Paris mysteries starring Bill Nighy.
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Mar 6, 2012 01:35
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A friend of my Mum's lent me her copy of the audiobook of Six Wives: The Queens of Henry VIII by David Starkey via Clipper Audio. It's amazing. It's also 34 hours long.
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Mar 6, 2012 14:12
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Great reviews budgieinspector! Mister Macys posted:or the Mass Effect books (no, really) I'm almost done listening to Mass Effect: Revelation. The reader's accent bugged me a little at first. The book for sure won't win any awards but I think it's good fun space opera. Kept me entertained over many hours of driving last weekend.
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Mar 7, 2012 19:15
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Audible's doing a $4.95 sale, with a couple hundred titles, and I have to ask after seeing this one: http://www.audible.com/pd?asin=B0045ZXFO4 Is this guy, like a political troll? How the gently caress did he get money to make a book?
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Mar 7, 2012 23:27
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Mister Macys posted:Audible's doing a $4.95 sale, with a couple hundred titles, and I have to ask after seeing this one: I had to give up on China Mieville's Kraken today. John Lee's accent and affect were too much for me to follow. UltimoDragonQuest fucked around with this message at 09:54 on Mar 8, 2012 |
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Mar 7, 2012 23:56
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I audio anything I don't want to be seen reading, like Harry Potter, actually a good listen.
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Mar 8, 2012 17:22
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Davros1 posted:My one problem with Vance's reading was his take on Blomkvist sounded a hell of lot like Matthew Holness' character Garth Merenghi. I'll have to wait until the experience of enjoying the audiobook has faded enough so that a compare/contrast session doesn't make me sad. quote:There's a fifth radio play, "Poseidon's Gold". But I bought these, not knowing really what to expect, and I was pleasantly surprised at how humorous these Falco stories are. Right? Thanks for the tip on the existence of "Poseidon's" -- I read the hardcover for that one, and kept getting pulled away from it. By the time I was finished, I owed late fees to the library. quote:Something all the same lines are the adaptations of Simon Brett's Charles Paris mysteries starring Bill Nighy. I'll check these out as soon as the first one becomes available on Audible or through the library. Thanks! In the last week, I've listened to the following: Lolita, by Vladimir Nabokov, read by Jeremy Irons. If you've read through this thread, seen all the gushing recommendations for this reading, and wondered if they were just hype -- they're not. Some of the best prose in the English language, read by a world-class actor at the top of his game. loving transcendent. I don't care if you know the book by heart, hearing Irons put Humbert's confession through its paces is worth revisiting it. By turns snarling, wheedling, suave, distraught, and haughty, this performance is amazing. God Is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything, by Christopher Hitchens, read by the author. More vicious than most of the atheist screeds out there, but also filled to bursting with deft turns of phrase and some different points than one normally finds. Definitely recommended to nonbelievers; not at all recommended to sharing with your friends among the faithful if you ever want them to speak to you again. Also: groverat posted:Christopher Hitchens reading his own God is not Great is magnificent because you can tell he is drunk in some of it, you can hear him shuffling papers, he'll pause to catch himself in one of those drunken half-burps/half-hiccups, and his delivery is wonderful. You can visualize him sitting in a booth with big headphones and a glass of neat scotch. Oh, and his delivery tends to GO LIKE THIS at the beginning of sentences, then get very... very... quiet...toward... the end. Which can be annoying when you're trying to listen in your car. God, No!: Signs You May Already Be an Atheist and Other Magical Tales, by Penn Jillette, read by the author. Picked this up from Audible's $4.50 sale. It's fine, if you already like Penn. If you don't (and even if you do, quite frankly), having his congested foghorn of a voice blasting in your ear might be a trying experience. It's about 1/3 anti-religious proselytizing, 1/3 anecdotes, and the rest is a mix of his LOLbertarian rants, a bit of family reflection, and one Penthouse "I never thought it could happen to me" letter. Squirrel Seeks Chipmunk: A Modest Bestiary, by David Sedaris, read by the author, Dylan Baker, Elaine Fritch, and Sian Phillips. Essentially, Aesop's fables, with every character an animal, and every animal a self-absorbed buffoon. Characters include a pair of American warblers who migrate to Guatemala every winter, only to return with hiLARious stories about the backwards locals who refuse to learn English; a stork who runs into a problem when her chick asks where babies come from; and an annoying New Age lab rat whose smug tirade about the power of positive thinking to impact health helps neither her terminally-ill new roommate nor, in the end, herself. Supergods: What Masked Vigilantes, Miraculous Mutants, and a Sun God from Smallville Can Teach Us About Being Human, by Grant Morrison, read by John Lee. Simply a must for any comics fan, and a great bit of pop-art history/personal memoir for any non-comics-fan, brought to you by one of the current crop of star writers in the field. Morrison's book is sharp, insightful, and funny. A typical passage: Grant Morrison posted:From the very beginning, Batman habitually found himself dealing with crimes involving chemicals and crazy people, and over the years he would take on innumerable villains armed with lethal Laughing Gas, mind-control lipstick, Fear Dust, toxic aerosols, and "artificial phobia" pills. Indeed, his career had barely begun before he was heroically inhaling countless bizarre chemical concoctions cooked up by mad black-market alchemists. Superman might have faced a few psychic attacks, but even if it was against his will every time, Batman was hip to serious mind-bending drugs. Batman knew what it was like to trip balls without seriously losing his poo poo.
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Mar 9, 2012 14:29
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At the risk of killing this thread again: This past week had a couple of false starts. I couldn't get into Anathem, and The Age of American Unreason was just so damned elitist that I dropped it halfway through. Instead, I listened to: Fahrenheit 451, by Ray Bradbury, read by Christopher Hurt. I know I read this in junior high. I'm sure of it. I just couldn't remember anything about it. There are some really wonderfully-constructed passages, and the theme still rings true, today. Unfortunately, it suffers from being written in the 1950s. Even a man with Bradbury's imagination couldn't envision the ways in which the world would be different even half a century later, and some of the tech ideas are truly quaint. It's also shot through with Bradbury's ever-present "when I was a boy" image of the American ideal. All in all, I'm glad I revisited it, but it was a bit disappointing. Fatherland, by Robert Harris, read by Michael Jayston. A conspiracy/detective thriller that just happens to take place in a world where Hitler and the Third Reich survived WWII and prospered in its wake. The main character is a detective in the Kriminalpolizei, who finds himself following a murder mystery all the way to a conspiracy at the highest levels of the Reich. Does a great job of conveying the author's notion of how fascist Germany would operate in the 1960s -- in contrast to Fahrenheit's rococo futurism, Harris benefits from writing about a past that never happened by using elements of the past that did. The reading was mostly solid, but goddamn some Brits can't do an American accent to save their lives. Jayston shares Stephen Fry's tendency to jam as many hard "r"s into the lines as he possibly can, when the script calls for an American dialect, culminating in his pronunciation of "us" as "urrrsss".
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Mar 16, 2012 23:31
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budgieinspector posted:Fatherland, by Robert Harris, read by Michael Jayston. A conspiracy/detective thriller that just happens to take place in a world where Hitler and the Third Reich survived WWII and prospered in its wake. The main character is a detective in the Kriminalpolizei, who finds himself following a murder mystery all the way to a conspiracy at the highest levels of the Reich. Does a great job of conveying the author's notion of how fascist Germany would operate in the 1960s -- in contrast to Fahrenheit's rococo futurism, Harris benefits from writing about a past that never happened by using elements of the past that did. The reading was mostly solid, but goddamn some Brits can't do an American accent to save their lives. Jayston shares Stephen Fry's tendency to jam as many hard "r"s into the lines as he possibly can, when the script calls for an American dialect, culminating in his pronunciation of "us" as "urrrsss". They made a movie out of this in the 70's. It is actually pretty interesting and has some fantastic matte painting for the scenery.
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Mar 20, 2012 19:28
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I just read Hunger Games and I feel like I'm reading Battle Royale again (hint: I probably am, it's the same poo poo and quite possibly plagiarized) but the book was extremely well written and decently voiced. I do suggest getting the audiobook or the book and then going back to the distant past of 1999 (when BR was written) and read Battle Royale on some manga reader website and then curse the author for a well written but obviously plagiarized work. That said, it is an excellent read and I wholeheartedly suggest getting it. Ice Phisherman fucked around with this message at 19:58 on Mar 20, 2012 |
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Mar 20, 2012 19:54
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Ice Phisherman posted:I just read Hunger Games and I feel like I'm reading Battle Royale again (hint: I probably am, it's the same poo poo and quite possibly plagiarized) but the book was extremely well written and decently voiced. I do suggest getting the audiobook or the book and then going back to the distant past of 1999 (when BR was written) and read Battle Royale on some manga reader website and then curse the author for a well written but obviously plagiarized work. Battle Royale also came out in novel form. The General has a copy of it, and it's pretty thick.
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Mar 20, 2012 23:48
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Mister Macys posted:Battle Royale also came out in novel form. The General has a copy of it, and it's pretty thick. it is quite good. Every time I lend a copy to somebody, I never end up getting it back. Right now I'm listening to "Ghost in the Wires" by Kevin Mitnick. I'm not a huge non-fiction person, but I caught them talking about it on NPR and knew I had to check it out. While parts of it are extremely technical, it is an interesting look into what it meant to be an actual hacker.
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Mar 20, 2012 23:55
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Roydrowsy posted:it is quite good. Every time I lend a copy to somebody, I never end up getting it back. That might be the state of my copy. Im not sure.
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Mar 21, 2012 02:41
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Roydrowsy posted:Right now I'm listening to "Ghost in the Wires" by Kevin Mitnick. I'm not a huge non-fiction person, but I caught them talking about it on NPR and knew I had to check it out. While parts of it are extremely technical, it is an interesting look into what it meant to be an actual hacker. Seconding this, but with the caveat that the tone of the book is incredibly smug and self-satisfied, and the narrator seems to deliberately add to that. If you can tolerate massive doses of  then Ghost in the Wires is a great listen.
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Mar 21, 2012 03:57
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Sepherothic posted:They made a movie out of this in the 70's. That'd be a hell of a trick, seeing as how the book wasn't published until 1992. Just finished Guns, Germs, and Steel, by Jared Diamond, read by Doug Ordunio. Great book on why certain societies prospered in history while others didn't. Had me wondering what the world might have been like if Australian Aborigines (who apparently had the first watercraft, some 40,000 years ago) had found themselves in a land of domesticable large mammals (or marsupials) and rich soil, rather than one where the local megafauna died off around the time that they arrived, and the soil was nutrient-deprived. An Australian navy reigning over the Pacific, perhaps? Piss-poor reading, though -- the guy sounds like he has a cold, and is just dull as poo poo. Now listening to The Pale Blue Eye, by Louis Bayard, read by Charles Leggett. It's a historical murder mystery set at West Point in 1830, and a certain cadet named Poe plays a significant part in the proceedings.
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Mar 21, 2012 07:10
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please thread do not die  I enjoyed The Pale Blue Eye. It was an interesting bit of historical fiction that featured a 20-year-old Edgar Allen Poe flouncing around West Point as an assistant to a murder investigation. The narrator kind of sounded like Gerald McRaney. The Uncommon Reader, written and read by Alan Bennett, was cute, light, amusing -- a good way to spend a little over two hours of your day. It's basically: Queen Elizabeth chances across a bookmobile, becomes obsessed with reading, neglects matters of state. The Suspicions of Mr. Whicher: The Undoing of a Great Victorian Detective, by Kate Summerscale, read by Simon Vance. Victorian true crime. A child's murder shocks England shortly after the creation of Scotland Yard; and the public dissatisfaction with the investigation has grim repercussions on the newly-coined profession of the police detective. Lots of tie-ins to detective fiction of the day. I literally checked this out thinking that it was a novel, and when the tone didn't quite match up, I had to look up the incident. Pretty good. More Information Than You Require, by John Hodgman, read by the author, featuring Jonathan Coulton, Paul Rudd, Dick Cavett, Rachel Maddow, Sarah Vowell, Ira Glass, and Ricky Gervais. loving hilarious. One of those books that's better in audio format -- Hodgman and his collaborators often stray from the text to ad lib, Coulton plays some songs, and Maddow mixes drinks. Trying to decide which of the following to listen to, next: Doomsday Book, by Connie Willis My Name is Red, by Orhan Pamuk The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, by Junot Diaz The Magicians, by Lev Grossman The Windup Girl, by Paolo Bacigalupi Any suggestions? budgieinspector fucked around with this message at 17:30 on Apr 6, 2012 |
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Apr 6, 2012 05:04
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Windup Girl is pretty excellent for world building, even if the plot itself is a little eh. Probably one of the most believable (and thus depressing as poo poo) views of the future in ~100-150 years. The narrator is slow as poo poo in his reading though, the only way I could stand it is that my mp3 player can speed up tempo by like 15%.
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Apr 6, 2012 06:04
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budgieinspector posted:
I absolutely love The Doomsday Book, and Connie Willis in general, though as you have probably already have been warned, it can be a very dreary, depressing book. I have only ever read it on paper, though, so I can't say anything about the audio version. I am, however, currently listening to another book by Willis (after having read it on paper as well, which is very rare for me), that is set in the same universe, while being as radically different in tone as you can possibly imagine: To Say Nothing Of The Dog. It's a Victorian period piece/comedy of manners/mystery novel/sci-fi/spoof and it's fantastic. I'm enjoying it even more the second time around, and the narrator is really good, so I recommend that one without any hesitation.
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Apr 6, 2012 12:38
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jeeves posted:Windup Girl is pretty excellent for world building, even if the plot itself is a little eh. Probably one of the most believable (and thus depressing as poo poo) views of the future in ~100-150 years. Yeah I just finished this too and second the sentiment. The book is very slow and some of the ideas are kooky (springs replacing batteries everywhere, cargo blimps replacing shipping and airplanes, genetically engineered elephants) but then again a lot of the other ideas - Calorie companies, American economic hitmen going after indigenous crops, gene-prospecting, seed banks as invaluable genetic heritage, bioengineering gone wrong wrecking the global ecology - are all very cool and well done. It is one of the more plausible and depressing near-future novels I've read.
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Apr 6, 2012 16:44
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Bass Concert Hall posted:Yeah I just finished this too and second the sentiment. The book is very slow and some of the ideas are kooky (springs replacing batteries everywhere, cargo blimps replacing shipping and airplanes, genetically engineered elephants) but then again a lot of the other ideas - Calorie companies, American economic hitmen going after indigenous crops, gene-prospecting, seed banks as invaluable genetic heritage, bioengineering gone wrong wrecking the global ecology - are all very cool and well done. It is one of the more plausible and depressing near-future novels I've read.
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Apr 6, 2012 16:57
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Just started Stranger in a Strange Land by Rober Heinlein. I'm on disc four already. When I first heard Christopher Hurt's voice, i was a little worried that it would get old, but he's knocking it out of the park. I am absolutely loving it, and I think one of my favorite things about the book is that it really doesn't feel like a book written in the 1960s. Granted, we know a lot more about mars now, but it feels like it could have been written at any time. Next up... i've got Wizard's First Rule coming in from the library. I saw it on a top fantasy list so I figured I'd try it out. Then I heard everybody talking about how awful the series is... so I guess we'll find out.
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Apr 6, 2012 23:23
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Wizard's First Rule is great. But, you need to stop after that book. Move on, don't look back.
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Apr 8, 2012 01:42
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This thread has been invaluable to me over the last several months. Working on an assembly gets to be more than a little arduous. Thank you all for the great book reviews. To contribute these are some of my favorites. Made in America - Bill Bryson This book is great for anyone interested in etymology or Americana. The author presents a huge range of Americanisms and their origins. He works his way from the first visitors to the continent naming the places the found to the more recent stock market and sports slang. 5/5 Physics of the Impossible - Michio Kaku and Feodor Chin The popular Theoretical Physicists explains how things like dark matter and death rays could exist. This isn't a physics book, the concepts are explained in a way that anybody can understand. If you're a physics nerd you probably all ready know a lot of what is presented. It's an entertaining listen nonetheless. 4/5 True Hallucinations - Terence McKenna McKenna was an advocate for hallucinogenic drugs. If you have ever listened to the Joe Rogan podcast you have heard this guys name come up. McKenna's Ideas were dubious, and he would be the first to admit it. Basically its stoner talk, but it's so good you start to believe that there might be something to it. His writing style and Ideas are poetic, and Terence comes across as a super charming guru type. 3/5, points off for annoying sound effects. Games People Play: The Basic Handbook of Transactional Analysis - Eric Berne A fascinating look at human interactions presented in the form of games. Dr. Berne discusses 101 games in a six and a half hour long audio book. Most of the games are innocuous rituals or help full things like the "how too" game. Having been written in 1962 The book shows it's age when discussing sex rolls in a lot of domestic situations. Where the book really shines is that it presents the games we all play, whether or not you choose to continue playing them is up to you. 4/5 2Jets fucked around with this message at 04:16 on Apr 8, 2012 |
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Apr 8, 2012 03:52
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Lately I've been using audiobooks to fall asleep to. The first Dark Tower book does it for me every time - I hardly make it through the first scene, and still have no idea what the story is about! Do you guys have any suggestions for good sleepytime audiobooks? Monotonous readers with gentle voices preferred, and if they don't act out the characters' voices, all the better.
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Apr 8, 2012 04:14
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Snowy posted:Lately I've been using audiobooks to fall asleep to. The first Dark Tower book does it for me every time - I hardly make it through the first scene, and still have no idea what the story is about! The woman who does the reading for Diamond Age does a really good job. Great voice, and nice subtle accents that aren't jarring.
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Apr 8, 2012 04:26
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The Modern Scholar series puts me to sleep in minutes. There's nothing better than a lecture in a dark room to put me to sleep. I had a geology professor who would show slides during his 8:30am class. It was the perfect storm. I would go into class shaking from coffee/red bull and 5 minutes in be struggling to stay awake.
2Jets fucked around with this message at 04:36 on Apr 8, 2012 |
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Apr 8, 2012 04:28
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