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MrGreenShirt
Mar 14, 2005

Hell of a book. It's about bunnies!

Snowy posted:

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.

Go The gently caress To Sleep read by Samuel L. Jackson.

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Mister Facetious
Apr 21, 2007

I think I died and woke up in L.A.,
I don't know how I wound up in this place...

:canada:

Snowy posted:

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.

Sir Winston Churchill's history of World War Two Volumes 1-4

Narrated by Christian Rodska. Not monotonous, but a very even speaker, with that great, relaxing british accent north americans love, and we all call "Yorkshire" (regardless of where the actor/speaker is from).

They're also really good.

Sepherothic
Feb 8, 2003

Roydrowsy posted:

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 read this a year ago. Great book, great listen.

quote:

The woman who does the reading for Diamond Age does a really good job. Great voice, and nice subtle accents that aren't jarring.

Also great. I loved the music they played between chapters and the voice actor was great.


But anyway. I came here to post these two books.

The Alchemy of Air http://www.audible.com/pd/ref=sr_1_2?asin=B0043BW4OW&qid=1333860467&sr=1-2

Demon Under the Microscope http://www.audible.com/pd?asin=B002V8KZZO

Both are incredibly good nonfiction books.

I chewed through Alchemy of AIr in about 2 days. Seriously that good.

Alchemy is about the discovery of the Haber-Bosch process and its impacts on world history. The other is about the discovery of sulfa drugs and antibiotics. The two are companion pieces really, as the two have multiple interactions of key figures and occur roughly on the same timelines.

Also check out The Great Influenza http://www.audible.com/pd/ref=sr_1_1?asin=B002UZLF8Y&qid=1333860728&sr=1-1

Basically these three books chronicles the rise of modern science in pre WWI Germany and its destruction at the hands of Kaiser Wilhelm and Hitler. It is a story that defines the 20th century and is absolutely enthralling.

10/10 for all around. If you like science history reading, or history in general, read these!

Sepherothic fucked around with this message at 05:54 on Apr 8, 2012

jeeves
May 27, 2001

Deranged Psychopathic
Butler Extraordinaire

GlassEye-Boy posted:

The woman who does the reading for Diamond Age does a really good job. Great voice, and nice subtle accents that aren't jarring.

She is honestly one of the best narrators I have ever heard for doing different voices in interesting ways that are both unique and memorable.

Too bad that book sets up an awesome world only to be let down by a completely retarded plot that goes no where and abruptly ends with a slap right in your face from the author's dick when you could tell he got tired of writing it.

wargames
Mar 16, 2008

official yospos cat censor

dema posted:

Wizard's First Rule is great.

But, you need to stop after that book. Move on, don't look back.

I think you can stop on book 3 and never look back because god drat does it turn in a soap box after that.

fordan
Mar 9, 2009

Clue: Zero

wargames posted:

I think you can stop on book 3 and never look back because god drat does it turn in a soap box after that.

But if you are the type of completionist person who thinks they'll need to finish the series regardless, don't start.

Or you'll face this:

quote:

The bird let out a slow chicken cackle. It sounded like a chicken, but in her heart she knew it wasn't. In that instant, she completely understood the concept of a chicken that was not a chicken. This looked like a chicken, like most of the Mud People's chickens. But this was no chicken. This was evil manifest.

coyo7e
Aug 23, 2007

by zen death robot
^^^ I forced myself through the first 7 or 8 or 9 of those books, the chicken was really something else. Something else in a book series where the protagonist summons the Power of Rage to deal with a spoiled little girl. Super-Saiyan style.. I think in the first or second book of the series, too!

Actually it's pretty much entirely a Randian Dragonball show.

The made for TV take on it, "Legend of the Seeker" is kind of fun though, and the woman playing Kahlan is amazingly gorgeous in her Confessor outfit.

budgieinspector posted:

Trying to decide which of the following to listen to, next:

The Magicians, by Lev Grossman

Any suggestions?
I picked this up from Audible this month, and tore through it in a couple of days. I would say that the goon hype for the book is overrated (the "Harry Potter would totally die in ten minutes!" stuff is bullshit,) and I'm kind of surprised by how little goons seemed to sperg out about the P.F. Hamilton-levels of sex orgies happening in the book. The premise is interesting, the world is solid, the characters are mostly good, and once I got over how lame the focus on Fillory was in the early book, by the end of the story it's come together nicely, sort of in a "decayed Alice in Wonderland" vibe.

I was kind of annoyed by one specific thing in the book(s), the author bringing back Julia from out of nowhere, after he had seemingly tied those loose ends up neatly, halfway through the first novel. The character is terrible when they show up teh second time, worse when they show up with no explanation in the finale, and almost entirely unlikable in the early portions of the second book that I've gotten through so far.

So yeah, I'd recommend it, I enjoyed it, and look forward to the next books. There are definitely a few bits where the author falls short or misses something which may be glaring to many readers but the story as a whole is quite fun.

coyo7e fucked around with this message at 23:49 on Apr 9, 2012

savinhill
Mar 28, 2010
I just found this site that has tons of those old time radio dramas of sci-fi and horror stories from many different great authors(Poe, Lovecraft, Vance, Wells, Bradbury, etc.) http://www.digital-eel.com/rtsf/ I don't know how the production or audio quality is yet, but it's free.

Snowy posted:


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.
I used to listen the audiobook of the Silmarillion to fall asleep to, it fits all your criteria perfectly.

MrGreenShirt
Mar 14, 2005

Hell of a book. It's about bunnies!

Mister Macys posted:

Sir Winston Churchill's history of World War Two Volumes 1-4

Narrated by Christian Rodska. Not monotonous, but a very even speaker, with that great, relaxing british accent north americans love, and we all call "Yorkshire" (regardless of where the actor/speaker is from).

They're also really good.

Thank you so much for this! I've always had a problem with lying in bed for hours without falling asleep and waking up the next morning exhausted. Just started this series last night and within 15 minutes I was out like a light!

budgieinspector
Mar 24, 2006

According to my research,
these would appear to be
Budgerigars.

coyo7e posted:

I picked this up from Audible this month, and tore through it in a couple of days. I would say that the goon hype for the book is overrated (the "Harry Potter would totally die in ten minutes!" stuff is bullshit,) and I'm kind of surprised by how little goons seemed to sperg out about the P.F. Hamilton-levels of sex orgies happening in the book. The premise is interesting, the world is solid, the characters are mostly good, and once I got over how lame the focus on Fillory was in the early book, by the end of the story it's come together nicely, sort of in a "decayed Alice in Wonderland" vibe.

I was kind of annoyed by one specific thing in the book(s), the author bringing back Julia from out of nowhere, after he had seemingly tied those loose ends up neatly, halfway through the first novel. The character is terrible when they show up teh second time, worse when they show up with no explanation in the finale, and almost entirely unlikable in the early portions of the second book that I've gotten through so far.

So yeah, I'd recommend it, I enjoyed it, and look forward to the next books. There are definitely a few bits where the author falls short or misses something which may be glaring to many readers but the story as a whole is quite fun.

I wound up with very mixed feelings about The Magicians. I felt it could've more effectively been broken up into two books, one set at Brakebills, one set in Fillory -- or leave out Brakebills altogether except in flashback, and start the book with a group of young, dissolute, freshly-graduated magicians about to head off into a fictional world. The story felt uneven, imbalanced, with a greater amount of page space given to expository prose about incidental matters than to major plot points. And the prose, while interesting and evocative in some places, seems clunky and indulgent in others. There are some hints of intriguing ideas that were just buried under piles of interior monologue. Overall, it reads, to me, like a rough draft by a talented writer.

dema
Aug 13, 2006

Hounded: The Iron Druid Chronicles, Book 1
http://www.audible.com/pd/ref=sr_1_1?asin=B004V4OD04&qid=1334693232&sr=1-1

Really enjoyed this audio book. Modern day fantasy, not unlike Dresden Files. However, I liked the main character better and I also thought the story was paced better. Dresden kind of reminds me of Die Hard, where he is exhausted, beat up, almost dead and dragging himself from scrap to scrap. Always barely making it through alive. Got real tired of that after a few books.

Also enjoyed the voice acting in Hounded.

Downloading the next book in the series, right now.

Sepherothic
Feb 8, 2003

MrGreenShirt posted:

Thank you so much for this! I've always had a problem with lying in bed for hours without falling asleep and waking up the next morning exhausted. Just started this series last night and within 15 minutes I was out like a light!

I've been doing this for years. It really takes your mind off of things. The only bad part is occasionally forgetting where you left off.

coyo7e
Aug 23, 2007

by zen death robot

Sepherothic posted:

I've been doing this for years. It really takes your mind off of things. The only bad part is occasionally forgetting where you left off.
My Audible app has a sleep timer, works great.

Thesaurus
Oct 3, 2004


budgieinspector posted:

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?

I can definitely recommend The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao. I just finished this one. The story is awesome, very funny, intriguing, and deep at the same time, and the reading is just stellar. It's one of those readings where I feel like I would have missed out on something had I just read it. Easily the best reading I've ever heard. Check it out!!!

Also, how do you manage to listen to so many drat audiobooks, like, multiple every week? How many hours of listening do you manage a day?

I have a job where I can listen to stuff all day long, more or less, but I find that I get burned out after maybe a max of four hours. I had some big 40hr+ nonfiction books that I powered through, but with fiction I don't want to start zoning out after listening to it all day. As such, I usually mix up a few hours of music, a few hours of audiobooks, and a few hours of news/Spanish stuff (working on improving my comprehension).

For the record, what's the longest book people have listened to? My long hauls include Dan Simmon's The Terror at 28hrs, Alistari Horne's A Savage War of Peace: Algeria 1954-1962 at 30hrs and Tony Judt's Postwar: A History of Europe Since 1945 at 43 hrs.

Simmons definitely could have cut his down. I just noticed that there is an abridged version of 8 hours... they cut out 20 hours of content!

Thesaurus fucked around with this message at 17:46 on Apr 20, 2012

LionYeti
Oct 12, 2008


My longest was The rise and fall of the third reich 57 hours 18 minutes if you have time it's great.

budgieinspector
Mar 24, 2006

According to my research,
these would appear to be
Budgerigars.

Thesaurus posted:

I can definitely recommend The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao. I just finished this one. The story is awesome, very funny, intriguing, and deep at the same time, and the reading is just stellar. It's one of those readings where I feel like I would have missed out on something had I just read it. Easily the best reading I've ever heard. Check it out!!!

Awesome. I think I'll check out that one next.

quote:

Also, how do you manage to listen to so many drat audiobooks, like, multiple every week? How many hours of listening do you manage a day?

Depends on how busy work is and/or the sort of tasks I have to do. If it's just straight data entry, 8 hours + an hour-and-a-half round-trip commute.

quote:

For the record, what's the longest book people have listened to?

Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell, by Susanna Clarke. 32 hours.

ImpAtom
May 24, 2007

budgieinspector posted:

Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell, by Susanna Clarke. 32 hours.

How is that, by the way? The actual book relies so much on footnotes that I'm curious how it works in audio book form

MrGreenShirt
Mar 14, 2005

Hell of a book. It's about bunnies!

The longest audiobook I've ever finished is probably Atlas Shrugged (Unabridged) weighing in at 63 hrs.

I was stupid in college.

ImpAtom posted:

How is that, by the way? The actual book relies so much on footnotes that I'm curious how it works in audio book form

Absolutely wonderful! I don't exactly remember how they managed the footnotes (I believe they compiled them all at the end of each chapter), but however they did it the audiobook was phenomenal.

budgieinspector
Mar 24, 2006

According to my research,
these would appear to be
Budgerigars.

ImpAtom posted:

How is that, by the way? The actual book relies so much on footnotes that I'm curious how it works in audio book form

Loved it. If I recall correctly, the footnotes were read as parentheticals. The only issue I really had was Simon Vance's annoying mispronunciation of "sidhe" as "sid-hey".

Pretty_Llama
Nov 11, 2009

quote:

For the record, what's the longest book people have listened to?

A Storm of Swords at 47 hours.

World Without End at 45 hours.

About The Magicians - I enjoyed the story (particularly the second half) but I just found myself hating the main character enough that I wasn't interested in the sequel.

Syrinxx
Mar 28, 2002

Death is whimsical today

dema posted:

Hounded: The Iron Druid Chronicles, Book 1

Also enjoyed the voice acting in Hounded.
Seriously the voice for Oberon is worth the price of admission by itself. I loved this audiobook.

SnakePlissken
Dec 31, 2009

by zen death robot
Hey, I'm sure it's been mentioned previously, but Dan Carlin is pretty good. I'm presently listening to his "Death Throes of the Roman Republic" series and it's very entertaining. Except I'm listening to him at about 125% speed because he speaks a little slowly for my attention span -- but otherwise I like his delivery. Highly recommended. I listened to pt. 2 for a couple hours while doing yard work, and then when I came inside I listened to it again.

http://www.dancarlin.com/disp.php?page=hharchive

LionYeti
Oct 12, 2008


SnakePlissken posted:

Hey, I'm sure it's been mentioned previously, but Dan Carlin is pretty good. I'm presently listening to his "Death Throes of the Roman Republic" series and it's very entertaining. Except I'm listening to him at about 125% speed because he speaks a little slowly for my attention span -- but otherwise I like his delivery. Highly recommended. I listened to pt. 2 for a couple hours while doing yard work, and then when I came inside I listened to it again.

http://www.dancarlin.com/disp.php?page=hharchive

If you like that Ghosts of the Ostfront is so wonderful

cbirdsong
Sep 8, 2004

Commodore of the Apocalypso
Lipstick Apathy
I'd also highly recommend his series on the Punic Wars from a few years ago.

Fellwenner
Oct 21, 2005
Don't make me kill you.

Having found myself in a night shift at work, I've discovered audio books to be lifesavers. Blood Meridian's narrator is absolutely brilliant. An older guy, his sort of rougher voice is perfect for the tone of the book.

Roydrowsy
May 6, 2007

quick update.

Finished "Wizard's First Rule" while it was hardly a masterpiece, I had a pretty good time listening to the book. I thought the reader was exceptional.

I just blasted my way through Tina Fey's "Bossypants". It was an entertaining book, but I was by no means the target audience. There are some fun lines, but let's just say I didn't blast through it because I was savoring it.


On the drive to work I put on Robert B Parker's "Now and Then" the first Spencer novel I'll be experiencing. I was laughing out loud in the first five minutes. The book wasn't all that funny... but I'll be damned if Parker doesn't put the words "I said" or "He said" after every line of dialogue. Actor Joe Mantegena then gives those attributions as much emphasis as important lines. I'm hoping it will be less noticible as it goes on, but it's only five and a half hours long. (I needed some short books after a bunch of 20 and 30 hour books)

budgieinspector
Mar 24, 2006

According to my research,
these would appear to be
Budgerigars.

Recently finished:

Candide, by Voltaire, read by Andrew Sachs. Delighted to learn that there's a 250-year-old satire that is not only accessible, but funny. I'm sure that there were plenty of allusions that I didn't catch, owing to not having been born in a time of powdered wigs, but I found it absolutely worthwhile. The reading by Sachs, probably best known as Manuel from Fawlty Towers, was wonderful.

The Mating Season, by P.G. Wodehouse, read by Jonathan Cecil. I know it's not fair to criticize something for not being something else, but drat it, the Jeeves and Wooster stories just sound odd not being portrayed by Fry and Laurie. Still, charming book, and Cecil does a good job.

The Portable Atheist, by Christopher Hitchens (or, at least, edited by him), read by Nicholas Ball. It's more a compendium of writings from skeptics and nonbelievers throughout the centuries with commentary from Hitchens, rather than an actual Hitchens book. One essay from George Eliot completely skewers a hellfire-and-brimstone preacher of her day. Informative, but can be dull in places.


Moonwalking with Einstein, by Joshua Foer, read by Mike Chamberlain. Enjoyable look at what might be the gooniest subculture based on a competition, Memory Championships, and one journalist's journey from researching it, to participating in it, to competing in it. You can nearly smell the Cheetos at each point where a group of memory enthusiasts gather. One interesting aspect is that the author accuses Daniel Tammet of being, not a synaesthetic savant, but rather a mnemonicist along the lines of the rest of the competitors featured in the book -- claiming that Tammet, among other things, actually did compete in a championship, only to come in 4th place. Neat stuff.

The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, by Junot Diaz, read by Jonathan Davis and Staci Snell. After The Magicians, this was just what I needed: Clear, conversational prose. This novel kind of pulls a bait-and-switch on you (in a good way). It starts off being the tale of an overweight Dominican geek who pines for unrequited love... and then switches gears to tell the story of the struggles of his family during the reign of Rafael Trujillo. Really opens it up from a fat-loser story to an Important Novel. Great performances, too.

Roydrowsy
May 6, 2007

just joined Audible. I figured the way I go through audiobooks, its a way to pick up the stuff my library can't get. But.. with so many options available it can be so hard to choose how to spend that first credit.

Fortunately, I've got lots of reccomendations!

UltimoDragonQuest
Oct 5, 2011



Someone finally recorded Infinite Jest.

The endnotes are included as a PDF. :downs:

ultrachrist
Sep 27, 2008
Wow, awful choice on the end notes. So many people listen to audiobooks while doing things with their hands already.

For Consider the Lobster, the footnotes are just done in a different tone of voice, I don't see why they couldn't do that with the IJ endnotes.

budgieinspector
Mar 24, 2006

According to my research,
these would appear to be
Budgerigars.

Stiff Upper Lip, Jeeves and Much Obliged, Jeeves, both by P.G. Wodehouse, the former read by Jonathan Cecil, the latter read by Dinsdale Landen. I'm cleaning out my library's Wodehouse collection. It's pretty sparse, sadly. All I can say about these two books that I didn't already say about The Mating Season is that, all told, I prefer Cecil's reading to Landen's. Though Landen has a more interesting take on his duty as narrator -- he reads the whole book as Wooster, doing "Wooster's" impressions of the various other characters, and tittering in places where he thinks Wooster might've paused in the story to reflect on the humor of a situation -- I find I prefer a more "standard" reading featuring a clear tonal delineation between Jeeves' and Wooster's dialogue.

Drood, by Dan Simmons, read by Simon Prebble. First Simmons book, and I enjoyed it. Surprised to find it to be nothing like the straight-ahead horror novel the cover seems to suggest. It's a neat idea to position Wilkie Collins as Salieri to Dickens' Mozart (by the way, technology slights the former pair even today, as my spellcheck doesn't recognize "Wilkie" or "Salieri", but is just fine with "Drood"). I'll say no more, as I don't want to give anything away that you can't glean in the first few pages, but I'd recommend it. Prebble does an excellent job.

Currently listening to Jesus, Interrupted and learning quite a lot about what is probably the most important book in Western civilization. Will do a proper review later, but highly recommended to anyone with an interest in the topic.

bpower
Feb 19, 2011
I have all of Martin Jarvis' readings of Wooster Stories. I absolutely love them.

budgieinspector
Mar 24, 2006

According to my research,
these would appear to be
Budgerigars.

Is there even such a thing as a sub-par Wodehouse book? I'll grant that I haven't branched out beyond the Wooster stories, but I've yet to encounter one that either raised or lowered the bar.

About the only criticism I can make about the stories is that they're almost eerily consistent. Someone (or several someones) want to marry another person, but there's an obstacle. Someone (or several someones) are engaged to someone they don't want to marry, and need to find a way to end the engagement without manning up and breaking it off directly.

If they seek Jeeves' advice and follow it, their problems will be solved (albeit occasionally in such a bizarre way that it makes me think that Jeeves is merely playing billiards with the universe, and likes to pull a trick shot every now and again). If they seek his advice and ignore it, peril and desolation ensue... although Jeeves is a loving God and will always manage to fish the party out, in the end.

The storytelling is universally chummy and cheerful, clever and concise. The wit is always bright and kind, if perhaps smacking a bit of the put-upon pal. I just can't picture what sort of Wooster story would make me fling the book against the wall, or even shake my head with mild disappointment.

Borh
Oct 2, 2005

Disappointment to a noble soul is what cold water is to burning metal; it strengthens, tempers, intensifies, but never destroys it.

budgieinspector posted:

Is there even such a thing as a sub-par Wodehouse book? I'll grant that I haven't branched out beyond the Wooster stories, but I've yet to encounter one that either raised or lowered the bar.

Wodehouse was a professional writer in the truest sense of the word, in that he wrote books to make money and support himself, not to pursue some high artistic ideal. So he was churning them out by the bucket-load for a while, there, and he tended to repeat a lot of his themes, characters and plot devices, especially when you begin to delve into his less popular stuff. That being said, his amazing turn of phrase, his gift for creating charming and enduring characters, and the sheer amount of fun to be had from his writing mean that it's never the wrong decision to pick up a Wodehouse book. Just that some are more accomplished than others.

And since this is the audiobook thread, Jonathan Cecil does a fantastic job of reading them, to the point that his has become my inner voice for those characters. He also seems to have recorded literally dozens of Wodehouse books, which is awesome.

bpower
Feb 19, 2011

budgieinspector posted:

Is there even such a thing as a sub-par Wodehouse book? I'll grant that I haven't branched out beyond the Wooster stories, but I've yet to encounter one that either raised or lowered the bar.

About the only criticism I can make about the stories is that they're almost eerily consistent. Someone (or several someones) want to marry another person, but there's an obstacle. Someone (or several someones) are engaged to someone they don't want to marry, and need to find a way to end the engagement without manning up and breaking it off directly.

If they seek Jeeves' advice and follow it, their problems will be solved (albeit occasionally in such a bizarre way that it makes me think that Jeeves is merely playing billiards with the universe, and likes to pull a trick shot every now and again). If they seek his advice and ignore it, peril and desolation ensue... although Jeeves is a loving God and will always manage to fish the party out, in the end.

The storytelling is universally chummy and cheerful, clever and concise. The wit is always bright and kind, if perhaps smacking a bit of the put-upon pal. I just can't picture what sort of Wooster story would make me fling the book against the wall, or even shake my head with mild disappointment.

The blandings castle stories are just as good . Lord embsworth is just adorable. "crimewave at blandings" is hilarious and "a girlfriend for lordemsworth" is a beautiful short story and chokes me up every time. But maybe I'm odd.

budgieinspector
Mar 24, 2006

According to my research,
these would appear to be
Budgerigars.

Jesus, Interrupted, by Bart D. Ehrman, read by Jason Culp. As someone who has never had religion in his life, there is obviously much about the Bible of which I'm ignorant. However, what this book drives home is that, lacking a historical perspective on it, so are a vast majority of the faithful. The author assures us right up front that there is nothing in this book that would be considered controversial, surprising, or even new to anyone who's graduated from seminary or divinity school in the last fifty years. And yet, they don't tend to pass the info on to their flocks.

Aside from the fact that the books of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John were not written by Matthew, Mark, Luke, or John, I didn't know any of the material going in. (And the book does an excellent job of explaining the evidence for the assertion.) All in all, whether or not you're among the faithful, it's an enlightening perspective on a Really Important Book.

The Minotaur Takes a Cigarette Break, by Steven Sherrill, read by Holter Graham. Literally a story about the Cretan Minotaur, who, it turns out, actually struck a deal with Theseus in order to escape the Labyrinth. These days, he's a cook at a prime rib joint in North Carolina. His presence in humanity's midst is apparently no more remarkable than that of someone with a harelip. I found it kind of a trying book, to tell the truth; it just frustrated me that an honest-to-poo poo Creature of Myth is portrayed as leading such a small, mundane life amongst small-minded and rarely-kind people. You'd think that after 5,000 years, he'd've learned to avoid rednecks.

I've stopped halfway through The Pox Party as I was just getting too angry at white people. I'll pick it up again after a bit. Really well-written, though, and well-read, too. I'm actually kind of surprised that it's considered a YA book.

Currently listening to The Killer of Little Shepherds, which is excellent, so far. Want to know about the case that popularized forensic medicine around the world? Check it out. My only issue is that the reader keeps pronouncing Paris as "Paree", which, while certainly correct if you're speaking French, makes you sound like a tool if you're not.

Roydrowsy
May 6, 2007

I just want to say that the Cincinnati Public Library is amazing.

I've just been checking out books via their system, sometimes having to wait a week or two for a particular book to come in. I little while ago I started to play around on their website and discovered something amazing.

Similar to how you can download books to your kindle or nook via the library, Cincinnati Public Library allows you to do the same with audiobooks. Basically you search their selection of downloadable books (which is pretty extensive but not all inclusive by any-means), you download the book via the "overdrive media console" client - and you can listen to it on your computer for 14 days, or you can transfer it to your ipod. Once it is on your ipod - its pretty much there until you delete it. (It also provides you the option to burn them onto discs if you are dedicated to that route)

After 14 days the computer files lock you out on the computer..but you're still good to go on your ipod. So, it is essentially like a free, practically unlimited audible account. (Technically you can only have like 8 downloaded books checked out at a time) so I guess you're really limited to like 16 a month. (Though I think you can toggle check-out duration to just a week).

Those of you who are really serious about your audiobookin', I'd reccomend you look into your big city libraries and see if they offer anything similar. I literally just signed up for an Audible account at the start of the month. I'm going to hold on to it for the moment (In case there is a book i cant get via the library) but I could see myself changing my mind and saving some dollars.

Could save some of you a lot of money too!

Roydrowsy fucked around with this message at 04:42 on May 20, 2012

budgieinspector
Mar 24, 2006

According to my research,
these would appear to be
Budgerigars.

Yep, that's how I go through as many books as I do -- the Los Angeles Public Library system has an almost identical service. You can choose a checkout duration of 7, 14, or 21 days, and they let you have 10 e-audiobooks out at a time (which has no impact on your tally of physical library books). And while there are certain glaring omissions in their catalog (Doctor Zhivago, the entire commercially-available catalogs of Pynchon, Camus, and Rushdie), it's hard to beat "free".

I currently have 55 audiobooks on my iPod that I need to listen to. Most of them are from the library. Am on the waiting list for 10 more. Have another 31 on my LAPL wish list, and another 100 or so more on my Audible wish list. I really hope I manage to get through them all before I get tired of having literature stuffed in my ears.

Strange Matter
Oct 6, 2009

Ask me about Genocide

Skellen posted:

Having found myself in a night shift at work, I've discovered audio books to be lifesavers. Blood Meridian's narrator is absolutely brilliant. An older guy, his sort of rougher voice is perfect for the tone of the book.
I had given up on reading Blood Meridian because I found the prose impenetrable at first. Then I listened to about half of the Audiobook, and went back in and devoured it in a single sitting.

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Thesaurus
Oct 3, 2004


I've definitely been getting a lot of good books through my local library's website (Denver Public Library). I find that it's strongest for classics but that there can be random gaps for contemporary literature. I only assume that some of this is due to licensing issues.

For example, I've been looking forward to listening to the Harry Potter series because I haven't gotten around to reading them before. I assumed that such a popular series would be available in their audio collection, but it's not, and I don't feel like shelling out the cash to get it on Audible.

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