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I've got a job where 90% of the time I'm at a computer, doing mind-numbingly boring work. Audiobooks have been a godsend. It really is a different experience from reading, the narrator does make a big difference. I've read "America: The Book" and listened to the audiobook, and I could recommend experiencing both. With the book you get all the diagrams, pictures, etc; whereas with the audiobook you get all of the word stress, timing, etc that make comedy... comedy. Virtual Light by William Gibson was one of my favorites. I thought American Gods (Neil Gaiman) had a pretty mediocre narrator though. I tried starting a Haruki Murakami book (I can't remember which, might have been After Dark) and the narrator was so grating that I had to stop 5 minutes in. Richard K Morgan's Takeshi Kovacs trilogy is pretty well done but I skipped through the sex scenes. Robert A Heinlein's The Moon is a Harsh Mistress was somewhat unusual; the book is written in a sort of nadsat-esque clipped prose, which the reader also added a Russian accent to. It sounds annoying and gimmicky but it wasn't (at least for me), I actually enjoyed it a lot. Not-fiction: Maybe not technically "books", but The Teaching Company's series' are pretty good. Lewis Black's Me of Little Faith sucked, but that's more a fault of the source material than the format. Libraries are a great source of audiobooks.
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May 2, 2009 15:48
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The Flying Milton posted:I finished The God Delusion last week and I really think Dawkin's smarmy tone ruined it for me. The  tone is the best part, imo. I didn't really care for the woman (isn't it his wife or something?) reading though.
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May 13, 2009 03:28
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Redfont posted:Not sure if this has been mentioned already: I actually hate the whole zombie (sub)genre but most of the stories were pretty good.
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Mar 4, 2010 04:05
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Mathlete posted:I have a job this summer painting walls all day long and audiobooks have been my salvation. I can listen to about three-fourths of one per day if I get into the story or about half of one if I feel like listening to music for a few hours. Inter-Library Loan owns bones, I've got a nearly inexhaustible supply of free audiobooks that way. I listen to them primarily at work, really helps the day go by faster. Just got through The Moon is a Harsh Mistress for the second time, the ending is well-read and the narrator makes it more poignant than just reading the text. I think I've pimped it in this thread before, but the book was originally written in a kind of nadsat-esque style (being told from the point of view of a future resident of the Moon, where there's a heavy Russian influence) so the whole book is narrated with a Russian accent, dropped articles, etc. It works really well, IMO. Just started Richard K Morgan's "Thirteen" ("Black Man" in the UK) and really enjoying it so far, grabbed my attention out of the gate.
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Jun 11, 2010 02:36
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To be honest, I find more than one reader distracting.
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Jun 21, 2010 22:34
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miguel sanchez posted:Ugh. Roy Dotrice is not that good of a reader IMO; he doesn't have a very big range of voices, which really hamstrings something like ASoIaF.
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Jul 12, 2010 03:28
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Ridonkulous posted:David Sedaris, The earlier the better (opinion, not the name of a book). Yeah, I've only listened to "When You Are Engulfed in Flames" and while it's funny in parts, it can be pretty tedious. I dunno if they have stand-up routines on Audible, but those are great for long car rides.
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Jul 24, 2010 19:17
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Mister Macys posted:Here's a one-sentence, end-of-year review for the books I grabbed this year: Awesome, was just getting to the end of my existing queue of audiobooks to listen to. By the way, The God Delusion works really well as an audiobook, probably better than it does in print.
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Jan 2, 2011 04:49
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Island Nation posted:If anyone uses iTunes, 39 audiobooks of public domain works are being sold for $2 a piece. It claims to be presented by Audible so they might be better quality than ones from Librivox or Internet Archive since I would assume these were recorded by professionals. Mentioned earlier in the thread, but check out Lit2Go for public domain audiobook freebies. Your local library is another good source for free audiobooks, with interlibrary loan I can find an audiobook mentioned in this thread more often than not!
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Feb 11, 2011 23:01
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Mister Macys posted:The Automatic Detective You pretty much just sold me on this. I just bought DwD (the Kindle version, assuming the audio is a ways off) for my upcoming 13 hour plane ride, but this looks like a solid #2.
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Jul 16, 2011 02:28
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