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Woofwoof posted:Also, for those of you on a budget, there are plenty of free audiobooks out there that have taken on the moniker, "podiobooks" that range from really, really bad, to kind of bad but not so much because they're free.  The rest of Scott Sigler's stuff is far more palatable, although he tends to get pretty ridiculously bombastic with his presentation.. He's got a lot of fans and he panders/showboats for them mercilessly - I tend to fast-forward through the beginning and end of most of his podcasts. A lot of his books are really very good, although the cow-sharks in one of his story were pretty  MindSet posted:What about other 'high fantasy' type audiobooks? Stuff similar to A Song of Ice and Fire or Malazan Book of the Fallen? I've got plenty of print handy but I've found myself looking for something to listen to at work recently, and the Malazan series appears to lack an audio version. The free "general" fiction (and scifi) stuff you find on iTunes tends to be a lot better and more professionally produced, but some of the fantasy stuff is really painfully bad, and the voice acting doesn't do the mediocre writing any favors. coyo7e fucked around with this message at 20:50 on Nov 9, 2009 |
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Nov 9, 2009 18:53
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I don't know why I never thought of it already, but Jack palms Crime novels are really great. They're from an indy author who wrote the books as he went and put them online as podcasts/audiobooks for free, and ended up with enough of a following that he took his fan numbers to a publisher and got his books put in print.    (I've yet to read the "Young Junius" stuff, they're based on a character in his other novels who became a much-demanded fan-favorite.) They're fun and the protagonist is kind of a failed Jason Statham-type action star with all kinds of problems, who ends up getting mixed up with some bad, bad people. They're really fun, wild rides and there's a pretty satisfying character progression throughout the books as the protagonist gets his poo poo together and has it fall apart again from time to time. Everything's narrated by the author with (sometimes) voicework help from his friends and family (it's almost all of very acceptable quality). The author himself has an easy-to-listen-to voice and you can really hear him getting into his own work. Also he's got a series of short vignettes named "A Long Way From Disney" which are really poignant cross-sections the life of a boy who grows into a man. They're not told in sequential order but they can sometimes make your heart ache. All available here for free, "Jack Wakes Up" is the first book in the series: http://sethharwood.com/jack-wakes-up This reminds me, I wouldn't mind listening to all of those books again - I've already heard most of them twice! coyo7e fucked around with this message at 22:54 on Jan 28, 2010 |
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Jan 28, 2010 22:50
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Tornhelm posted:I was going to grab these, only to find out that they aren't available from Audible if you live in Australia (gently caress you Daniel Suarez!). I've been tempted to cancel my Audible account lately, just because of how many credits are starting to build up in my account from not being able to find fun new things to listen to.
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Feb 9, 2010 20:24
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MeatwadIsGod posted:I just finished this audiobook (my first one), and it was really enjoyable and varied. The voice actors who really stood out to me were Mark Hamill, Henry Rollins, and Eaomann Walker. When I heard John Turturro had a part, I decided to go for the audiobook instead of a hard copy, even though it's abridged. Maybe my expectations for him were too high, but I felt kind of underwhelmed by his delivery. Some of the Asian characters, despite having interesting stories, were brought down by phoned-in, stilted voice acting. I'd recommend the audiobook of World War Z if you're into this kind of journalism or you really like zombie stuff, but the quality of the voice acting really runs the spectrum from bad to great. I'm curious whether you're asian, or just getting offended by proxy? http://modelminority.com/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=1 Edit: oh yeah, I forgot about the japanese dude, although "blind sensei" is a pretty cheesy cliche anyway. 
coyo7e fucked around with this message at 02:18 on Mar 3, 2010 |
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Mar 3, 2010 00:11
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Bioalchemist posted:What the gently caress is this? I go to the audible website, not logged in, to search for a book and see this-->
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May 25, 2010 20:18
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Ola posted:But one I like even better is Stephen Fry's autobiography Moab Is My Washpot, obviously read by the author.
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Jul 26, 2010 21:48
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So I've been struggling to figure out how to get BeyondPod to work on my phone, but in the meantime I tracked down some old-favorite audiobooks (which are free.) tl;dr incoming: The Rookie, by Scott Sigler Science fiction coming-of-age story about a racist human kid playing football with aliens. I can't stand football but loving loved this book (enough that I bought the sequels, "The Starter" "The All-Pro" etc). You can download the entire thing for free in a number of places, including iTune' podcast area. Sigler also has a ton of other free audiobooks. His writing is pulpy and the character he acts like in his podcasts is ridiculuos and can annoy some people who think he's being arrogant, but really he's just putting up a front to get people enthused over his work. Fair warning, most of his other audiobooks are fangoria-style stuff, I couldn't handle listening to "Infection" when a character was busily digging an alien parasite out of his leg with whatever sharp objects he could find in his bathroom. But Earthcore was pretty fun, Ancestor was stupid and fun, and Sigler's very prolific and shares most of his work weekly on his podcast, so if you keep up with it you can pretty much listen to all of his books for free if you can find when he read them out on his podcast.. He hates iTunes and says they take 80% of the purchase price, so only a couple of his older books are on the iTunes store, but you can find them on a variety of online retailers' sites. The Terrible Business of Salmon and Dusk: How to Disappear Completely (and sequels) by Myke Bartlett. Similar to Neil Gaiman's 'Neverwhere', the first novel is about a woman who fades out of reality and into a fantastical undercity while hanging out with a pair of strange hoodlums. I loved the first one and listened to it a couple times. Haven't gotten to the sequels, but the last time I listened to 'HtDC', the sequels were nonexistent, so I'm pumped to track them down or buy them, whatever. I've probably mentioned these before, but Jack Wakes Up by Seth Harwood and the following novels are a blast, as well as Harwood's A Long Way from Disney (pt I and pt II) are really poignant excerpts from the life of a (presumably) fictional boy as he grows up and - later - functions as an adult. Jack Wakes Up is basically the story of a Jason Statham analogue who gets caught up in a bunch of heavy duty eastern bloc mobster stuff. ALWfD can be pretty hard-hitting, fair warning. I loving love this author, he's got a great voice, great attitude, and really nails it in most of his readings. Crescent by Phil Rossi is pretty fun, a sci-fi horror novel about a 'haunted' space station. There's a followup Crescent Vignettes which has a bunch of short stories which are pretty good. Not excessively creepy or scary, but great production and atmosphere in the Crescent novel especially.. The rest of the books on that page are new to me but I'll listen to them eventually. How to Succeed in Evil by Patrick E. McLean. I haven't listened to this one in years - since it was in rough draft form on a serial podcast. It's finished and remastered, now. I don't recall a lot about the book except that I remember I thought it was a heck of a lot of fun. I think you can DL the full book from iTunes store - I know the rough draft is there. Also it's on audible or podiobooks or one of those sites as well. The Failed Cities Monologues by Matt Wallace was a blast (and too short, I want more!) to lsiten to, and is easily available for free all over. It's a sort of a gritty post-apoc series of vignettes from a half-dozen different characters who swap back and forth between chapters. Reminded me a bit of Dhalgren (without all the gay sex) and very much of Sin City. Pretty good quality production with a number of readers, matched to the different narrators. Protip: do not go anywhere near Mur Lafferty's free audiobooks. She's got a voice like an old truckstop waitress, and she writes like a crazy Wiccan catlady. Her subjects are approximately at the level of a comic book character fanfic, except without any art, and without any good writing. coyo7e fucked around with this message at 22:43 on Mar 25, 2011 |
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Mar 25, 2011 22:39
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Locus posted:I'm not one of those people that just assumes Orson Scott Card loves Hitler or something based on shaky reasoning, and I'm definitely not someone who starts burning books the second anyone dares to say that politics and science are too close when it comes to environmental issues. I just know that Card and I are not in the same realm when it comes to world views and political goals, so I'm a little wary about books by him that heavily revolve around those things.
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Apr 16, 2011 01:07
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Kestral posted:Has anyone listened to The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms? It's been getting good reviews, but I'm skeptical of the narrator based on the preview. Edit: overall it was okay, but not great. The ending was predictable and took a lot of beating around the bush before the author got to it, but it honestly didn't drag on or anything. Not a bad quick read at all. coyo7e fucked around with this message at 05:45 on Apr 24, 2011 |
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Apr 17, 2011 01:48
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How much pulling of braids and/or wailing about one's godlike powers that you're too pussy to use, can I expect from the Mistborn books? This is extremely important.
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Apr 24, 2011 05:47
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Mister Macys posted:The blurb reads almost like a book-version of NPH's Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog
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Jun 3, 2011 05:21
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Picked up "Night Watch" on audible. I'd been intending to read it for a while after I saw the movies, and it's pretty good. Very noir detective novel type stuff. Also there's a new version of Neverwhere by Neil Gaiman on audible, which I was tempted to nab. Anyone heard it?
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Jun 23, 2011 01:32
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Petra Arkanian posted:I've been listening to it. There are a few cheesy, radio-story elements (crackly voices on the phone, sounds like he's in a tunnel when talking about a memory or dream) but other than that, Neil Gaiman is a great reader. http://www.audible.com/pd/ref=wl_1?asin=B0055274U2
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Jun 29, 2011 23:51
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Ahh, well that was a typo, then. It's not Neverwhere's 10th anniversary.
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Jun 30, 2011 01:26
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Syrinxx posted:Currently listening to it. He's a great narrator and I think it's the best way to enjoy his books. As previously stated there are a couple dumb sound effects but I'd recommend the audiobook without hesitation. There was an audiobook/podcast by a writer named Mike Bartlett IIRC, named something like, "The Terrible Business of Salmon and Dusk, or How to Disappear Completely" which is quite Neverwhere-esque mixed with a detective novel, and quite fun. coyo7e fucked around with this message at 06:29 on Jun 30, 2011 |
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Jun 30, 2011 06:27
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XyrlocShammypants posted:I'm not sure if this has been discussed, but I am on Wolves of the Calla, book V in the Dark Tower series and the new narrator, George Guidall, is driving me crazy. The previous narrator, Frank Muller, seemed so perfect and this guy is just absolutely terrible. Are there alternative reads that I can't locate through google or the library system? I can't believe I have to finish this series with this guy.
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Jul 5, 2011 15:27
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But (wolves of the calla spoiler) World as Myth is such an original idea! A legion of Doctor Doom clone robots is the awesomest idea! It doesn't get any better! Stephen King got all the good writing knocked out of him by that minivan. The last thing he wrote that I felt was worthwhile was On Writing, because his autobiography was fun.
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Jul 6, 2011 06:45
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woodenchicken posted:Many thanks to the guy who mentioned Scott Sigler in the horror thread, you made my summer. I'd never had any interest in audiobooks before, but that recommendation made me try Contagious on podiobooks.com, and it turned out to be a fantastic source of entertainment for when I'm on the move. Now I'm downloading all his novels I can find, while it's summer and it's still feasible to spend lots of time outdoors. Cardio has never been this exciting!  I strongly recommend the "The Rookie" and the other books in the galactic football league series (he's been releasing the latest one "The Starter" via RSS). I don't even really like football but goddamn they're fun. I'd buy them but they're kinda expensive and I'm kinda poor - which is why I like to namedrop him in here to give him some more listeners/readers  I can't recall the name of it, but one of his podiobooks was so ridiculous I loved it - the monsters were genetically engineered cow-dinosaur-sharks, and the sterongest monster was spotted like a Holstein which cracked me up bigtime. coyo7e fucked around with this message at 21:20 on Jul 13, 2011 |
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Jul 13, 2011 21:18
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Kestral posted:Does anyone have the new full-cast audio version of American Gods who has also listened to the superb George Guidall version or read the original book? I'm not a huge fan of the full-cast version so far - Guidall is the One True Voice for this book, especially Wednesday - but I'm curious as to whether the additional content for the anniversary edition is worth it.
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Jul 18, 2011 16:06
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Clinton1011 posted:Hows the audibooks for this series? I plan to get it when I get my next two credits from Audible. I'd only previously seen the movies, it's pretty wild/great how drastically different the books are. There was a lot more creative license taken in the movies than I realized, and the first book is like 6 times the length/depth as the first movie.. Also the protagonist (and the entire night watch group) is a lot darker and "grey" than I realized.
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Jul 18, 2011 21:38
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ImpAtom posted:I really preferred the books to the movies, although I read them first. A lot of the scenes in the movie felt like scenes from the book taken out of context, and that really bothered me. I never considered picking up the audiobooks but it might be worth it. Who reads them? Seems to be pretty prolific, somebody besides me must think he does a passable job narrating stuff. http://www.audible.com/search/ref=sr_nsrch_lnk_2?searchNarrator=Paul%20Michael&qid=1311045371&sr=1-2
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Jul 19, 2011 04:17
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Seconding that Audible's customer service rocks. I got double-billed a couple months ago (upgraded to platinum and then it still charged me for my new month on normal as well,) and called up, was on the phone for maybe 3 minutes total from the time I dialed, to getting a refund. I'd already spent that extra credit though, don't tell anybody! 
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Aug 2, 2011 04:40
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Nope. I did it a while back and then renewed my sub months later.
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Aug 12, 2011 04:46
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So I picked up the 10th anniversary, Full-Cast edition of American Gods and I quite enjoy it. Wednesday is a bit eh, but the guy doing Shadow convinced me that American Gods should be a movie.. Starring Vin Diesel.
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Aug 13, 2011 06:05
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Just went through Kraken by China Miéville. Excellent narrator, hadn't read the book before so it was all new. I recommend it.Streebs posted:HBO is making a series based on American Gods 
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Oct 13, 2011 00:11
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BjornOfBorg posted:I haven't read through the entire thread and this may not be the right place to ask this but I need some help. Specifically, I want to know how audiobooks work for other people because they really don't work for me. I have only tried 2 or 3 audiobooks (I remember Lord of the Flies and The God Delusion) in my life and I've never really gotten into it. I would listen to them on a stationary bike and it would be hard to follow without concentrating on it really hard and I felt that I needed to have the text with the audio. So, I tried reading along with the narrator but that really was a terrible idea because it would be much faster to just read the drat book. I used to have boring jobs where I'd be stuck with nothing but an AM radio to keep me company for hours at a time, so i got used to listening to the radio while I did other tasks, and it is very easy to tune out audio and forget all of it entirely, but I also found that after a while you get better at retaining what you listen to. I even got to the point where I could listen to talk radio and read a book at the same time and keep up with both. Nowdays, I listen to a lot of audiobooks while playing games and stuff however, if it's a game with a lot of dialogue or text, I can't pay attention to both, and will lose track in one or the other. I still regularly re-listen to segments of my audiobooks and podcasts but it's more of a "I was busy doing something more important than listening to a book," case, than a "oh poo poo I missed a bunch of stuff there," situation. Besides, if you need to re-listen to a segment, that's not necessarily a negative thing.
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Jan 12, 2012 23:38
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Roydrowsy posted:I gave this a shot and got about an hour and a half into it and just couldn't take it anymore, which bums me out because I really want to give this book a shot. The reader was painful to listen to. coyo7e fucked around with this message at 20:09 on Jan 28, 2012 |
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Jan 28, 2012 20:06
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SnakePlissken posted:Welp, finally joined Audible. When I realized I could get Zinn's unabridged People's History with a trial membership, that sold me. Very excited. I ended up going with the 2 credits a month sub to audible, because a lot of the newer and bigger name books can be 2 credits, and if I don't buy one of them, then I can get two other ones instead! 
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Feb 2, 2012 00:57
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Through some crime of genre literature I never got around to reading Sanderson's Mistborn series, so I grabbed them on audible. The narrator is very solid with a reasonably diverse range of believable character voices, although occasionally he falls into the classic "forgot to stop using the accent when the character stopped talking," foible that seems so common in audiobooks (I bet it'd be hard as hell to keep from doing that now and again.)
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Feb 7, 2012 00:00
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Syrinxx posted:Audible is having a "first of series" sale for $5 each. Highlights include Foundation, Tom Sawyer, Dresden Files, Hyperion, Kingkiller Chronicles, Leviathan, Iron Druid and other stuff. Lots of Sci Fi and Fantasy. The Black Company is in the list, and a couple of other series which sounded interesting. I ended up picking up four novels including the black company, 3 of them were just random stuff that sounded reasonably interesting, including The Last Templar, Patient Zero, and Monster Hunter International. I just bought the Iron Druid Chronicles on kindle, btu I'm tempted to get the first on audiobook just so I can (hopefully) figure out the proper Gaelic pronunciations of stuff.
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Feb 7, 2012 18:51
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feedmyleg posted:Accidentally posted this in the recommendation thread before I found this one. I mostly listen to more history or politics/economics stuff though when it comes to nonfiction.
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Feb 16, 2012 22:30
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coyo7e posted:Yeah I was coming in to post this same thing. A couple of the series sound interesting enough to check out, although some of them sound pretty abysmal.  edit: just got to the point where the protagonist is waxing poetic about the woman of his dreams and her immaculate trigger discipline. 
coyo7e fucked around with this message at 04:37 on Feb 19, 2012 |
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Feb 19, 2012 03:14
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^^^ 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: 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 |
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Apr 9, 2012 23:44
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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.
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Apr 19, 2012 18:20
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SnakePlissken posted:I note that Audible sells a lot of classics that are past expiry on their copyright and many of which have free versions available at Librivox. Quality may vary but frankly, for me, the quality of readers even for commercially available books can really suck too and the readers who are enthused enough to do it for free can be very, very good. So you can sometimes save your credits for something more recent. For instance, queued up on my list is Ralph Waldo Emerson's essays. Audible wanted a credit for one of the essays, under 2 hours' worth. I said screw that, looked it up elsewhere and now can spend my monthly credit on something more current.
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Jun 6, 2012 17:00
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FYI, audible.com is having a 25% off sale right now - on everything on their website, through June 17th.
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Jun 12, 2012 21:14
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WildWanderer posted:I am about to do a cross-country road trip on my little black Italian motorcycle. I am going to hop on the bike and hit the road in less than 24 hours. There are some parts that are extremely enjoyable, like the twisty mountain passes in Colorado and Utah. Other parts require a degree improvisation to not be bored of my skull. The Middle of Iowa, having spent the last 500 miles going in a straight line, knowing I still have hundreds of miles to go, in a straight line, with nothing to look at except corn, audio books are a godsend. Problem is, I don't read much fiction so recommendations would be much appreciated. Since you're road-tripping on a bike, Dayton Duncan's "The National Parks" narrated by Ken Burns (of shitloads of documentaries, fame) may also be fun to listen to. Those are a few I've got through audible and enjoyed. Most of them aren't sci-fi, but I mostly read sci-fi because I have trouble keeping up with dilithium crystal engineering theory, if I can't flip the page back and read it slowly a couple times..
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Jun 13, 2012 20:00
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budgieinspector posted:Audible has a 2-for-1 sale going on until 6/30 (you need to be a member to view the page): http://www.audible.com/sp/2for1
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Jun 28, 2012 17:38
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Picked up Hounded: The iron Druid Chronicles on a lark from audible the other day. I've read the first book before but had trouble parsing all the gaelic names and stuff, so i figured the audiobook might make it easier. I was very pleasantly surprised! The narrator is alright but he has a great range of voices, and his voice for the protagonist's dog, Oberon, is hilarious - super doofy and with a sthpeech impediment (think that Beggin' Strips commercial dog, but dumber and with a speech impediment), and it makes every bit of dialogue with the dog where he's begging for a harem of french poodles or trying to pretend to be Ghenghis Khan, is freaking hilarious. I think somebody else recommended the book in this thread already, but it's pretty fun.
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Jul 13, 2012 18:31
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Wade Wilson posted:Thanks, I'll get that one.
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Jul 19, 2012 18:32
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