|
Agile Sumo posted:World War Z 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.
|
#
¿
Feb 17, 2010 22:32
|
|
|
|
| # ¿ Apr 29, 2024 17:35 |
|
|
I've been listening to The Last Battle by Cornelius Ryan. Gives some great insight into the final days of World War II from the upper echelons of the American, British, Russian, and German forces - both politically and militarily. The narrator gives some nice gravitas to the horrors (read: the justifiably vindictive Red Army) that fell on Berlin towards the end.
|
|
#
¿
Feb 4, 2013 05:08
|
|
|
Has anyone both read and listened to Thomas Piketty's Capital in the 21st Century? I want an audiobook, but I figure there are lots of graphs, charts and tables that wouldn't translate well to being read.
|
|
#
¿
Jun 16, 2015 05:55
|
|
|
Frank Muller's narration of Moby Dick owns bones. We lost one of the best narrators ever.
|
|
#
¿
Jun 24, 2015 01:00
|
|
|
punissuer posted:Trying to decide which of the Great Courses history books to use my audible credit for this month. The Other Side of History: Daily Life in the Ancient World is one I've seen lauded all over the internet. I haven't heard it yet but have heard lectures from the same professor about Hannibal, and they were fascinating.
|
|
#
¿
Aug 9, 2015 04:26
|
|
|
Frank Muller forever. His reading of Moby Dick was so vivacious and dynamic it kept me glued the whole time. And seconding Stefan Rudnicki. I have Legacy of Ashes and The Bloody White Baron as read by him, and he has the perfect voice for history books.
|
|
#
¿
Sep 26, 2015 05:17
|
|
|
I wish they'd gotten Stefan Rudnicki to read the entirety of Will Durant's Story of Civilization series. I want Caesar and the Christ, but I don't care for Grover Gardiner's voice 
|
|
#
¿
Apr 21, 2016 15:46
|
|
|
Murgos posted:This is kind of like saying, "The gave me a free 2016 Mercedes Benz E Class AMG AND paid all the taxes but what I really want is a 1992 Yugo." I have the audiobook of Carthage Must Be Destroyed read by Gardner, and his voice has this nasal quality that just bores the poo poo out of me. Rudnicki owns 
|
|
#
¿
Apr 22, 2016 17:00
|
|
|
Mister Macys posted:If the amount of pornography Rudnicki is hired to narrate is any indication, people love his voice just fine...  I didn't know he narrated porn. I have Legacy of Ashes, The Bloody White Baron, and The Life of Greece as narrated by him. His voice is great for history.
|
|
#
¿
Apr 23, 2016 02:04
|
|
|
Mister Macys posted:You can probably find the original for free. You can indeed. Relic Radio's Orson Welles on the Air has it, along with The Third Man prequel series, The Lives of Harry Lime. Welles' performances are some of the best radio ever got. If you're a fan of old time radio, you owe it to yourself to check out Relic Radio. Listening to anything Welles put out and anything in the Suspense and Escape series is the best of radio.
|
|
#
¿
Jun 10, 2016 22:59
|
|
|
There's a 2-for-1 Great Courses sale on Audible this week. I was wondering if anyone has the course on the Vikings by Kenneth W. Harl. I have his series on Alexander the Great but honestly found his delivery very dry and rushed with lots of "uhs" and "ums" thrown in. Just wondering if I'd be in for more of the same since it's a subject I'd like to learn more about, but I'd rather wait if his delivery didn't change much from the Alexander series. Any other recommendations for History Great Courses series are welcome. So far I've got The Other Side of History: Daily Life in the Ancient World (my favorite series to date), History's Greatest Voyages, Food: A Cultural Culinary History, and the aforementioned Alexander the Great and the Macedonian Empire.
|
|
#
¿
Jun 20, 2016 16:53
|
|
|
I picked up Harl's Vikings lecture and another one about the Gilded Age. My next credit becomes available at midnight on the 24th - one minute after this sale ends  MeatwadIsGod fucked around with this message at 14:14 on Jun 23, 2016 |
|
#
¿
Jun 23, 2016 14:10
|
|
|
Peas and Rice posted:I've been listening to Harl's history of Alexander the Great from the Great Courses series and it's really good except that he sometimes pronounces "allies" as "all-EYES" and it's really distracting. Especially because he does it inconsistently. Far more distracting to me were moments when individual words were clearly edited in later, something that is fortunately absent from his Vikings lectures (so far).
|
|
#
¿
Aug 23, 2016 16:53
|
|
|
Apoffys posted:The Android app has an option for downloading books as either single files or split into many parts. I don't know how well it works (haven't used it much), but the feature is definitely there. I think that if you start a multi-part download, it will just keep downloading parts until it has the whole book, so you'll need to stop it manually once you have enough downloaded. Speaking of Audible Android App download settings, it seems like the current version (2.8) has an issue where it doesn't recognize my SD card as a download location. I reverted to the default version and it was detected just fine, but on the current version there's no download location setting. My SD card has a ton of free space, and I want to have all the books I've finished on there. Anybody else run into this?
|
|
#
¿
Oct 5, 2016 22:35
|
|
|
Blood Meridian is on Audible's current 2-for-1 sale. I read the book several years ago and loved it, but I lent it to a friend who has since moved away. I remember it taking 30 or 40 pages before McCarthy's writing style clicked with me, and this was even after I'd read The Road. Can anyone who has the audiobook recommend it? It seems like it might make it easier to parse whenever several characters are talking to each other. I typically prefer reading fiction and using audiobooks for nonfiction, but Frank Muller's narration of Moby Dick showed me that sometimes a good narrator can make otherwise difficult prose flow like water.
|
|
#
¿
Nov 3, 2016 15:39
|
|
|
Cool. 
MeatwadIsGod fucked around with this message at 16:17 on Nov 3, 2016 |
|
#
¿
Nov 3, 2016 15:55
|
|
|
Robert Reich narrated Saving Capitalism, which he also wrote. I quite like his voice, and the book is just worth it in its own right.
|
|
#
¿
Nov 3, 2016 16:18
|
|
|
Zephyrine posted:Is there any good service for free or cheap audiobooks? Like some app with just a monthly fee? LibriVox, maybe?
|
|
#
¿
Nov 29, 2016 20:45
|
|
|
I'm halfway through it so can't totally vouch for it yet, but Atomic Accidents by James Mahaffey is a pretty cool dissection of every radiation-based accident in history, beginning with Nikola Tesla sticking his head into a hitherto unknown X ray beam. It's written very much for the benefit of a layperson and, once the development of radioactive piles and nuclear weapons is in the picture, much of the book is dedicated to how these things and their failsafes are engineered. Judging from the title, you might think it's a fear mongering thing but it's exactly the opposite. I'm enjoying it so far.
|
|
#
¿
Feb 8, 2017 18:19
|
|
|
Devorum posted:Are there any good Lovecraft audiobooks available? Most people consider Wayne June to be the definitive narrator for Lovecraft. The readings done for the H.P Lovecraft Literary Podcast are also very good (and free).
|
|
#
¿
Mar 1, 2017 05:31
|
|
|
Aardark posted:So Frank Muller died and didn't finish The Dark Tower. Sad. He died like a decade ago, but I didn't know that until after I finished his Moby Dick reading and was extremely bummed. That guy effortlessly nailed some notoriously difficult prose with style.
|
|
#
¿
May 5, 2017 05:13
|
|
|
Are there any history must-haves in the Great Courses sale? I have Daily Life in the Ancient World, The Vikings, History of Explanation, Alexander the Great, Food: A Cultural History, and TheGilded Age. Robert Garland and Ken Albala are fantastic but I've found the other lecturers to be hit-or-miss so far.
|
|
#
¿
Jun 14, 2017 02:22
|
|
|
Thanks, guys. I picked up another Harl one - Steppe Nomadic Empires - even though sometimes he sounds like he's reading a phone book. Also one on the Black Plague.
|
|
#
¿
Jun 17, 2017 01:42
|
|
|
If anyone's wondering what to buy in the current Audible sale, the Audible Studios production of Dracula is very good. I read it a couple years ago and loved it, but all the cast members really make the story flow nicely, and hearing it narrated reinforces how well Stoker executed the epistolary format. It's extra cool when you have characters like Dr. Seward whose diary entries are dictated to a phonograph. It really brings the old Europe/new Europe conflict to life in a way that reading it doesn't.
|
|
#
¿
Jul 13, 2017 15:01
|
|
|
Mister Facetious posted:Charlton Griffin I have this version and thought it was dope. The only part I didn't like was the translator using modern rather than Roman place names. My own answer would be Frank Muller narrating Moby Dick. It's a little tough just reading it, but I wouldn't call it a slog. The flow and vivacity of Muller's narration makes it sound effortless, and it's probably my favorite audiobook narration period. MeatwadIsGod fucked around with this message at 13:04 on Jul 19, 2017 |
|
#
¿
Jul 19, 2017 10:49
|
|
|
MockingQuantum posted:How's Robin Miles as a reader? I see she does all the Broken Earth and Binti books so I assume she must be pretty good. I've only heard one book she narrated (The Warmth of Other Suns), but she was very good. Even though it's nonfiction she did a good job of giving different people distinct voices. Fiction may be a different story though. I think Audible lets you play samples from anything they offer so I would say try that first.
|
|
#
¿
Apr 19, 2018 17:58
|
|
|
MockingQuantum posted:I have a bunch of downtime at work and I'm just about caught up on my Audible books, so I'm looking for a recommendation. I love me some horror novels, and although I'm hesitant to tackle them as audiobooks since I really enjoy reading them at whatever pace suits me, I'd like to give one a spin. Any particularly good horror audiobooks out there? The Audible studios adaptation of Dracula is really good.
|
|
#
¿
May 15, 2018 18:01
|
|
|
Lumbermouth posted:I was looking up why Phil Gigante didn't continue narrating the Hap and Leonard books and welp, turns out he's a convicted sex offender/child predator. Yikes. It's gonna be weird listening to Flow My Tears, The Policeman Said again
|
|
#
¿
Aug 10, 2018 12:33
|
|
|
Has anyone had issues with chapters playing out of order? I have an audiobook I've redownloaded a few times with the same result each time. While it reads as Chapter 1 in the Audible app, I get the "This is Audible" announcement and then playback goes midway into what's actually chapter 5 at least. Seems like it's only happened with one audiobook in my library that I know of, but it's one I've finished, deleted, and redownloaded to my Android phone if that matters.
|
|
#
¿
Jan 2, 2019 20:22
|
|
|
I thought the Audible production of Dracula was good. Alan Cumming plays Seward and Tim Curry plays Van Helsing. Since it's an epistolary novel you have stuff like Seward's chapters being journal entries he recorded on a dictaphone so the format works nicely.
MeatwadIsGod fucked around with this message at 14:39 on Dec 30, 2019 |
|
#
¿
Dec 30, 2019 14:20
|
|
|
Len posted:I finally saw Knives Out and was reminded of how much I like murder mysteries but haven't read many. If you haven't read all the Sherlock Holmes short stories and novels I would definitely start there. They're insanely good.
|
|
#
¿
Feb 3, 2020 03:52
|
|
|
For a second I thought you were inside my head but lately I've been binging another YouTube channel of Victorian ghost stories with fantastic narration https://youtube.com/c/BitesizedAudioClassics
|
|
#
¿
Oct 20, 2021 03:44
|
|
|
Enfys posted:Does anyone have any recommendations for good spooky/scary audiobooks? Seconding Head Full of Ghosts Otherwise, the Audible production of Dracula is very good. The Robert Aickman short story collections on Audible have a good narrator, as does the Ambrose Bierce collection Can Such Things Be? The narrator in that case is the guy who runs the prison in Silence of the Lambs. His stories aren't really scary as such, more "cozy horror" if that makes sense, but I really like Michael Hordern's narration of M.R. James' horror stories. They're good to fall asleep to. Lastly, this God-tier narration of Nathaniel Hawthorne's "Young Goodman Brown" by Basil Rathbone: https://youtu.be/SPhQCJ6waLI
|
|
#
¿
Sep 20, 2022 17:28
|
|
|
It sucks that Audible is the biggest game in town because for at least the last year I've consistently had Bluetooth audio lag issues with their app - and only their app - that are very frequent and very annoying. None of the troubleshooting steps I've found improve it at all.
|
|
#
¿
Jan 6, 2023 13:35
|
|
|
mystes posted:What do you mean bluetooth audio lag issues? I would normally assume you mean a/v sync but since audiobooks are purely audio do you just mean it's slow to respond when you pause or skip or something? Basically frequent slowdown of audio playback and clipping/crackling. Once every 10 minutes or so the audio playback slows to a crawl, give or take. CrazySalamander posted:It’s possible that’s a device problem and not an app problem. Not every audio device implements Bluetooth correctly and most of the time apps muddle through by making assumptions but you can end up with weird glitches. I threw out my first Bluetooth headphones because they glitched and beeped/screamed at max volume in my ears. It could be my Android phone, maybe. I've had this phone and bluetooth headphones for years and have only had issues with using the Audible app with Bluetooth for the past year or two. It's the only app I've ever had this issue with (YouTube, Spotify, Soundcloud, etc. have never had any issues w/ playback on Bluetooth) but who knows. I get the same problem with Audible when pairing with a bunch of different Bluetooth headphones, speakers, etc. but maybe there was an Android firmware update within the last year or two that really hosed with the Audible app. MeatwadIsGod fucked around with this message at 23:42 on Jan 6, 2023 |
|
#
¿
Jan 6, 2023 22:55
|
|
|
escape artist posted:What are some classics that REALLY come to life in audio form? Moby-Dick with Frank Muller's narration is god-tier
|
|
#
¿
Apr 19, 2023 01:07
|
|
|
Anybody ever had an Audible title you've purchased with a credit that's locked in the app so you can't download or play it? I know this happens with Audible Plus titles when they're removed from the Plus catalog, but I've never had this happen to titles I've purchased with a credit, and as of now there's like 5 books I've paid for that are locked.
|
|
#
¿
Dec 4, 2023 09:57
|
|
|
MinionOfCthulhu posted:Thanks to Audible having a 3 month free trial, I’ve gotten into listening to audiobooks after a loooong hiatus. I’m not sure what to spend my first of three credits on so far but I’m listening to Between Two Fires. Excellent book, and really good narrator too! Highly recommend it so far if you like sort of grounded historical fantasy (the part with the fight against the river monster with the hand on its tail was genuinely chilling) I still think about this book a lot. The tone hit just right for me, it's got the pulpiness of Evil Dead or maybe Diablo 1 but also lots of genuine horror and awe. Hopefully someday I can find another dark fantasy novel in a similar vein.
|
|
#
¿
Feb 23, 2024 10:09
|
|
|
|
| # ¿ Apr 29, 2024 17:35 |
|
|
escape artist posted:Richard Poe is the king of audiobook narration. Frank Mueller is a high ranking member of the King's Court. Bill Homewood is up there for me. Love it whenever he busts out a West Country accent for an appropriate character. Mueller is untouchable though, RIP
|
|
#
¿
Feb 25, 2024 04:56
|
|