Audio Book Recommendations

I’ve listened to a couple hundred audiobooks - I’m a huge fan. Some of my favorites - some of the best-narrated audioboks I can think of - include:

Jane Eyre, Charlotte Bronte, read by Thandie Newton. Big-name actors often don’t do particularly better than Audible’s professional voice actors, but Thandie Newton did such an amazing job with this classic - I seriously can’t overstate how awesome it is.

Anathem, Neal Stephenson, read by William Dufris. Bill Dufris is one of my favorite readers anyway, but I love the way he brings the characters in this book to life with his voice work (with some help from Kevin Pariseau on a few of the characters).

Code Name Verity, Elizabeth Wein, read by Morven Christie and Lucy Gaskell. This novel has two of the most delightfully strongly-voiced narrators I’ve encountered in recent years, and these two readers do an absolutely marvelous job with them.

If I flip back through my library I am sure I can find more - but these three are so wonderful that I can remember them off the top of my head. (I have listened to each of them twice or more.)

innocentbystander said:

A recent gem I found is Robin Miles narrating N.K. Jemisin's Broken Earth trilogy. The first book is entitled "The Fifth Season". Ms. Miles is extraordinary - I feel like she's sitting right next to me cozily telling me this fascinating story.

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Robin Miles is an excellent reader. I’ve listened to both fiction and nonfiction read by her, and she’s always terrific. (Not all readers do an equally good job with both.) Her reading of We Need New Names, NoViolet Bulowayo, is probably my favorite of hers that I’ve listened to.

I told AW Admin I would flip through my library and se if there are any other performances that stood out beside those I listed above. Here are a couple more:

If you like Victorian literature (I do), then there are a stable of really excellent English readers whom you can always count on. Simon Vance is one - I’ve been listening to his readings of Trollope lately but he’s all over my library. Nadia May is another - her readings of George Eliot are among my favorites. Finally Wanda McCaddon’s reading of Vanity Fair, Thackeray, captures the satiric tone perfectly and is often laugh-out-loud hilarious.

The Bell Jar, Sylvia Plath, read by Maggie Gyllenhaal, surprised me. She has a relatively flat, affectless style, which ordinarily isn’t great for audiobooks, but really works brilliantly for the subject matter here. (I don’t recommend her reading of Anna Karenina.)

I generally stay away from audiobooks read by the author. Reading aloud is a very different skill from writing, and most authors can’t do it. Professional voice actors are really required, especially for fiction.

That’s probably enough for now. I have tons of audiobooks that I’ve enjoyed, and I could keep going, but the ones I mentioned in my post above are really a tier above anything else I’ve mentioned here. Have fun.

I'll add one more: Bernadette Dunne's performance of We Have Always Lived in the Castle, Shirley Jackson, is excellent.

AW Admin said:

When you're looking for audiobooks, how do you look? Do you look for a title or author, or a performer/reader, or by genre . . .

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Really, I look the same way I choose any other book to read. Audiobooks are my prime consumption of books these days(*). So when I come across a book I want to read, for whatever reason, I search Audible for it first. If it's there, and read by a performer rather than the author, I'll put it on my wish list. Only if the book isn't available in an audio edition will I look for it in print or eBook editions. As a result I've listened to a pretty broad variety of audiobooks; classics, contemporary fiction, nonfiction, essays, a handful of genre books.

For the most part the performances on Audible are very high quality, so I generally don't worry about listening to the sample before buying. As I said, I've listened to >200 audiobooks, and there are really only a handful for which the narration really got in the way. But you certainly can listen to the samples, and it's worth doing if you have hesitations. (When there are multiple audio editions, as sometimes happens with classics, I'll listen to the samples before I choose.)

Occasionally I've looked for performers I particularly like, to see what else they've read. (Audible lets you search by performer.) I mentioned William Dufris, who's a favorite of mine; I once searched for him, and discovered an edition of Huckleberry Finn performed by him. I probably wouldn't have listened to that book otherwise. Cassandra Campbell is another favorite of mine; when I searched for her, I discovered that she had mostly read romances, which isn't a genre of great interest to me. But she's turning up here and there in other places, too, and I've now listened to her reading a few different things. A reader I like can definitely tip the scales for a purchase I'm on the fence about.

I also go a little crazy in Audible sales - they have a daily deal and frequent 2-for-one sales (two books for one credit), half-price sales, and $5.95 sales (used to be $4.95, alas) that net me some very good deals on audiobooks. If an audiobook is cheap, I'm more likely to take a chance on something that wasn't otherwise on my to-read list - just as most of us do in physical bookstores, I'm sure!

(*) I'd say audiobooks account for about 75% of my book consumption. I do read with my eyeballs, but I'm much slower at it; my eyes are very tired after work, and I'm a slow reader anyway. Whereas I get a couple hours a day of good audiobook time, between my commute, exercising, household chores, and lying in bed with my eyes closed before sleeping.