Rec me some audiobooks!

[firecat]

Hey, people who use Audible: I have a metric shit-ton of credits to use up before March. Recommend me some audiobooks. I like science fiction, fantasy, detective/mystery, linguistics, Great Courses.

Here are some audiobooks I've listened to recently that I liked:

• JG Ballard, High-Rise (horror)
• Ian Fleming, Bond series (spy)
• Charlaine Harris, Gunnie Rose series (fantasy western)
• Faith Hunter, Junkyard Cats (post-apocalyptic)
• Madeline Miller, Circe (retelling of Greek myth, based on The Odyssey)
• Walter Mosley, Easy Rawlins series (Black amateur detective)
• EA Scarborough, The Healer's War (fantasy, historical fiction)
• Jodi Taylor, Chronicle of St Mary's series (time travel, humor)
• Agatha Christie, Three Act Tragedy
• Rivers Solomon, An Unkindness of Ghosts (generation ship SF)
• Lanie Taylor, Strange the Dreamer (fantasy)

Comments

[starwatcher]

.
J D Robb, the "In Death" series crime/detective novels set in a future year I don't remember, but they have things like flying cars. The lead detective is a woman, Eve Dallas.
.

[firecat]

Thanks!

[shanaqui]

I'm more of a radioplays person, and I forget if you are a Sayers person, since so many people I know are, but the BBC radio adaptations of her books, starring Ian Carmichael, are awesome. The Lord of the Rings radioplays were also astounding... and pretty much any of the BBC radioplays are probably a good bet. They tend to be very faithful and often almost verbatim.

[firecat]

Thanks!

[adrian_turtle]

A Memory Called Empire is great as an audiobook, and I think you'll like it.

The Aubrey Maturin books are wonderful on audio if you get the unabridged versions narrated by Patrick Tull.

Amberlough may be darker than you're in the mood for just now, but the audiobooks are fabulous.

[firecat]

Thanks!

[sasha_feather]

Catfishing on Catnet was very good, i loved the audio version.

[firecat]

Thanks!

[adrian_turtle]

I loved the text version of this one.

[pameladean]

Cat Valente's Space Opera is a great audiobook. That said, I should mention that mostly I don't like audiobooks, which might mean this is a specially good one, or might just mean that what I like is orthogonal to what people who listen to a lot of audiobooks might enjoy.

P.

[firecat]

Thanks! For calibration purposes, why don't you like audiobooks?

[pameladean]

I have trouble processing and retaining information that way. So if I'm going to go to the effort, the reader and the book both need to be really good, and need to feel to me as if they are well matched. I can glide over a number of defects when I'm reading because reading feels effortless to me at this point in my life, unless I have eyestrain or am very tired or upset. But listening to a narrative being read to me is not like that.

If the voice doesn't seem right, if there's any bobble in pace or timing, if I don't think the names are being pronounced right, if the reader does different voices for the characters and they seem wrong to me, I just fall out of the story. And if the story has certain kinds of defects -- even though I read imperfect books all the time and some of my favorite books have some kind of problem or other of structure or pacing or consistency -- I get very impatient and can't pay attention.

P.

[firecat]

Those things bother me about narration too, but probably to a smaller degree.

[stonepicnicking_okapi]

Patricia Highsmith's Strangers on a Train narrated by Bronson Pinchot is very well done. Dark and sad and suspenseful.

The Stately Home Murder by Catherine Aird narrated by Robin Bailey is a very traditional Agatha Christie-style detective story.

They're Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston narrated by Ruby Dee is a classic about an African American woman and her loves.

And then there were none by Agatha Christie narrated by Dan Stevens [note: I don't like Stevens' Murder on the Orient Express]

I don't see any romance on your list, but if you like K. J. Charles or Cat Stevens, their works on audiobook are good.

[firecat]

Thanks! I liked Their Eyes Were Watching God. I have Hugh Fraser's narration of And Then There Were None.

[firecat]

I picked up a KJ Charles, Magpie Lord, based on your recommendation! Haven't started it yet, but will post about it when I've finished listening.

[stonepicnicking_okapi]

Yea! That's Cornell Collins and he's great. He has distinction (in my mind) of being able to say (in a different KJ Charles book) "How's the debauching going?" and not sound like a total douche. That's talent! My favorite part of Crane and Stephen are the magpies (they are way cool!).

[firecat]

[very belated reply]

I'm listening to this now. I really like it, and yes the magpies are the best. (I more or less have a rule that I will try any book that references corvids in the title, LOL.)

I have mixed feelings about Cornell Collins based on this book (I'm about 3/4 of the way thru). I like his light, playful tone in the light, playful parts of the story, and I like how he narrates the sex scenes (where he brings out the intensity very well). But sometimes he uses that light tone in action or emotional passages, and I feel like I miss out on some of the emotion that way.

[st_aurafina]

I have two absolute favourite audiobook series

The Imperial Radch series are sci-fi, about personhood and classism and colonisation, and they have found family feels in shades. Adjoa Andoh is the narrator and she is wonderful. Just so good.

The other series I love from Audible is the Rivers of London series - it's British urban fantasy. The narrator, Kobna Holdbrook-Smith, is equally wonderful and really good at accent work. The premise is that there's a secret magical police force working inside the existing police, but the secondary story is about old mythological figures adjusting to modern life. It's really rich world-building and drags myths and legends into the story from all over the place.

[firecat]

I've read Imperial Radch in book form and I love it. Definitely will check out Rivers of London series, that sounds right up my alley.

Heyer

[agoodwinsmith]

Georgette Heyer. My all time favourite is The Talisman Ring, followed by The Convenient Marriage and The Reluctant Widow. I fear the racism fairy has blighted some of her books.

Re: Heyer

[firecat]

Thanks!

[snippy]

Peter Cline's Threshold novels are excellent on audio; Lovecraft-adjacent or inspired, I'd say.

[jesse_the_k]

Another Bronson Pinchot narration which helps tie together the deep dive into ecology, farming, First-world-"helping"-third-world, GMOs, is Charles C Mann's The Prophet and the Wizard -- explores the parallel development of conservationists and green-miracle-workers. His other two works -- 1491 and 1493 -- detail what our continent was like before and after European settlement.

https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/authors/60291/charles-c-mann/

[firecat]

Thanks!