Recommend me some good audiobooks

[Calibandar]

I am looking for a good audiobook to listen to in the car.

Ones I am considering;
 

Lord of the Rings read by Inglis ( not sure if there is another narrator)

Dune audiobook

Anything in SF or Fantasy that stoof out for you guys?

But I am open to any good suggestion really, including non-fiction, maybe something from Richard Dawkins, or Malcom Gladwell.

It can also be that you have a favorite narrator that you just love to listen to regardless of book, I am interested in such recommendations as well, either male or female narrators.

[SkynJay]

Jack Vance is often cited as the narrator people love; I know he did the Novick books.

I have found my ability to listen to an audio book taps out around the 9 hour mark so I have listened to more YA than I have read.  Two that stand out from a narration standpoint are The False Prince and The School for Good and Evil.  

I also have taken in most my Vorkosigan books in audio form and enjoyed them just fine.

 

I would love to try some non fiction books as well, specifically U.S. history, so I eagerly watch for recomendations.

[Wilbur]

Two recent discussions on audio books that list some good options:

Jack Vance:

General Discussion:

 

[Muwhahaha]

check out John Dies at the End, it's fantastic on audiobook.

[HexMachina]

The Joe Abercrombie audiobooks are good, with narration by Stephen Spacey. Great range of voices for the different characters

[Manhole Eunuchsbane]

 The Kid Stays in the Picture by Robert Evans. The audiobook is narrarated by Robert Evans and it is fantastic. Basically the memoirs of a famous coke-fueled, pussy hound Hollywood producer. Arguably the greatest audiobook of all time. I believe it is "out of print" so to speak, so it's a bit pricey and kind of hard to find, but it is worth the money and the search.

   https://www.amazon.com/Kid-Stays-Picture-Notorious-Life/dp/0062228323

[Calibandar]

15 hours ago, HelenaExMachina said:

The Joe Abercrombie audiobooks are good, with narration by Stephen Spacey. Great range of voices for the different characters

I would consider Heroes as I have yet to read that.

[HexMachina]

54 minutes ago, Calibandar said:

I would consider Heroes as I have yet to read that.

I actually enjoy listening to audiobooks after already having read the book. Otherwise I don't take the story in so well. I've recently finished listening to Best Served Cold, and enjoyed it a lot even though I only read the book around a month or two ago

[Calibandar]

I have that as well, just tracked down a cd version of Bakker's The Judging Eye, really like the narrator ( Kevin Orton) but I've already the book. Though it's been 6 years at least.

[wolverine]

Well to just test audio books out in the carI have listened to some free audiobooks and found very enjoyable versions of Sherlock Holmes, A Tale of Two Cities, and some other free stuff.  Can't recall the readers I liked

 

I like listening to classics that way because I could also find free versions online if I wanted to continue reading somewhere.

[Muwhahaha]

Our local library has an online ebook and audiobook selection where I get most of my stuff.  

[C.T. Phipps]

I recommend:

The Lies of Locke Lamora by Scott Lynch
Prince of Thorns by Mark Lawrence
Ex-Heroes by Peter Clines
Quarter-Share by Nathan Lowell
Confessions of a D-List Supervillain by Jim Bernheimer
The Atrocity Archives by Charles Stross
The Name of the Wind by Patrick Rothfuss

Anything by me. Hehe.

[GilletteMace]

2001 by arthur c clarke theres a version on youtube i listened to when working. i liked it. even better may be

rendevous with rama also by arthur c clarke.

[Calibandar]

I had been looking at Rendezvous as well, I already have the physical book of that on the shelf but the audio sounded good.

[Happy Ent]

Not a book, but I’ve been listening a lot to Dan Carlin’s Hardcore History podcast. Start with his 6-part series on WW1 (“Blueprint for Armageddon”), which is available for free right now. (Over 24 hours of audio.)

[red snow]

On 05/07/2016 at 0:12 PM, Happy Ent said:

Not a book, but I’ve been listening a lot to Dan Carlin’s Hardcore History podcast. Start with his 6-part series on WW1 (“Blueprint for Armageddon”), which is available for free right now. (Over 24 hours of audio.)

These are all good - the eastern front of WWII is excellent as well

Other good non-fiction audiobooks are

A History of the world by Andrew Marr (his modern Britain one is excellent too but maybe not so interesting for non brits.

I'm currently listening to Sapiens by Yuval Noah Harari and it is excellent. I thought it was mainly going to cover human biology but it covers so many topics eg gender identity, religion, capitalism etc and explains them better than I've encountered in many places. I also like how he is pretty neutral and points out how all of these things are never solely good or bad. I much prefer it to Diamond's 3rd chimpanzee and guns, germs and steel and found Yuval explains some of those concepts better, For example - I'd never quite grasped how agriculture was initially a step back for humans but his take on this makes perfect sense.

Diamond's audiobooks are still good but a bit too apologetic/fate determining in the sense he makes out history would play out exactly the same due to the environment. "collapse" is excellent though and does a great job of showing how mankind has walked blindly and openly into societal collapse.

quantum Biology by Jim al khalili has some great descriptions of biology and physics that are very easy to grasp when spoken.

[Teng Ai Hui]

After listening to an interview of Max Brooks on the Nerdist podcast, I'm anxious to start the unabridged version of World War Z as it seems to have an all-star cast.

[Jon Weirgaryen]

Neil Gaiman's own reading of "The Truth is a Cave in the Black Mountains" is an hour long artistic rendition of this novelette of promises of hidden treasures, darkness, friendship-companionship on the road through the lowlands and the highlands, of vengeance, death, the otherworld and ultimative loss with music by the FourPlay String Quartet especially composed for it. While the text is free on the net (above link), the full performance is not, you can buy or loan it where you usually do.

I also recommend all other audiobooks read by Neil Gaiman. Neil knows his stuff in public reading just as well as in writing.

I also liked "The Crossing Places" by Elly Griffiths, a detective story where the unwilling detective is a lady archeologist and "Kidnapped" by Robert Louis Stevenson, classic children's adventure story, books that were recommended to me by friends.

I liked all the audiobook renditions of James Branch Cabell's works read by Robert Blumenfeld: "Figures of Earth" (Manuel), "Jurgen" and "The High Place" (Florian). Good listening, great books about the rise and downfall of the strangest kind of very human-like heroes, life, (meta-)philosophy and most basic pragmatism.

For reader/listeners of the French language, I'd recommend the reading of "Le Compte de Monte-Cristo" (by Alexandre Dumas) read by Éric Herson-Macarel, which comes in 2 audiobooks, 25 hours each respectively. I'd only seen a movie or two and remember the theme of main character Edmond Dantès elsewhere in the arts. So I was positively surprised about this intriguing big big book. It is a story about endurance, long term plans (decades) and jostling the course of actions around you towards outcomes that look like they are divine providence (be it gratification, charity and benefactions or revenge), still all centrally managed by a single man and his friends. It has such a multitude of side characters, which may confuse the reader just as much as ASoIaF may do, when someone forgotten since book one only returns a few hundred or thousand pages later. I am still reading/listening, but now am closing in on the end, unfortunately.

[red snow]

On 22/09/2016 at 6:29 AM, Let's Get Kraken said:

First Law and Kingkiller books are really good on audio, so are the first three Malazan (before they switched narrators). I wasn't a huge fan of the Dune audiobook. Personally I think that adding sound effects or music to a book is taking artistic liberties with the material. I also don't like multiple narrators, as there is always going to be a shift in quality from voice to voice.

If you are a constant listener like me, I definitely recommend getting a subscription to Audible though. Otherwise some of these can be very expensive.

Sound effects should at least come with the option to turn them off. Some people hate the music in "insomnia". I'd rather it wasn't there but it does add to the horror aspect of the story (freaking me out at several points)

Multiple narrators work for me when there are multiple fixed POVs but I'd find it distracting if there was an actor attached to a voice. "bone clocks" uses different narrators quite well. I do think something in the format of GOT or First Law could work with a voice actor for each POV but that kind of thing increases production costs.

[red snow]

1 hour ago, Let's Get Kraken said:

The problem with the music in Insomnia, for me at least, was that it completely drowned out the narration. The narrator had a very soft voice, and I listen to audiobooks when I drive, so whenever the music played hear what he was saying. To me that's just lazy editing, as they could easily have turned the music down to accommodate the narration.

It does feel like they never double-checked with the sound editing as it's really bad at the beginning (I suspect a lot of people gave up there) but genuinely becomes less intrusive later on. Almost as if they learned as they went along but never bothered going back and changing the first few uses.