What are we listening to? (audiobooks)

[DanTin]

I'm Listening to WEB Griffin - Corps series Book 4 Battle Ground there are 10 books in the Corp series The whole Crop series is around 170 hours long
I'm new to this forum
WEB Griffin is one of my favorites


Dan

[tubemonkey]

Originally Posted by DanTin

I'm Listening to WEB Griffin - Corps series Book 4 Battle Ground there are 10 books in the Corp series The whole Crop series is around 170 hours long
I'm new to this forum
WEB Griffin is one of my favorites

Dan

Welcome to the group and happy listening

[pwalker8]

Originally Posted by DanTin

I'm Listening to WEB Griffin - Corps series Book 4 Battle Ground there are 10 books in the Corp series The whole Crop series is around 170 hours long
I'm new to this forum
WEB Griffin is one of my favorites


Dan

So who is the reader and what do you think of the audiobook? I've got the Corps series in both paper and ebook and like them. I wasn't aware that they had come out in audio book.

[WT Sharpe]

I just finished listening to Mil Nicholson's most excellent narration of Bleak House by Charles Dickens. Mil Nicholson is one of those Librivox readers that puts the lie to the old adage, "You get what you pay for." Her reading is a pure delight, and I can't recommend it highly enough.

The story itself was engaging, and Dickens knowledge of human nature makes his characters come alive. Perhaps the thing that most surprised me in the book was the ending. After having taken such pains to tie up loose ends and bring the story to a satisfying conclusion, I wasn't prepared for the tale to end mid-sentence, but upon reflection, it was a perfect ending.

Now it's on to The Canterville Ghost by Oscar Wilde, followed by a Dicken's short story, The Cricket on the Hearth. I've already read the Dicken's tale on my Kindle, so the audiobook version will be a re-read in preparation for the MobileRead Book Club's discussion on the 20th.

[Red Falcon]

I am currently listing to The Narrow Road to the Deep North by Richard Flanagan.It is read by the Author which in this case I think Is a good fit for this book.
He reads the book in a very slow way with major emphasis on the language and scene building which took me a bit to get the rhythm of the book and narration's style.I find I have to listen to this in large chunks 1-2 hours each block and then let what happened sink in.
I do not typically read this type of book because I feel that they focus so much on the language and making a point that they forget to make the book interesting to read but the subject matter of the Burmese Death Railroad interests me.

[CRussel]

Originally Posted by CRussel

Oh, this was FUN! A superb bit of fluff, and highly recommended. One of my favourite Georgette Heyer Regencies, read by an excellent narrator.

Next up, another Heyer, but this one a contemporary (1930's) mystery, The Unfinished Clue, read by Ulli Birvé. I'm enjoying the story, though her mysteries are nowhere near as good or as witty as her Regencies, but the narrator is painfully stilted and slow.

Originally Posted by CRussel

I won't ever buy another book read by Ulli Birvé. Just awful. I'll finish this one, but that is officially IT.

Finished. A simply AWFUL narrator. To get the bad taste out of my ears, I'm going to listen to the first of the Ben Aaronovitch Peter Grant books, Midnight Riot. The narrator is Kobna Holdbrook-Smith, and his reading of these books is simply superb. A perfect voice for the narrator.

[pidgeon92]

Originally Posted by CRussel

Finished. A simply AWFUL narrator. To get the bad taste out of my ears,

What didn't you like about her? I'm listening to the sample, and she sounds pretty good.

[CRussel]

Originally Posted by pidgeon92

What didn't you like about her? I'm listening to the sample, and she sounds pretty good.

The pace. It was just unbelievably slow and stilted. Not something you notice listening to a sample, usually. But I ended up listening at 1.25% speed and it was almost tolerable. And it's not evenly distributed - some sections felt too fast at 1.25, others too slow even then. Just really not a pleasant experience. Especially since it isn't slow because of dramatic pauses, just way, way too much "white space" between each word.

[issybird]

I'm listening to Ford Madox Ford's Great War tetralogy, Parade's End, interspersing the component books with other listens. I don't love the narration by Steven Crossley and feel fairly confident I'd enjoy the books more if I were reading them, but they're good enough for when I need an audiobook.

[Tarana]

The pace. It was just unbelievably slow and stilted. Not something you notice listening to a sample, usually. But I ended up listening at 1.25% speed and it was almost tolerable.

Oh, good to know. I had one book like that and only listened to about 20% before I gave it up and returned it to Audible. Unfortunately, it looks like she will be reading all the Inspector novels, so I best make sure I have the ebooks with a kobo coupon.

I, on the other hand, am enjoying the Fellowship of the Ring. Almost 40% done. It's been decades since I read this and I never listened to the audiobook before. The songs are.. well.. a bit strange, but since I'm doing this via whispersync, I can read the songs and then I get them (I've been told that many of the songs contain portents of what is to come).

[WT Sharpe]

I just finished the Librivox version of Benedictus de Spinoza's Theologico-Political Treatise read by Chiquito Crasto. Mr. Crasto was a good speaker, but as he's obviously not a native English speaker, certain pronunciations raised an eyebrow more than once (especially his pronunciation of the word "Pentateuch"), but as his annunciation was always clear and strong there was never any doubt as to what was meant and I have no qualms about recommending this version.

This book was a mixed bag for me. The Treatise was very forward thinking for it's time, but still contained much theological rubbish. Granted, Spinoza lived in a day when it was dangerous to speak certain opinions too plainly, and it was clear that he was hardly a fundamentalist by any stretch of the imagination, but I felt he accorded too much authority to the Hebrew and Christian scriptures.

That being said, there were some real gems between its covers. In the Preface, he had this to say about hypocrisy:

"I have often wondered, that persons who make a boast of professing the Christian religion, namely, love, joy, peace, temperance, and charity to all men, should quarrel with such rancorous animosity, and display daily towards one another such bitter hatred, that this, rather than the virtues they claim, is the readiest criterion of their faith. Matters have long since come to such a pass, that one can only pronounce a man Christian, Turk, Jew, or Heathen, by his general appearance and attire, by his frequenting this or that place of worship, or employing the phraseology of a particular sect—as for manner of life, it is in all cases the same."

And from Chapter 20 (the final chapter) comes this stirring appeal for free speech:

"It is far from possible to impose uniformity of speech, for the more rulers strive to curtail freedom of speech, the more obstinately are they resisted; not indeed by the avaricious, the flatterers, and other numskulls, who think supreme salvation consists in filling their stomachs and gloating over their money-bags, but by those whom good education, sound morality, and virtue have rendered more free. Men, as generally constituted, are most prone to resent the branding as criminal of opinions which they believe to be true, and the proscription as wicked of that which inspires them with piety towards God and man; hence they are ready to forswear the laws and conspire against the authorities, thinking it not shameful but honourable to stir up seditions and perpetuate any sort of crime with this end in view. Such being the constitution of human nature, we see that laws directed against opinions affect the generous minded rather than the wicked, and are adapted less for coercing criminals than for irritating the upright; so that they cannot be maintained without great peril to the state. Moreover, such laws are almost always useless, for those who hold that the opinions proscribed are sound, cannot possibly obey the law; whereas those who already reject them as false, accept the law as a kind of privilege, and make such boast of it, that authority is powerless to repeal it, even if such a course be subsequently desired."

[Catlady]

I just finished listening to The Sleeper, by Emily Barr. An unhappy wife living in Cornwall takes a temporary job in London and goes home on weekends on a sleeper train, from which she disappears one day. I mostly enjoyed it, but once the story got off the train, it also veered off the tracks. The characters weren't especially sympathetic. The biggest problem, though, was that after the main surprise was revealed, there was nearly two hours' worth of what was essentially mopping up, which wasn't all that interesting. (Total length is nearly thirteen hours.)

I'm looking forward to another "train" thriller due out next week--The Girl on the Train.

[WT Sharpe]

I'm currently listening to Humorous Ghost Stories selected by Dorothy Scarborough, an audiobook read by LibriVox volunteers. Some of them are pretty good.

On a separate note, here's a graphic from Grammerly.com:

[pwalker8]

Ever since they moved audiobooks down to the bottom of the forums list, I keep forgetting to scroll down to it.

I've listened to several interesting books over the past several weeks. A couple of shorter stories. The first was Tokyo Raider, a short story by Larry Correia (about an hour long), the second was The Slow Regard of Silent Things a rather odd story by Patrick Rothfuss that was 3.5 hours. The longer book was Dead Six, by Larry Correia. It's an action thriller set in the near future. This one was some 21.5 hours long, so I definitely got my money's worth on this one.

The one that I just finished was Codespell, the 3rd book of the Ravirn series by Kelly McCullough. The first three books of this series were quite good, but if I recall correctly, starting with the next one, it started going off in odd directions losing steam, so I probably won't get the rest of the series in audio book. Each book is self contained listening to the first three books is fine.

The one I'm listening to right now is The Dragon and the George by Gordon R. Dickson, a classic that I've read a number of times. So far it's quite good, the reader does a good job.

[badgoodDeb]

"Subscribe" to the whole Audiobooks thread, and see which bits have changed or been newly added. Then you can subscribe to sub-threads (?) that you care to follow. It has revolutionized my information following!