What are we listening to? (audiobooks) - Page 127

issybird · 01-31-2017, 04:28 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by badgoodDeb

Say what?? What is a "thorn" in this circumstance?

A thorn is the letter þ, which replaces "th" at the beginning of a word in old texts, but in modern typography is usually represented by "y". So the word "the" is spelled "ye", but it should still be pronounced like "the." It was a book about 17th century America, I should add.

All those "yees" really took a toll on me.

ETA: I don't mind it when someone says "ye" when it's something like Ye Olde Towne Shoppe; it would even be silly not to say it that way. But not in a scholarly work.

ApK · 01-31-2017, 04:32 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by issybird

A thorn is the letter þ, which replaces "th" in old texts at the beginning of a word, but in modern typography is usually represented by "y". So the word "the" is spelled "ye", but it should still be pronounced like "the." It was a book about 17th century America, I should add.

All those "yees" really took a toll on me.

Not for nothing, but I would direct my anger to whomever decided to represent it with a "y" rather than with a "th."

What did they THINK was going to happen?!

(eta: Especially since the pronoun 'ye,' with the 'yee' sound, was also a word! Geesh!)

Catlady · 02-06-2017, 12:43 PM

Latest listen: The Fire by Night, by Teresa Messineo, narrated by Kirsten Potter. This novel detailed the experiences of two army nurses during World War II, one in Europe trapped behind enemy lines, the other in the Pacific in a Japanese prison camp.

This was tough to listen to, because their experiences were so terrible. The story reminded me of two old WWII-era films--So Proudly We Hail and Cry Havoc--but grittier and more nightmarish. Best book of the year so far.

issybird · 02-06-2017, 04:22 PM

I'm listening to Phantom Terror: Political Paranoia and the Creation of the Modern State, 1789-1848 , written by Adam Zamoyski and read by Gildart Jackson. It's an account of state repression in Europe and America in the aftermath of the French Revolution. Chilling and all too relevant.

CRussel · 02-07-2017, 04:50 PM

Currently listening to an Ian Rankin book, Even Dogs in the Wild. Narrator is James Macpherson, and he's appropriate and good, but it's taking my ears a bit of time to sync in to the accent. The main problem has been that I've not been able to do dedicated time with it, and I need a couple of hours of steady listening to start to follow. Overall, though, I think I'll enjoy this.

pwalker8 · 02-16-2017, 12:10 PM

Finished off Monster Hunter: Sinner. A fun listen. Next up, Fire Touched by Patricia Briggs. As one might tell, I really like to mix things up so I don't listen to too much of the same thing.

Catlady · 02-27-2017, 11:41 PM

Just wasted a good chunk of the last few days listening to The Detective's Daughter, by Lesley Thomson. What a disappointment! This sounded exactly like my cup of tea--after a police detective's death, his daughter delves into a thirty-year-old cold case he had failed to solve: the murder of a young mother out for a walk with her four-year-old son.

But, omigosh, if there's an award for boring, this book surely deserves to be a prime contender. Hour after hour after hour for more than sixteen hours, I forced myself to keep listening, thinking that perhaps it was time to abandon my stance against abandoning books without finishing them. But I stayed with it. And it never did get un-boring.

It would have been helped immensely by some ruthless cutting; spending less time with unlikable characters (all of them) could only have been a plus. And if there were supposed to be surprises along the way, they were duds, telegraphed way ahead of time and obvious to anyone who's ever read this type of book.

So disappointing! It's the first in a series, and the subsequent books all have intriguing blurbs too, but are likewise lengthy, and I am not going to be drawn into another snore-fest. Yuck!

issybird · 02-28-2017, 10:49 AM

For the past year or so, my crack when I've been looking for something mindless but gripping, has been the Sharpe novels by Bernard Cornwell. Unfortunately, I hit a point in the series where my libraries don't have the next audiobook. I used to use the OverDrive/Whispersync option to buy the audiobook cheaply when this happened before; now this isn't an option and I'm not quite willing to pay the member's price. But when I started the books, I skipped the first three as I wanted to get right to the Napoleonic wars; I decided to go to the beginning of the chronology, set in India, with Sharpe's Tiger as read by Frederick Davidson, since my library had it.

I must say it's a cracking good listen so far, despite my knowing in general terms what's going to happen. I even think I'm enjoying it more now than I would have if I had started with it. This makes me wonder if I'd ultimately have liked the books better had I listened to them in published order rather than chronological. On the other hand, the first two or three books in published order were definitely the weakest, and I might not been grabbed by the series had I started with them. As it was, by the time I got there I was committed, and motivated to push through.

CRussel · 02-28-2017, 11:13 AM

These really are good books, aren't they? And both readers are excellent, so you don't have to worry about which one is reading a particular book. (And unlike some other series where there's a narrator change, there isn't any disconnect with the change in narrator that I've perceived.)

Personally, I've been going through a period of re-reads for my audio books. Prepping for the next in a series by reading the last couple leading up to it. Both favourite series, the Liaden Universe and Cherryh's Foreigner series. The reader for the Foreigner series, Daniel Thomas May, is excellent, and the readers for the Liaden books are good to OK. Sadly, they didn't get a single reader for the series, and a couple of the books aren't well read. But I'm not hitting the real clunker on this "catch up to where we are" re-read.

The interesting thing for me is how much I get out of these re-reads. I catch nuances that I simply missed the first time around as I was mostly focused then on the plot, and this time around I am able to savor some of the finer details.

Of course, the other advantage of re-reads is that I've already paid for the book, thank you, and it's keeping my costs down. But NOT doing anything for my TBR, but that's a different thread.

issybird · 02-28-2017, 02:31 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by CRussel

These really are good books, aren't they? And both readers are excellent, so you don't have to worry about which one is reading a particular book. (And unlike some other series where there's a narrator change, there isn't any disconnect with the change in narrator that I've perceived.)

One of the books is read by Steven Crossley and while I've got nothing against him, the voice was just wrong to my ear. I slightly prefer Tull to Davidson, I think in part because I heard him first, but as you say there's no serious disconnect. My only issue with Freddie is that he reads too many of the books I listen to! (If you're going to have a problem, that's about as pleasant a problem as possible.)

CRussel · 02-28-2017, 08:06 PM

Didn't notice the Crossley version, but between Tull and Davidson/Vance, you can't go wrong.

Sent from my Amazon Fire with Tapatalk. Blame autocorrect for the spelling.

pwalker8 · 03-01-2017, 09:39 PM

Finished off Fire Touched. A good solid book with the next in the series coming out in a week. Next up, The Trials of Apollo. Right now, Rick Riordan is doing a pretty good job bouncing between his main line Greek/Roman stories and other mythologies (starting with Egyptian, now Norse). I don't know that any of his book have reached the level of that first Percy Jackson series, but so far all have been very readable and fun.

Now that I'm back to driving 4 days a week (for a year I was working from home 4 days a week), I'm moving through the books just a bit faster, a week and a half on Fire Touched. The Trials of Apollo is a 10 hour book, so it will probably take about the same amount of time, then on to The Sword of the South, a nice long David Weber story.

pwalker8 · 03-12-2017, 08:36 AM

Just about finished with the Trials of Apollo. It's a nice change of pace, the narrator is good and the next in the series is due out in a couple of months.

Now that I'm back in a noisy office, I'm back to wearing headphones/earbuds much of the day so I can block out the constant distractions. (insert long rant about idiotic corporations that think sticking programmers in a noisy environment sitting next to people who scream into a phone all day is suppose to improve productivity). I alternate between the two to give the inside of my ears/outside of my ears a rest. At the office, I've started listening to Neil Gaiman's Norse Mythology, which is about....Norse Mythology. Neil Gaiman reminds me of Simon Winchester in that he has a very nice reading voice and good delivery. Most authors probably should not read their own material, but these two can pull it off. It's a pretty short book, only 6 hours long. Also just pick up Stephen Fry reading the Complete Sherlock Holmes. This one is 62 hours long. I will most certainly be bouncing back and forth between this one and other books over the next couple of months.

CRussel · 03-12-2017, 01:29 PM

Just finished listening to A Fatal Thaw, by Dana Stabenow. This is #2 in the Kate Shugak series of Alaskan native mysteries and was very well read by Marguerite Gavin. An excellent book, in an excellent series. Highly recommended. Next up, Dead in the Water. I'm going to work right through this series, which are all re-reads, while I wait for the new one due out in May. Which might or might not have a Audible version. Not sure what will happen now that Ms. Stabenow has ditched her publisher and gone independent.

pwalker8 · 03-16-2017, 01:14 PM

Finished up Trials of Apollo. Just started to listen to The Sword of the South. This is a nice long one, 23 hours.

I like to queue my books in a playlist. My current car playlist is roughly 18 days worth of listening, or around 425 hours. I don't guess I will be getting bored in the car anytime soon.

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02-06-2017, 12:43 PM	#1893
Catlady Grand Sorcerer Posts: 7,419 Karma: 52613881 Join Date: Oct 2010 Device: Kindle Fire, Kindle Paperwhite, AGPTek Bluetooth Clip	Latest listen: The Fire by Night, by Teresa Messineo, narrated by Kirsten Potter. This novel detailed the experiences of two army nurses during World War II, one in Europe trapped behind enemy lines, the other in the Pacific in a Japanese prison camp. This was tough to listen to, because their experiences were so terrible. The story reminded me of two old WWII-era films--So Proudly We Hail and Cry Havoc--but grittier and more nightmarish. Best book of the year so far.

02-06-2017, 04:22 PM	#1894
issybird o saeclum infacetum Posts: 21,343 Karma: 234636059 Join Date: Oct 2010 Location: New England Device: Mini, H2O, Glo HD, Aura One, PW4, PW5	I'm listening to *Phantom Terror: Political Paranoia and the Creation of the Modern State, 1789-1848* , written by Adam Zamoyski and read by Gildart Jackson. It's an account of state repression in Europe and America in the aftermath of the French Revolution. Chilling and all too relevant.

02-07-2017, 04:50 PM	#1895
CRussel (he/him/his) Posts: 12,296 Karma: 80074820 Join Date: Jul 2010 Location: Sunshine Coast, BC Device: Oasis (Gen3),Paperwhite (Gen10), Voyage, Paperwhite(orig), iPad Air M3	Currently listening to an Ian Rankin book, *Even Dogs in the Wild*. Narrator is James Macpherson, and he's appropriate and good, but it's taking my ears a bit of time to sync in to the accent. The main problem has been that I've not been able to do dedicated time with it, and I need a couple of hours of steady listening to start to follow. Overall, though, I think I'll enjoy this.

02-16-2017, 12:10 PM	#1896
pwalker8 Grand Sorcerer Posts: 7,196 Karma: 70314280 Join Date: Dec 2006 Location: Atlanta, GA Device: iPad Pro, iPad mini, Kobo Aura, Amazon paperwhite, Sony PRS-T2	Finished off Monster Hunter: Sinner. A fun listen. Next up, Fire Touched by Patricia Briggs. As one might tell, I really like to mix things up so I don't listen to too much of the same thing.

02-27-2017, 11:41 PM	#1897
Catlady Grand Sorcerer Posts: 7,419 Karma: 52613881 Join Date: Oct 2010 Device: Kindle Fire, Kindle Paperwhite, AGPTek Bluetooth Clip	Just wasted a good chunk of the last few days listening to The Detective's Daughter, by Lesley Thomson. What a disappointment! This sounded exactly like my cup of tea--after a police detective's death, his daughter delves into a thirty-year-old cold case he had failed to solve: the murder of a young mother out for a walk with her four-year-old son. But, omigosh, if there's an award for boring, this book surely deserves to be a prime contender. Hour after hour after hour for more than sixteen hours, I forced myself to keep listening, thinking that perhaps it was time to abandon my stance against abandoning books without finishing them. But I stayed with it. And it never did get un-boring. It would have been helped immensely by some ruthless cutting; spending less time with unlikable characters (all of them) could only have been a plus. And if there were supposed to be surprises along the way, they were duds, telegraphed way ahead of time and obvious to anyone who's ever read this type of book. So disappointing! It's the first in a series, and the subsequent books all have intriguing blurbs too, but are likewise lengthy, and I am not going to be drawn into another snore-fest. Yuck!

02-28-2017, 10:49 AM	#1898
issybird o saeclum infacetum Posts: 21,343 Karma: 234636059 Join Date: Oct 2010 Location: New England Device: Mini, H2O, Glo HD, Aura One, PW4, PW5	For the past year or so, my crack when I've been looking for something mindless but gripping, has been the Sharpe novels by Bernard Cornwell. Unfortunately, I hit a point in the series where my libraries don't have the next audiobook. I used to use the OverDrive/Whispersync option to buy the audiobook cheaply when this happened before; now this isn't an option and I'm not quite willing to pay the member's price. But when I started the books, I skipped the first three as I wanted to get right to the Napoleonic wars; I decided to go to the beginning of the chronology, set in India, with Sharpe's Tiger as read by Frederick Davidson, since my library had it. I must say it's a cracking good listen so far, despite my knowing in general terms what's going to happen. I even think I'm enjoying it more now than I would have if I had started with it. This makes me wonder if I'd ultimately have liked the books better had I listened to them in published order rather than chronological. On the other hand, the first two or three books in published order were definitely the weakest, and I might not been grabbed by the series had I started with them. As it was, by the time I got there I was committed, and motivated to push through.

02-28-2017, 11:13 AM	#1899
CRussel (he/him/his) Posts: 12,296 Karma: 80074820 Join Date: Jul 2010 Location: Sunshine Coast, BC Device: Oasis (Gen3),Paperwhite (Gen10), Voyage, Paperwhite(orig), iPad Air M3	These really are good books, aren't they? And both readers are excellent, so you don't have to worry about which one is reading a particular book. (And unlike some other series where there's a narrator change, there isn't any disconnect with the change in narrator that I've perceived.) Personally, I've been going through a period of re-reads for my audio books. Prepping for the next in a series by reading the last couple leading up to it. Both favourite series, the Liaden Universe and Cherryh's Foreigner series. The reader for the Foreigner series, Daniel Thomas May, is excellent, and the readers for the Liaden books are good to OK. Sadly, they didn't get a single reader for the series, and a couple of the books aren't well read. But I'm not hitting the real clunker on this "catch up to where we are" re-read. The interesting thing for me is how much I get out of these re-reads. I catch nuances that I simply missed the first time around as I was mostly focused then on the plot, and this time around I am able to savor some of the finer details. Of course, the other advantage of re-reads is that I've already paid for the book, thank you, and it's keeping my costs down. But NOT doing anything for my TBR, but that's a different thread.

02-28-2017, 08:06 PM	#1901
CRussel (he/him/his) Posts: 12,296 Karma: 80074820 Join Date: Jul 2010 Location: Sunshine Coast, BC Device: Oasis (Gen3),Paperwhite (Gen10), Voyage, Paperwhite(orig), iPad Air M3	Didn't notice the Crossley version, but between Tull and Davidson/Vance, you can't go wrong. Sent from my Amazon Fire with Tapatalk. Blame autocorrect for the spelling.

03-01-2017, 09:39 PM	#1902
pwalker8 Grand Sorcerer Posts: 7,196 Karma: 70314280 Join Date: Dec 2006 Location: Atlanta, GA Device: iPad Pro, iPad mini, Kobo Aura, Amazon paperwhite, Sony PRS-T2	Finished off Fire Touched. A good solid book with the next in the series coming out in a week. Next up, The Trials of Apollo. Right now, Rick Riordan is doing a pretty good job bouncing between his main line Greek/Roman stories and other mythologies (starting with Egyptian, now Norse). I don't know that any of his book have reached the level of that first Percy Jackson series, but so far all have been very readable and fun. Now that I'm back to driving 4 days a week (for a year I was working from home 4 days a week), I'm moving through the books just a bit faster, a week and a half on Fire Touched. The Trials of Apollo is a 10 hour book, so it will probably take about the same amount of time, then on to The Sword of the South, a nice long David Weber story.

03-12-2017, 08:36 AM	#1903
pwalker8 Grand Sorcerer Posts: 7,196 Karma: 70314280 Join Date: Dec 2006 Location: Atlanta, GA Device: iPad Pro, iPad mini, Kobo Aura, Amazon paperwhite, Sony PRS-T2	Just about finished with the Trials of Apollo. It's a nice change of pace, the narrator is good and the next in the series is due out in a couple of months. Now that I'm back in a noisy office, I'm back to wearing headphones/earbuds much of the day so I can block out the constant distractions. (insert long rant about idiotic corporations that think sticking programmers in a noisy environment sitting next to people who scream into a phone all day is suppose to improve productivity). I alternate between the two to give the inside of my ears/outside of my ears a rest. At the office, I've started listening to Neil Gaiman's Norse Mythology, which is about....Norse Mythology. Neil Gaiman reminds me of Simon Winchester in that he has a very nice reading voice and good delivery. Most authors probably should not read their own material, but these two can pull it off. It's a pretty short book, only 6 hours long. Also just pick up Stephen Fry reading the Complete Sherlock Holmes. This one is 62 hours long. I will most certainly be bouncing back and forth between this one and other books over the next couple of months.

03-12-2017, 01:29 PM	#1904
CRussel (he/him/his) Posts: 12,296 Karma: 80074820 Join Date: Jul 2010 Location: Sunshine Coast, BC Device: Oasis (Gen3),Paperwhite (Gen10), Voyage, Paperwhite(orig), iPad Air M3	Just finished listening to *A Fatal Thaw, by Dana Stabenow. This is #2 in the Kate Shugak series of Alaskan native mysteries and was very well read by Marguerite Gavin. An excellent book, in an excellent series. Highly recommended. Next up, Dead in the Water*. I'm going to work right through this series, which are all re-reads, while I wait for the new one due out in May. Which might or might not have a Audible version. Not sure what will happen now that Ms. Stabenow has ditched her publisher and gone independent.

03-16-2017, 01:14 PM	#1905
pwalker8 Grand Sorcerer Posts: 7,196 Karma: 70314280 Join Date: Dec 2006 Location: Atlanta, GA Device: iPad Pro, iPad mini, Kobo Aura, Amazon paperwhite, Sony PRS-T2	Finished up Trials of Apollo. Just started to listen to The Sword of the South. This is a nice long one, 23 hours. I like to queue my books in a playlist. My current car playlist is roughly 18 days worth of listening, or around 425 hours. I don't guess I will be getting bored in the car anytime soon.