What are we listening to? (audiobooks)

[dreams]

Originally Posted by DianNC

<snip> Next up...I'm about to find out all about Mr. Penumbra and his bookstore, then I may go back to Konrath and try his alcoholic (Jack Daniels) series.

I didn't read the book, but did listen to EP215: Mr. Penumbra’s Twenty-Four-Hour Book Store by Robin Sloan that I downloaded for free from Escape Pod. This was a version from 2009 and I thought it was fun and loved the ending.

http://escapepod.org/2009/09/10/ep21...ur-book-store/

Originally Posted by fantasyfan

I'm listening to a Librivox recording of A Study In Scarlet by A. Conan Doyle. the reader is Laurie Anne Walden. It's quite nicely done and I'm enjoying it so far.

I just read A Study In Scarlet and then downloaded the free LibriVox version Read by Bob Neufeld. Although I really enjoyed reading the story, the audio version was my favorite version to experience.

I also started and have almost finished Kenneth Grahame's The Wind in the Willows [Audible] Narrated by Shelly Frasier. I read various Frog and Toad stories to my son when he was young, but had never read the full Wind in the Willows. It was a cute story to listen to as I did yard and house work.

[covingtoncat73]

I got Life After Life with my audible credit. It seems like a great book and the reader is certainly very good but I think this one might have been better as an eBook. Anyway, I'm wondering if I'd have an easier time keeping up with all the bouncing back and forth in alternate timelines in a text book. It is still a really good book and this is a quality reading of it.

[SeaBookGuy]

Originally Posted by dreams

I also started and have almost finished Kenneth Grahame's The Wind in the Willows [Audible] Narrated by Shelly Frasier. I read various Frog and Toad stories to my son when he was young, but had never read the full Wind in the Willows. It was a cute story to listen to as I did yard and house work.

I've never read the stories before, but have put the edition narrated by Ralph Cosham (I believe it is) on my TBR pile.

[Marrella]

Finished A Universe From Nothing by Lawrence Krauss. As I already said earlier, the author narration didn't do the book a favor. The afterword by Richard Dawkins was read by Simon Vance, and I would have very much preferred if he had read the whole book. The ideas presented in this book were interesting, though.

Before starting the next book, I listened to two novellas: Legion by Brandon Sanderson and Trunk and Disorderly by Charles Stross.

Legion was my first encounter with Sanderson and I absolutely loved this weird story about a guy who hallucinates different people who then help him investigating strange events and artifacts. It is read by Oliver Wyman who does a wonderful job.

Trunk and Disorderly is a funny science fiction story involving a very peculiar pet dwarf mammoth. If you like Stross's Laundry series, you will probably like this one, too. It is free from Subterranean:
http://subterraneanpress.com/magazin...charles_stross

[ApK]

Just finished "Shards of Honor" (The first of LMB's Vorkosigan series) and have just started "Falling Free," a sort of prequel story set earlier in the same universe.

I think Grover Gardner is an EXCELLENT narrator.

[Marrella]

Originally Posted by ApK

Just finished "Shards of Honor" (The first of LMB's Vorkosigan series) and have just started "Falling Free," a sort of prequel story set earlier in the same universe.

I think Grover Gardner is an EXCELLENT narrator.

I agree. I have recently listened to "Shards of Honor" and it was excellent. I also have the next one (Barrayar) on my pile of books to listen to.

This weekend, I have started a new bedtime book: Frankenstein by Mary Shelley, the version that Downpour is giving away this month. All I can say so far is that it is awesome, read by three different narrators.

[orlok]

Just finished The Prisoner of Brenda by Colin Bateman, about a bookshop owner and part-time detective (the "Mystery Man") who takes on cases brought to him by people who have nowhere else to go (or in some instances, cases that intrigue our Mystery Man). Given that he is borderline autistic, a massive hypochondriac, and an imbiber of huge quantities of pills and medicines of dubious efficacy, it is a wonder that he is able to hold his own in the big bad world outside his book store. Funny and quirky and at the same time a classic detective story with a Christie-style reveal (using PowerPoint!) at the denouement.

Just started listening to Stephen King's polemic, Guns.

[CRussel]

Originally Posted by ApK

Just finished "Shards of Honor" (The first of LMB's Vorkosigan series) and have just started "Falling Free," a sort of prequel story set earlier in the same universe.

I think Grover Gardner is an EXCELLENT narrator.

I agree, Mr. Gardner does a superb job of these books. The books are already excellent, and his narration just adds to the experience. Without being obtrusive or inserting himself into the narration.

I just finished listening to L.E. Modesitt's Imager's Battalion, read by William Dufries. A good narration, and a series that I enjoy quite a bit in its Audible presentation, but which I've been totally unable to read as a regular book. Recommended.

[SeaBookGuy]

Grover Gardner's narration of the Inspector Montalbano series by Andrea Camilleri is truly outstanding!

[DuaneAA]

I just finished 'Naughty in Nice' by Rhys Bowen. It is the 5th book in the Royal Spyness series. I really enjoy this series set in 1933 about this 22 year old girl who is 34th in line for the British throne, but virtual broke because her father squandered the family fortune before killing himself and leaving his children saddled with onerous death taxes. The books all feel very similar and I wouldn't recommend reading them one after another. But listening to one every six to nine months is like seeing an old friend again.

Perhaps the best thing about this series is the narrator, Katherine Kellgren. She simply brings the story to life with distinct voices for every character that are consistent from book to book and she brings such a feeling of enthusiasm to each book.

I enjoyed her reading so much I went looking specifically for other things she has narrated and she has a really long list at audible.com, something like 8 pages of entries. I settled on 'Sophomore Switch' by Abby McDonald about two girls who exchange schools for a semester - one having gone to Oxford and the other to UC Santa Barbara. It is a light, fluffy fish-out-of-water story. I am only couple of hours into it, but I am enjoying it so far. This is the kind of 'turn off your brain' story I frequently enjoy during my commute.

Before that I listened to 'Mila 2.0' by Debra Driza. I stuck with it to the end, so I'm only going to give it a small thumbs down rather than a big one. It is the story of an android who at the beginning thinks she is a real 16 year old girl and over the course of the story has to come to grips with being an android. I'm a sci-fi geek, so I liked the concept. Unfortunately, the execution was terrible. Enough said.

And before that, I listened to the first book in 'The Lying Game' series by Sara Shepard. I've been watching the tv show version on ABCFamily and really love the show, so I thought I would try the book. While all the same characters are in both, and they have the same personalities, the basic plot is somewhat different. And I think I like the tv shows variation better. Plus the book had the added disadvantage of being narrated by Cassandra Morris, one of my least favorite narrators. She uses this whiny young girl voice that sounds about 12 years old that I hate. She has also narrated the 'Pretty Little Liars' series and I pretty much gave up on those book strictly because of her. So I doubt I will listen to any more books in The Lying Game series.

Duane

[covingtoncat73]

I enjoyed Eyes of the Dragon by Stephen King, narrated by Bronson Pinchot. It was fableish, which I love.

I am now listening to The Last Werewolf, which is quite fun. Great voice for the first person narrator.

[SeaBookGuy]

Simon Callow's Charles Dickens and the Great Theatre of the World, Dickens' life through his interest in theatre and dramatics, turned out much more engaging than I'd expected - definitely recommended!

Now, I've moved on to a rather odd book: Florence and Giles by John Harding. It's been compared to Turn of the Screw, although no governess has appeared yet after an hour and a half. Florence has a strange ideolectic way of speaking, making up her own verbs and such, which can be a bit grating, but I'm pretty much used to it.

[ZombieEatsYou]

The Strain read by Ron Perlman. No character voices but he's done a fine job nonetheless.

[CRussel]

Currently reading Bad Blood by Dana Stabenow, read by Marguerite Gavin. As always, Ms. Gavin is very much the voice of Kate Shugak, and I'm enjoying the book a lot. In spite of the snerkers I've read.

[SeaBookGuy]

For those of you who listen to classics, I've started Balzac's Cousin Bette, ably narrated by Kate Reading.