I am taking a long flight tomorrow and want to purchase a book from Audible.Com that will keep me entertained. I have several already downloaded in my ipod but if it doesn’t grab me in the first chapter or so, I tend to give up on it.
I enjoy all books…memoirs, fiction, history, comedy etc. I simply want something to listen to that is at least 6 hours long.
Any suggestions would be most appreciated.
(This should have read “Listen” in the title but it won’t let me edit. Oops.)
I’m a huge fan of audiobooks.
My suggestions are:
1984 - Even if you have read it before the narrator does such a great job it sends chills down my spine.
The Moon is a Harsh Mistress - A great book in it’s own right, but again the narrator nails it. The protagonist in the book is of Russian heritage. At first I thought it was just the narrator’s normal accent until he does some other characters.
Really anything by those two narrators (readers?) is bound to be good. I forget their names at the moment and I’m too lazy to look them up.
Enjoy!
Jeff
Have you listened to any of Christopher Moore’s stuff? I find that most of it works really really well as audiobook. Lamb in particular is fantastic as an audiobook. Him and the Discworld (Terry Pratchett) books are the SDMB audiobook recommendations of choice it would seem.
I have also been very impressed with Sarah Vowell’s audiobook presentations (musical interludes by They Might Be Giant, famous quotes read by some of her famous friends like Stephen Colbert.) David Sedaris books, when read by the author are better than they are on the page, and his live reading is better than just about anything.
My two favorite audiobooks from Audible are still Anansi Boys by Neil Gaiman Doublestar by Heinlein. Both are better as audiobooks than they were as regular books because of what the readers bring to the table.
If you are more into nonfiction, there is a great book called Devils Teeth which is about the author going to live with some researchers of Great White Sharks off the coast of California for a while. It’s a fantastic, interesting, and sometimes quite suspensfull book.
There’s lots more, but those should keep you busy for a while.
I don’t listen to many books, but recall vividly a long trip where I listened to the unabridged My Family and Other Animals by Gerald Durrell and loved every last second of it.
Seconding “The moon is a harsh mistress”. It’s almost better suited to be an audiobook than a written one.
Whatever you do, get audiobooks read by pro actors. I remember listening to a Harlan Ellison compilation of short stories with him reading, and his shrill, badly acted job completely ruined it all.
My two favorite audiobooks (for easy listening and great narration) are:
The Beach House
by James Patterson
Amazon.com Review
James Patterson and Peter de Jonge’s The Beach House opens with the death of a handsome townie on Memorial Day weekend in the Hamptons, where being a single-digit millionaire is laughable and being poor is unthinkable. Peter Mullen is a high school dropout who parks cars at the private bashes of the superwealthy Barry and Campion Neubauer. When Peter is found dead on the beach, the Neubauers and their friends insist that he drowned, but his brother Jack, a law student who saw Peter’s body, knows he was beaten to death. As Jack uncovers evidence of his brother’s secret life, he begins to realize that the very rich are indeed different from the rest of us. Revenge is a dish best served cold, and Jack’s patiently plotted payback for Peter’s death is one that the Hamptons will not soon forget.
Cabinet of Curiousities by
From AudioFile
When archaeologist Nora Kelly is called to a building site where a long-buried body is found, she little expects to be embarking on the path of a mystery that will lead back to the last century, with danger reaching into the present. This is an intense and interesting story, entwining the quest for eternal life with the history of America, New York, and present-day politics and influence. René Auberjonois crafts his narration with great care; each word is voiced with perfect tone, pitch, and emotion, and each character is provided with a fitting personality. The result is narration that flows beautifully while providing insight into the story and those who inhabit it. Satisfyingly imbued with thrills and suspense, the prose is fully realized in Auberjonois’s performance, and he even manages to make some of the more fantastic aspects seem reasonable. A totallyengrossing experience. M.A.M. Winner of AudioFile Earphones Award© AudioFile 2003, Portland, Maine-- Copyright © AudioFile, Portland, Maine
Lloyd James narrates Double Star. He also did The Moon is a Harsh Mistress. Actually, of all the Heinlein I’ve listened to, he did all but The Door into Summer and Stranger in a Strange Land.
The Door narrator wasn’t that great, but not terrible. The Stranger narrator was the same as Atlas Shrugged. He’s ok.
Now I’m on Variable Star which was co-written by Spider Somethingorother after Heinlein died. Spider does the narrating and his voice is fine, but his style stinks. I may have to actually read that one.
I read this in the other Heinlein thread, and I’m surprised. I’ve been listening to his reading of Rocket Ship Galileo, and thought he did an excellent job. Maybe the fact that he himself wrote Variable Star makes him act differently, somehow.
I’ve recently listened to audiobooks of Stephen King’s The Colorado Kid and Lisey’s Story I’m still not finished with the latter, but they’ve been pretty good. I really liked the Heinlein I’ve been listening to. I’ve also been re-listening to some of my audiotapes. I don’t know if they’re on your format yet, but I recommend The Doorbell Rang and other of Rex Stout’s Nero Wolfe novels, and James Burke’s own readings of his books Connections and The Day the Universe Changed.
Not lately, but anytime David Sedaris reads his own stuff, I lose it. He is simply a comic genius. Not to be missed.
It all depends. John LeCarré has an impeccable voice. I can’t possibly imagine any of his books read by anyone else. Get The Spy Who Came in From the Cold if you’re unfamiliar with his work.
You might also try the Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas spoken word adaptation from 1996. It’s pretty good, although Jim Jarmusch has got a terribly flat, monotonous voice.
Waltzing at the Piggley Wiggley
Story of a small town in the South, a grocery store about to go under financially, and one woman’s plot to get it back on its feet. Filled with a number of eccentric characters, nothing terribly profound, suitable to listen to with my mother.
When her life settles down, we’ll listen to the sequel–Kissing Babies at the Piggly-Wiggly.
That reminds me of The Southern Belle Primer by Maryln Schwartz, read by Dixie Carter. Pretty much a hoot from beginning to end. The subtitle is “Why Princess Margaret Will Never Be a Kappa Kappa Gamma.”
I knew I could count on the dopers. Going to look to see which one Audible has. Any other recommendations are welcome. I listen to audio books during my 45 minute commute to and from work. Amazing how it makes the trip fly and traffic not seem so bad.
I loved the audible book for Water for Elephants, written by Sara Gruen. Two narrators are used, and I was completely enthralled for the entire book.
I second David Sedaris. I’ve listened to Me Talk Pretty One Day and Dress Your Family in Corduroy and Denim and loved them both. I’d never read any of his stuff before but now I can’t imagine enjoying reading it as much as hearing it.
On the same trip where I listened to Sedaris, I also listened to Barack Obama’s The Audacity of Hope. I’ll probably get Dreams of my Father someday too.
Currently I am listening to Dawn French’s autobiography called Dear Fatty (for those not familiar with French, she is the comedy partner of Jennifer Saunders of AbFab fame; French is The Vicar of Dibley herself). It’s really good so far - she has such a fantastic storytelling style. Instead of a straight-up autobiography it is a collection of letters she wrote to people she knew (or David Cassidy) that happen to describe events in her life. She doesn’t read it - her prologue says that parts of the book are just too painful for her to read - but the person who does read it has almost the same accent as French and I’ve already forgotten it’s not her.
Anyway, I love Dawn French and wish she was more popular in America!
Make sure you get an Audible subscription, Foxy40. It’s way cheaper than buying things one at a time.
I just finished the audiobook of World War Z by Max Brooks. It’s read by a full cast that includes Alan Alda, Mark Hamill, Henry Rollins, and John Turturro, among others. (There are some sketchy accents in places, but the good way more than makes up for the bad.)
The story itself is really dark, but it’s an amazingly well-thought-out look at how the world might react to a zombie uprising.
And I fourth-or-whatever everything by David Sedaris.
The best bit of that is where he does his George W. Bush impression. 
I LOVE Warld War Z! Those characters are just incredible. I just picked up the book (which has many more interviews than the audio book). I love Mark Hamill as Todd Wainio!
As it happens, when Sedaris spoke at Oberlin College a few years ago, he enthusiastically praised World War Z, and copies were being sold in the lobby! He likes to encourage new authors and bring them to the attention of his readers. A class act.
[slight hijack]On the subject of World War Z. I really loved the Zombie Survival Handbook and have a copy of World War Z at home, but I have a lot more time to listen to books than I have to read them these days and I porbably won’t have a chance to get to World War Z anytime soon. Is it worth getting the audio version even though it’s abridged?
I normally don’t do abridged works (the last one I listened to was Darwin’s Radio and that ended up making almost no sense in its abridged format). Has anyone who has listened to the audio book also read the whole text? How does the abridged version hold up?[/slight hijack]