For a long trip, I would suggest you listen to Bill Bryson’s “In a Sunburned Country”.
The book is hilarious, but the Audio book is quite cool as well and is read by the author.
Thank you for all of the recommendations! I have a few in mind based on books I’d been thinking of reading already. Excellent. I’m looking forward to…well, I’m not exactly looking forward to flying around the fucking planet, but hopefully I’ll be able to keep myself from going batshit now.
Yes, it’s a year and a half old, but it’s book recommendations! Those don’t go stale! I’m about to drive from Massachusetts to Arizona and need to load up on some Audible audio books. Any suggestions would be appreciated! I generally prefer fiction.
I find in audio books I want something relatively light that I can listen to with half a brain while dealing with distractions that crop up, since an audio book doesn’t stop just because I stop paying attention.
In that vein on a recent long road trip I found unabridged The Passage to be well read, suspensful enough to keep my attention but not so dense as to require complete attention all of the time.
I’m listening to a very good tale of the “revenge is best served cold” variety. New author to me, and the reader is fantastic. A Prisoner of Birth by Jeffrey Archer. Reader is Roger Allam.
One of my all-time favorites* is The Seventh Scroll by Wilbur Smith. If memory serves the reader was named David Case.
*My wife made me drive around the city awhile at our destination so she could hear the end.
Any of the Christopher Moore books on tape are fantastic.
Hi, I’m digs. …Hi, digs… And I am addicted to audiobooks. Between commuting, working out, doing house and yardwork, falling asleep, and (the best drug I’ve found for…) falling back asleep, I’ve listened to hundreds.
I’ve found that mysteries work best on long car trips. I think it’s because if you miss a word here, a half-sentence there, you can still follow the plot. So that narrows my recommendations:
Any of those "Murder Occurs Near An Average Guy Whose Job Involves Horses" books by Dick Francis. Read by Tony Britton or Simon Prebble.
For DC-Politics-meets-Conspiracies with young, idealistic protagonists and some fun plot twists: The Zero Game or The Millionaires, by Brad Meltzer.
W is for Whatever* Kinsey Milhone book* I’m re-listening to. A plucky, honest investigator with clever cases. “S” is the most thoughtfully-written, but they’re all fun.
The Janet Evanovich “One for the Money/Two for the Dough” series – if you like the broad humor of a Jersey bounty hunter and her huge black hooker assistant.
George Guidell does a masterful job of reading any of "The Cat Who…" books. A quiet little Northern Exposure sort of town. But maybe too quiet if you’re driving late at night…
But if you are driving late, you have got to listen to the best-read moodiest thrillers I’ve ever heard: Fear Nothing and Seize The Night. Hauntingly read by Keith Szarabajka, who captures the feel of the protagonist, who has Exoderma Pigmentosa, so can’t go out in the daylight. Written by Dean Koontz, who can be an uneven author, but these are a good blend of Sci-Fi, fantasy, philosophy and surfer lingo (seriously). And, most importantly…
These are the best example of a voice and words working together. Others on this board have replied to audiobook threads just to mention these two books, and the reading thereof.
Other genres? Anything read by Frank Muller is excellent, esp. The Great Gatsby, or the Tale of Two Cities (although, don’t forget, Dickens got paid by the word… it’s lonnnng). Oh, and though i haven’t heard them, he’s read the first four books of the Dark Tower series.
Or anything read by Dick Hill (like that Harry Potter kid), or Scott Brick (he’s the guy who does such a great job on Brad Meltzer’s political thrillers – and Ender’s Shadow and its sequels).
And of course you might want to include some light “reading”. Jonathan Cecil reading P.G. Wodehouse, like the Bertie Wooster and Jeeves adventures. And every car needs a copy of David Sedaris Live at Carnegie Hall.
If you haven’t already read the books - I really enjoyed The Girl with a Dragon Tattoo (unabridged, read by Simon Vance). I think I enjoyed the book more in audio format than I would have reading the paper version because of all the unpronounceable (to me) Swedish. I get taken out of a story when there’s a name (character, city, whatever) that I can’t pronounce and having it read to me removed that. Plus, I quite liked the way Simon Vance read.
Having someone else read REALLY made Anathem enjoyable. I’m sure the first 200 pages or so would be impossible to get through if you were reading it yourself, but listening to it, you can gloss over bits and pieces, the guy just keeps reading.
Just mentioning this again: LibriVox
All public domain and all free.
I have been woking my way through the mystery category and while there is variety in the quality of readers I have enjoyed the majority (all of sherlock Holmes, anything by Anna Cathrine Green etc) I think i am addicted