Looking for an Audiobook recommendation

[napoleon_in_rag]

Hi everyone,

Does any one have a recommendation for a decent Audiobook? I listen to them on my commute to work everyday. I am into hard sci-fi, fantasy and history. To give you an idea of what I am into, in the last year I have listened to several of Howard's Conan novellas, Ben Bovas "Powersat", David Eddings Belgariad trilogy, Ron Chernow's biography of Rockefeller, Jared Diamonds "Guns, Germs, and Steel", and Homer's Illiad.

I am grateful for whatever recommendation you all might give me.

[Eldan]

I'm very picky with my audiobooks. With most narrators, I can only manage half a page before switching off because they annoy me. But the Dresden Files are excellent. If you don't know the books (or if you do and want a refresh) give them a try. Urban fantasy, considerable comedic element, wise-ass protagonist solves mysteries involving magic. A bit heavy on the sex sometimes for some tastes.

[Lemmy]

I'll echo the recommendation for the Dresden Files series. Not only it's a great book series, but also James Marsters does an amazing job as the the narrator is amazing. I actually "re-read" the whole Dresden Files series in audio-book format.

I also "re-read" a Discworld book ("Mort") in audio-book and it was pretty great. Nigel Planer's is now my definitive voice for DEATH whenever I read a Discworld book. :smallbiggrin:

[solidork]

I recently listened to the entire Vorkosigan Saga on audiobook and it was great. Start with Shards of Honor or The Warrior's Apprentice. It's more space opera than hard science fiction, but it was very good. Also, since you mentioned the Illiad, I'll also recommend Circe by Madeline Miller.

[Thrudd]

The American Gods tenth anniversary edition, with a full cast, was good, as was Anansi Boys.

Dan Simmons' Hyperion books were also really well done, with a cast of actors.

I was also happy with Peter F Hamilton's Void trilogy.

For some classic sci fi, I thought the Gateway (Pohl) audio book was good, the actor did a great job capturing the personality of Robby.

Other classics I've listened to that I enjoyed: The End of Eternity (Aasimov), Stranger in a Strange Land (Heinlein), At the Mountains of Madness (Lovecraft), The Dying Earth (Vance). I liked the reading of Dying Earth particularly, it just captured the weird tone of the setting very well.

[napoleon_in_rag]

I'll echo the recommendation for the Dresden Files series. Not only it's a great book series, but also James Marsters does an amazing job as the the narrator is amazing. I actually "re-read" the whole Dresden Files series in audio-book format.

I also "re-read" a Discworld book ("Mort") in audio-book and it was pretty great. Nigel Planer's is now my definitive voice for DEATH whenever I read a Discworld book. :smallbiggrin:

Do you have to read Discworld or Dresden Files Books in order? I am using the "Hoopla" app which let's you check out audio books through your local library. It's 100% free but the selection is a little limited.

[napoleon_in_rag]

The American Gods tenth anniversary edition, with a full cast, was good, as was Anansi Boys.



"American Gods" came up in my suggested books. Is the 10th anniversary edition the one published in 2011?

[Eldan]

Do you have to read Discworld or Dresden Files Books in order? I am using the "Hoopla" app which let's you check out audio books through your local library. It's 100% free but the selection is a little limited.

Discworld no, Dresden Files mostly yes, it's a series. More so for the later books, less so for the first few. One and two are mostly skippable.

[Thrudd]

"American Gods" came up in my suggested books. Is the 10th anniversary edition the one published in 2011?
Yes, that's probably it.
For Discworld, you generally don't need them in any order, most are standalone stories. I've listened to "Small Gods" and "Thief of Time" on audible

[napoleon_in_rag]

Yes, that's probably it.
For Discworld, you generally don't need them in any order, most are standalone stories. I've listened to "Small Gods" and "Thief of Time" on audible

So I think I am going to download a Discworld book. This is the list available to me on Hoopla:

The Shepherds Crown
Snuff
The Amazing Maurice and His Educated Rodents
Monstrous Regiment
Thud!
The Wee, Free Men
Going Postal
Unseen Academicals
I Shall Wear Midnight
A Hat Full of Sky
Wintersmith

Which is a good Audiobook for someone who knows nothing about Discworld? I notice several are about someone named "Tiffany Aching". Is that a series within Discworld? And is there an order I should "read" those in?

[Lemmy]

Do you have to read Discworld or Dresden Files Books in order? I am using the "Hoopla" app which let's you check out audio books through your local library. It's 100% free but the selection is a little limited.
I just started reading Discworld a few weeks ago. People told me I should read books of the same cast/storyline in order (e.g.: read all Wizard books in order, all City Watch books in order, etc). But there's nothing wrong with reading different series in whatever order you prefer (although you might miss a few references here and there). That said... I'm still reading the books in publication order, since I think that should make for a more genuine and fun read. :smallsmile:

The Dresden Files, OTOH, should definitely be read in order, as they all are part of one big continuity and each book takes place directly after the previous one, even if they all feature a self-contained stories (by that I mean there are no "to be continued" anywhere, but all books share the same chronology), so things that happened in previous books directly impact the ones that come later.

[napoleon_in_rag]

I just started reading Discworld a few weeks ago. People told me I should read books of the same cast/storyline in order (e.g.: read all Wizard books in order, all City Watch books in order, etc). But there's nothing wrong with reading different series in whatever order you prefer (although you might miss a few references here and there). That said... I'm still reading the books in publication order, since I think that should make for a more genuine and fun read. :smallsmile:


So it looks like I have access to every book in the Tiffany Aching Series. I think I will start with "The Wee Free Men"

[Vinyadan]

For German-speakers, I advise Er Ist Wieder Da. I can't remember the reader's name, but he is incredible.

[Eldan]

A few things a reader should know with Discworld:

Discworld started out as a rather silly fantasy parody. Especially the very first two books. They riff directly on Conan, Lankhmar, Dragonriders of Pern and make a lot of puns and silly jokes and are quite episodic. Then, over the next handful of books, more serious themes started creeping in. There was literature parody on Shakespeare, Dante, Greek philosophy, discussion about mortality, humanity, inequality in society, human nature and story telling and gradually, the pure amount of jokes started going down and they became darker. The books became quite amazingly deep, though. Which is a good reason to read them in publication order, you see a very interesting evolution of Pratchett as a writer, where sometimes he picks up a theme again 15 years later and just does it so much better.

Tiffany Aching is a bit of a departure from that again. It's the children's subseries of Discworld and a bit independent of the rest. The protagonist is 12-ish years old. Now, don't let that discourage you. It still talks about some quite mature themes and it is not what I'd call childish. It never talks down to children. And they can be quite dark, still. They also contain some of Pratchett's best use of language and some amazingly poetic imagery. But know what to expect. Less talk of the indifference of crowds in the face of tyranny or how opression can be a self-perpetuating system supported even by the opressed, a bit more talk about personal responsability and toxic group dynamics. You know. Child-friendly themes.

[Wraith]

The American Gods tenth anniversary edition, with a full cast, was good, as was Anansi Boys.

I second this one. American Gods is already an excellent book, but with a full cast - and the between-chapter short stories narrated by the author, Neil Gaiman himself - really makes it something special.

I also enjoyed the three novels by Ben "Yahtzee" Croshaw, the guy who does the Zero Punctuation videos for The Escapist. Mogworld is pretty good fantasy-satire, Jam is a big departure into post-apocalyptic sci-fi and also enjoyable, but I really liked Will Save The Galaxy For Food as pulp sci-fi lunacy. I'm looking forward to picking up his newest book, Differently Morphous, in the near future.

John Dies @ The End by David Wong was one of the first audiobooks I picked up. It's what I can only describe as a millennial's view of lovecraftian horror, which is actually a compliment despite how it sounds.

And if you're a sci-fi aficionado, Games Workshop's "Warhammer 40,000" and "Horus Heresy" collections will last you for months.
There are stand-alone stories ("Helsreach" by Aaron Dembski-Bowden, for a recommendation), trilogies ("Eisenhorn" and "Ravenor" by Dan Abnett) and a full saga of 50 books to make up the Heresy cycle.
The latter has a few duds, but general consensus is that the good ones are REALLY good.

[Eldan]

I second this one. American Gods is already an excellent book, but with a full cast - and the between-chapter short stories narrated by the author, Neil Gaiman himself - really makes it something special.

Oooooh. I need that.

I also just bought an American Gods graphic novel, written by Neil Gaiman. Haven't started reading, but from a leaf-through, it looks excellent.

[solidork]

So I think I am going to download a Discworld book. This is the list available to me on Hoopla:

The Shepherds Crown
Snuff
The Amazing Maurice and His Educated Rodents
Monstrous Regiment
Thud!
The Wee, Free Men
Going Postal
Unseen Academicals
I Shall Wear Midnight
A Hat Full of Sky
Wintersmith

Which is a good Audiobook for someone who knows nothing about Discworld? I notice several are about someone named "Tiffany Aching". Is that a series within Discworld? And is there an order I should "read" those in?

Yes, you've got access to all of the Tiffany Aching books. They go in this order:
The Wee, free Men
Wintersmith
A Hat Full of Sky
I Shall Wear Midnight
The Shepard's Crown

[napoleon_in_rag]

Yes, you've got access to all of the Tiffany Aching books. They go in this order:
The Wee, free Men
Wintersmith
A Hat Full of Sky
I Shall Wear Midnight
The Shepard's Crown

So I checked out "The Wee, Free Men" narrated by Stephen Briggs and am about 1:30 into it. It's a very good audio book. My thoughts on it so far:

-The writing has a wit to it that reminds me of Douglas Adams and this really comes out when its read aloud. Many books lose something when they are performed or perhaps the flaws in the writing are more noticeable.
-My daily commute to work is about :35 minutes one way and this is almost the exact amount of time it takes Stephen Briggs to read one chapter. I remember that Tolkien designed "The Hobbit" so that each individual chapter could be read to a child in one night. Did Pratchett do something similiar?
-I like how Tiffany doesn't like fairy Tales because they make too many assumptions without any real proof. Witches are Wicked, Princesses are beautiful, princes are brave, etc.

[Eldan]

So I checked out "The Wee, Free Men" narrated by Stephen Briggs and am about 1:30 into it. It's a very good audio book. My thoughts on it so far:

-The writing has a wit to it that reminds me of Douglas Adams and this really comes out when its read aloud. Many books lose something when they are performed or perhaps the flaws in the writing are more noticeable.
-My daily commute to work is about :35 minutes one way and this is almost the exact amount of time it takes Stephen Briggs to read one chapter. I remember that Tolkien designed "The Hobbit" so that each individual chapter could be read to a child in one night. Did Pratchett do something similiar?
-I like how Tiffany doesn't like fairy Tales because they make too many assumptions without any real proof. Witches are Wicked, Princesses are beautiful, princes are brave, etc.

The Douglas Adams comparison is a solid one. The books were actually billed as "The Douglas Adams of Fantasy", at least in the German edition. Though I'd say at least later Pratchett (and this is very late Pratchett) is better than Adams in many ways. Better language, and far more solid plots.

[Daer]

Humble bundle (https://www.humblebundle.com/books/more-torchwood-doctor-who-audiobooks?hmb_source=navbar&hmb_medium=product_tile&hmb_campaign=tile_index_8) does have some Doctor who & torchwood audiobooks currently which what i have listened before have been pretty good. , can't say for sure these ones though. haven't listened them yet. but again enjoyed the previous ones.

[Wraith]

-My daily commute to work is about :35 minutes one way and this is almost the exact amount of time it takes Stephen Briggs to read one chapter. I remember that Tolkien designed "The Hobbit" so that each individual chapter could be read to a child in one night. Did Pratchett do something similiar?

This is intentional, yes.
Typically Terry Pratchett didn't use Chapters - he is on record as saying that the only reason to have a novel in chapters is to have an arbitrary stopping point where a parent reading it to a kid at bedtime can find a convenient way to escape, and since he wrote for grown ups (which isn't the same as adults....) they were pointless in his books.

Tiffany Aching's stories, however, were intentionally billed as being for younger readers, so chapters were introduced to aid that. Very likely, as they came so late in the Discworld cycle, it was also an aid to his writing as his illness grew progressively worse and he found it harder to follow his own plot to completion.

[georgestawn]

American Gods, I would say
to me personally, it was a long read, and I simply had no time to finish it, so audiobook was a good option

[Narkis]

I really liked the Foundation series audiobooks, narrated by Scott Brick. Asimov is among the best sci-fi authors, and Brick has good voice for this sort of thing.

[The Duskblade]

I know it's been said, but American Gods the full cast version is utterly phenomenal. Anansi boys also has a really good narator.

On a related note, BBC have made radio adaptions of some of Gaiman's work and they're really good stuff. Especially Neverwhere and Anansi Boys. They're a bit shorter but they're available through audible.

The cast for Neverwhere is just ridiculous. Natalie Dormer, Benedict Cumberbatch, Anthony Stewart Head and Christopher Lee. It's just incredible.

[Tvtyrant]

Star Trek: The Next Generation is actually better as an audiobook then a show IME. Almost everything is people talking, and there is a lot of narrating by Picard. It is often better without the silly costumes.