Audible Book Review/Recommendation Thread
 

I have a couple of credits to burn and am looking for any recommendations.

I am all over the place when it comes to Audible listening habits. A fair bit of history, biographies and memoirs, but also a decent amount of fiction.


Some of my own favorite titles I've listened to on Audible:

Non-Fiction
John Adams, by David McCullough
The Heart and the Fist, by Eric Greitens (memoir of a Rhodes Scholar turned Navy Seal)
Destiny of the Republic, by Candice Millard (the story of the Garfield assassination)
Unbroken, by Laura Hillenbrand
Disney War, by James Stewart
Born to Run, by Christopher McDougall
Manhunt, by James Swanson (the search for Lee Harvey Oswald)
Charlie Wilson's War, by George Crile (RIP Charlie)

Fiction
I've listened to several Vince Flynn novels in the Mitch Rapp CIA Special Ops bad ass series, if that is your flavor.
I very much enjoyed the set up of Reamde, by Neil Stephenson.
11-22-63 was a good listen
I've also listened to a decent amount of political satire, mostly by Christopher Buckley.

I generally listen to things on 1.5x speed on my commute (1/2 hour each way), so I don't mind getting caught up in longer stories, but definitely prefer narratives (even if on the non-fiction side) to heavy learning.

What have others enjoyed?

I'm not big into audiobooks like some but here are a few I've enjoyed:

Non-Fiction
War by Sebastian Junger
Battle Cry of Freedom by James McPherson

Fiction
Matterhorn: A Novel of the Vietnam War by Karl Marlantes
The Gunslinger: The Dark Tower by Stephen King
All The Pretty Horses by Cormac McCarthy
Cutting for Stone by Abraham Verghese

All from audible

My list of audiobooks is on GR at http://www.goodreads.com/review/list...ok&sort=rating

There are some that are definitely "Kristin" books, but ones I liked and would recommend to others:
A Song of Ice and Fire books (audio is great, love the narrator!)
Ender's Game and Ender's Shadow (narrator really added to this one for me, far superior to print)
Andy Carpenter books (lawyer/mystery series with a dog-loving lawyer and a great narrator...even if the main character IS a Yankee fan and the narrator sounds like a typical New Yorker...hehehe)
Ready Player One (80's throwback narrated by Wil Wheaton, MUST be listened to at 1.5x for him to be tolerable as a narrator in my experience)
Confessions of an Economic Hitman (nonfiction but I was gripped and it usually isn't my thing)
Shadow Divers (nonfiction and there seems to be some "controversy" on the accuracy but again, I was totally sucked in)
Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy narrated by Stephen Fry (he's just so. damn. good)
Ceepak mysteries (not as good as the Andy Carpenter books, more police-y but still entertaining)
Solaris: The Definitive Edition (apparently the Lem family was disgusted with the English translation of the print book, they consider the audiobook to be the "correct" version)
Bossy Pants (Tina Fey is so damn smart)

Yeah those are some of my favorites, but you can see my feelings on GR....

/tk

Feist just announced that he secured the deal with HarperCollins to have all his books put out on Audiobook, so more money he will get out of me!

I am not surprised that your tastes, digamma, are not that far from mine. I'm a big audible guy. Here are a few:

Christopher Moore - Lamb is downright brilliant, Fool is very good, I suspect others are great also, he's gifted

James Lee Burke - his Dave Robicheaux series is my favorite mystery series ever, and Will Patton's narration is a plus

Harlan Coben's standalone books (i.e. not the Myron Bolitar series) are really solid - I'd start with Tell No One

Chad Harbach's The Art of Fielding - nominally about sports, but truly just a good novel

Neil Gaiman - I'd start with American Gods or Neverwhere, but he has a wide range of offbeat stuff, all pretty good I think

Dan Chaon's Await Your Reply - I think it misses the mark on being great, but it's certainly interesting

There's not a day that I don't listen to at least a half-hour of audio books (short commute). I get them all through iTunes but I think they have most of the ones from audible. I also listen to movies, documentaries, etc. on my iphone/ipod as well. I have a 3500 mile road trip next month and I'll be listening to Ken Burn's Baseball again (all 11 innings, about 21 hours).

I listen most to historical fiction and in the past couple of years, listened to Michener's Chesapeake, Alaska and Source (my three favorites),
Rutherfurd (New York, Princes of Ireland),
Martin (Lost Constitution and City of Dreams, both by my favorite narrator - Phil Gigante),
Jack Finney.
Plus I saw they have John Jakes' Civil War trilogy, which I don't have yet.

Other looonnng books include:
McPherson's Battle Cry of Freedom (45 hours or something like that),
Lord of the Rings (unabridged),
The Great Deluge (Douglas Brinkley),
Great Influenze (John Barr)
and my favorite travel/history writer, Tony Horwitz (Voyage Long and Strange, Confederates in the Attic).

One of these days I'll start listening to Malcolm Gladwell, more from David McCoullough and Robert Kurson's Shadow Divers.

I went with Lamb to start. It seems right up my alley and reminded me, at least in the description, of an old Tom Robbins novel I read a number of years back: Another Roadside Attraction. I'm enjoying it an hour plus in.

i've been "reading" a bunch of audio books this year.

my favorite reader so far has been Scott Brick. he must read a LOT because i've been jumping around and he's an option quite often. some of the books i've done recently that he read:

Cloud Atlas (one of 6 readers, all are great)
In Cold Blood
Ender's Shadow
The Devil in the White City


other books i really enjoyed lately on audible:

This is Where I Leave You - Jonathan Tropper - dysfunctional family sitting shiva. pretty funny.
City of Thieves - David Benioff - coming of age ww2 story in Russia. written by the guy running game of thrones
Downtown Owl - Chuck Klosterman - small town north dakota in the 80's, and one of the characters is read amazingly by Philip Baker Hall
Art of Fielding - Chad Harbach - slow starting story about a college baseball prodigy. it really comes around though.
Steve Jobs - Steve Isaacson - the first half of this book about Jobs building apple is pretty amazing, especially the details. it even gets into the shapes of rectangular icons and how they came about.


anyway, with an hour to an hour and a half in the car every day, i've been ripping through the audiobooks lately. those are the ones that stood out to me so far. also glad to get some recommendations here

World War Z (Unabridged) was just released on Audible.

Just finished Chuck Klosterman's "The Visible Man."

The Visible Man: A Novel Audiobook | Chuck Klosterman | Audible.com

I really like CK, and I liked this a lot. It's speculative fiction - basic setup is: a guy has developed a means to become virtually invisible, the story is presented in the form of a first draft of a book written by his psychotherapist based on her sessions and interaction with him. The focus is much more human than just "wow, this is cool stuff," it's more about moral and personality issues. CK also inevitably seeds in pop culture, too, though not overdoing it.

I'd add it to my list of worth a listen - pretty brief (8hrs I think) and the two narrators are solid. It would be an interesting book to discuss over drinks.

Looks like Audible has swung a deal with The Teaching Company, and is offering at least some of their "Great Courses" series as Audible purchases. They're doing a back-to-school themed 3-for-2 sale, and that's pretty good value when compared to the prices the Teaching Company series usually go for. $10-15 is a really nice price point for their stuff, most of which are very good.

http://www.audible.com/sp/3for2/ref=..._1_tab?tb=tab1

I can personally vouch for:

The World Was Never the Same: Events That Changed History
Economics, 3rd Edition
The Will to Power: The Philosophy of Friedrich Nietzsche
Mysteries of Modern Physics: Time

And at the moment, I'm in the middle of my first of the Jo Nesbo novels (Norwegian detective series, all the rage it seems, I'm a late adopter) which is living up to billing as pretty complex but well conceived, so far.

The Redbreast Audiobook | Jo Nesbo | Audible.com

I'm currently listening to The 4 Percent Universe - really interesting about the history of cosmology and the current discoveries in dark matter and dark energy.

The 4 Percent Universe: Dark Matter, Dark Energy, and the Race to Discover the Rest of Reality Audiobook | Richard Panek | Audible.com

my last batch:

beat the reaper (highly recommended)
cuckoo's calling
mother night
unbroken (highly recommended)

My most recent is The Boys in the Boat, about the 1936 University of Washington crew who won the national title and a gold medal in the Olympics. Really enjoyable listen.

I have been on a run of several decent to very good listens on Audible.

Billy Lynn's Long Halftime Walk, a heroic Iraq War army squadron comes home and is paraded around the country with the ultimate destination being the Thanksgiving Day Cowboys game at Jerry World (Norm World in the book). Funny, at times, and I think a pretty good story.

Days of Fire, on the Bush-Cheney relationship throughout their administration.

Sycamore Row, Grisham's latest. I loved A Time to Kill (my favorite still by him) and this brings Jake back as a character.

I am now making my way through Goldfinch, from the current best sellers' lists. I was initially skeptical, but pretty much immediately found myself drawn in.

Born to Run great travel, outdoor sport/adventure, anthropological book.

I'll second any recommendation for King's The Dark Tower series - it's read phenomenally. I've heard great things about George R.R. Martin's stuff as well.

I'm not sure if it's still out there, but back in the day (10+ years ago) I got a copy of The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe read by Patrick Stewart from Audible that was a joy to listen to.

Bumping and updating for some of my more recent listens...

Gone Girl, by Gillian Flynn. One of my favorite thrillers up until a point. If you've read it, you probably know where that is.

The Cuckoo's Calling, by Robert Galbraith. Decent mystery with solid characters. I may continue the series.

Not new by any means, but I picked up the Girl with the Dragon Tattoo series earlier in the summer and really enjoyed them (after being told it was a pretty serious hole in my collection).

On the non-fiction side, I've dabbled in some of the Great Courses and enjoyed Flash Boys.

I only have one Audible book but "Not Taco Bell Material" by Adam Corolla was an insane good listen.

Here are some that I've listened to recently:

"Lexicon" - Max Berry (two readers - man and a woman. Both very good and it's a fun, interesting quick book.)

"The Martian" - Andy Weir (I really loved the reader. He captured the main character really well.)

"The Ocean at the End of the Lane" - Neil Gaiman (read wonderfully by Gaiman himself)

"World War Z" - Max Brooks (all-star cast)

"Infected", "Contagious" and "Pandemic" - Scott Sigler (I really enjoyed these books. Kind of gory, sci-fi/horror books. A series. You can get the first two for free as podcasts read by the author. The third is on audible.)

Non-Fiction:

While not a book, I am huge fan of "Dan Carlin's Hardcore History" podcast. It's awesome. He covers a wide, wide range of topics. Each podcast is anywhere from an hour and a half to two and a half hours or so. Great stuff for any fan of history.

I really enjoyed the books in the Lightbringer series. Unfortunately, the first book (The Black Prism) is terribly done in audio.

If I may be so non-humble, I write reviews for SFFAudio.com, so if you're looking for science fiction and fantasy books, check there for sure.

I'm pretty to see that Tad Williams' Otherland books are now in audio. The narrator seems good so far, but I'm only about an hour in.

My overall audiobook ratings are here (with some reviews): https://www.goodreads.com/review/lis...helf=audiobook
My SFFaudio reviews are here (and on sffaudio.com): https://www.goodreads.com/review/lis...shelf=sffaudio

/tk

The Martian - Probably my favorite audio book. The story is good, the reader is great. It's the only one that's made me laugh out loud.

World War Z - Excellent rendition of the book. Great cast reading it including Alan Alda.

The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich - Excellent narration and cool history about this period in world events. It's an older book that definitely frowns on "homosexuals and other deviants", but overall it's a good and LONG listen to.

The Guns of August - Good, but not quite as good as Rise and Fall, about the beginnings of WWI. Told definitely from a British point of view. Great narrator.

Fight Club - Another awesome read with a good narrator.

Of course, I recently canceled my Audible subscription. Seemed a little expensive. I'll wait until they toss me a discount offer and then I might rejoin.

I really enjoyed all of the Lev Grossman Magicians series - The Magicians, The Magician King and The Magicians' Land on Audible. They are kind of start with a more grown up Harry Potter for adults vibe and go from there.

I made out great with my Audible subscription this year. For 35 years, I had waited for John Jakes' Kent Family Chronicles to come out in a good audiobook and last year, a new recording (8 books, 155 hours) by Marc Veitor (superb narrator) was released. Each book ranged in price from $25-$35 so a $15/month membership for 8 months saved me about $120. Spent the last 10 months listening to the series and it was awesome (you had to have been around in the 1970s to know how legendary this series was).

I just finished Girl on a Train, which is apparently the hot ticket right now, if the looks of my local B&N is any indication.

I'm sure it is being pitched as "if you liked Gone Girl, you'll like this" -- and that is pretty apt. It also has substantial shades of Rear Window and Memento, I'd say. I find both female narrators and British accents/venues to be very slightly off-putting, but this overcame both of those easily.

Not a great great book, but well worth the time and cost, I'd say.

I have started Walter Isaacson's new book "The Innovators" about the history of computers and Internet - starting with Ada Lovelace and Charles Babbage in the 1830s then moving onto Alan Turing. Highly recommend for computer history nerds like me.

I started this a couple of weeks ago and got side tracked. I need to plug it back in.

I am about halfway through Small Mercies by Eddie Joyce. I'm really enjoying it. Full disclosure, I'm old college friends with the author but even without that connection it's very well written.

Just finishing up with The Boys of '67: Charlie Company's War in Vietnam by Andrew Wiest. Really good book if you're interested in the history of one small unit in Vietnam. You really learn a lot about individual members of the company and what they experienced.

Highly recommended if you're interested in Vietnam history at ground level.

Q: What's the best way of listening to Audible in your car?

Background: We live in rural New England. So rural, in fact, that we don't get cell phone service at our house and so have not had a cell phone in more than a decade. So not really very familiar with the technology at all. But my wife got a new job a few months ago that requires a couple hours of commuting time every day, and she bought an android, and now she's looking to consume mass quantities of audio books. Audible seems an obvious solution.

Her car, a 2007 Prius, doesn't have an auxiliary input for mp3 players, etc. We have a FM transmitter but it's a pain to use. Hence the question: are there speakers for the phone that you use, or, for someone who doesn't know anything about this sort of thing, what is the best way of listening to audible in your car?

Corbes-

You could probably get a rechargeable Bluetooth speaker. That's not going to be the greatest but it's less finicky than an FM modulator. Or she could use a Bluetooth earpiece/headset(probably illegal perhaps). Even the phone with the best internal speakers is going to be a pain in the ass to hear in the car.

There's like a million podcasts out there for free, I use the app BeyondPod on my android and you can set it up to sync with the shows you want and have them autodownload to your phone via Wi-Fi on a scheduled basis. That will get you a ton of free content, to supplement the paid content of audible.

You might also be able to get a Bluetooth enabled RF modulator, which isn't going to be much much better than a regular one but will cut out some of the cord clutter. Maybe go to a car audio place and see if they can splice in an audio-in port into the existing stereo, which is going to be the best overall sound and ease of use, but it will be several hundred bucks probably.

1- If she has an HTC M8/M9 she the phone speakers are plenty loud enough ;)
2- If not, and if you are handy at all this is the answer: Amazon.com : iSimple IS31 Antenna Bypass FM Modulator for Factory or Aftermarket Car Radios : Vehicle Audio Auxiliary Adapters : Car Electronics

$25. It will plug into your cars radio anteenna (behind the dash) then you run the two wires out to the battery or to the fuse panel. Add in a regular audio cord and you can play your phone, ipod, etc through the car radio ...all in less than $50.


Ive ran the same device for 3 years and used it daily.

Sitting down. :p

It was a pain for me to find something that worked. Headphones, are the best, cheapest, and probably most dangerous option.

A note on audible. The deal I have is $15 a month for a credit, usually 1 book. If she is doing a couple hours a day she will blow through that book in no time. If you have a CD player then I find libraries a good resource, also, a lot of libraries do free audiobook downloads.

I honestly don't agree, and I have an M8. I may be deaf

Also, in the one car with a horrible radio I rock headphones similar to these. I'm guessing they are a generic OEM style, cause mine are the same with a different logo. You look like lobot from starwars, but it's good and cheap. Plus it works for phone calls.

http://www.amazon.com/SoundBot%C2%AE...oth+headphones

So, from the "Eat this, not that" category:

Let's just say you (like many of us) are interested in the awesomely-powerful relentlessly-ingenious hero who can work his way out of any situation and land on his feet. cf. Bond, James Bond, and countless others.

Here are two choices that, by their book jackets, would seem to be basically the same book (both following that pattern quite nicely):

Ghostman

The Gray Man

Okay, even eerily similar titles.

Read the four sentence setup text, and both will sound perfectly compelling and right up your alley.

Here's where you need your old buddy QuikSand to help you out.

Ghostman - yes.
The Gray Man - no.

Both of these authors are seemingly capable of coming up with a general plotline that works for their Batman-esque characters. But the execution... if you're into that sort of thing... is really different.

I found the Ghostman book to be a pretty solid bad guy procedural, and liked it a lot. I'm halfway through the Gray Man now, and wish I had bamboo shoots to jam up my fingernails to find something else to do other than finish it.


The Ghostman sequel is not as good as the original (natch) but from where I sit (halfway through book one) I just cannot see how the Gray Man character is worth reviving for book after book. It's crap.



I will now report to the drunk guy thread.

Bottoms up.

Put me in the camp that really liked Ghostman, and thought the sequel was passable but not as much fun.

Looking at my own recent listens (and I'm on the hunt for a new one), I got pretty involved in The Verdict, and was pleasantly surprised by The Bullet.

Reviving. I'm on a kick.

File under: Offbeat, but interesting

An Absolutely Remarkable Thing (Audiobook) by Hank Green | Audible.com

Can't say I loved it, but I liked it. I definitely liked a specific device the author uses early in the book's narrative, which I think adds materially to the book's effect.

I just finished A House in the Sky, about the Canadian freelance journalist who was kidnapped and held captive in Somalia for 15 months.

I found it very compelling, somehow I missed knowing about this story earlier. Reactions to it have been kind of polarizing. It all depends on your general view about people who feel compelled to travel to the most dangerous places on earth. If you find them annoying, it would be an annoying book. If you find them fascinating, as I do, it's an incredible insight into how one develops this kind of passion, and then, how they deal with everything going terribly wrong.

I didn't know about the story (other than that she lived, and that she was captive for over a year), so there was a point near the middle of the audiobook that was very unexpected and riveting to me, as in, I stayed in my car for a few minutes after I got to work to see how it played out.

Thanks for this recommendation. Liked the way the story was told - the whole thing felt very Ready Player One in a way. Very accessible writing, veering towards YA but not quite.

Two that my boys (8 and 5) and I listened to on a recent road trip.

I'm From the Sun
Who in the World is Carmen San Diego?

Carmen San Diego is a particular kick if you grew up with the computer game or PBS show.

I loved Infected! Scott Sigler does such a good job reading his own books! I was listening to his books via his podcasts for years, until my phone was wiped out and I lost about a year of podcasts that I was behind. I strongly recommend any of his books though, they've all been good so far.

Count me in as really liking this one.

I finished the first two books in the Collapsing Empire series by Scalzi, narrated by Will Wheaton. I might be alone in finding Wheaton generally irritating/overrated but he grew on me about 25% of the way through book 1. The series itself is pretty great, I have to say. Excited for the 3rd book.

I picked up Scalzi's Redshirts next, also Wheaton narrating. Man, there is a lot of He Saids and She Saids in the narration. Like, a distracting amount. It was his first book I believe, and I'm glad he'd moved away from that by the time of the Collapsing Empire. If I was Wheaton it would have driven me crazy narrating this.

I have touted this book on this site before, and it looks like it has gotten a new audio treatment this year:

Replay (Audiobook) by Ken Grimwood | Audible.com

Replay is my favorite of the time-travel genre, I really thought it got at the sort of things that interest me a lot about the whole concept. I recommend it, and will likely get the audible version for a re-read.

I love Replay - agree with you completely. I even got my wife to read it who does not like the genre at all, and she also walked away loving it.

I've basically been podcasting rather than audio-booking lately - the last 3 audiobooks I grabbed through Audible all disappointed me and I didn't make it through. I've got 5 credits built up that I need to spend then cancel my membership I think.

dola

Just grabbed Replay with one of my credits. Maybe this will get me back into my audiobooks.

FWIW, Audible claims that you can cancel anytime, and your downloaded books and remain in your account and accessible. Worth double checking, but I'm pretty sure that's true if you have a billing date approaching. I'm sitting on something like 20 credits, and probably will cancel (at least temporarily) before my next annual billing.

On my subscription plan at least (monthly), you keep your books but lose all your credits. I grabbed 5 books, a couple new, a couple of old, then downloaded them and cancelled my membership - I was still able to listen to my library.