078 Audiobooks

Memory Lane

• Grandmother and Great Grandmother reading from fairy tales and folklore
• Story records listened to while drifting off to sleep
• Sterling Holloway reads Aesop's Fables and Peter and the Wolf. (Downloads!)
• The Hobbit!
• The mp3 revolution

What makes a good book for audio?

• Short, focused chapters (partly for when you lose your place, and you will)
• Not too many characters/viewpoints ("big" fantasy problematic, too many proper nouns)
• Relatively straight forward chronology (not a lot of time shifts)
• Series are great!

What makes a great reader? 

• Voice that's authentic to period, region, etc. (e.g. Nick Offerman/Twain)
• Displays an understanding of the material – feels connected to it (e.g. Marsters/Dresden, Dale/Potter)
• Clear enunciation, correct pronunciations
• Pitch, partly a matter of taste but too low/high may prove challenging
• Good pacing (though somewhat mitigated by player speed controls)
• NOT necessarily voices, except for consistency of

Audiobooks for my "Top" lists:
Note, most of these are just "fine." If they are better or worse, I made note of it.

• Starship Troopers - Lloyd James 
• Forever War - George Wilson 
• Hammer's Slammers - Stefan Rudnicki (low voice, hard to parse?)
• Princess of Mars - (lots of choices!) Macleod Andrews, Scott Brick, Jack Sondericker, Brian Holsopple, Mark Nelson (Librivox)
• Zothique - Reg Green (Ziggurat productions, sound fx make it a little challenging)
• Coming of Conan the Cimmerean - Todd McClaren 
• The Hobbit and A Wizard of Earthsea - Robert Ingles (really good; when he sings, he sings like an Englishman in a pub, not a performer)
• Once and Future King - Neville Jason (good!)
• Dying Earth - Arthur Morey 
• Two Sought Adventure (Swords Against Death) - Jonathan Davis 
• The Broken Sword - Bronson Pinchot (good!)
• We - Grover Gardner (good)
• Brave New World - Michael York 
• 1984 - Simon Prebble (good!)
• Fahrenheit 451 - Tim Robbins (ok), William Roberts (better)
• Logan’s Run - Oliver Wyman (eh), William F. Nolan (ok)

Some One-Offs I Enjoyed (title, reader)

• A Dimension of Miracles, John Hodgman 
• The Martian, R.C. Bray
• I Claudius, Nelson Ranger
• High-Rise, Tom Hiddleston
• A Clockwork Orange, Phil Daniels
• The Stars My Destination, Gerard Doyle
• Who Goes There (The Thing), Steve Cooper
• A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court, Nick Offerman
• The War of the Worlds, Simon Vance - also 
• Dune
• Sherlock Holmes
• A Christmas Carol
• Eaters of the Dead
• Kim
• At the Mountains of Madness, Edward Herrmann
• The Lies of Locke Lamora, Michael Page
• Sirius, Nigel Carrington
• Shogun, Ralph Lister
• A Christmas Story, Dick Cavett
• Pavane, Steven Crossley
• The Jungle Book, Peter Batchelor
• Tales from the Perilous Realm, Derek Jacobi
• Roadside Picnic, Robert Forster
• Carmilla, Elizabeth Klett (Librivox)
• 2001, Dick Hill
• hereg, Bernard Setaro Clark
• The Bloody Chamber, Richard Armitage & Emilia Fox
• The Hot Rock, Jeff Woodman
• The Day of the Triffids, Sam West or Roger May
• Endurance, Simon Prebble
• The Cyberiad, Scott Aiello
• Necroscope, James Langton
• As You Wish, Carey Elwes (and other cast members!)
• The Lost World, Glen McCready
• Dark Matter, Jeremy Northam
• The Scarlet Pimpernel, Ralph Cosham
• A Christmas Carol, Jim Dale
• Alien (novelization), Peter Guiness
• The Big Sleep, Ray Porter
• Homeland & Exile, Victor Bevine
• Beowulf (Kennedy translation), Charlton Griffin

Some Aubiobook Series I Enjoyed (title, reader)

• The Lord of the Rings, Robert Ingles (also Earthsea)
• The Dresden Files, James Marsters (rough start)
• The Expanse, Jefferson Mays
• We Are Legion (Bobiverse) - also Prism Pentad, Ray Porter
• Jeeves & Wooster, Cecil, Lambert, Davidson, et al
• All Creatures Great and Small, Christopher Timothy
• Harry Potter, Jim Dale
• Bosch 1-5, Dick Hill (also Dragonriders of Pern trilogy)
• Nero Wolfe, Michael Pritchard