The good folks at Audible.com have offered to give a copy of the audio version of Without a Summer to one of you. Here– Have a sample to listen to.
Click to listen to the: Without a Summer sample
The actual audiobook is eight and a half hours of listening to me tell you a story about Luddites, winter, and the Regency. Oh, and magic.
The way you enter is very simple. There’s a new credit waiting for me in my account at Audible.com and I’m seeking suggestions on what to listen to next. All you have to do is to post in the comments the title of your favorite audiobook , on Audible, and at least one thing about why you love it. You may wax as rhapsodic as you like. (Make sure that when you fill out the form that you use your correct email.)
On Monday, May 13th, at noon Central, I’ll pick one of those recommendations randomly and the person who recommended it will get an audible.com copy of Without a Summer.
I absolutely love the audiobook of “Daughter of Smoke and Bone”
The woman who reads the book does the most wonderful and distinct voices for all of the characters! Besides that, the language of the book itself is just so visual and beautiful that it does really well as an audio book!
My absolute favorite audiobook is Howl’s Moving Castle by Diana Wynne Jones narrated by Jenny Sterlin. I think she did a fantastic job narrating, so even if you’ve read it before you might want to check out the audiobook. Everyone I’ve recommended this audiobook to has loved it, even if we don’t share the same tastes in narrators and narration types generally.
Komarr by Lois McMaster Bujold
This is a science fiction story which integrates science ideas into the story which bears a resemblance to the famous sci-fi short story THE COLD EQUATIONS.
The trouble with this story is that it is kind of far into Vorkosigan series. The story is still understandable but some nuances will be missed, but it is a good excuse to read the whole thing.
The trouble with so much stuff called science fiction today is that it really does not have any science or scientific thinking. It just has tropes to be part of the sci-fi fad.
Naked in Baghdad: The Iraq War as Seen by National Public Radio’s Correspondent
I realize this is nonfiction, but it’s fabulous. Anne Garrels’ story of her time in Baghdad. Some of the craziness simply sounds made up, but it’s not. She does the reading herself and (unsurprisingly) the audiobook is excellent. One of my favorite audiobooks.
Ready Player One by Ernest Cline, read by Wil Wheaton
For a child raised on ’80’s geek culture, this book is a marvel. The music, video, and games of the ’80’s are displayed in all their glory in a story that feels absolutely modern despite the retro trappings. Wil Wheaton brings an air of geek authenticity to the proceedings and strikes the right combination of dispassionate narrator and “man, can you believe he just referenced *that*? how cool is *that*?” fanboy. One of my favorites for sure.
The Manual of Detection by Jedidiah Berry
Charles Unwin is a clerk at a detective agency in a nameless city, filing reports from the great detective Travis Sivart; but when Sivart goes missing, Unwin gets an unwanted promotion to detective and soon finds himself embroiled in murder, conspiracy, and a circus.
That might sound whimsical and wacky, but it’s really a serious book about telling stories.
The Road by Cormac McCarthy and narrated by Tom Stechschulte.
An amazing story. The relationship throughout the book between the father and son are endearing and memorable. It gave me goosebumps!
America is a barren landscape of smoldering ashes, devoid of life except for those people still struggling to scratch out some type of existence. Amidst this destruction, a father and his young son walk, always toward the coast, but with no real understanding that circumstances will improve once they arrive. Still, they persevere, and their relationship comes to represent goodness in a world of utter devastation.
+1 for Amanda’s recommendation. The narrator was and excellent choice and set the atmosphere correctly.
I’ll admit to sitting in the hotel parking lot for an extra 25 minutes so that I could finish it in one go.
Just about any of the Aubrey/Maturin series by Patrick O’Brian. Great story, and great voices to go with it.
John Scalzi’s “The Human Division” (still in episode form so far as I know, but I bet the whole thing will be avail as a single audiobook soon..)
Yeah, I know y’all are friends and you may have this already – but I wanted to enter the contest and this IS a great audiobook!
The Bloody Jack series by L.A. Meyer, not only is it narrated by my FAVOURITE narrator Katherine Kellgren (who does an amazing British accent for an American through out the ENTIRE series) but the books are a great adventure with a sassy (and very handy) heroine who travels to many places and meets many kinds of people during the late 19th century. Some of my less ladylike and more piratical behaviour has come from Jacky Faber I’m proud to say!
And the winner is…! I rolled a twenty-sided die, and it came up with lucky number 10.
I finished Without a summer a couple of days ago, and I prefer to use my eyes to read books – so I don’t want the audiobook that you’re so generously giving away but I can’t stop myself from raving about Nathan Lowell.
Tales from the Golden Age of the Solar clipper is a series documenting the coming of age of a young man, Horatio Wang. The thing I like best about it is that nothing happens. Aliens don’t invade. Worlds don’t hang in the balance. The fate of the universe is… irrelevant. Horatio learns, and grows and wow, Nathan Lowell can tell a story. I don’t mean to make the books sound boring: There’s excitement, love, laughter and mystery, but it’s all mundane.
He narrates his own books, and the audio book is free on his site: http://nathanlowell.com/quarter-share/ (I searched audible to see if it was there, and they have some other books that he’s narrated, but not these.) They’re well produced, and very well reviewed, winning several award (which I’d never heard of before, but that doesn’t matter, this series has won my approbation, which is the only award that really matters)
My favorite is ‘The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy,’ by Douglas Adams, narrated by Stephen Fry.
One of the things I look for in an audiobook is that the narrator should be able to give each character a unique voice. That is, I should know who is talking just by listening. Fry is able to do this in such a talented way. Every sentence drips with Fry’s style of humor. Combined with the wit of the novel, it’s a listening delight.
One? Only one?
Okay. I would have picked Gaudy Night or Busman’s Honeymoon by Dorothy L. Sayers, read by Ian Carmichael, but they’re no longer available through Audible (more’s the pity).
So I will go with our family’s absolute favorite, The Wee Free Men, by Sir Terry Pratchett, read by Stephen Briggs. I had already read the book when I got the audiobook, and the audio more than lived up to my expectations. Also, I think The Wee Free Men does so well as a narrated story — though the book is funny, it also has emotional resonance that builds and recurs and sustains, and it was intensified by being read aloud.
I’ll recommend what I always recommend: Neil Gaiman’s ANANSI BOYS, read by British comedian Lenny Henry.
“Brilliant” doesn’t begin to describe it. Perfect voice for Fat Charlie, excellent balance of performance vs. narration throughout.
I already have the Without a Summer audiobook, so I don’t want to win the audiobook, but I wanted to recommend a book anyway.
My favorite book on Audible is We Have Always Lived in the Castle by Shirley Jackson. The narrator, Bernadette Dunne, does a great job, and the book is very strange and good. Merricat Blackwood, the main character, is an unreliable narrator with mental issues, sort of like John Cleaver from Dan Wells’s books, but with different issues and personality. She is unsettling but really likeable. The book centers on her and her sister and uncle who live as recluses in a big house. The book does a good job of getting the reader into Merricat’s head, which is a fascinating place to be.
I don’t do audio books much — I drift off and get bored — but Audible brought me “Dreams From My Father” by our President, and I listened straight through. Of course Obama has a wonderful speaking voice, but he also delineates between other characters when he’s quoting people he met along the way. It’s funny and very touching.
Abarat by Clive Barker, read by Richard Ferrone. Barker’s imagination is powerful and complex, his imagery throughout the book is wonderful. The world of Abarat, parallel to our own, is a rich and diverse archipelago of 25 islands, each representing an hour of the day, with the 25th hour being a mysterious place, and I assume a place where many secrets lie (it’s a planned five book series, with the first three available now). I found Ferrone’s narration engaging and, oddly, very comforting. I’ve listened to the first two books multiple times because of that last fact. So much so he’s on my list of narrators to look for when searching for new books to listen to.
Going to go with Furies of Calderon, by Jim Butcher.
My friends and I listened to this on a very long driving trip a couple of years back. When you are driving across the great plains, you need an engaging story and a good narrator to eat up those miles.
Furies provided both for us.
My favorite audiobook was Among Others by Jo Walton, narrated by Katherine Kellgren who does an amazing job and a very convincing Welch accent.
The book is about a teenage girl in 1979 who loves sf and fantasy. She talks very passionately about the books she reads and the authors she loves.
This book made me want to reread the sf books from the seventies.
I’m a big fan of the Name of the Wind audiobook, Mary Robinette. Not only is it a great book in general, but the audio version of it is really well done. It just flies smoothly by with nothing jarring to knock me out of the moment, and makes long car trips pass in a blink.
It’s hard to choose just one…I’ll go with the Golden Compass by Philip Pullman, beside being a good story it’s read by a cast which makes it a very entertaining listen. My favorite is Way of Kings by Brandon Sanderson but figured you might already have it since he is one of your writing excuses partners.
I’d like to recommend Golem and the Jinni by Helene Wecker. I don’t really have a favorite anything (except wife, since well… she’s my best wife), but this book is one that I just finished and found absolutely wonderful. It is not a perfect novel, but the vivid and caring portrayal of the Jewish and Syrian immigrant communities in 19th Century New York is fascinating. Likewise fascinating are the characters, especially in the Jinni and the Golem, but also with the cast of supporting characters.
I listen to so many audiobooks that it’s very hard to pick my favorite. However, I think I will go with Crocodile on the Sandbank by Elizabeth Peters, narrated by Barbara Rosenblat.
Amelia Peabody is a spinster of some means who takes a fateful trip to Egypt in the late 1800’s. This is book 1 of a fairly long series that have murder, Egyptology, and creative use of parasols. It’s a series that I return to again and again.
Barbara Rosenblat is a superb narrator. I’ve picked up several books on the basis of her narration alone.