Continuing Thoughts on Audiobooks

Continuing my thoughts on audiobooks from a few days ago, which you can read here if you haven’t already. I mentioned in that post how I love that audiobooks can bring books alive and make them so much more real. A lot of this is credited to the narrator (and I suppose the director) for how well they tell the story itself. Well, a narrator can also kill a book too, which I’ll highlight in a few examples. These are books that aren’t necessarily bad books, but in my opinion the audiobook was not worth listening to.

The Inheritance Cycle by Christopher Paolini, read by Gerard Doyle

I will start off by saying Gerard Doyle has narrated A LOT of audiobooks, and there’s been some that I’ve enjoyed a lot more than Eragon et al, so I don’t entirely blame the narrator for this one. Eragon was always a good example of how I often dislike books that have gotten a lot of hype. I had tried to read it several times, but just hadn’t gotten that into it. So I decided to try the audio, since a lot of times that can get me over the hump. The narration ended up making all of the characters seem rather whiny and weak, and although I slogged all the way through the first book, I did not get any farther in the series. And I have to say that Doyle’s voice for the dragon Sapphira was always completely ridiculous to me.

The Looking Glass Wars and Seeing Redd by Frank Beddor, read by Gerard Doyle

Another fail by Gerard Doyle, although I didn’t realize it until I started writing this post. The Looking Glass Wars, a retelling of Alice in Wonderland, was a book that should have been right up my alley. The synopsis made it sound amazing. And yet listening to it wasn’t so amazing. The urgency of the war was just never there for me. But I enjoyed it enough to try the sequel. Again, not wowed, but now I wanted to find out what happened. So when the third book came out, I simply read it rather than listening to it. And suddenly, the world and characters and plot and motivations became so much more real to me. I ate the book up. To this day I’m still not sure if the third book was so much better than the other two, or if it was the lackluster narration of the first two books that made me not like them so much.

The Tale of Despereaux by Kate DiCamillo, read by Graeme Malcolm

I think I may be the only person in the entire world who didn’t love this book. It had all the hallmarks of a story I would have loved: a brave mouse knight, a princess in peril, etc. And yet it was rather forgettable to me. I listened to it several years ago and to this day I can remember that I didn’t like it, but not why I didn’t like it. One of the marks of a good audiobook is that it impresses the story into your mind. It’s something you can remember and reflect on. And this one just didn’t do it for me.

The Dispossessed series by Page Morgan, read by Katharine McEwan

I would be remiss if I only included male narrators in this post, so here’s a female narrator I didn’t care for. Although the narration itself didn’t bug me so much, the accents of the individual characters, especially the French characters, was ridiculous to the point of being distracting. Some narrators are more successful than other at creating distinct voices for each character, and let’s just say these books don’t do male characters well at all.


I could dig up more examples of audiobooks that fell short of my expectations, but if you’ve read the blog awhile, you know I don’t like talking a lot about things I didn’t like. I’d rather spend time on positive opinions. So I think I’ll leave the list off there. Now, by all means, feel free to try these audiobooks for yourself. I think audiobooks can be even more subjective than the books themselves, because the listener usually invests a lot more in the story than a reader would (or at least I do). So perhaps the things that bug me won’t bug you at all. Each book definitely has its own advantages, and each reader to his own of course!

Thoughts on Audiobooks

I’ve been thinking a lot about audiobooks lately. I don’t mention it a lot on the blog, but a lot of my “reading” these days is done via audiobook. I find it’s the perfect way to combine my hobby of reading with another of my hobbies, cross stitch. But that’s a discussion for my other blog.

I love that audiobooks in general have been gaining so much more attention lately, even among teens, which is awesome. Programs like Sync Audiobooks (hosted every summer) and the prevalence of digital audiobooks through sites like audible.com are bringing so much more awareness to readers. Which is awesome, because of course that means more audiobooks are being made every day.

For me, audiobooks are a good way to “read” a book while I’m busy doing something else. They are also lifesavers on long drives and car trips. A lot of what I listen to are books that are new to me. But I also love hearing my favorite books come alive too. Perhaps my love of audiobooks harkens back to when I used to be read to every night before bed by my parents. I love closing my eyes (except when driving on those long car trips of course) and getting lost in the story.

So in case you’ve never tried audiobooks, I thought I’d share a few of my favorites with you.

The Harry Potter series by JK Rowling, read by Jim Dale

I cannot highly recommend these enough. Besides the fact that the books are awesome all on their own, Jim Dale’s narration does an amazing job of bringing the books to life. He gives each character a distinct voice, which is a nice contrast to his somewhat dry narration style. Some narrators have voices that are very similar to each other, or don’t distinguish very well between sexes, two of my biggest narrator pet peeves. No problems with that here. The really nice thing is that Dale is consistent with each character voice from book to book too, which is amazing considering they were recorded years apart as the individual books were coming out. Fun fact, I don’t think I ever actually have read Goblet of Fire or Half Blood Prince. Both books I finished by listening to them on summer car trips.

The Artemis Fowl series by Eoin Colfer, read by Nathaniel Parker

So I had read the first 2 Artemis Fowl books and enjoyed them, although I wouldn’t say they made it on a favorites list by any means. Then my brother borrowed the audiobook for the 1st book from the library, and it changed everything for me. Nathaniel Parker made Artemis Fowl for me. Something about his narration captured Artemis’ personality so crystal for me, I was able to understand him as a character so much more. Holly also became much more real of a character and friend, and less of an intimidating presence, which was definitely something that had a large influence on the series later on. Needless to say, I’ve listened to all of the books now, and they’re definitely books I fall back into listening to from time to time.

Fairest by Gail Carson Levine, read by Full Cast Audio

In picking my favorite audiobooks, just about everything done by Full Cast Audio would make the full list. Seriously, they are amazing recordings. Rather than being read by a single person, the book is read by, well, a full cast. So a different person for each character. This gives the books another dimension; makes them feel almost like watching a play instead of listening to a single person relate a story. I’ve listened to so many of their recordings now that I frequently recognize actors from one story to another, which gives a whole different dimension to the characters of the stories (as a weird and unintentional side effect). As I said, I love Full Cast Audio’s productions and would recommend many, many of them, but for the sake of keeping this post manageable size, I would choose Fairest as one of my favorite. I loved this book, both because of its standalone qualities and also because it was a prequel of sorts to one of my favorite books of all time, Ella Enchanted. But in addition to the amazing full cast reading, this book has music. Lots of it. Music plays a big part in the story line, and the studio put the author’s songs to actual music, so you get to hear the main character actually sing her parts. The result is nothing short of fantastic. Sadly, I don't think Full Cast is doing much these days, and a lot of their books have been re-recorded by other narrators, but I'd definitely get this version if you can.

Dealing with Dragons by Patricia C. Wrede, read by Words Take Wing Repertory Company

Okay, this one is a cheat in several ways. If you’ve read my review of this book on the blog here, you’ll know that this is one of my all-time favorite books. So it was probably a no brainer I was going to love it for that reason. Secondly, this was done by the Words Take Wing division of Listening Library, which was the precursor to Full Cast Audio, which we’ve already covered the fact that I adore their productions. This is a great book to read, and also a great one to listen to. There’s something about hearing the story being read that highlights the hilarity of the plot and characters, which is one of the most charming devices Wrede uses in this story.

I could go on a lot more about these and other favorites, but to keep this shorter, I’ll just highlight two more books that I didn’t expect to love at all, but listening to the audiobook completely changed my mind.

The Last Dragonslayer by Jasper Fforde, read by Elizabeth Jasicki

I had tried several times to pick up Fforde’s Thursday Next series, never with much success. Probably because I kept getting distracted by other books. So when I saw this audiobook at the library, I decided to give it a try, since it was supposed to be his attempt at a “young adult” series. To my surprise, I quite enjoyed the book, and I think it was mostly because the narration made the main character Jennifer Strange so endearing to me. I was completely lost in Jennifer’s world, and I fell in love with many of the characters, causing me to actually shed tears at the end. If I hadn’t picked this up, I certainly wouldn’t have ever picked up the second book in the series, Song of the Quarkbeast, which I loved just as much.

Theodosia and the Serpents of Chaos by R. L. LaFevers, read by

This is another book I really task the narration with my falling in love with it. The narrator became Theodosia for me. I could believe that an 11-year-old was telling this story. Although I had seen this book around from time to time, for some reason it hadn’t really appealed to me that much enough for me to actually give it a try. But needing something to keep me entertained on a long commute, I gave the audiobook a listen. And I’m so glad I did. Listening to it definitely opened up the whole world of this story, where the setting of ancient Egyptian curses and prophecies is almost a character of its own. I’ve already done a full review of this book here, so I’ll let you go read that if you want more specifics.

Well, hopefully that’s a few suggestions to get you started if you’ve never been brave enough to try them. I’ve got a few other audiobook discussions I’d like to have rolling around in my head, but I’ll save those for another post.

Until then, happy reading (or listening!)

Sync Audiobooks 2013: Week 5

Oops, missed a week.  So that's why I wanted to pop in this week really quick and make sure I told you about the free audiobooks Sync has for download this week.

This week's theme is dead bodies, or the walking dead, zombies.... something like that.  The YA title is Daniel Kraus' book Rotters,which I've never actually heard of but sounds like it might be interesting.  I know I'm going to have to download this one regardless, because the audiobook is read by Kirby Heyborne, which is one of my brother's favorite people.  So I know he'll want to listen to it at some point.

And what classic pairing goes better with the theme of the rising dead than Mary Shelley's Frankenstein.  I've never actually read Frankenstein, although I know the book is way different than the movies and typical Hollywood green monsters you see running out (thank you Wishbone! see, you can learn things from watching TV).

Head over to download both titles if you wanna snag them soon, since they will be replaced on the 4th of July

Sync Audiobooks 2013: Week 3

If you're new to Sync audiobooks, check out my introduction on them in this post.  

The theme for this week's sync audiobooks is hearing voices.  The selections this time are The Raven Boys by Maggie Stiefvater paired with the classic title Bless Me, Ultima by Rudolfo Anay.

I haven't read either of these books yet.  Maggie Stiefvater tends to be a little more dark than I like to read, although I know a lot of people really like her books, and The Raven Boys has gotten some great praise.  I actually could have read Bless Me, Ultima for my AP Lit class in high school.   But I chose the group that was reading Pride and Prejudice instead, which was way more fun.  :)

So if you'd like to give either book a try, head over to Sync Audiobooks to download them both (or either one) for free.  But hurry, because the last day is June 19th!

Sync Audiobooks 2013: Week 2

So for those of you who've been around for awhile and have been hanging in there during my absence, you may remember I talked about something called Sync Audiobooks last summer.  This year I'm happy to announce they're starting earlier and going longer, which means even more books this summer. 

For every week during the summer months SYNC offers up 2 free audiobooks a week: one contemporary YA offering, and a classic book that goes along with the theme.  If you listen to audiobooks already, you know they can be expensive.  So 2 free audiobooks is a pretty amazing deal!  And if you don't do audiobooks already, well, it's free, so this is your chance to try them.  All you need to do is provide your name and email address when you download the book, and you'll need to download Overdrive Media Console to download the MP3 books with (which is also free to download).  It's pretty neat, so check it out. 

At the very least, you might as well download the classic title.  It's free (as I mentioned already) and you never know when you might have to read one of those books for school.  And sometimes listening to those books makes them much easier to understand than reading them!

This weeks offering features Victorian age governesses in strange circumstances.  It's The Mysterious Howling by Maryrose Wood paired with the Charlotte Bronte classic Jane Eyre.  By the way, if you want to see the best movie version of Jane Eyre (in my opinion) you definitely need to check out the BBC's Masterpiece Theater miniseries version.

Head over the Sync's blog to download both books.  But you'll need to hurry, because June 12 is the last day!  Keep an eye here for more Sync news the rest of the summer.   I'm going to try and remember to update every week.  Try being the key word in that sentence of course.

Sync Week 4: Anna Dressed in Blood

Sorry for the short notice about this, but I wanted to make sure I posted about it so you don't miss this awesome opportunity!

This week's theme for Sync's free audiobook downloads is "women dressed in white".  The classic title is The Woman in White by Wilkie Collins, which is cool, but the really cool part is the contemporary YA title: Anna Dressed in Blood by Kendare Blake! This is one of the most popular books they've had available so far, and it's only available through July 11th. So make sure you grab it while you can!

Sync Audiobooks Week 3

I hope those of you who like audiobooks are keeping on top of the Sync offerings this summer.  I'm pleased to announce that this weekend there is yet another set of books (a modern YA and a classic pairing) that you can download for free.

Week 3's theme is "Be Careful What You Wish For" with an opportunity to download The Amulet of Samarkand by Jonathan Stroud and Tales from the Arabian Nights by Andrew Lang.  As always, you can snag these by going to sync's website before July 4th.

Sync Audiobooks Week 2

So I posted last week about the awesomness that is Sync, a website that is giving away free audiobooks all summer.

Week 2 is now upon us.  Apparently this week's theme is sisters, with the offerings being Francisco X. Stork's book Irises and the wonderful Jane Austen classic Sense and Sensibility (not as good as Pride and Prejudice, but still one of my favorites!).

These will be available until June 27th, so grab them now while you can!

Meanwhile, we're getting really close to seeing some action for the Blog Battle.  Round 1 is almost over, and that's when things really get started.  :)  So keep an eye out for that coming soon...