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queensthief
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Date: 9/26/14 01:51 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 9/26/14 02:08 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 9/26/14 02:32 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 9/26/14 03:50 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 9/26/14 05:08 am (UTC)Also, the Tamara Pierce books are all done as performances -- music and different actors for the voices, which can be a nice diversion on a car trip.
I've enjoyed all the Queen's Thief books on audio. Also the Bujold books -- the older ones have a shared narrator which is cool. James Marsters read a lot of the Dresdon books by Butcher and we liked those.
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Date: 9/26/14 05:21 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 9/26/14 05:22 pm (UTC)If you like James Herriot's books, the audios, read by Christopher Timothy, are nice.
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Date: 9/26/14 08:25 pm (UTC)of the few audiobooks I've listened to...
Date: 9/26/14 09:16 pm (UTC)There is, also, an audiobook of FINNIKIN OF THE ROCK... ;) Though truth be told, even as a fan I wasn't impressed. I got annoyed at the reader because he pronounced some things differently than I'd always "heard" them.
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Date: 9/26/14 10:04 pm (UTC)That said, I absolutely adored the audio for Cath Crowley's Graffiti Moon. I think I've listened to it at least three times. The narrators are perfect and they actually sound like teenagers, as opposed to some other narrators I've heard for YA books.
Rick Yancey's 5th Wave was another great one and it looks like the sequel, The Infinite Sea, has the same narrators.
Alan Cumming did a fantastic job narrating Scott Westerfeld's Leviathan trilogy. The main characters are from Scotland and Austria-Hungary. Cumming is Scottish and he had experience with a Germanic accent while playing Nightcrawler, so he was pretty much the perfect narrator for the job.
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Date: 9/27/14 03:33 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 9/27/14 04:54 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 9/28/14 05:21 pm (UTC)Naomi Novik's His Majesty's Dragon series (aka Temeraire series) is even better as audiobooks than on paper, IMO. I really like Simon Vance (the narrator).
The Jeeves & Wooster books are fun. Stick with the ones narrated by Jonathan Cecil or Frederick Davidson. I generally prefer Cecil, but Davidson is ok, too, and his American accent is better (there are only a couple of characters in the whole series with US accents, and they're not in every book).
Lois McMaster Bujold's Vorkosigan saga or Curse of Chalion and Paladin of Souls.
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Date: 9/29/14 06:25 pm (UTC)I also really like Sissy Spacek's version of 'To Kill a Mockingbird,' though that one is quite a different genre, :).
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Date: 9/30/14 08:58 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 9/30/14 08:59 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 9/30/14 09:12 am (UTC)My fav audiobook to date is the Veronica Mars audiobook narrated by Kristen Bell. She does a lot of voices and they're delightful and distinct, and it's very well-acted (for obvious reasons).
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Date: 9/30/14 02:48 pm (UTC)http://www.mousecircus.com/videotour.aspx
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Date: 9/30/14 02:50 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 9/30/14 02:51 pm (UTC)no subject
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Date: 9/30/14 04:12 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 9/30/14 04:32 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 10/1/14 01:05 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 10/1/14 02:40 pm (UTC)I am also fond of/enchanted by/obsessed with Xanthe Elbrick's narration of Fire and Bitterblue by Kristin Cashore. But then, those books break my heart in the very best way, and are admittedly probably my two favorite books of all time, so I might be biased.
(I'm actually in the middle of listening to The King of Attolia for the first time, and while I'm not thrilled with the narrator's interpretation of dialogue, it's still Megan Whalen Turner, and it still reduces me to giddiness.)
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Date: 10/1/14 05:05 pm (UTC)And I completely agree that sometimes some of the voices aren't my ideal, but the strength of the books carries them through.
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Date: 10/1/14 05:11 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 10/2/14 01:43 am (UTC)The Screwtape Letters
Date: 10/2/14 08:45 am (UTC)You can get a taste of his performance here: youtube [dot] com/watch?v=FLfYd2nd5NI (add the w w w and the dot to the rest of the address).
--Handmaiden
Re: The Screwtape Letters
Date: 10/2/14 01:02 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 10/3/14 03:25 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 10/3/14 03:31 am (UTC)I've read Graceling, I thought it was pretty good but am content to leave the story there--are the sequels much better? I know Bitterblue is about, well, Bitterblue, but who's the protagonist in Fire?
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Date: 10/3/14 05:49 am (UTC)Graceling is easily the weakest of the three, in my opinion. It's also the middle story--Fire takes place forty years before Graceling, in a different country, and Leck is the thread between the three.
Fire is the name of the protagonist of Fire--in her country, the Dells, she's what's known as a human monster. Monsters use their impossible beauty as a lure for prey, and on top of that, have strong mental powers. Fire is so beautiful, she can't even look in a mirror without being overwhelmed by her own reflection. A lot of readers can't get past that. It sounds shallow, but Cashore takes the "most beautiful woman in the world" trope and shapes it into something profound. Cashore wrote the novel in response to hearing and experiencing and ruminating on catcalls shouted at women on the street. When you look, really look at Fire and what she goes through every day as a young woman, you realize: she is considered an object. She is something to be possessed, something to be ogled at, something to be hated by people she's never met simply because of what she is and because of what she looks like. And Fire hates herself. She goes through the world hating herself, hating her body and her femaleness, and refusing to use her mental powers because she's afraid she'll become like her mosnter human father, who abused and manipulated and pleasured himself and the entire kingdom to the brink of destruction. It's a story about this kingdom on the cusp of war, but it's mostly a story about Fire. About Fire learning to accept herself for who and what she is, in spite of the precedent laid down by her cruel father and regardless of what others expect her to be. About Fire learning that she has a choice in her own life and her own destiny; choosing when and where and how to use her powers and for what purpose; choosing whom to love, even if loving someone makes no sense; and discovering that she, perhaps, can come to love herself in the process.
It is an incredible exploration of beauty and objectification and feminism, and I have a lot of feelings about it and will vehemently defend Fire (the book and the character) to the end of my days. :3 I actually wrote a college paper on it, and while you'd think I'd be sick of the text after pages upon pages of analysis and consideration, I actually grew to love it even more.
(And I am going to post another comment for Bitterblue, because my feelings can literally not be contained in one post.)
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Date: 10/3/14 05:50 am (UTC)This book is hard. That's the best way I know how to describe it, the adjective I use when explaining it to other people. I cried often. I sobbed as a young queen was shown her own strength. I don't know how Kristin Cashore wrote this book without going mad. I don't know how she wrote Leck's journal entries, how she lived with Thiel beside her.
But I have a guess.
Bitterblue.
The book is named for its main character, and that character is the very reason this book is so hard and so beautiful and so painful. Bitterblue's struggle is physical and emotional and full of grief, but it's also full of curiosity. Compassion. Determination. Justice. And in questioning her world and her own motivations, she finds herself, finds her own strength and her capacity for love and forgiveness and mercy, and it is her narrative that carries the overwhelming, incredible truth of this novel.
What that truth is, exactly, I'm still trying to sort out. Because there is more than one. There are hundreds of important things in this book, things that can't always be put into words no matter how hard you struggle. Truths about about friendship. About love. About grieving and madness and leadership and knowledge and trust and passion and cats and words and meanings and kisses and clocks and numbers and touch and depression and privilege and wealth. About memories, stories, and lies. About truth. Truths about truth.
And maybe the truth is there are so many truths, and we'll never uncover them all, and that's okay. That we all operate under a different set of truths, a different set of needs and wants and meanings that are one thing to us and something else to another. That the world is full of liars--but only because our truths are our own, and we can't always understand someone else's. That we don't have to understand the truth of someone to love them, but in loving them, we might come to understand anyway.
So, the short answer? The sequels are stunning.
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Date: 10/4/14 03:32 am (UTC)I also recommend _The Chronicles Of Narnia_ with David Suchet.
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Date: 10/17/14 07:34 am (UTC)Really, though, I had no idea what Fire was about, and the "most beautiful woman" premise makes me want to shy about it, but I think I might give it a chance when I'm in the mood--it seems like empowering, influential YA (one of my favorite things about Graceling is how Katsa decides to train girls how to fight/defend themselves). I hope the writing/pacing has improved as well! Good to know that you thought first book was the weakest; will take that into account.
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Date: 10/17/14 07:39 am (UTC)Thanks again for your comments! It really helps to know what to expect in a book, summaries can only say so much.