đź—Ł đź“– Audiobooks Recommendations

We’re having an audiobooks thread. As perhaps one of the bigger car-bound people of this site, I get through quite a few of them, enough to start considering them an artform in their own right.

In that spirit, my first recommendation would be La Belle Sauvage. It’s Phillip Pullman’s book married up with a masterful Michael Sheen performance.

Pullman has stridently moved into adult fiction with this trilogy. You couldn’t print all the content on SaintsWeb without looking like a fucking_clown, let me tell you. His contempt for poorly justified and ruthlessly enforced authority seeps through once more. All our heroes are outlaws of some kind, all the villains are figures of authority and oppression.

The central two characters of the book are working class kids. In Malcolm, “not noticed much but liked when he was”, Pullman spends much of the book making you notice him, and you can’t help like him. In Alice, initially presented as Malcolm’s only real source of anguish, we’ve a girl who doesn’t know how to trust getting to do that from noticing him too.

Tha alternate England that literally gushes into existence is dark, foreboding and alien. The supernatural stuff is nicely done, and anyone that has read (or heard) His Dark Materials is going to be fully onboard with the daemon concept by now. For anyone who isn’t, it is such a neat conceit. As far as I can make out, it’s your inner conflict externalised as a lifelong pet you can talk to. And pretty handy for a writer, because it means you can put dialogue anywhere :lou_sunglasses:

The original HDM audiobooks have got very decent reviews. I’ll be getting them too, but Sheen really is magnificent in this, elevating Pullman’s already excellent material. He’s subtle when required, a master of slipping between voices, and is fucking intense during the more stirring scenes.

I know some sneer at this audiobook lark, but you can’t read a Kindle on the M6 on the roadworks section. Unless @bearsy , init.

What are your audiobook recommendations?

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It’s really accessible and is pretty light listening if you’re driving etc. Covers a load of subjects.

75% per cent of life is driving so audiobooks are great. I haven’t read Pullman though.

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I don’t trust Pullman. He’s upto something imo. He’s trying to brainwash kids into thinking things about stuff. Did you read his one about Jesus’ brother, or whatever it was? He makes some good points tho!

My Audiobook recommend, is anything P.G.Wodehouse but only if it is read by Jonathan Cecil (rip). These readings are spot on! If I try to read i.e. Jeeves & Wooster now, i mean in old fashioned way using my eyes & brain, I find it quite a dry and dull experience, in comparison with Jonathan Cecil’s amazing vocalisation work I am srs!

Erudition doesn’t become you @bearsy go back to your usual persona. :lou_wink_2:

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I’ve been doing the new Lord of the Rings audiobook narrated by Andy Serkis. He obviously does a good Gollum but also manages some pretty decent impressions of his fellow cast from the movies. The character voices seem much more aligned.

Still the same complaints as ever. Too much singing, which is fine when it is written down but fucking awful in all of the audiobooks, long tuneless dirges which I end up skipping through.

It is a very strange structure from book two onwards as well. The movies did a much better job of mixing this up, but essentially, first half of Two Towers is all Aragorn and pals while the second is Frodo, Sam and Gollum.

Warts and all, still astonishingly great works which basically comprise the Bible for most fantasy that followed. The Serkis adaptation is the best on audiobook but even as itself, it’s not perfect. With no-one to impersonate for Tom Bombadil from the movies, Serkis’ take on the character sounds exactly like Aslan from South Park, and I couldn’t unhear it.

Just finished Jeeves and Wooster by Stephen Fry - now listening to his version of the sherlock holmes collection

I listened to animal farm which was good and 1984 which was turgid

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I would recommend The Blade Itself, written by Joe Abercrombie and narrated by Steven Pacey.

The story is set in a fantasy world, but it’s very much an allegory for our times.

The Union, the location of most of the point of view characters, is a complacent empire at its peak, surrounded by foes it sees as backwards, too self-satisfied to see what’s coming.

The point of view characters are excellent. I’m finding myself rooting for someone I really shouldn’t be rooting for but the POV context and the fact he’s surrounded by bigger bastards make him strangely compelling.

Pacey’s narration is excellent and I admire his slavish devotion to British English, even if it did make me realise I’ve been saying “grimace” in American English all my life.

And it is the first book of a series

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A completed series.

Have that, GRRM and Rothruss.

Need mine then

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Ove still got two books to go on the First Law series

Are yours on Audiobook?

Remember that reading is a pain in the arse for me.

Only my first one is on audiobook Amazon.co.uk