Tag: Audible Books

I Still Love Audible Books

I have kept up with my “reading” on Audible Books for another year. Still climbing my local mountain. There is some concern that I won’t hear the bears, but so far I have seen them a long way off so my sense of hearing has not, so far, been necessary.

This year I listened to some books I have read before (some of them multiple times). These include

Man’s Search for Meaning by Victor Frankl,

The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy and The Restaurant at the Edge of the Universe by Douglas Adams,

Shogun by James Clavell,

Great Expectations by Charles Dickens,

The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood, and

Dracula by Bram Stoker.

I loved these books when I read them, and got even greater pleasure from them this time around with Audible.

A lot of my enjoyment of Audible Books is the performances–Especially good performances were :

Medium Raw by Anthony Bourdain, was performed by Anthony Bourdain himself.

A Spy Among Friends by Ben Macintyre was read by John Lee

Excellent Woman by Barbara Pym was read by Jayne Entwistle

Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison was performed by Joe Morton

The Pickwick Papers by Charles Dickens was read by Simon Prebble

The books I would most strongly recommend are:

William Manchester’s The Last Lion: Winston Spencer Churchill, II: 1932-1940. I own all three volumes in book form and read and loved reading volume 1. Volume 2 on Audible was very, very good. Volune3 was fine.  The issue here is Manchester passed away before he could write volume 3. Using Manchester’s material, Paul Reid wrote volume 3.  He’s good, but his prose isn’t as engaging as that of Manchester.

Ready Player One by Earnest Clone is pure entertainment. Great story and you will especially love it if you grew up playing video games in the late 70s early 80s. Apparently this book is being made into a movie and I can’t wait to see it.

The list below rounds out the books I listened to since my last post about Audible Books I have “read.”  I enjoyed all of them.

The Godfather by Mario Puzo

A Little History of Philosophy by Nigel Warburton

The Innocent: A Novel by David Baldacci

The Idiot by Fydor Dostoevsky

The Guns of August by Barbara Tuchman

Great Expectations by Charles Dickens

The Last Lion: Winston Spencer Churchill, III: 1940-1965 by William Manchester and Paul Reid

Our Magnificent Bastard Tongue by John McWhorter

The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood

Reframe: From the God We’ve Made to God With Us by Brian Hardin

Battle by John Toland

One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez

The Island of Knowledge by Marcelo Gleiser

The Sea Wolves by Lars Brownworth

If you regularly drive or walk for any significant amount of time, you must consider an Audible Books account.  I love it.

I Love Audio Books

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This past year I’ve been listening to audio books. I like listening to audio when I climb up my local mountain. I looked into Audible Books, but at $14.95USD it was too expensive. They did offer a free book if you gave them a try. Being a cheap Dutchman, I went for the grandfather of all books–War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy. That’s 61 hours and 8 minutes of listening for nothing. Audible Books just got pwned! The problem is, I loved this book, seriously–I thought this book was infamous only because it was the longest book. It’s long, but it’s also one of the best books I’ve ever read (listened to). I loved listening to a great reader read it to me. It was very immersive; I hardly felt that I was climbing.

This was such a delight that I thought I would keep my membership for just a few months. Just to knock off some other biggies. Books that I had started, but for one reason or other had not been able to finish: Moby Dick by Herman Melville, Don Quixote by Miguel de Cervantes, Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoyevsky, A Distant Mirror by Barbara Tuchman.

Just one more. I had seen the trailer for the movie, so I decided I’d listen to the book The Martian by Andy Weir before the movie came out.

I had always meant to read A Fine Balance by Rohinton Mistry, but I’d need more than a summer to read it, so I never picked it up. Wow, what a book, and a great performance by John Lee. Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov is in the top ten of almost every list of must read books, so I checked that one off.

I did some listening directly related to my work: Wise Blood by Flannery O’Connor and two collections of her short stories, A Good Man is Hard to Find and Everything that Rises Must Converge. Also, All Quiet on the Western Front by Erich Maria Remarque and A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court by Mark Twain.

I have already read Tolkien’s trilogy four times, and the Hobbit at least a dozen times, but the last time was a while back, so I listened to them.

Then I listened to some religious books: The Bible Tells Me So by Peter Enns, The Pilgrims Progress by John Bunyan and Mere Christianity by C. S. Lewis.

Most recently I finished Watership Down by Richard Adams, and I am just finishing Gone With the Wind by Margaret Mitchell.

I purchased a bunch of books on a few very good sales, so i am set for a while. I look forward to another year of listening and hiking.

If you are interested in my recommendations for listening or reading, here is my list in order of awesomeness. I’ve separated Tolkien out because with Tolkien I have no objectivity.

The Hobbit by J. R. R. Tolkien

The Fellowship of the Ring by J. R. R. Tolkien

The Two Towers by J. R. R. Tolkien

The Return of the King by J. R. R. Tolkien

So here’s my list in order:

War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy

A Fine Balance by Rohinton Mistry

Watership Down by Richard Adams

Gone With the Wind by Margaret Mitchell

Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoyevsky

The Martian by Andy Weir

Moby Dick by Herman Melville

Don Quixote by Miguel de Cervantes

Mere Christianity by C. S. Lewis

The Bible Tells Me So by Peter Enns

Everything that Rises Must Converge by Flannery O’Connor

The Pilgrims Progress by John Bunyan

A Distant Mirror by Barbara Tuchman

Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov

Wise Blood by Flannery O’Connor

A Good Man is Hard to Find by Flannery O’Connor

All Quiet on the Western Front by Erich Maria Remarque

A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court by Mark Twain

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