Asklemmy

43940 readers

454 users here now

A loosely moderated place to ask open-ended questions

Search asklemmy 🔍

If your post meets the following criteria, it's welcome here!

Open-ended question
Not offensive: at this point, we do not have the bandwidth to moderate overtly political discussions. Assume best intent and be excellent to each other.
Not regarding using or support for Lemmy: context, see the list of support communities and tools for finding communities below
Not ad nauseam inducing: please make sure it is a question that would be new to most members
An actual topic of discussion

Looking for support?

Looking for a community?

Lemmyverse: community search
sub.rehab: maps old subreddits to fediverse options, marks official as such
!lemmy411@lemmy.ca: a community for finding communities

~Icon~ ~by~ ~@Double_A@discuss.tchncs.de~

founded 5 years ago

MODERATORS

Fiction audiobooks you've enjoyed? (mander.xyz)

submitted 1 year ago by Mothra@mander.xyz to c/asklemmy@lemmy.ml

57 comments fedilink hide all child comments

I'm looking for easy-to-listen-to fiction audiobooks. Something I can tune in while doing other stuff without getting distracted.

I find some authors have styles that are a bit more sophisticated than others. The more thought-provoking, the more difficult I find to enjoy an audiobook while doing something else. I catch myself stopping whatever I'm doing to pay attention to the book, which is not what I want.

So for example I've found The Witcher books very easy to listen to, it wouldn't matter if I missed a few seconds and I never found myself stopping to ponder about the text itself. The narrator was great too. Also bonus points as it was a long saga of books.

In contrast I would never want to listen to a Terry Pratchett book while doing something else. He's probably my favourite English author but I find he's too much of a genius, and my poor brain wouldn't be able to digest it all if I'm not giving it my attention 100%.

I hope this makes sense?

How's your experience with audiobooks?

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments

[–] PetDinosaurs@lemmy.world 5 points 1 year ago

Pretty much all major books are published as audiobooks as well. Even ones that have computer code written in them, which is not something that you'd ever expect to have read out loud.

It used to be that books would be "narrated for the blind" where not a lot of attention would be put into the audio. Nowadays, there tends to be a lot more effort put into them. I suppose that's because they don't need to be packaged as 12 to 20 cassette tapes or CDs any longer.

There's the added element that a narrator can ruin or improve things. The Making of the Atomic Bomb by Richard Rhodes is a wonderful book, but the narrator displays an unprofessionally slim knowledge of physics.

Then there's World War Z. I'm not sure that there's a better way to tell that story than the audio book. It's the exact interview style that the author intended.

Orson Scott Card really likes audio books, so the Ender's Game series is really good.