Audiobooks

[Flamekebab]

Some of you may have guessed that I spend a lot of my time on my arse with the rest of me busy doing complicated things with models. While I'm doing that I like to listen to audiobooks.

I'm coming to the end of the currently available audiobooks for the series I've been listening to recently - Jasper Fforde's Thursday Next books - and I'm curious to hear some recommendations if you have them.

In the meantime I'm going to talk about books and series I've listened to and what I made of them. I may do this in replies to my own topic just so as to actually get the accursed thing posted.

I'll start of with the series I've just mentioned - Thursday Next.
Currently the series consists of the following titles:

• The Eyre Affair
• Lost in a Good Book
• The Well of Lost Plots
• Something Rotten
• First Among Sequels
• One of Our Thursdays Is Missing
• The Woman Who Died a Lot

It's set in a world that bears both strong similarities to our own and some rather odd differences too. It's not steampunk but there are Zeppelins (but no jet liners), croquet seems to have the popularity of football/soccer, and classic literature is bizarrely popular.

The first book, The Eyre Affair, is, frankly, rather miserable for much of it. I'm not sure why but compared to the others it felt bleak and depressing despite its whimsy. The later books seem to avoid this which I was frankly glad of. I enjoyed Fatherland but it didn't exactly leave me cheerful after a hard day's work and the atmosphere of The Eyre Affair some how had a lot in common with it.

After that we find ourselves on a wild and imaginative journey through the world of books (practically a whole other dimension with all sorts of odd quirks and amusing technologies). That's what I've been enjoying lately.

There's a whole army of Mrs. Danvers clones:


Certain places contain The Mispeling Vyrus and gas masks with dictionary filters must be worn to go near it...
Hopefully you get the idea. It's rather fun.

[Jubal]

As a spoken-word storyteller I feel I should be more into audiobooks than I am - I tend to find that either I can't concentrate on them enough to keep track if I'm working on something, or I get fidgety because my hands & eyes aren't engaged if I try and use them as standalone media. :/

[Flamekebab]

The trick is choosing the right level of task for the job. I have the same problem with sculpting - if I try to watch a good TV programme at the same time I end up concentrating on it over my work. If I watch crap TV instead it works out nicely!

Several other things:

• Have you considered recording your own audiobooks?
• The Opus codec is amazing for audiobooks. The ~11 hours of Andy Weir's The Martian compressed down to 77 MB!

[Jubal]

Yes - my problem is that I do a lot of writing or programming which are too high-intensity to concentrate on something else.

1. I have considered it, I don't know how well my voice would suit it - given I usually stride around a room somewhat when storytelling, I imagine doing it to a mic or reading from a script could feel odd (and I wince a lot when listening to my speaking voice recorded, much more so than I do my singing voice). I did once nearly get brought on board with voice acting for a project I found on the web, but I got rejected in favour of someone else which was a little offputting. I might have a go at doing some short stories at some point though and see what people think of them?

2. Noted - I generally use Audacity as my recording program, I'll see what support it has for it etc.

[Flamekebab]

The second point wasn't in response to you - it was just a general statement of geeky glee related to audiobooks 

[Jubal]

Noted 

I'll let you know when I get a recording of something done anyway - it'd be good to have feedback from people who actually regularly use audio stuff.

[Pentagathus]

I started listening to audiobooks this year, they're pretty good when you've got mundane chores or you're doing some simple work.
Martin Shaws narration of the hobbit is rather wonderful,would recommend.

[Jubal]

I should still do my plan of recording a few short story audios... my writing group keeps telling me I should do an audio book for my book when that's done. No time for more projects for the time being anyway.

I'm listening to podcasts more than I used to, but mostly bitty factual ones where I don't lose much if I zone out momentarily. With audiobooks I worry I'd lose bits of the plot too much whenever my brain went for a walk (as it so oft does).