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yaffle
Sep 15, 2002

Flapdoodle

XBenedict posted:

Ok but did you get into these because of Good Omens?

I just read them all when I was a kid, they are very good.

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Enfys
Feb 17, 2013

The ocean is calling and I must go

Lordshmee posted:

I just finished Other Minds by
Peter Godfrey-Smith. It’s a self-described philosophy book but goes into quite a bit about the evolution and behavior of cephalopods with emphasis on their minds. I liked it and the narration was good.

I really enjoyed listening to this as well

luscious
Mar 8, 2005

Who can find a virtuous woman,
For her price is far above rubies.

Enfys posted:

I really enjoyed listening to this as well

Thanks! I just grabbed this! I haven’t been listening all year.

Ups_rail
Dec 8, 2006

by Fluffdaddy
Does anyone know what up with audible?

I was a fan of Ian M Banks and his culture novels and about 3 years ago I found another UK author whose writting remindes me of the culture books

https://www.audible.com/author/Neal...KRW8AB2MW934RF2

He s book arent avaible in the us anymore

I then went on to discover other good sci fi books like stuff by jermey robbins

Then I found pulpy stuff like BV Larsons books (how he pumps those out is beyond me)

But lately I am seeing basically erotica in the sci fi field and its like I went from sci/fi to pulp sci fi to loving fan fiction. have I just taught audible algorithm to give me trash or is their like a dispute with publishers?

The last book series I fought to find and enjoy was tales from the gas station.

Mister Facetious
Apr 21, 2007

I think I died and woke up in L.A.,
I don't know how I wound up in this place...

:canada:
Their recommendation algorithm is pretty poo poo, because it gives priority to what you recently looked at instead of what you've bought; if you've ever clicked on something out of morbid curiosity, it thinks you did it out of genuine interest.

As for that author you linked, it gave me the option to purchase his books, and I use the .com website for my account still.

Mister Facetious fucked around with this message at 12:52 on Dec 25, 2020

mystes
May 31, 2006

It might have gotten worse as a side effect of audible trying to push their "audible original" content, but the audible website has always been useless for discovering new content anyway.

poisonpill
Nov 8, 2009

The only way to get huge fast is to insult a passing witch and hope she curses you with Beast-strength.


2-for-1 sale again at Audible. If you haven't read The Illiad recently or at all, you really owe it to yourself to try this:
https://www.audible.com/pd/The-Iliad-Audiobook/B00HUWO1T2
It's Dan Simmons reading a good translation and he brings it to life. I can't shill it enough.

Roundabout
Oct 31, 2006
It's Crumbelievable!
I stopped using audible because I am trying to minimize my reliance on amazon as much as possible. Right now I am trying libro.fm, which gives 15% of its revenue to bookstores. I set my account up so it goes to my local bookstore (The Last Bookstore in LA). 15% isn't much, but at least they are getting something out of it. Also, if you use the code "switch", you start out with two audiobook credits.

Anyways, so far it seems to be going okay. I have been listening to The Recovering: Intoxication and Its Aftermath, which is a pretty great memoir/study about addiction. Bonus points for the author being the reader and a good one at that.

Syrinxx
Mar 28, 2002

Death is whimsical today

poisonpill posted:

2-for-1 sale again at Audible. If you haven't read The Illiad recently or at all, you really owe it to yourself to try this:
https://www.audible.com/pd/The-Iliad-Audiobook/B00HUWO1T2
It's Dan Simmons reading a good translation and he brings it to life. I can't shill it enough.

What's the link to the 2 for 1? They aren't advertising it anywhere on the site that I saw.

KingShiro
Jan 10, 2008

EH?!?!?!
Got a 2 credit trial so I picked up The Corner (David Simon) and Mythos (Stephen Fry).

Listening through Fellowship of the Ring now, it’s alright... all these songs are wack

Enfys
Feb 17, 2013

The ocean is calling and I must go

If you listen to the trilogy, you're going to hear so many songs.

It's especially fun if you listen to them at a faster playback speed, so the narrator's attempts to carry a tune get even more garbled.

Lordshmee
Nov 23, 2007

I hate you, Milkman Dan
The Lord of the Rings is the only series of books I’ve ever encountered that I can’t get through either reading or listening to. They are intensely boring. It makes me sad because all of my friends read them as kids and love them, I adored the movies... I want to like them but simply cannot.

I just got done listening through the entire Dark Tower series by Stephen King again. That’s a 2 month endeavor at 2 hours a day, but recommended! Fair warning though the series took so long to finish that the original narrator (the excellent Frank Muller) was replaced at book 5 because he was royally hosed up in a motorcycle accident. The silver lining is that his replacement was George Guidall who is also excellent.

Right now I am about 2/3 of the way through The Sparrow by Mary Doria Russell. Really digging this one. The perspective shifts both characters and timeframes and you never know more than what the characters in each scene know at the time, so you’ve got to put it all together.

Henrik Zetterberg
Dec 7, 2007

Dark Tower was so weird. Some of the books were really really good and others (I'm looking at you, The Gunslinger) were confusing garbage.

my kinda ape
Sep 15, 2008

Everything's gonna be A-OK
Oven Wrangler

Lordshmee posted:

Right now I am about 2/3 of the way through The Sparrow by Mary Doria Russell. Really digging this one. The perspective shifts both characters and timeframes and you never know more than what the characters in each scene know at the time, so you’ve got to put it all together.

I think that was the very first audiobook I ever listened to. It's very good! The sequel is good too and worth checking out.

Mister Facetious
Apr 21, 2007

I think I died and woke up in L.A.,
I don't know how I wound up in this place...

:canada:

Lordshmee posted:

The Lord of the Rings is the only series of books I’ve ever encountered that I can’t get through either reading or listening to. They are intensely boring. It makes me sad because all of my friends read them as kids and love them, I adored the movies... I want to like them but simply cannot.

The first lotr book is the only good one. The second two are just absolutely boring.

Enfys
Feb 17, 2013

The ocean is calling and I must go

Lordshmee posted:

The Lord of the Rings is the only series of books I’ve ever encountered that I can’t get through either reading or listening to. They are intensely boring. It makes me sad because all of my friends read them as kids and love them, I adored the movies... I want to like them but simply cannot.


I devoured them as a kid and have tried to re-read them a few times as an adult and always stall out at some point.

kaworu
Jul 23, 2004

Been trying to listen to ASoIaF in its entirety from start to finish recently, and I made it about... halfway through A Feast For Crows (book 4) before getting totally and utterly burnt out on these goddamn books, so I am having to uh... Take a break, at least for now.

I decided to choose a decently reviewed Stephen King book that I have never read and which wasn't too cripplingly long, and chose based primarily on which reader I most wanted to listen to.

I ended up with Duma Key mostly because it's read by John freaking Slattery, who is definitely near the top of the list of actors whom I'd enjoy listening to even reading the phone book. And he hasn't disappointed so far, though admittedly the story itself has yet to really grab me in the way most King books do, I mean, I'm not giving up on it or anything, but I was hoping for some sort of impossibly intriguing supernatural hook. 2 hours into the story and it's been a pretty straightforward character study so far - at least the protagonist is a painter (rather than, say, a writer) so I am thankful for such small things.

edit: I guess I spoke slightly too soon, because I'm now 4 hours in and an impossible-to-resist supernatural hook has definitely appeared, just as expected. Now I get to see King continue to set it up perfectly and then screw up the ending :v:

kaworu fucked around with this message at 18:05 on Mar 1, 2021

Henrik Zetterberg
Dec 7, 2007

Try the wheel of time :v:

NikkolasKing
Apr 3, 2010



I'm always pleasantly surprised when I find good secondary philosophical literature in audiobook form. It's one thing to find an audiobook of say, Descartes' Meditations, but to find a good collection of essays on Descartes in audio form?

https://www.audible.com/pd/A-Companion-to-Descartes-Audiobook/B00CBG1104

Or, say, to find Goethe's Faust in audio but also a whole philosophical biography of Goethe?
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B01HDSU0FQ/ref=dp-kindle-redirect?_encoding=UTF8&btkr=1

But the real shock for me just now was this:
Baumgarten and Kant on Metaphysics


I was actually depressed because it was like $70 via Kindle and I could not find it ...anywhere else in text format. But then my Google search turns up it on Audible and I'm like "this is awesome."

Bought that poo poo in a hurry. I always buy stuff like this to show there is at least some interest and hopefully encourage more audiobooks made of these kinds of secondary sources which are potentially more crucial than the main works.

CrazySalamander
Nov 5, 2009

NikkolasKing posted:

I'm always pleasantly surprised when I find good secondary philosophical literature in audiobook form. It's one thing to find an audiobook of say, Descartes' Meditations, but to find a good collection of essays on Descartes in audio form?

https://www.audible.com/pd/A-Companion-to-Descartes-Audiobook/B00CBG1104

The reviews on that one are great, lol.

quote:

Probably the worst book on audible
This book wasn’t for you, but who do you think might enjoy it more?
John Carriero's essay on Descartes was turbid and obtuse. I cannot believe that someone with a bachelor's degree would produce such numbing spew.

What could John Carriero and Janet Broughton have done to make this a more enjoyable book for you?
There is nothing positive about this. I bought it on the basis of the amazon reviews, which, I now realize, were lies.

What do you think the narrator could have done better?
Not narrated it.

You didn’t love this book... but did it have any redeeming qualities?
It did not.

Any additional comments?
Oxford University Press has disgraced, which it has been doing with increasing frequency.

quote:

execrable
What disappointed you about A Companion to Descartes?
It was very boring. Not illuminating. Gratuitous and myopic scholarship.

Has A Companion to Descartes turned you off from other books in this genre?
Not really, but John Carriero's contributions to this volume were singularly poor, and did make question the legitimacy of this ever-growing--but steadily deteriorating---secondary literature.

Have you listened to any of Annie Wauters’s other performances before? How does this one compare?
She is an excellent narrator. I don't wasted

If you could play editor, what scene or scenes would you have cut from A Companion to Descartes?
Everything that John Carriero wrote. He is sooo boring.

Any additional comments?
Why was this written?

Please report back and tell us if these are valid.

E: That metaphysics book seems to be on kindle for $16 right now if you want text.

CrazySalamander fucked around with this message at 06:31 on May 4, 2021

NikkolasKing
Apr 3, 2010



CrazySalamander posted:

The reviews on that one are great, lol.



Please report back and tell us if these are valid.

E: That metaphysics book seems to be on kindle for $16 right now if you want text.

Yeah I'm obviously gonna try to form my own opinion but those reviews did make me uncertain about purchasing it. I was like "great, they give us a collection of Descartes essays and they suck."

But that "Companion" is referenced on multiple entries for Descartes on the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy which is a very respected scholarly resource that actual academics use a lot. And the guy the reviews called out, John Carriero, has written a pretty respected book on Descartes' Meditations So I'm leaning more in trusting them than random Audible reviews.


Also on Kindle the Metaphysics book still says it's $68.40 for me. But it's fine, I prefer audiobooks. I have terrible eyesight and using TTS speech is my only choice most of the time. Having an actual reader is really nice.

And I almost forgot, let me rep another book:
Why We Are Restless: On the Modern Quest for Contentment. It's a short analysis of Montaigne, Pascal, Rousseau and Tocqueville. It touches on a topic very near and dear to my heart: French Philosophy and also the peculiarly modern condition in which we all live.

NikkolasKing fucked around with this message at 13:29 on May 4, 2021

Jack B Nimble
Dec 25, 2007


Soiled Meat
Thank you! I would never have thought essays like this even existed on Audible aside from, say, The Great Courses. I'm buying the Descartes one with my next credit.

Edit: ok so now I read the reviews. Still interested.

The_Other
Dec 28, 2012

Welcome Back, Galaxy Geek.
Just finished listening to As You Wish:Inconceivable Tales from the Making of The Princess Bride by Cary Elwes, read by the author with additional narration by most of the available cast and crew (Rob Reiner, Billy Crystal, Robin Wright, etc). It was a lot fun listening to these people recounting the great time they had making the movie, as learning some of the behind the scenes details, such as the fact that the book was thought to be unfilmable or the training Elwes and Patinkin went though in order to learn the sword-fighting choreography.

Of course a lot of Elwes and the other cast's stories revolve around their interactions with Andre the Giant. It seemed like everybody had some story to tell about their interactions with him.

Mister Facetious
Apr 21, 2007

I think I died and woke up in L.A.,
I don't know how I wound up in this place...

:canada:
His speaking voice is soo good too. I don't regret picking that one up.

poisonpill
Nov 8, 2009

The only way to get huge fast is to insult a passing witch and hope she curses you with Beast-strength.


Another vote for as you wish. It was fantastic. Bought it for a car trip a few years ago and we sat in the car for another half hour after we arrived to finish it.

Lordshmee
Nov 23, 2007

I hate you, Milkman Dan
Thanks for that recommendation! I need something of a pick me up.

Mr Owl
Dec 28, 2008

The new book from Andy Weir (of the Martian) is out (called Project Hail Mary) and the audiobook is excellent

His writing style really suits it

CrazySalamander
Nov 5, 2009

Mr Owl posted:

The new book from Andy Weir (of the Martian) is out (called Project Hail Mary) and the audiobook is excellent

His writing style really suits it

Seconding this. Excellent production value. If you enjoyed The Martian, you will enjoy this book.

Kestral
Nov 24, 2000

Forum Veteran

CrazySalamander posted:

Seconding this. Excellent production value. If you enjoyed The Martian, you will enjoy this book.

Thirded, with the caveat that Project Hail Mary is much, much more sci-fi than The Martian. It's excellent hard SF, but go into it knowing that it's not quite as grounded as the previous one. Book is still a total blast though, and I'd go so far as to say that the audiobook is the definitive version.

Lordshmee
Nov 23, 2007

I hate you, Milkman Dan
One of the most revelatory books I’ve ever read is Ishmael by Daniel Quinn. There’s an audio version but it’s abridged so I recommend the text - it’s very short.

However I recently found another book which is very much in the same vein called Civilized to Death by Christopher Ryan.

The gist of the book is that our entire civilization is completely hosed up from top to bottom. By this he doesn’t mean the US specifically, or “Western Civilization” in general, but all “civilized” societies everywhere that are enacting the hyper-individualist, hyper-agrarian, stratified, population-dense lifestyle. It’s easy to dismiss the critique out of hand due to millennia of inertia and cultural indoctrination, which is why I recommend reading Ishmael first if you haven’t already had a chance to examine the core idea. He also doesn’t deal in Noble Savage platitudes but in anthropological analysis comparing and contrasting specific facets of “primitive” societies with our own. Recommended.

QuarkJets
Sep 8, 2008

Anyone here listen to The Sandman? I'm imagining that something gets lost when translating a comic series to audio form, but I guess you gain possibly-great vocal performances and let your imagination create the visuals?

Mister Facetious
Apr 21, 2007

I think I died and woke up in L.A.,
I don't know how I wound up in this place...

:canada:

QuarkJets posted:

Anyone here listen to The Sandman? I'm imagining that something gets lost when translating a comic series to audio form, but I guess you gain possibly-great vocal performances and let your imagination create the visuals?

I have the audiobook, I'm not familiar with the comics beyond the Choronzon and Sandman contest, and that's only because some goon used to run a 2008 primary avatar where Hillary was the former, and Obama was "hope". :haw:.

I rather liked it, but whenever it does that chapter stinger, it reminds me of this every time:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Md8WBDOSg6g

Mister Facetious fucked around with this message at 03:21 on May 23, 2021

ImpAtom
May 24, 2007

Mr Owl posted:

The new book from Andy Weir (of the Martian) is out (called Project Hail Mary) and the audiobook is excellent

His writing style really suits it

Yeah I haven't really enjoyed any of his stuff from The Martian but this one I enjoyed quite a bit. It's pretty silly at times but in a mostly enjoyable way and the big twist near the end actually did catch me off guard.

Khizan
Jul 30, 2013


QuarkJets posted:

Anyone here listen to The Sandman? I'm imagining that something gets lost when translating a comic series to audio form, but I guess you gain possibly-great vocal performances and let your imagination create the visuals?

I thought it was really good. They’ve added narration to set the scene, because so much of that was done by the art, and Gaiman does a good job as narrator, I think. They also did a good job picking most of the VAs. I’m not a huge fan of Kat Dennings as Death, but all the others are very good, IMO. And Dennings isn’t actually bad, really, she’s just not up to the standards of the other important characters.

Wastid
Oct 21, 2008

ImpAtom posted:

Yeah I haven't really enjoyed any of his stuff from The Martian but this one I enjoyed quite a bit. It's pretty silly at times but in a mostly enjoyable way and the big twist near the end actually did catch me off guard.

Hail Mary is my first Andy Weir book and it's fun enough so far. The Martian is free on audible until September, which is very timely as I'm nearing the end of Hail Mary. They look pretty similar so hopefully it's at least as good.

I listened to Alec Karakatsanis Usual Cruelty recently and its very good. It's about the US criminal punishment system so it's upsetting and depressing at times but its a good short critique of our big dumb oppressive legal system.

Eta: I've been asked for recommendations for sci fi audiobooks for a kid, like 13 I think. They're steering him towards Enders Game, anyone got any better books for a young nerd?

Wastid fucked around with this message at 16:24 on Jun 11, 2021

poisonpill
Nov 8, 2009

The only way to get huge fast is to insult a passing witch and hope she curses you with Beast-strength.


Robert Heinlein’s Citizen of the Galaxy is good teen lit sci-fi. It’s Kipling’s Kim, in spaaaaace.

CrazySalamander
Nov 5, 2009
I’d recommend the murderbot diaries series by Martha Wells (starts with All Systems Red). The series does include multiple genders and the robots and the protagonist prefer the pronoun “it,” which is difficult to hear applied to sapient beings for many people.

All Systems Red introductory paragraph posted:

I could have become a mass murderer after I hacked my governor module, but then I realized I could access the combined feed of entertainment channels carried on the company satellites. It had been well over 35,000 hours or so since then, with still not much murdering, but probably, I don’t know, a little under 35,000 hours of movies, serials, books, plays, and music consumed. As a heartless killing machine, I was a terrible failure.

The biggest problem is that it is mostly a novella series with only two novel length books done more recently in the series and if it weren’t so good I would balk at the audio book prices. With this series always check if buying kindle book and adding audible narration is cheaper.

Devorum
Jul 30, 2005

The_Other posted:

Just finished listening to As You Wish:Inconceivable Tales from the Making of The Princess Bride by Cary Elwes, read by the author with additional narration by most of the available cast and crew (Rob Reiner, Billy Crystal, Robin Wright, etc). It was a lot fun listening to these people recounting the great time they had making the movie, as learning some of the behind the scenes details, such as the fact that the book was thought to be unfilmable or the training Elwes and Patinkin went though in order to learn the sword-fighting choreography.

Of course a lot of Elwes and the other cast's stories revolve around their interactions with Andre the Giant. It seemed like everybody had some story to tell about their interactions with him.

Thanks for this rec. I just finished it, and it was such a sweet, funny, wonderful book. You can really feel the affection the cast and crew had, and still have, for each other. Cary's Rob Reiner impression cracked me up.

I remember when the movie came out, we saw it on opening weekend. I had just turned 8, and really had no idea what to expect. We only went to see it because my mom was a huge fan of Santa Barbara and loved Robin as Kelly. The theater was almost empty. I loved it, as did my younger sister and my mom. I was confused as to why no one else seemed to be watching it.

Since so few of our friends and family had seen it, it became a big bonding experience for us...and watching it today always reminds of my mom.

NikkolasKing
Apr 3, 2010



There's a lot of new audiobooks made about famous philosophers. Mainly of the A Very Short Introduction series but it's still cool. Some of the top scholars of each thinker writes these books so even a brief book is still worthwhile.
https://www.audible.com/search?node...6223H8WMZNC76EB

Also a lot of pop junk or weird Christian fundy poo poo, but easy enough to ignore that.

The book on evil really interests me
https://www.audible.com/pd/Evil-in-...NDABM5DQHC1M8Z8

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Hardawn
Mar 15, 2004

Don't look at the sun, but rather what it illuminates
College Slice
I'm about a 1/3 of the way through The Rise and Fall of The Third Reich, but I am taking a break and listening to Irresistible by Adam Alter

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