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Peas and Rice posted:Last Call by Tim Powers. If you haven't read it, buckle up. This was back a few pages but I just wanted to give this back book a thumbs up too. It’s narrated by Bronson Pinchot who turns out to be an excellent reader. He does good accents and his cadence is soothing. Based on this I also just got done with A Man on the Moon, also read by ol’ Balki. I recommend this too if you’re into space. It’s a cool telling of the entire Apollo Program story.
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Oct 17, 2018 02:03
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I just finished A People’s Tragedy by Orlando Figes about the Russian Revolution. Since this topic is barely mentioned let alone covered in American schools I learned A LOT and recommend it as long as you can take dense histories. The author never goes on about anything overlong, there’s just a TON of poo poo that went down between 1890 and 1924 in Russia. My takeaway is that the Russians are a cursed people who haven’t really caught a break in like 400 years... I’d like to continue on with the history. Anyone got any recommendations for history of the USSR from the rise of Stalin to, say, the end of WW2?
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Feb 20, 2019 02:45
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That sounds like a you problem.
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Aug 16, 2019 19:06
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I’d like to recommend Requiem for the American Dream by Noam Chomsky. I like the cadence of the narrator. Kind of sounds like a younger version of smarmy old Chomsky himself. Disclaimer: This book, like most Chomsky, is extremely depressing and should only be undertaken if your sadbrains are sufficiently controlled. It is a nice departure from the usual take of Americans being monsters to the world at large, to being monsters to ourselves!
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Aug 16, 2019 19:12
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I cannot more highly recommend A People’s History of the United States by Howard Zinn. Never mind the reviewers saying the audio sucks. It’s 99.9% fine. There’s some roughness near the beginning that goes away quickly. I should warn that if you have sadbrains this may not be good for you, but really it should be required reading for all US citizens at least. Very well done. As damning as it is, it isn’t really preachy. Just the facts.
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Sep 9, 2019 19:05
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I enthusiastically recommend Edward Snowden’s new memoir Permanent Record. It’s gripping and well written and performed. I purposefully refrained from forming a personal opinion of the guy when everyone that was talking about him had one agenda or another, and now, listening to his side of the story I think he’s a real patriot, which is not something I always consider to be a compliment, but in this is very much intended to be. I only hope that if I am ever in that kind situation I’ll have the guts to act the same way.
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Nov 13, 2019 16:04
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NikkolasKing posted:I guess it's kind of old now but Stephen King's The Stand? I didn’t like the narrator at first either but I gave him a chance and he grew on me. Fun fact about him. The whole time I’m listening I’m thinking he sounds really familiar and I couldn’t figure from where... then I finally realized - he also narrated The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich. Incidentally I recommend that audiobook too. It’s very well done but I don’t think I could’ve got through the text version. It’s ponderously long.
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Nov 20, 2019 19:57
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I love listening to Holidays on Ice around this time of year. I’ll never forget the first time I heard it on the radio driving in interminable snowstorm traffic a couple days before Christmas. It was magical.XBenedict posted:Grover Gardner does mostly non-fiction, history in particular, so his fiction stuff can seem a little dry. Some notes about the Shirer book: Thanks for the recommendation - I’ll wishlist it.
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Nov 22, 2019 17:28
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And what do you think about it? The ideas hinted at in the blurb can be taken to extremes with little effort. I am instantly leery of the Noble Savage take on our glorious past. Personally I do agree with the idea that as a species we are WAY out on the evolutionary ledge in terms of our ability to handle our own successes, but romanticizing a usually fictitious past is a dangerous fantasy. I’m not necessarily trying to bash this book unread - just looking to see whether or not it goes that way.
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Nov 23, 2019 18:03
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Just finished The Conspiracy Against the Human Race by Thomas Ligotti. I liked it but it could be REALLY heavy to someone who hasn’t already done a great deal of thinking about its thesis. I recommend it but only if you’re currently well nailed down psychologically. The narrator was particularly good. E: would love more recommendations on a similar theme if anyone knows any. I’d imagine this topic is not well represented in popular audiobooks for obvious reasons. Lordshmee fucked around with this message at 20:57 on Dec 15, 2019 |
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Dec 15, 2019 20:44
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Jack B Nimble posted:I'm going to get this because I love "The Better Angels of Our Nature"; not sure if you'd think they're as similar as I do, but the two of them together remind me of William Blake's paired poems. You don’t mean the Steven Pinker book do you? Because I don’t think that book has anything remotely to do with the one I mentioned. I tried googling an alternative and came up empty.
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Dec 18, 2019 19:02
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Jack B Nimble posted:No, that's the one, and I meant it as a contrasting work on a similar topic, and I could be completely wrong about that. No worries. I took no intention from your post. However, your assessment of The Conspiracy Against the Human Race is not anything like what it’s about. The basic premise of the book is that consciousness is a terrible evolutionary mistake that renders human life a horror. I guess there is a small and obscure genre around the idea, generally called Pessimism, but it’s a relatively new idea to me. So, nothing at all like Pinker’s book, heh.
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Dec 20, 2019 22:59
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I just finished The Quantum Magician by Derek Kunsken and really enjoyed it. A neat kind of sci-fi Oceans Eleven set in the distant future. Apart from it being a fun story, the narrator is EXCELLENT.
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Feb 16, 2020 18:01
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Friends I’m looking for a lifeline. I just finished Carl Sagan’s Contact and I’d like to get something that invokes the same numinous spirit, if you know what I mean. I don’t want a SAGA or anything, just a well-written story that brings out awe in the universe. So, you know, easy!
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Mar 11, 2020 00:44
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Thanks for the recommendation. The reviewers universally loathed the narrator but I kind of dig the measured tone of the preview. I’ll give it a whirl! e: Trip report. I’ve got about two hours left in the first Rama book and I like it a lot. It’s exactly the tone I was looking for. Most of the time I can’t stand SF written before 1990 because it’s usually riddled with racism and sexism, but this is pretty forward thinking on the whole. The narrator reminds me of Tuvok from Star Trek Voyager, and despite his nearly deadpan delivery of the story he does have different voices for the characters and in general does a good job. Lordshmee fucked around with this message at 17:48 on Mar 15, 2020 |
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Mar 12, 2020 03:04
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I just finished Hate Inc. by Matt Taibbi. If you know Taibbi then you know you should get it - the narrator is good. If you don’t know Taibbi, well, he’s very CSPAM, if you’re into that sort of thing.
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May 6, 2020 01:23
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Currently almost done with Ka: Dar Oakley in the Ruin of Ymr and am enjoying it immensely. It’s a story of the first crow to acquire a name and his adventures with humans throughout history. It’s narrated by the author and I dig his voice and cadence. I swear it sounds like a crow is telling the story. I don’t know how I’d know if that were a thing, but I feel it anyway. It’s great.
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Aug 17, 2020 01:52
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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.
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Dec 7, 2020 21:41
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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.
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Feb 17, 2021 23:28
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Thanks for that recommendation! I need something of a pick me up.
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May 20, 2021 16:59
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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.
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May 22, 2021 17:46
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I just had a book called Lamb recommend to me. I’m enjoying it thus far and it’s read by Fisher loving Stevens!
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Jun 24, 2021 14:56
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I recently did The Gospel of Loki and rather enjoyed it. Will probably pick up the next book in the series soon. I am currently going through Particle Physics for Non-Physicists for the 3rd time. As you might guess, there’s a lot to learn. The lecturer is good and the material is so cool if you have a mind to look into it. This was recommended to me by a friend: The Orphan Master’s Son. This is a heavy book, in that it is told from the perspective of a North Korean soldier of low birth and is about as awful as that sounds, but with crazy twists. It has three very good narrators and I did enjoy it.
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Apr 7, 2022 01:43
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Mister Facetious posted:- As You Wish: Inconceivable Tales From The Making of The Princess Bride Seconding that. It was really just a delightful time.
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Apr 7, 2022 21:19
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THAT is the question  Content: I’m listening to The Da Vinci Code again. Great narrator. Nothing flashy, just good accents all around. Fun story. I think I’ll give some other entries in the series a try.
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Sep 7, 2022 02:19
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I just finished the new Stephen King book Fairy Tale. I liked it a lot. Good narrator that I hadn’t heard before. Kinda wish they had used Will Patton again. I very highly recommend basically anything read by him, but especially Stephen King stuff.
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Oct 1, 2022 01:41
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I have lately really gotten into the works of this Brit that styles himself Adrian Tchaikovsky. Notably, the Children of Time series. Really cool sci-fi themes. This lead me into another series of his called The Final Architecture. I really liked both narrators and this author is rapidly becoming one of my favs.
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Jun 22, 2023 02:18
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I’m doing The Library at Mount Char right now and it’s rad. It’s like American Gods if American Gods were a completely different story.
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Feb 4, 2024 03:41
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Frank Muleler is in my top-five favorites list, but I can’t imagine him doing a better job with that series than Simon Vance. He was really good. I just finished The Tender Bar and loved it. I can’t imagine the print book being as entertaining. The narrator had voices for all the main characters, and there were a lot of them, and all good.
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Feb 25, 2024 02:51
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