Audiobooks: when you're too busy to read

The Something Awful Forums > The Finer Arts > The Book Barn > Audiobooks: when you're too busy to read

mystes: May 31, 2006

I thought the third book was pretty bad myself. If I had known what the second and third would be like I probably would have stopped after the first.

# ¿ Apr 25, 2011 12:54

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# ¿ Apr 24, 2024 01:35

mystes: May 31, 2006

coyo7e posted:

This seems especially ironic when you take into consideration the fact that Audible refuses to sell contemporary audiobooks which have a version available online for free elsewhere online. Scott Sigler has some interesting stuff about it on his website, where he explains why he can't sell his work on audible unless he never gives it out for free, serially.

It actually sounds more like he would just have to take it down now if he wanted to sell it, and audible just doesn't want to piss off its customers by charging them for something they could go download for free elsewhere, which seems pretty reasonable.

Edit: Audible even sells episodes of NPR shows where the podcasts only go back a couple episodes but you can listen to pretty much all of online via a flash interface that just doesn't give you the option to download them. I really don't think this is some sort of evil discrimination against independent authors or something as the site he links suggests.

Also, their limitation appears to be just based on selling the exact same audio. I'm pretty sure they sell audiobooks of works where the text can be downloaded for free from the authors' sites. As a result, this really has nothing to do with whether they would sell audiobooks of works where the copyright for the text has expired.

mystes fucked around with this message at 20:22 on Jun 6, 2012

# ¿ Jun 6, 2012 20:11

mystes: May 31, 2006

Regarding Whispersync For Voice, do you always get the audiobook included free for a book that has it if you buy the Kindle version? Or do you normally have to buy both separately? I ask because I really like the idea but in general I don't think I would pay twice as much to have both versions (I would probably pay 15-20% extra at most).

# ¿ Sep 12, 2012 15:56

mystes: May 31, 2006

Syrinxx posted:

They're not free, but you don't pay full price either. I spot checked a book on my wish list and it's $5 to add the audiobook. It's a good deal considering Audible credits cost about $15, and buying the audiobook outright is very high, like $30.

Ah, neat. I said I didn't want to pay that much extra but I was mostly thinking in comparison to just the audiobook, in cases where I already knew I wanted that version, so the fact that it doesn't actually come free with the Kindle version isn't actually that bad.

Edit: Unfortunately, it doesn't seem like all books that have whispersync for voice allow you to obtain the audiobook for a reduced price, but you can see the ones that do here: http://www.amazon.com/s/?node=5744840011

mystes fucked around with this message at 21:42 on Sep 12, 2012

# ¿ Sep 12, 2012 16:29

mystes: May 31, 2006

You're thinking of Samuel Delany.

# ¿ Nov 30, 2012 00:35

mystes: May 31, 2006

Kestral posted:

Strange Matter and anyone else who has read The Quantum Thief on audio: how was it? I've skimmed the book at stores and it looks like something I have to read, but I get the impression it would be one of those books like Anathem or The Malazan Books of the Fallen that throw you in the deep end and expect you to start swimming. Those tend not to be well-suited to a format where you can't easily re-read a section or flip to the glossary to figure out what's going on.

I listened to the audiobook and it was mostly fine but there were a few parts that were confusing or where I had trouble keeping the characters straight but it was mostly fine. I found the made-up technology less of an issue than some parts just being sort of unclear, actually. It would have helped to be able to flip back but I found that if I just kept listening it became self-explanatory anyway. Overall I'd recommend it as long as you don't mind being temporarily confused occasionally (honestly I don't know if the audiobok format even contributed to the confusion anyway).

# ¿ Dec 10, 2012 19:13

mystes: May 31, 2006

Mister Macys posted:

Human Division was a great listen.
That said, I don't know if it's just the nature of a serialized story format, but Scalzi's setups/Chekovs were pretty obvious, even to me.
You can see them coming very early in each section, and usually I'm pretty oblivious to setups.

I don't think Scalzi really tries to attempt subtlety in his foreshadowing. I mean, come on, one of his stories might as well have been titled This story ends with a head in a box or your money back. Or that story with the radio host, Scalzi could have explicitly stated that he was going to die at the end and it wouldn't have made it any less surprising. I think he prefers to tell you exactly what to expect and then deliver that.

Edit: I don't mean to say that this is necessarily a good thing either; I feel like "delivering what you expect" describes his work as a whole, and he might write more interesting stories if this wasn't his goal.

mystes fucked around with this message at 15:39 on Jun 10, 2013

# ¿ Jun 10, 2013 15:36

mystes: May 31, 2006

Wade Wilson posted:

Well, sure, I wasn't talking about something that had any impact on the actual story/plot. It was just something that didn't click for me until right before Scalzi flat out tells you about it by having one of the characters go "Hey, you were friends with John Perry, right? Why did he gently caress the CU over like that?" (John Perry was the main character for three previous novels in the same universe).

I was responding to Mister Macys's point about foreshadowing, not your post.

# ¿ Jun 10, 2013 18:21

mystes: May 31, 2006

xcore posted:

If people can produce hours of free content a week via podcasts then it seems a little hard to justify $30+ for books. Thanks heaps for the info anyway.

Audible doesn't charge $30 for a book, they charge $15 per book if you have the one book per month plan and $11.5 if you have the two book a month plan, plus they have various sales all the time.

If you want free podcasts or amateur recordings of public domain audiobooks then go ahead and knock yourself out, but if you want professional recordings of books that aren't free in the first place why would you expect not to pay?

That said, you may also be able to get audiobooks through your library using overdrive or a similar service.

# ¿ Jul 8, 2013 15:29

mystes: May 31, 2006

I've been subscribed for a couple years and I haven't once come across a book that was 2 credits.

# ¿ Jul 10, 2013 21:44

mystes: May 31, 2006

Audible has an audiobook for Alastair Reynolds's new book up but they aren't selling it in the US

# ¿ Nov 14, 2013 16:03

mystes: May 31, 2006

Kestral posted:

I'm one of the ones polarized by the Audible version of Ancillary Justice. The book is incredible and absolutely deserves the major awards that rained down on it, but the narration was so grating that I had to go out and get a print copy to finish it. Ciulla's reading feels forced, partly because of the way she enunciates anything that isn't a normal English word (which, in this book, is a lot of words). Bernadette Dunne does something similar in the MaddAddam books, this combination of cadence and over-enunciation that puts so much emphasis on the made-up words that they stand out like crazy.

Who are the great female narrators anyway, the equivalents of legends like George Guidall and Jonathan Davis? I've heard samples from Tandy Cronyn and Rebecca Lowman, and they both sounded great in the five minutes of exposure I've had to them, but it'd be nice to hear of some others.

I've listened to plenty of audiobooks with great narration by women and even some where it's completely the narrator's performance that makes the book for me and I might not be interested in reading it as a printed book (the Bloody Jack and Flavia de Luce series, and probably Code Name Verity) but unfortunately none of these narrators are very prolific (I don't know if it's a bad thing in that their books haven't sold or a good thing that these people are talented enough that they're busy doing other stuff like acting rather than narrating audiobooks, but it's too bad as a listener of audiobooks at any rate.)

The only exception I can find is Susan Duerden, whose narration of Embassytown and The Rook I thought was pretty good, but while she has apparently done a large number of books, the vast majority aren't in genres I'm interested in.

mystes fucked around with this message at 20:37 on Nov 23, 2014

# ¿ Nov 23, 2014 20:31

mystes: May 31, 2006

Kestral posted:

Embassytown always struck me as impossible to do as an audiobook, given the nature of Ariekei Language and how important that is to the story. How do they handle it? In the print version they show Language words stacked on top of each other, separated by a horizontal bar like a fraction.

They just had the words spoken at the same time (i.e. they combined audio of the narrator saying each word). If the book had gotten more carried away with this it might have been a problem, but as it was it worked fine, since it was more about giving the idea of how Language worked and it wasn't really necessary for it to be possible to make sense of lots of it.

# ¿ Nov 23, 2014 22:44

mystes: May 31, 2006

Mister Macys posted:

'The Quantum Thief' is really weird. I listen to all my audiobooks at work, and I don't think that's the right environment for this one. This is some sit-down-in-an-easychair poo poo to get it all.

It's not actually that complicated in the end, but even given that it doesn't want to explicitly explain stuff at the beginning it's written in a somewhat unnecessarily confusing way where it's often hard to figure out whether a given section is occurring in the present or past until half way through. However, there's nothing that really requires particularly deep contemplation or attention if you can just put up with stuff being confusing until the point where the book finally bothers to make it clear.

# ¿ Oct 28, 2016 08:32

mystes: May 31, 2006

ElGroucho posted:

I bought it on a recommendation from Audible, listened to about 15 minutes, the pulled a and read some reviews, and now it sits in my list, mocking me.

I bought it and couldn't finish it, and yet despite this, in a moment of stupidity I bought Armada, which is like 10 times worse.

# ¿ Feb 2, 2017 00:14

mystes: May 31, 2006

learnincurve posted:

Audible UK has 72 hours of Steven Fry reading the complete Sherlock Holmes.

As does Audible in the US.

# ¿ Apr 11, 2017 13:27

mystes: May 31, 2006

poisonpill posted:

Out of the PKD books, I've never heard anyone mention Martian Time Slip, which is absolutely nuts and fantastic to listen to on a long drive.

I'm pretty sure this is the one I've listened to:
https://www.amazon.com/Martian-Time-Slip/dp/B01CPT0B6Q

It'll fit the bill in terms of near future, high tech low life, nothing makes sense aesthetic of cyberpunk, but don't read anything else about it before jumping in.

It seems like that version isn't available on audible right now at least in the US. There's another version by Brilliance Audio though, so i think I'll give that one a shot.

# ¿ Apr 21, 2018 18:56

mystes: May 31, 2006

XBenedict posted:

Is this even a thing? I would listen to Stephen Fry read the phonebook.

I don't have a problem with audiobooks, but it always cracks me up to hear him narrating children's shows because it's so similar to the voice he uses in a sarcastic condescending way on QI.

# ¿ May 29, 2018 21:41

mystes: May 31, 2006

XBenedict posted:

I would recommend the Robert Galbraith (J.K. Rowling) Cormoran Strike books. Fantastic narrations by Robert Glenister.

Speaking of which, I hadn't realized that the fourth book finally came out.

# ¿ Jan 8, 2019 15:46

mystes: May 31, 2006

XBenedict posted:

It's quite good. She's really starting to fill Strike and Robin out a bit.

I'm actually really glad to hear that because that was probably my biggest complaint about the third book: in general I think I liked it better than the second book, but it didn't seem like the characters were actually developed much and this was starting to make the series feel a little bit repetitive.

Now I just have to decide whether to wait for it on Overdrive or buy it from audible.

# ¿ Jan 8, 2019 16:28

mystes: May 31, 2006

Mister Facetious posted:

Is it just me, or have any of you started noticing a conspicuous increase in specific product/brand mentions in audiobooks recently?

How would this only be audiobooks as opposed to printed books? Are you saying that additional product mentions are being inserted in audiobooks that aren't in the original text?

# ¿ Jul 5, 2019 23:32

mystes: May 31, 2006

Kraps posted:

Why was The Martian rerecorded by Wil Wheaton? Why was the RC Bray version memory holed? Who asked for this?

https://www.audible.com/pd/The-Martian-Audiobook/B082BHJMFF?qid=1577888090

That's bizarre. Maybe if it's their own version audible gets a bigger cut this way? Maybe they think that more people will buy it if it's Wil Wheaton (a scary thought)?

mystes fucked around with this message at 15:30 on Jan 1, 2020

# ¿ Jan 1, 2020 15:27

mystes: May 31, 2006

Maybe Wheaton does it for free.

# ¿ Jan 2, 2020 03:44

mystes: May 31, 2006

Mister Facetious posted:

And if you own the Kindle version of something, you can get it for a reduced price if it supports Whispersync

Dune is a good option for this.

I don't know if this is still the case, but I think at least previously if you borrowed a kindle book from a library through overdrive you could then buy the audiobook for the reduced price, too. (Obviously if your library has the audibook you should just get that, though).

# ¿ Feb 4, 2020 23:20

mystes: May 31, 2006

Henrik Zetterberg posted:

Alright, that's kind of what I gathered from reading that FAQ and that table I posted. Sounds like I'd need the higher plan to keep the books flowing. Bummer.

You can also just subscribe to the 2 credit plan long enough to buy a bunch of audiobooks and then cancel your subscription. The only downside to cancelling is that you lose any unused credits and can't get the free audible originals, but you keep all your books.

# ¿ Feb 5, 2020 02:32

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.

# ¿ Dec 25, 2020 13:36

mystes: May 31, 2006

jeeves posted:

The Altered Carbon books seem to have some sort of obligatory chapter in each that is an extremely graphic sex scene like out of some romance novel. It�s very jarring especially since the rest of the books are so well done scifi.

Are you sure you aren't reading Haltered Hardon by accident?

# ¿ Sep 7, 2022 21:36

mystes: May 31, 2006

I only read the first book and it was a long time ago but I think I kind of got the impression that the author just felt that that was part of the whole noir detective thing.

cant cook creole bream posted:

I once listened to a series of audio books which had a bit of a gross out humor, while usually being quite enjoyable. At one point I was walking the street wile litening to it and some dialogue suddenly took a hard swerve into something pornographic and I felt a bit weird listening to that surrounded by people.

I can only hope it was as good as the late Gilbert Gottfried's best work:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XkLqAlIETkA

# ¿ Sep 7, 2022 21:46

mystes: May 31, 2006

Mister Facetious posted:

There's a site that does public domain books recorded by normal people iirc. It was posted some years ago in the thread.

librivox?

# ¿ Jan 6, 2023 05:22

mystes: May 31, 2006

MeatwadIsGod posted:

It sucks that Audible is the biggest game in town because for at least the last year I've consistently had Bluetooth audio lag issues with their app - and only their app - that are very frequent and very annoying. None of the troubleshooting steps I've found improve it at all.

What do you mean bluetooth audio lag issues? I would normally assume you mean a/v sync but since audiobooks are purely audio do you just mean it's slow to respond when you pause or skip or something?

# ¿ Jan 6, 2023 16:21

mystes: May 31, 2006

On android you could try turning on developer mode and messing around with the bluetooth codec settings I guess. If it's just a problem with the phone or device I'm not sure what the chances are that that will help tough.

# ¿ Jan 6, 2023 23:15

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# ¿ Apr 24, 2024 01:35

mystes: May 31, 2006

Deep Glove Bruno posted:

if it helps you in your decision, i will never listen to that in a million years based on the title alone. you guys could be saying it cures cancer and I wouldn't.

You should read CCC (cancer curing cat)

# ¿ Apr 8, 2024 21:28

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