Today is the second day of We’re Listening: Audiobook Week 2013. Hosted for the fourth year by Jen at Devourer of Books, Audiobook Week runs June 17–21. It’s a fun way to find other audiobook bloggers/readers and see what everyone’s listening to these days. Click here to see other posts on today’s topic, How Do You Choose Your Audiobooks?.
How do you decide what you’ll listen to?
Starting an audiobook requires a bigger investment of time than picking up a print book to see if I like it (because of the whole converting CD to MP3, etc. that I still do a lot of) so I tend to be a little more choosy about audiobooks. Usually, but not always, I choose one that I’ve been wanting to read in print but have heard around the blogosphere is even better on audio, or one that has won an Audie or Earphones award (in certain categories) from AudioFile.
I also have favorite audiobook narrators who can entice me to read something I might not otherwise. Here are just the top three (only because I didn’t have time for a longer list):
1. Jonathan Davis is always going to be #1, after Snow Crash by Neal Stephenson and The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao. I raved about him last year, too, and he visited my blog and recommended some of his favorite narrations. (One recommendation was The Watchers by Jon Steele, which I got from the library with Disc #6 totally blank, so I’m still waiting to start it.)
2. Ralph Cosham is going to be #2 for at least as long as Louise Penny continues her Inspector Gamache books. He also does a great David Copperfield!
3. Hillary Huber was a new discovery for me last year just before Audiobook Week, when I had just come out of the deeps of The Night Swimmer by Matthew Bondurant with her.
I’m sure I’ll be discovering more audiobook reviewers this week to add to this list, but for now these are the bloggers I turn to for recommendations that match my own listening tastes:
Beth Fish Reads (I want to read everything she reads. How does she do it?)
Devourer of Books (our fearless Audiobook Week leader and literary fiction and nonfiction listener)
The Guilded Earlobe (S/F, zombies, epic fantasy battles? He’s your man!)
Literate Housewife (She turned me on to The Good Thief’s Guide to… mysteries by Chris Ewan, which I still haven’t reviewed, and is also the executive director of the annual Armchair Audies.)
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