Audiobook Recommendations for Listening on an iPod or iPhone

Audiobook Recommendations

Finding great audiobooks is harder than finding great books, because there are more variables involved. Not only is the story and the quality of the writing important, but the reader of the book is vital. A great reader can make a mediocre book pretty enjoyable, while a bad reader will ruin even the best book. And the quality of the readers ranges from superb to terrible, and I mean terrible.

So if you are paying for them, always listen to an audio sample of a book before you buy it. When it’s a library book you’re just borrowing, the quality is less important; you can always just stop listening and return it. But audiobooks are generally more expensive than the printed version of the book, and buying bad ones will add up to real money quickly.

Some of the best readers are prolific. If you find one whom you really like, try exploring other books that they have recorded, even if you have no particular interest in the author. Audible.com makes this easy to do; just click the reader’s name on the detail page for a book you’ve listened to and liked. You’ll probably end up surprised and delighted by following a great reader off your own beaten path.

I personally only want to listen to the unabridged versions of audiobooks. (If I’m short on time, I listen to a podcast.) Not only is the “editing” (chopping down) process uneven, but frequently the abridged versions are read by a celebrity actor or actress, instead of one of the many professional audio recording artists.

Occasionally a celebrity reader is pretty good, but more often they are being used as a name to sell more units. The worst reader I’ve heard was Burt Reynolds reading the abridged version of Trunk Music; thankfully the unabridged version was read by Dick Hill, one of the “golden voices” in audiobooks. Audible.com often has both the abridged and unabridged versions of a work, so be careful you’re looking at the longer version. Audible.com also has links to take you to their unabridged section, where you will find only unabridged selections.

Specific Recommendations

Here are a few audiobooks I’ve listened to and thoroughly enjoyed. (I’ve listened to a lot of audiobooks; my recommendations here are the crème de la crème, that which rises above the rest.)

The Harry Bosch Series by Michael Connelly

Michael Connelly’s Harry Bosch series are mystery / police procedural novels featuring Los Angeles homicide detective Harry Bosch. These novels have absolutely spoiled us in their level of detail; we actually giggled throughout the episodes when we tried watching the CSI television shows. Compared to the Harry Bosch novels, CSI is just silly.

Many of the books are outstanding, some are great, and a few are “merely” very good. The unabridged versions are recorded by two different narrators, Dick Hill for the first eight books, and Len Cariou for the latest five. Dick Hill is exceptional, as I wrote earlier, one of the “golden voices” in audiobooks, meaning he’s done a lot of books and always does a terrific job. But Len Cariou takes Harry Bosch to even higher levels. He has the perfect voice for Harry, truly a hard-boiled LA cop’s voice. Lost Light remains my favorite audiobook ever.

I recommend you listen to the series in order, because a number of recurring characters, and the arc of Harry’s life, have developments which take place across many novels; hearing them out of order means you lose some of the surprises. So here’s the order:

The Black Echo [Formats: MP3 CD, Audio CD]
The Black Ice [Formats: MP3 CD, Audio CD]
The Concrete Blonde [Formats: MP3 CD, Audio CD]
The Last Coyote [Formats: MP3 CD, Audio CD]
Trunk Music [Formats: MP3 CD]
Angels Flight [Formats: MP3 CD, Audio CD]
A Darkness More Than Night
City of Bones
Lost Light
The Narrows
The Closers
Echo Park
The Overlook

The Harry Potter Series by J.K. Rowling

Yeah, yeah, you think they’re kids books. And the first two books, while enjoyable, are definitely aimed at younger audiences. But starting in book three, and most definitely with the ending of book four, the series takes a darker turn, and I consider it at least as enjoyable by adults as by kids. Certainly, I have enjoyed the series tremendously, both in print and on audiobook.

A very large part of that enjoyment is the spectacular narration performance by Jim Dale. He provides an astonishing array of distinctly different voices, and just perfect nuance and delivery. It took about 10 minutes of listening for him to be added to my Personal Golden Voices list.

I also really appreciate and enjoy the whimsy and creativity and humor that J.K. Rowling brings to Harry’s world, and the people in it. Although there are flaws in some of the writing (Order of the Phoenix could have been 100 pages shorter, surely), but through it all the books are fun to read, and even more fun to listen to.

Individual Titles

While great series are fantastic to find, in that you get a lot of really good books delivered in a package, they can be rare. I find many series to be formulaic, and after a few books, boring. And there are a lot of books that are one-offs, but still highly worth listening to. Here are a few I liked:

A Short History of Nearly Everything, by Bill Bryson — This will seem like a criticism instead of a compliment, but this is a great book, if not the best book, to fall asleep to. What’s so fun about it is that while the narrative hangs together if you listen to it in long stretches, the individual stories are quite short, and you can start almost anywhere in the book and quickly be up to speed. And there is something about the narrator’s voice that is so soothing, it’s easy to drop off if you’re in a place to do so. I’ve listened to this while driving and been highly entertained and awake, but also use it as a power nap aide (when I’m not in motion). Crazy as it sounds, it really works both ways, making this book unique in my experience.

Dress Your Family in Corduroy and Denim, by David Sedaris — Read by the author with his inimitable voice and delivery, this book has many, many laugh-out-loud moments. We started listening to it on a road trip, and I was initially afraid I was going to wreck the car, I was laughing so hard. I’m sure I’ll recommend all of the author’s books eventually, as I get ahold of them in unabridged form.

The Apprentice: My Life in the Kitchen, by Jacques Pépin — My love of all things Jacques extends to his autobiography, which is both well-written, and a record of a seriously interesting life. Rochelle and I both laughed out loud many times, though usually at different things. (Rochelle found his inept wooing of the woman who became his wife particularly funny, while I found that it reminded me too much of my wooing of Rochelle.) If you are a fan of his cooking shows, or love cooking and food stories, you’ll really enjoy this book.

Haunted Ground, by Erin Hart — This is a mystery told at a languid pace, taking place in the Irish countryside. The narrator’s wonderful voice and Irish accent took a pretty good book, and made it terrific. Not for people who want a lot of action and gunfire in their mysteries, but not at all boring or slow, either.

The Historian, by Elizabeth Kostova — Three things make this a strong book. First, the story itself is very good. It’s kind of a historical detective thriller, not quite as self-consciously clever or fast-paced as something like The DaVinci Code, but it certainly has parallels. And the structure of the novel is quite interesting, weaving together multiple people’s tales across quite a span of time. Second, the performance is very good, two different readers for the two different main character perspectives used in the narration. (Amusingly, the male narrator is Paul Michael, who also read The DaVinci Code, where he was also excellent. He’s close to being added to my Personal Golden Voices list.) And third, it’s quite long, more than 26 hours. So if you’re enjoying it, there’s a lot to enjoy.

Personal Golden Voices

The following readers really worked for me; they are listed in the order in which I encountered them. I’ve either heard them on more than one book, or was particularly struck by how much I enjoyed their reading of a work. One suggestion: give every reader a chance. I’ve noticed that I often think little of a reader in the initial 15 minutes or so of a book, but come to really appreciate them as the book moves along, they handle more characters, have a chance to add nuances, etc. You can only truly judge the quality of a reader at the end of a book.

Len Cariou
Dick Hill
Jim Dale

More Recommendations

I will only recommend here the audiobooks which I’ve personally listened to and liked, and while it’s quite a few, it’s a very small percentage of the available audiobooks. So here are some links to other web sites which provide editorial content about the quality of the book, reader, and recording for audiobooks.

AudioFile Magazine — Online reviews and lists of audiobooks, well-organized by genre.
AudioFile Magazine’s Golden Voices — A list of the most prolific and well-regarded recording artists working in audiobooks.
Amazon.com — Their reader reviews of audiobooks are useful, but they have no special catalogs or organization schemes for audiobooks.
Audible.com — Again, the reader reviews and ratings of audiobooks is useful, though certainly not definitive. Take the reviews with a grain of salt, and judge them as a whole, not by any individual review…

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