The Wall Street Journal discusses five audiobooks generating buzz, starting with A Game of Thrones:
The first book in Mr. Martin’s “A Song of Ice and Fire” series, read by British actor Roy Dotrice, has sold more than 100,000 audiobook copies this year, bringing total audio sales to more than 700,000 since its 2003 release, according to Penguin Random House Audio.
Amy Poehler’s Yes Please was among the five best-selling audiobooks of 2015 on both Audible and iBooks.
Celebrity memoirs — particularly ones by comedians — are audiobook gold, when narrated by the author.
Leo Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina also made the list:
Audible and other audiobook producers have found success hiring A-list actors to narrate classics. The latest is “Anna Karenina,” read by Maggie Gyllenhaal. Released on July 12, it immediately hit Audible’s best-seller list. “I feel like performing this novel is one of the major accomplishments of my work life — it was so challenging and so deep,” Ms. Gyllenhaal said, according to a description on Audible. Other pairings include Charles Dickens’s “The Chimes,” read by Richard Armitage, and Helen Mirren’s telling of “The Tale of Kitty-in-Boots,” a rediscovered Beatrix Potter story to be released in September.
Oddly, those “other pairings” took some work to find in Amazon’s listings.
I wasn’t learning toward Anna Karenina but rather War and Peace, but I don’t know if I’m up for 61 hours of audio.
It’s not just 61 hours of audio; it’s 61 hours read by a woman who sounds like Hillary, as if War and Peace wasn’t tedious enough on it’s own…
And speaking of audio books, all three Adam Carolla books, narrated by him, are on Audible as well, if you want a treat.
Slovenian Guest, from the link it seems War and Peace is read by a man.
I understand audiobooks for those that drive much or are stuck in transit but otherwise give me a paper book.
Patrick Tull reading Patrick O’Brian’s sea novels or “Pickwick Papers” will change your life — actually kind of saved mine at a low point.
Tull, by the way, is a man’s man of a reader. You’ll wish you’d known him.
Lucklucky: Yes, sorry, I meant Anna Karenina, which is read by Maggie Gyllenhaal. The point still stands. Hear for yourself.