Audible.com asks some of the industry's best narrators: "What's the Best Book You've Ever Narrated?"

Audible.com asks some of the industry's best narrators: "What's the Best Book You've Ever Narrated?"

Posted on 2011-08-26 at 15:29 by Sam

Link: Audible.com asks some of the industry’s best narrators: “What’s the Best Book You’ve Ever Narrated?”

Wow, there’s a great new (at least to me!) feature page at Audible.com today, “The Best Book I Ever Narrated”. This page lists some of my favorite narrators describing, well, their pick for the best book they ever narrated, and as a narrator junkie this is just a great feature. Some highlights:

Glimpses by Lewis Shiner narrated by Stefan Rudnicki:

This is an audiobook which is very dear to my heart, a transformative experience. I’ve written both Shiner and Rudnicki about this book before, reviewed the audiobook on Audible.com, picked it as the best Audible.com SF/F release in March 2011, and it’s just great to watch and listen to Rudnicki explaining exactly why he loved the book. It’s one I’ve used Audible.com’s “gift” feature to send to people, just to spread the book further and wider in the hopes that more and more people can hear about it and read it or listen to it. Yeah… it’s wonderful. Considering that Rudnicki’s long, stellar career has included Orson Scott Card’s Ender’s Game, Alan Dean Foster’s Pip and Flinx, Ben Bova, David Drake’s Hammer’s Slammers, Nabokov, … it’s high praise indeed.

Gateway by Frederik Pohl narrated by Oliver Wyman with an introduction by Robert J. Sawyer:

No, fair, Mr. Wyman. OK, he’s one of my favorite narrators, and he did do an absolutely amazing job capturing Robinette and the “Dr.” for this great book, but he takes a few liberties here. One, he picks a total of four “best” books, including How Sex Works by Sharon Moalem, Monster Hunter International by Larry Correia, and Atomic Lobster: A Novel by Tim Dorsey. Two, despite this first transgression he doesn’t list Finch by Jeff VanderMeer, which he absolutely nailed and is right up there with Gateway for my favorite of Wyman’s many excellent narrations. For shame! (I kid, you can’t really argue against Gateway or Wyman’s performance on it.) And getting a narrator to express that their “first love” was science fiction… a good thing. He describes begging to narrate Pohl’s Gateway, and I’m glad he got his wish.

The Prestige by Christopher Priest narrated by Simon Vance:

I loved what Vance had to say here, going behind the scenes a bit to talk about re-recording the first half of the novel after a conversation with the author, and how the experience of recording the book turned into a friendship with Priest.

Scott Brick also bends the rules a bit, picking several books, including (among others…):

• Somewhere in Time by Richard Matheson
• The Quantum Thief by Hannu Rajaniemi
• The Passage by Justin Cronin (narrated with Adenrele Ojo and Abby Craden)

The last one I want to single out is The Road From Chapel Hill by Joanna Catherine Scott narrated by Karen White. From one of the smaller independent audiobook publishers I follow, CrossRoad Press, it covers the ground quite near my own stomping grounds:

Whew. Great feature, I enjoyed checking out the video and audio recollections from these great narrators, talking about some great books. I hope you do, too.

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