audiobook – Page 128

Dutch Treat The Audiobooks of Elmore Leonard

Aural Noir: Online Audio

My Elmore Leonard Audiobooks Dutch Treat The Audiobooks Of Elmore Leonard As you can see by my stack of Elmore Leonard audiobooks, gathered from my shelves, Dutch Treat: The Audiobooks of Elmore Leonard is just the kind of podcast I’m looking for. It’s on a highly specific subject, one that couldn’t really exist in any other format. The unnamed host takes clips from each Elmore Leonard audiobook (abridged and unabridged) to showcase Leonard’s terrific dialogue in the hands of some of the top narrators in the audiobook business. It was great to hear Grover Gardner, Joe Mantegna, Robert Forster chewing up Leonard’s dialogue once again. The only real detraction I see, in this super-fun podcast, is the highly unnecessary “strong language” warning.

It’s Elmore Fucking Leonard for fuck’s sake!

Actually there’s not a gratuity of swearing in these audiobooks, which makes the warning doubly annoying. Might as well say: “Elmore Leonard is a fiction writer, none of the events in these novels have actually happened.”

[sigh]

Okay, enough of my whining, have a listen.

Here’s the podcast feed:

http://dutchtreat.libsyn.com/rss

Posted by Jesse Willis

LibriVox: The Strange Case Of Dr. Jekyll And Mr. Hyde by Robert Louis Stevenson

SFFaudio Online Audio

Listening For The League's Gentlemen At LibriVox Alan Moore’s comic The League Of Extraordinary Gentlemen is chock- full of public domain literary references (and characters). This is the third in a series of posts in which I root out the freely available audiobooks (at LibriVox.org) that either feature the characters in “the league” or which are at least alluded to in passing in the story. What’s especially interesting in this case is that Moore’s wasn’t the first comic book to take inspiration from Henry Jekyll’s chemically induced bipolarity. Marvel comics had its own take on Jekyll and Hyde with Bruce Banner’s transformation into The Incredible Hulk. Indeed it seems rather strange that I never saw this until I saw Moore’s own re-purposing.

The Strange Case Of Dr. Jekyll And Mr. Hyde
By Robert Louis Stevenson; Read by Kristin Hughes
10 Zipped MP3 Files or Podcast – Approx. 2 Hours 50 Minutes [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: LibriVox.org
Published: April 24, 2009
After hearing Mr. Enfield’s account of a distressing event involving Edward Hyde, the heir of his friend, Henry Jekyll, John Utterson is convinced that Jekyll’s relationship with Hyde is built on something sinister. Utterson’s concern for his friend is not unfounded but the reasons aren’t quite what he, at first, believes.
Podcast feed:

http://librivox.org/bookfeeds/the-strange-case-of-dr-jekyll-and-mr-hyde-by-robert-louis-stevenson-2.xml

iTunes 1-Click |SUBSCRIBE|

Posted by Jesse Willis

LibriVox: Dracula by Bram Stoker

SFFaudio Online Audio

Listening For The League's Gentlemen At LibriVox Here’s another older LibriVox audiobook featuring a character found in Alan Moore’s League Of Extraordinary Gentlemen. Wilhelmina “Mina” Harker (née Murray) is lucky enough to survive this novel and then go on to be the core characters around which the events of Moore’s first comix collection swirl. She’s the proper Englishwoman wearing a large scarf over her neck. She plays a literally pivotal role in Vol. 1 of The League Of Extraordinary Gentlemen. This version is not read by a single narrator, but, that’s okay in this case because Dracula is told from multiple (and ever shifting) viewpoints.

Dracula
By Bram Stoker; Read by various
27 Zipped MP3 Files or Podcast – Approx. 16 Hours 31 Minutes [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: LibriVox.org
Published: May 10, 2006

Podcast feed:

http://librivox.org/bookfeeds/dracula-by-bram-stoker.xml

iTunes 1-Click |SUBSCRIBE|

Posted by Jesse Willis

Review of Hyperion by Dan Simmons

SFFaudio Review

SFFaudio Essential Hyperion
By Dan Simmons; Read by Various
19 CDs – 21 hours – [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: Brilliance Audio
Published: 2009
ISBN: 9781423381402
Themes: / Science Fiction / Artificial Intelligence / Aliens / Religion / Starships / Simulations / Transportation /

Seven people, all headed to the planet Hyperion to visit the Shrike, find themselves on the same ship. Regular pilgrimages are made to the Shrike, but these seven have been granted a visit to the Shrike together. To find out why this is, they all agree to tell each other their personal stories of what brought them. The result is a Canterbury Tales in space. A priest, a soldier, a poet, a scholar, a detective, and a consul each tell their story; all separate, all intensely personal, all very different, yet all involving the Shrike in some way.

The book is set in the distant future, and the ideas are plenty. There’s farcasting, where doorways are created to other worlds. One character has a house where every room is on a different world. Costs a fortune, but it can be done. There are artificial intelligences, starships, and sims. Against this backdrop is the Shrike, an alien creature that lives in the Time Tombs, and the seven on a pilgrimage who land in a city on the planet Hyperion, then make their way to see the Shrike over land. “Pilgrimage” is definitely the right word here, because the whole book has a mythic-religious quality. Each person is dealing with very difficult stuff, and what each person hopes to gain from the Shrike when they finally get to see it is nothing short of intervention of a higher power.

Audible Frontiers did a wonderful job with this audiobook. It used to be available only through Audible, but now Brilliance Audio is offering a hardcopy version on CD, which is how I listened. Each story is told by a different character, and each one uses a different narrator. The narrators were all excellent, so this is a perfect presentation of this book.

All seven of the stories are fascinating, well-written stories. There isn’t a weak one on the bunch. This is a top-shelf science fiction novel, up there with the greatest books of the genre.

Highly recommended, without question an SFFaudio Essential! The single caveat is that you must plan to read the next book in the Hyperion Cantos, (called The Fall of Hyperion), because the story doesn’t end with the end of this book. The Fall of Hyperion is also available from Audible (digital) and Brilliance Audio (CD), as are the two books that complete the series, Endymion and The Rise of Endymion. This is the only one I’ve read, but I expect I’ll be reading them all.

Posted by Scott D. Danielson

The SFFaudio Podcast #035

Podcast

The SFFaudio Podcast #035 – Jesse and Scott talk new releases and recent arrivals with 2 of the 3 internet celebrities that were on last week’s podcast:

Gregg Margarite (LibriVox.org narrator and book coordinator),

and Luke Burrage (professional juggler and host of the Science Fiction Book Review Podcast) discuss…

Talked about on today’s show:
recent arrivals and new releases, Audible.com, The Fountains Of Paradise, A Fall Of Moondust, Arthur C. Clarke, space elevator, Dyson sphere, augmented reality, William Gibson’s Virtual Light |READ OUR REVIEW|, Minding Tomorrow by Luke Burrage, audiobook narration, The Prisoner, disaster, The Poseidon Adventure on the moon, the “BRADBURY 13” radio drama series, A Sound Of Thunder [BRADBURY 13] based on the story by Ray Bradbury, A Gun For Dinosaur by L. Sprague de Camp, A Galaxy Trilogy Vol. 3 includes (Giants From Eternity by Manly Wade Wellman, Lords Of Atlantis by Wallace West, City On The Moon by Murray Leinster), Tom Weiner, Hater by David Moody, apocalypse, zombies, Stephen King’s Cell |READ OUR REVIEW|, Left 4 Dead, what makes zombies so compelling?, Of Bees And Mist by Erick Setiawan, book reviewing (using stars or scores), Metacritic.com, A Dribble Of Ink, Subterranean Press, The Sharing Knife Vol. 4 Horizon by Lois McMaster Bujold, The Curse Of Chalion by Lois McMaster Bujold |READ OUR REVIEW|, Star Trek by Alan Dean Foster, Alien by Alan Dean Foster, Star Trek: The Animated Series, Predator by Paul Monette, The Abyss by Orson Scott Card, The Abyss (the movie), endings, the goldfish effect, Science Fiction exposes you to a world, Fantasy immerses you in a world, Star Wars: Fate of the Jedi: Abyss, The Terror by Dan Simmons, abridgements, Simon Vance, Hyperion by Dan Simmons, Q Squared by Peter David, John de Lancie, LibriVox.org, Short Science Fiction Collection Vol. 025, Belonna Times, Brigands Of The Moon by Ray Cummings (read by Seth1864), The Pirates Of Erzats by Murray Leinster (read by mylantus), slide rules and calculators and abucci, Korean finger counting, Photoshop as a calculator, what jugglers are like, sculptor Jonathan Borofsky, The Pleasure Of My Company by Steve Martin, Magic square, Benjamin Franklin, Mandelbrot set, an entire issue of Astounding Stories of Super-Science – September 1930 as an audiobook, the Speech Accent Archive. An excerpt from Star Trek by Alan Dean Foster (the audiobook novelization of the 2009 film)

Posted by Jesse Willis

Aural Noir Review of Drive by James Sallis

Aural Noir: Review

Drive
By James Sallis; Read by Paul Michael Garcia
Audible Download – 3 Hours 26 Minutes [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: Blackstone Audio
Published: 2007
Provider: Audible.com
Themes: / Crime / Noir / Los Angeles / Hollywood / Arizona /

“Much later, as he sat with his back against an inside wall of a Motel 6 just north of Phoenix, watching the pool of blood lap toward him, Driver would wonder whether he had made a terrible mistake. Later still, of course, there’d be no doubt. But for now Driver is, as they say, in the moment. And the moment includes this blood lapping toward him, the pressure of dawn’s late light at windows and door, traffic sounds from the interstate nearby, the sound of someone weeping in the next room…”

Drive starts with an important dedication. “To Donald Westlake, Ed McBain and Larry Block.” If an author is going to choose any three modern crime writers as inspiration for a book they could pick no better three than these dudes. Drive starts off with an opening sentence that could have been written by Richard Stark (a pen-name of Donald Westlake), proceeds to punch-out clean and clinical prose like McBain’s 87th Precinct novels and punches the story along like Lawrence Block at his best. Drive stars “Driver”, a nameless Hollywood stunt driver by day and a criminal getaway driver by night. We get how he started in the business of stunt-driving, a few scenes of him pulling off those incredible feats of automotive control, and how he got involved in the punishing business of criminal getaway driving. It’s fast, but it ain’t furious, it’s more of a simmering sizzle.

Blackstone narrator Paul Michael Garcia, who I last heard as the reader of Starman Jones, has a young voice – I knew I’d enjoy his reading of something in this genre. Garcia’s narration made it an incredibly solid listen. What’ll keep it from being a classic of the niche is that same anonymity of the protagonist. I enjoyed the ride with the guy, the “driver”, he has an incredible story to tell, but it was like I got hypnotized by the road somehow – I got to the end, refreshed and exhilarated but not particularly aware of what route we took. Perhaps this makes Drive the ideal summertime, top down, high-gear audiobook? It’s a novella so it’s short and you’ll zip through it practically before the commute is over. I think its worth giving a try.

Posted by Jesse Willis