I’m looking for easy-to-listen-to fiction audiobooks. Something I can tune in while doing other stuff without getting distracted.
I find some authors have styles that are a bit more sophisticated than others. The more thought-provoking, the more difficult I find to enjoy an audiobook while doing something else. I catch myself stopping whatever I’m doing to pay attention to the book, which is not what I want.
So for example I’ve found The Witcher books very easy to listen to, it wouldn’t matter if I missed a few seconds and I never found myself stopping to ponder about the text itself. The narrator was great too. Also bonus points as it was a long saga of books.
In contrast I would never want to listen to a Terry Pratchett book while doing something else. He’s probably my favourite English author but I find he’s too much of a genius, and my poor brain wouldn’t be able to digest it all if I’m not giving it my attention 100%.
I hope this makes sense?
How’s your experience with audiobooks?
I set a goal for myself to get through as many of Stephen King’s books as I can before the end of the year. To date, I’ve gone through over half of the Dark Tower series, The Shining, Dr. Sleep, It, Later, Under The Dome, Bag of Bones, Desperation, If It Bleeds, and I’m working on The Stand right now. Most of them are quite long, 15 - 50ish hours.
If you’re not into horror, I still highly recommend The Dark Tower series. The recordings for the first 5 books are over 100 hours. They unfortunately had to change narrators in the 5th book, as the original sadly passed away. He did an amazing job at bringing the characters to life.
If It Bleeds is a short story collection, but it contains a sequel to King’s The Outsider, followed by Holly, which just came out last month.
I listened to the extended version of the stand.
It was 48 hours long and has a diatribe about people complaining about him being verbose.
Excellent storyteller, but he is long winded.
And it really didn’t make the ending any better… I didn’t feel rewarded after that slog. Personal victory maybe?
Yeah… Me neither.
I like audio books because they are slower than I read, which is more peaceful. I read words all day. I’m just done with that in my personal time, aside from the fact that I can listen to books when doing other things.
This one is more niche but it’s among my favourite audiobooks for both great writing and a stellar vocal performance.
I highly recommend the Eisenhorn trilogy by Dan Abnett and performed by Toby Longsworth. Or if you want to dip your toes then try the first one Xenos.
It’s set in the Warhammer 40K universe but you don’t need to know much lore to get into it. The trilogy is a pretty good primer into 40K.
I just finished the third book last week and really enjoyed them. The narration was superb also.
I can recommend “The Realm of the Elderlings” audiobooks. James Langton has a British accent and it’s just wonderful to listen to. He does voices for other characters fairly well too. Great book series too.
There’s a free series you can listen to on Podcast Addict by Nathan Lowell. The first book is called Quarter Share. (Then Half Share, Full Share, Double Share, Captains Share, and lastly, Owners Share).
It’s Sci fi set in space about a guy moving up in ranks making money and working on a space ship. It’s nothing too fantastic but it was still a good listen, read by the author who does a good job of it, and I did exactly what you’re wanting while I listened. Loosely paid attention while doing other things and it was great for that.
Also, you can’t beat free.
Woohoo another Nathan Lowell fan. I love that series and all is writing for that matter.
Discworld is my go-to these days. Goes well with cross stitching
In contrast I would never want to listen to a Terry Pratchett book while doing something else
Ah well. Sarah J. Maas was also a fun experience. It’s so bad it’s good. I went with A court of thorns and roses but I hear her other series follow a similar vein. It’s hard to miss the important details. Look for the Graphic Audio releases.
Pratchett has the highest rate of “that whole paragraph was great so I’m going to read it again now” and “that’s such a clever remark I’m now taking 5 minutes to think about it” out of any other authors I’ve ever read.
And you can do cross stiching whilst listening to it? I’m jealous. Thanks for the other recommendation, I’ll look into it :)
What other authors have high clever-remark ratings, in your experience? Because I find myself near the end of the Discworld series and want to continue with something similarly engaging. Basically, the opposite of what you requested :)
Ah, I feel for you, but unfortunately I don’t know of anyone else as engaging in a similar way. He really is an outlier.
Have you ever read anything by Joe Abercrombie? I’ve enjoyed the Last Argument of Kings trilogy, it’s not humorous, it’s not as thought provoking, but it’s definitely engaging enough I couldn’t divide my attention to work while listening.
The ice wind dale Trilogy by R.A. Salvatore is a great series set in the forgotten realms of dungeons and dragons. There’s even a free podcast audiobook of it on Spotify!
The Hundred-Year-Old Man Who Climbed Out the Window and Disappeared
This book did this for me. It was funny and totally casual.
A Night in the Lonesome October byRoger Zelazny. The version read by the author is better but harder to find these days.
This is also the perfect month to listen to it. It’s the diary of Jack the Ripper’s dog from October 1-31.
The only Roger Zelazny book I’ve ever read was Lord of Light.
It’s the only book I’ve ever read that I could not get into at first, or second attempt, but still had a third go and was not only able to go on, but ended up deciding it was one of the most enjoyable books I’ve read. Not one of the best, but just great fun to read.
Anyone interested can glean some insight from this short Guardian piece.
But I do recommend just diving in, it’s well worth it. Eventually.
I used to work while listening to audiobooks so I have come across a lot of this.
It’s not quite what you asked for but what I found was that in general, nonfiction memoirs were my favorite types of books to listen to as it would be ok if you get distracted and they were usually very interesting to me.
If I remember later I’ll check my list of books I’ve read and try to find some good fiction too.
I really enjoyed Stephen Fry’s Greek mythology audiobooks. He wrote three, basically a modern editorial of the mythology cleaned up a little bit and presented as a more linear sequence of events. He did the golden and silver ages, followed by the Trojan war.
I also really enjoyed Neil Gaiman’s Norse Mythology, narrated by himself. They are all easy to follow, and entertaining. Neil Gaiman’s book isn’t particularly to ribald as far as mythology goes, and my kids loved listening to it in the car.
Edit: also from the young adult section, Abhorsen and Sabriel are on audible narrated by Tim Curry, who makes them a hoot. Don’t recommend the other two as much. The books weren’t as good and they aren’t narrated by Tim Curry.
Please… for all that is good… listen to world war z, and the dark tower series.
Stephen Fry’s reading of Harry Potter is just the best.
On a JK Rowling note. Her Cormoran Strike series (starting with Cuckoo’s Calling) under a different pen name is actually pretty great. It’s a modern day detective series with great personable characters. Very easy to listen to. Despite her crappy views, Rowling’s way of writing is very clean and simple so might fit your brief.
I’ve been really enjoying re-reading The Hunger Games series, and the Uglies series by Scott Westerfeld
I recently listened to Daisy Jones and the Six and the audiobook was incredible. The book was written as a series of interviews, which worked great as an audiobook. There were definitely times I got a bit distracted but it didn’t impede my understanding too much. It does take a bit to absorb all the characters, so you’d probably want to listen uninterrupted for the first ~hour.
Killers of a Certain Age is another good one. Written about mature women assassins. It’s a fun thriller and an easy listen.
Final rec is any of Ken Follett’s Kingsbridge series as read by John Lee. They’re long as hell, but straightforwardly told. There’s something I just love about how John read them, too.
Expeditionary Force is a fun sci-fi saga with great narration and lots of funny bits. If you’re not paying attention and miss half a chapter it doesn’t really matter too much. Book 7.5 is a full cast epic production with a few well known sci-fi actors.
If you’re looking for something that’d you’d get at the pharmacy for $10 then Jack Reacher is pretty fun for the first 10 or so books. I find the most interesting bit being that they’re contemporary and basically released annually with the first being released in 1997. You can see the technology change and the world around Jack change. I tapped out after book 20 or so but it was an enjoyable enough experience.
