Top Ten Audiobook Narrators

I'm linking up with That Artsy Reader Girl for another Top Ten Tuesday.

This week we're sharing some of our favorite audiobook narrators! I am a big audiobook listener, so I know that narrators can make or break the book. These ten are some of the best I've experienced.

1. Cassandra Campbell
Campbell narrated two heartwarming reads I enjoyed, The Art of Hearing Heartbeats and The School of Essential Ingredients, as well as one of my favorite nonfiction books, The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks.

2. Rachel Dulude
Dulude did a stellar job narrating all four books in Becky Chambers' Wayfarer series; I was very glad after listening to the first one to discover that she narrated the following books as well!

3. Hugh Fraser
As many of you know, I've been working my way through Agatha Christie's complete works, and my absolute favorite way to experience these books is via the audiobooks narrated by Hugh Fraser. Most of the ones with female protagonists are narrated by Emilia Fox — who's also excellent — but Fraser reads the largest number, and his voice is part of what makes these books a comfort read for me. (Also it's fun to watch him play Captain Hastings in the old Poirot series!)

4. Dion Graham
Graham's name has now shown up on several excellent YA listens, including Concrete Rose and Dear Martin, and I also enjoyed his narration of one character's chapters in the full-cast Lovely War audiobook.

5. Martin Jarvis
Jarvis' narration of David Copperfield blew me away; he managed to create distinct voices for at least 30 different recurring characters in this lengthy story. I also got to experience his excellent narration of the books Family Matters and Metamorphosis.

6. Katherine Kellgren
Kellgren's narration of the first five books of the Incorrigible Children of Ashton Place series is likely one of the reasons I enjoyed it so much; she manages the perfect balance of sincere and wry that these books require. I was devastated to learn that cancer took her before she could narrate the sixth and final book of the series, as the replacement narrator did her best but couldn't fill Kellgren's shoes.

7. Robin Miles
I greatly enjoyed Miles' narration of the Binti series, as she brought to life the books' first-person Himba narrator, and she also did a great job narrating the audiobook of Hidden Figures.

8. Will Patton
Whenever I recommend someone read the Raven Cycle series (and the subsequent Dreamer trilogy), I tell them they have to listen to the audiobook to get the full effect of Will Patton's narration. I'm glad he returned to narrate the Dreamer trilogy, as it wouldn't have been the same without his voice. It was also fun to hear him pop up to narrate part of the multi-narrator audiobook of Killers of the Flower Moon.

9. Bahni Turpin
Turpin is a powerhouse audiobook narrator whom frequent audiobook listeners have probably heard at least once. When her name's on the audiobook, you know it will be excellent. Some of the titles I've heard her narrate are Everything, Everything, So You Want to Talk About Race, and The Hate U Give, and she also narrates part of The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks.

10. Julia Whelan
Whelan, like Turpin, is a name that pops up everywhere in the audiobook world. Some of the books I've listened to her read are The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue, The Last Time We Say Goodbye, and Educated.

Who are some of your favorite narrators?

Looking back:
One year ago I was reading: A Good Girl's Guide to Murder, Not Your Backup, and Genghis Khan and the Making of the Modern World
Five years ago I was reading: Magician's Gambit and America's Public Schools
Ten years ago I was reading: American Voices of World War I, Quiet, and Basic Black

Ten Changes in My Bookish Life Since 2010

I'm linking up with That Artsy Reader Girl for another Top Ten Tuesday.

In celebration of the Top Ten Tuesday linkup turning 10, we're revisiting a topic we missed the first time around (or want to redo). I skipped this one last year, and it seemed particularly appropriate for this 10-year anniversary celebration: How has my bookish life changed in the last 10 years?

1. I started using Goodreads.
I had held out for several years because I had all my books and reviews on another site and I thought it would be a pain to switch, and then that site shut down and took all my data with it! So I set myself up with a Goodreads profile and since then have rated and reviewed just about every book I've read in the last 7 years — over 800 reviews!

2. I joined several different book clubs, two of which I'm still part of.
About a year after we moved to Portland, I read the book MWF Seeking BFF, which made me think to start seeking out book clubs for a first time. I tried out several local ones through Meetup before settling on one that I've been part of ever since, and I simultaneously found an online book club that I've also been with for the past 7 years. I've been part of a few others throughout the years that have formed and then disbanded, but these two have been constants. I try to never miss a meeting and to always read the book!

3. I switched to digital formats for the vast majority of my books.
I talked about this way back in 2014, and since my son was born in 2015 my opportunities to read hard copy books have been drastically reduced, so now the percentage of books consumed digitally (ebook and audiobook) is even larger. Thank goodness for OverDrive!

4. I started tracking and intentionally diversifying the books I read.
In 2014, I made an intentional effort to diversify the race, gender, and nationality of the authors whose works I read and the protagonists of the fiction books I read. This involved creating a spreadsheet to track these details from every book listed under my Goodreads profile at the time, which I've since added to as I read more books. It's been a good exercise in keeping myself accountable so that I'm not reading just book by and about white Americans.

5. I started this book blog.
A Cocoon of Books launched in September 2014! At the time I didn't know the blog would be almost entirely Top Ten Tuesday, Quick Lit, and Best of the Bunch linkup posts, but I'm OK with that — I knew I didn't want to post my book reviews here since I was already using Goodreads for that, so it's worked out well.

6. I started setting annual goals for my reading.
As part of Top Ten Tuesday — which used to have a topic at the beginning of each year to generate ten goals for the year, but hasn't in recent years — I've set goals around my reading life every year. At times these can feel constraining, but they can also push me toward books or genres I wanted to read anyway, get outside my comfort zone, and give me permission to read things I otherwise might not make time for.

7. I read tons of new picture books.
After my son was born in 2015, I got rid of a ton of old books on PaperBackSwap and used the credits to start filling his bookshelf. In addition to classics from my own childhood, I sought out books with diverse representation, most of which have come out within the last decade. For some of the more in-demand books that have long waiting lists on PaperBackSwap, I've put them on his Christmas and birthday lists. This has given me the opportunity to read lots of great contemporary picture books that I otherwise wouldn't have had reason to pick up!

8. I made my "to read" list less of a "to do" list.
When I realized that my to-read shelf on Goodreads was stressing me out, I stopped adding books to it and made a "might-want-to-read" shelf where I started putting everything. Just recently I moved a bunch of books from that original to-read list to my might-want-to-read list, so now I feel less pressure to read some of the books I was no longer as interested in.

9. I set up a special reading area for myself.
When we moved into a larger apartment, I wanted to make an area dedicated to reading. (I think I got this idea from a book, but I don't know which one.) I got an old stuffed chair my parents were getting rid of and decorated the wall behind it with bookish items — a poster, a shelf of our Harry Potter books, and a clock that says, "Too many books, too little time." The chair has an organizer over one arm where I keep my Kindle and my bookmarks. I don't get a lot of chances to sit and read, but it still makes me happy to have this special space for my favorite activity.

10. I stopped owning books I haven't read.
After clearing out many of my old books after my son was born, I was able to get my unread stack down to a manageable amount, which I read through over the next few years. I try very hard now not to add anything to my shelf unless it's a book I've already read and loved so much that I want a physical copy to be able to reference or lend to others.

What has changed for you in the last 10 years?

Looking back:
One year ago I was reading: The Warmth of Other Suns
Five years ago I was reading: The Miracle Worker, Angle of Repose, and The Girl Who Circumnavigated Fairyland in a Ship of Her Own Making
Ten years ago I was reading: Everything Is Illuminated

Ten Books Best Experienced on Audio

I'm linking up with The Broke and the Bookish for another Top Ten Tuesday.

This week's topic is all about audiobooks! I have become a frequent consumer of audiobooks since learning how to download them from the library, and previously I shared my thoughts on what makes a book good or bad for audio. Here are ten books that I highly recommend experiencing as audiobooks if you're going to read them.

1. Angle of Repose by Wallace Stegner, narrated by Mark Bramhall
This story of a couple in the western United States in the late 1800s is narrated (in-story) by the couple's grandson, and due to his physical limitations he is dictating the story into some recording device, along with his present-day, stream-of-consciousness thoughts. This makes it a perfect fit for audio, and Bramhall perfectly captures the tone of a crotchety old man piecing together this family story while muttering comments about his meddling son and his weird caretaker.

2. The Bonesetter's Daughter by Amy Tan, narrated by the author and Joan Chen
This story is told from alternate viewpoints, those of a mother and daughter, and the two narrators allow these two characters to speak with unique voices. The fact that they are separated generationally and culturally, a key part of the story, is emphasized on audio by the mother's Chinese accent (Chen) and the daughter's American one (Tan).

3. David Copperfield by Charles Dickens, narrated by Martin Jarvis
I struggled to read this in print and finally switched over to the audio version, and I'm extremely glad I did. The characters all came to life with Jarvis' masterful narration, which provided distinct and recognizable voices for at least 30 different characters. That is especially helpful in a fairly long book where characters pop in and out of the story with long breaks between appearances.

4. Family Matters by Rohinton Mistry, narrated by Martin Jarvis
After picking up David Copperfield on audio, I realized the narrator was the same as another audiobook I'd enjoyed previously, Family Matters. This novel about a family in Mumbai shows how people are at their best and their worst with their family members, and Jarvis again brings the characters of all ages to life with his narration.

5. The Help by Kathryn Stockett, narrated by Jenna Lamia, Bahni Turpin, Octavia Spencer, and Cassandra Campbell
I was surprised to learn after reading this about the controversy of how Stockett wrote out the characters' voices (briefly: the black characters were written using heavy dialect while the white characters' Southern accents were not indicated typographically in any way). On audio, the characters' voices were all distinct in their own way, and the three primary audio narrators distinguished the three primary first-person narrators in the story. And how cool that Octavia Spencer also played Minny in the movie and won an Oscar for it!

6. Middlemarch by George Eliot, narrated by Juliet Stevenson
This is another case where I was able to keep many characters straight throughout a long story due to the excellent narration on the audiobook. This is especially important in a book where the first half is just about getting to know all the various inhabitants of the town of Middlemarch before we really get to dive into the drama of their families, relationships, and mistakes.

7. A Prayer for Owen Meany by John Irving, narrated by Joe Barrett
I picked this up on audio after seeing the Irving had handpicked Barrett to narrate this book. I honestly can't imagine getting the full impact of this book if it wasn't on audio, as a key component of the story is Owen Meany's voice. This is also another one that's quite long with a large cast of characters, and having those distinct voices is helpful for me.

8. The Remains of the Day by Kazuo Ishiguro, narrated by Simon Prebble
This story is told by a 1950s English butler reflecting over his career, which sounds kind of boring but is actually funny, sweet, and sad as we're forced to read between the lines of his very proper and professional narrative. I don't think I would have enjoyed this nearly as much if it hadn't been read to me in the butler's posh English accent by the talented Simon Prebble.

9. Room by Emma Donoghue, narrated by Michal Friedman, Ellen Archer, Robert Petkoff, and Suzanne Toren
People seem to have very strong feelings about whether hearing Jack's 5-year-old narration in a "child's" voice was better or worse than reading it, but I personally loved it. I'm glad that they chose to have other narrators for the adults in the story — it's rare to have multiple audio narrators just to break in briefly for character dialogue when there's a single first-person narrator, but I thought it worked well for this book. Some people have said that the way Jack's voice was written didn't always sound like a kid, but the woman who voiced him made everything sound natural and child-like.

10. Yes Please by Amy Poehler, narrated by the author (with cameos from others)
It's not common for audiobooks to go off-script from the written text, but Poehler made the most of the medium to include jokes, songs, and guest voices just because she could. Although the book itself didn't blow me away, it was delightful to hear it narrated by her along with as many celebrities and family members as she could drag into the recording booth.

Which books have you found particularly suited to audio?

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The Good and the Bad of Audiobooks

I love audiobooks. I've been a fan since the time when I had to feed CD after CD into my car stereo on the 6-hour trips between home and college (thankfully there are now such things as Aux plugins and MP3 CDs). I used to take advantage of them only when I was traveling, but now I always have one loaded on my iPhone for my morning jogs or to keep my mind occupied while folding laundry or unloading the dishwasher.

According to my records, I've read a total of 80 books as audiobooks, so by now I have some strong opinions on what makes a good or bad audiobook. In other words, what is there in common among the books I regret reading on audio and among those I strongly recommend others read on audio?

Unfortunately, some of these aspects are hard to determine until you've invested some time in listening to the book, but some you can determine by listening to samples before borrowing or buying, by reading the book summary, or by checking the narrator(s) listed.

The Good: Great reasons to pick up an audiobook

1. Multiple narrators
If a book has different characters narrate different chapters in first person, I love when different people do the voices. It helps a lot with getting into the mindset of that particular character and building mental continuity between their sections. Sometimes in a hard copy book like this I find myself getting confused because I've forgotten which character is narrating, which doesn't happen when there are literally different people talking. I also like multiple narrators when the different characters are different genders or from different countries/regions.

The only book in this category I didn't particularly like on audio was Eleanor & Park; I'm not sure if it's because it sometimes rapidly flipped back and forth between the narrators or because much of the book was dialogue between the two characters and they had each actor imitate the other's voice rather than just inserting them into the audio.

2. Nonfiction
It's frustrating when the narrator of a novel sounds good from a sample but it turns out they don't provide any distinction between character voices, particularly if the book doesn't use many speech tags to clarify. You don't typically have to worry about this in nonfiction, though. I've gotten through some great nonfiction reads by having them read to me, including the lengthy The Emperor of All Maladies. A good narrator can make an otherwise dry or complex explanation come alive with the proper emphasis and pausing, just like a good teacher.

3. Good accents
If a character has an accent, that's not always conveyed in writing, but can be brought out through narration. Assuming the narrator is good at accents or has a native accent, I love getting that added aspect from the audiobook. This added to The Bonesetter's Daughter, which had two narrators, one of whom voiced a Chinese character who spoke with an accent, in contrast to her American-accented daughter. This can even work in nonfiction books; I've listened to some great books where the narrator adopts a light (not obnoxious) Scottish, Australian, or Indian accent when quoting a scholar from that country.

The Mixed: Depends heavily on the particular book

1. Authors as narrators
If an author is a good narrator, it can be enjoyable to hear the book read exactly as they envisioned it when they were writing it. If they're an actor or comedian, they're usually great. But I'm generally cautious when I see "read by the author"; just because someone can write, doesn't mean they can narrate well. I've found that amateurish narrators tend toward overemphasis and awkward phrasing, which can be wearing to listen to over many hours.

2. Bonus material
Some audiobooks have a bonus interview with the author at the end, which can be great if the interviewer is good and the author is as articulate off the cuff as they are in writing, but that's not always the case. Sometimes it's like at the end of A Walk to Remember, when they put in this bonus music video of Mandy Moore dancing around scantily clad, which completely ruined the film's sweet ending after the illusion during the entire movie that she was a terminally ill conservative Christian. Bonus material can be cool or it can end the whole audiobook experience on a sour note. Same goes for downloadable bonus material, which can be great (like including visual elements of the book you would otherwise miss — see below) or terrible (like providing a "book jacket" summary that includes spoilers).

The Bad: Better to read it in hard copy if you can

1. Jumps in time
Maybe this is just me, but I have a hard enough time keeping things straight when a hard copy book jumps around in time and I have to keep flipping back to the beginning of the chapter to remember which year we're in. If the date is read once at the beginning of a chapter and I just have to remember it while listening to that chapter, forget it — I'm lost. And if there are cool parts where certain scenes are relived from multiple perspectives? There's no easy way in an audiobook to flip back to the previous time that scene was shared to compare. I loved The Time Traveler's Wife, but I wish I hadn't listened to it as an audiobook (despite liking the two different narrators) — I had to rewind to the beginning of chapters many times to keep it all straight.

2. Too many characters
Another reason I flip backwards in books: when a character pops up after a long lag and I can't remember who they are. This can be helped somewhat if they have a distinct voice on the audiobook, but more often than not I get muddled when I can't go back and look up a character (love the search on Kindle for this). Even a good narrator will have a hard time making 20 different characters sound sharply distinct from one another, particularly ones of the same gender and accent.

3. Books with visual elements
I made the mistake of listening to An Abundance of Katherines (in which mathematical graphs feature a large role) and The Lost Symbol (which should have been obvious), rather than reading them in hard copy. Any book that includes drawings, charts, or other visual elements directly referenced by the text is less than ideal as an audiobook.

Do you listen to audiobooks? What would you add to these lists?

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Digitizing My Reading

If you look at the formats in which I've read books over time, you'll notice some drastic changes...

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("Null" indicates books I read before I started recording my reading in 2006.)

There are actual three major shifts in my reading formats, which could be labeled "Jessica starts getting her books from the library" (more hardcover), "Jessica discovers OverDrive at her local library" (more audiobooks), and "Jessica buys a Kindle" (more ebooks). (There's a little blip of couple of ebooks I read in 2010 on my iPod Touch using the iBooks app, but that was not an ideal format.)

This graph shows what percentage of books I read each year were in each of these formats. From this, you might be tempted to conclude that, in recent years, I've largely replaced hard copy books with digital books. But in reality, I've only converted some of my hard copy reading to digital. It's more accurate to say that having access to digital formats has caused my total reading to skyrocket:

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I seek out books first on OverDrive now because it's quick and easy to download to my Kindle, and less quick but still easy to download audiobooks to iTunes (and WAY faster than when I used to import audio CDs in order to load them on my iPod). Books get automatically returned when they expire. I still make trips to the library when books aren't available digitally or I don't want to read them in that format, though I try to consolidate my trips so that when I drop off a book that's due or pick up one on hold, I pick up another one that's only available in hard copy.

I bought a Kindle right before we moved cross-country, and I was a reluctant ebook user at first, particularly when I discovered that I couldn't lend out the vast majority of books on Kindle. Once I realized that our new library had OverDrive, though, and it offered books in Kindle format, I started borrowing like a fiend and never looked back.

I'll be the first to admit that not all books are ideally read in a digital format. My e-reader is a black-and-white Kindle Touch, so anything that has pictures goes on my hard-copy-only list. I preview narrators before downloading an audiobook, and I'll sometimes stop and return it if I end up not liking the narration.

But I've found that many, many books are just as easily enjoyed digitally as in hard copy, and some even more so. I tend to appreciate classic literature much more when it's read aloud to me (Frankenstein was a recent example of this). And I love the Kindle feature that lets me touch and hold a word to get a definition; I'm way too lazy most of the time to look up a word I don't know in a hard copy book. (Sometimes I catch myself wanting to press down on the word on the paper!) It was also way easier to tackle War and Peace and Roots as audiobooks than it was to tackle A Suitable Boy in paperback.

I don't think that digital reading will ever fully replace my hard-copy reading, but I'm definitely not in the "but that book smell! but I like to hold it in my hand!" camp anymore.

How do you feel about digital books, whether ebooks and audiobooks? Have you changed the format you read most often over time?