Help needed! Audio books & app/platform suggestions for long(ish) car journeys

[Fillybuster]

One way and another, I’ve had a fairly difficult 6 months. Getting back to normal now, but somehow I’ve fallen into a total reading rut after being a lifelong bookworm. I just cannot get myself back into it, and I don’t know why.

Hopefully, that will pass, but in the meantime I’ve started a new job and am commuting by car rather than tube for the first time in years.

So that gives me about 6-8 hours a week driving time when I could be listening to someone read to me. Not as good as reading to myself, but definitely an improvement over the Times crossword and too much time on MN.

Please tell me about the best audio book apps….what works, what’s worth spending money on, what can I play in the car if that matters? And land your
best listening recs on me to: what’s so good that I’ll be glued to it even when I’m parked outside the house or late for a meeting?

My tastes: 40 plus years of mostly science fiction, classic fiction, modern novels, classics (both literally and in terms of English literature), a little bit of old fashioned whodunnits, a good wallop of steampunk, a smattering of magical realism and a chunk of anything goes as long as it’s good.

Have you tried borrowbox? It's free if you have a library card.

Never heard of it - thank you!

Borrowbox is fab - lots of choice, but you sometimes have to go on a waiting list for popular books as only a certain number of loans happen at once. I have the app on my phone which connects to the car via Bluetooth.

Check out your local library - mine uses the Libby app and has audiobooks you can borrow.

If you already have Spotify, there are audiobooks on there, and also on BBC Sounds.

Finally Audible is the Amazon app for audiobooks and has pretty much everything, you need to pay for it though.

I’ve got a library card (heck, I even know where it is!), although haven’t used it in years. Do I need to go in person to sign up for access to these apps?

Hadnt even considered Spotify! That’s a great shout - thank you

You might need a library pin as well as your card number. I got mine from the library and then used it to set up BorrowBox at home. I don’t know whether you can get a pin online.

BorrowBox is excellent & all free

Spotify has a monthly time limit of 15 hours on its audiobooks

if if you like SciFi I have to recommend Project Hail Mary by Andy Weir. It was a brilliant audiobook

Sounds like I’ll need to get a bit organised before I can do the borrow box option, but I’ll look into it.

And thanks for the advice - I had no idea about any of these!

Loved Hail Mary, possibly even better than the Martian! But arrrgh….15 hours is not good news….

I use Audible a lot, I let my credits accrue, have steadily been acquiring the most recent crop of Pratchett audio books by Penguin and they are very good, I find them excellent for car journeys as I know the general plot but they are still very engaging. Audible do also have podcasts on their set up which you gain access to if you have a subscription.

@Fillybuster Over Spotify I would recommend getting an Audible account with a set number of credits, the catalogue is huge and there are lots included with membership . There’s a HG Wells compendium on there with David Tennant and Hugh Bonneville narrating and I’d also recommend John Wyndham particularly The Chrysalids. I think all his are free to Audible members ! Also classics read by Celebs. Jake Gyllenhaal doing Gatsby, Elijah Wood doing Tom Sawyer etc etc

If you like SF, I highly recommend the Bobiverse books - read about them though to see if they're your thing or not. Hard SF but lots of references to make it fun, sort of Red Dwarf mixed with Star Trek.

John Scalzi has some good free ones in the Audible Plus library.

Oh and Parable of the Sower is in there too which is amazing. (Octavia E Butler, published in the 90s, black SF writer ahead of her time).

BBC Sounds is also great - podcasts, serialisations of books, radio plays etc as well as replay Radio shows and things like The Piano room. The Post Office scandal series is brilliant

Once again, thank you for the suggestions - this is really helpful.

A (probably bad) combination of “I can’t get to my local library due to a total lack of overlap between their opening hours and my work / life commitments” with the fact I already have an Amazon Prime account which I think means I can access free trial means that I’m leaning towards Audible as a first option. What is the credits thing all about?

@Defiantlynot41 you’re so right about Radio 4 - amazing content! Radio 4 plays & drama have been my dog walking go-to for years, and I space my listening through the week. Sadly, that means I’ve already worked my way through most of the things I really want to hear!

@BasicBrumble thanks for the suggestions. I read Parable of the Sower last year and couldn’t decide whether I liked it; in retrospect I read it in fairly close proximity to Lionel Shrivers The Mandibles, and something else that was cross-country mission based, so maybe it was a thematic overload? Never heard of Bobiverse, so will def investigate those. And John Scalzi is a win.

@EineReiseDurchDieZeit David Tennant, Hugh Bonneville and HG Wells??? Be still my beating heart! Definitely going on the list. No such thing as too much Wells or Tennant in my book (plus a bit of Hugh too, what’s not to like?!)

And @Pashazade I love the Pratchett suggestion. That’s a great idea for those days when I need a lift. Early mornings in London traffic mean there’s quite a few of those….

@Fillybuster your monthly sub for Audible gives you one credit, which allows you to buy one audio recording. You can also just spend money through Amazin. Often the credit is much better value, so I think the sub costs £9.99 per month but to buy an actual Pratchett audio book would be £12.99 or Harry Potter would be £17.99. Oh and go for Small Gods, Om is a very annoyed Scouser voiced by Andy Serkis and it’s fabulous.

Small Gods is on sale today only! Thinking of buying even though I already have the book and my family won't like it...

I’ve signed up for a 99p/ month 3 month trial on Audible. Now…..how best to invest my solitary credit?

Best investment is something long. I’m not a great physical book reader any more but 60 hours of War & Peace, 32 hours of The Goldfinch and 27 hours of Ulysses were all good value for a Credit. Also the Wolf Hall books. Worth listening to the samples as some readers are definitely better than others.

Project Hail Mary was so good as an audiobook. Here's some other long enjoyable listens to get value from your credit (she said, wincing as my last credit went on 15 mins of Zog for DD)
The Ember Blade - Chris Wooding
Pillars of the Earth - Ken Follett
Empire of the Vampire - Jay Kristoff
Koli series - M R Carey
Peter F Hamilton
Brandon Sanderson (just finished Yumi and the nightmare painter)
The Will of the Many - James Islington
An S J Parris or C J Sanson

If you like epic sci I highly recommend Children of Time by Adrian Tchaikovsky

A couple of good modern novels that are well narrated:
The Dutch House (read by Tom Hanks)
The Bee Sting

I love getting through classics this way as well, not sure if I ever would have read Middlemarch in book form but loved it in audio form!

Ooooh, these are such good suggestions! For the first time in ages I’m feeling a bit more excited about new books. Might even end up just going back to plain old reading too!

I’m trying to strike a balance between bang (or hours) for my single buck/credit @MMAMPWGHAP and enough self awareness to recognise I probably won’t fancy War and Peace or Ulysses at 6.30am if I haven’t got to them already after a lifetime of voracious reading. And they’ve both been on my bookshelves for a long time.

I loved Wolf Hall and Bring Up the Bodies, and also Children of Time @almondpesto - but I think I want something new instead of revisiting old reads. Aaagh! I’ll check out the other 2 fiction suggestions though.

In the meantime I started another Tchaikovsky book this morning, which was free on plus, City of Last Chances, which I didn’t particularly fancy on kindle when Dh bought it last year but was very good company in bad traffic today.

@Gsyllama thanks for the list. Even more great suggestions! How is the Carey series?

My favourite audiobooks:

Michael Maloney reading Aldous Huxley's Chrome Yellow
Michael Maloney reading Evelyn Waugh's Decline and Fall
Brian Blessed reading his own autobiography (hilarious)
Stephen Fry reading P. G. Wodehouse
Stephen Fry reading Sherlock Holmes

Simon Callow is a brilliant reader as well.

Thanks @Dappy777 🙏 Oddly, it hasn’t occurred to me to think much about who was doing the narration until your post…..doh! Love the idea of Fry reading Wodehouse (although suspect it might get a bit hammy?. I have just found his Holmes on the plus catalogue, so that’s definitely a win.

I think I want something properly “new” rather than a re-read for my first actual purchase…..hmmmm…..