From the None issue of Runner's World
Choice Words - 10 titles you should hear
You're in for a treat, but be careful. A clunker, even free from your library, is still a waste of time. Fear not. Each year brings a wider range, more talented voices, and better ways to shop. The larger providers are on the Web and now give free audio samples. Also quite affordable are the mail-order cassettes and CDs that can be rented from Recorded Books, Blackstone Audio, and Books on Tape, which have fine catalogs. Audible.com will download books, newspapers, and even recent speeches, easily loaded into MP3 players. (Prices vary wildly.) Books that have won Audiofile magazine's coveted Earphones Award are often excellent.
Seabiscuit, by Laura Hillenbrand (13.75 hours). History as a thriller. Audible.com has the download. Recorded Books cassette or CD.
Eye of The Needle, by Ken Follett (11.25 hours). Read stirringly by Graeme Malcom for Recorded Books.
In case you think the thriller is a recent invention, try King Solomon's Mines, by H. Rider Haggard (7.5 hours) from Blackstone Audio, originally published in 1885.
John Buchan's Thirty-Nine Steps (four hours), also from Blackstone Audio, will have you scampering across the countryside with the main character, despite the antiquated setting and worldview.
Davina Porter's rendering of John Prebble's Culloden (11.5 hours) for Recorded Books is astonishing both in the passion of the narrative and in the intricacy of historical detail in this tragic drama.
Short Stories of William Somerset Maugham. Volume I (three hours) is performed exquisitely by Charlton Griffin and available from Audio Connoisseur or at audible.com.
Lolita, by Vladimir Nabokov (12 hours). Read by Jeremy Irons. At Books on Tape or for sale at Amazon.com
Brideshead Revisited, by Evelyn Waugh, at Recorded Books (12 hours), also read by Irons. Both Irons's readings are masterpieces.
Great Expectations, by Charles Dickens (16 hours). An excellent reading by Frank Muller is available at audible.com.
While I've almost worn out my tapes of The Nation's Favorite Poems and The Nation's Favorite Comic Poems, both from Amazon UK, my favorite poetry audio is The Best Cigarette, by former Poet Laureate Billy Collins. Dare you not to laugh.
