Welcome to the end of the year! You’ve made it… basically. There is really only one more day. For me, the past week has been filled with good food (I’m going to take credit for a lot of the baking), good company (I’m hilarious… and I love my family), and a lot of travel (in short, travel increases 23% during Christmas and the New Year). I do a lot of driving during the holidays, and my drives are normally around five hours long (on a good day) but can go as long as… I think 9 hours was the longest on a really bad day. That’s a long time to be alone in a car… or a long time to be with some family, too. I’ve started to download audio books to keep me company, and I’ve found that downloading can be easier than using books on CD, because I never have to switch to another CD and be distracted while driving. Audio books can be awesome, and it helps me start to dwindle my (200 and counting) TBR pile, but they can also be hard to listen to depending on the narrator. The following books I’ve enjoyed because of the story and the plot, but also because I can tolerate the narrator*.
Bone Gap by Laura Ruby is a great fantasy/magical realism/mystery/young adult book. The story follows a young man who knows about gaps in the town that people can fall through. He believes a person who is important to him, Roza, has been kidnapped and taken through one of the gaps. The question is, can he prove this to a town that doesn’t believe, and can he find Roza before something worse happens to her? This was a book that I really looked forward to reading, and I was happy with the narration overall for the audio book. They did a good job of really giving the different characters voices.
Say What You Will by Cammie McGovern is a book about a boy who is struggling with OCD, and even admitting and figuring out what OCD is and entails, and a girl who has cerebral palsy. The book deals with a variety of issues that can be hard to read about, but I found overall that the book was good to listen to.
There are so many audio books out there and so many options. Some will be good and some will be bad, but if you find yourself traveling during the holiday season, it may be worth taking something to listen to.
-Abbey
*Full disclosure, not everyone will like the same type of narrator. I get really frustrated listening to narrators that are all breathy and whispery (it’s a word… I think), you know the type I mean. Some people may enjoy that type of narrator, and that’s awesome, but if you try an audio book and don’t like it at first, try and figure out if it’s the book or the narrator, and try other narrators before you dismiss audio books completely.
Eleventh Stack 
I totally agree with the idea that the narrator can make or break an audiobook. I think that the quality of the narration has risen in the last few years. If you listen to most audiobooks from the books on tape era, you wonder how they hired the readers. We they just someone they knew or what. The current crop are true professional readers.
I’ve found that if a book contains quite a few odd place or character names, I often struggle keeping everything straight if I’m reading a book, but if someone else is pronouncing everything for me, my interest in the book rises. I am able to just get into the story and not worry about the correct pronunciation.
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I’m obsessed with audio books! I spend way too much money each month on Audible :)
Amanda
AnchoredtoSunshine.com
I totally agree with the whole “everyone likes different narrators” thing. I’m really picky with the narrator’s voice because they can sometimes determine whether I like (or don’t like) a book. Thanks for the great post Abbey!
Aha! I have needed something like this – I have literally never listened to an audiobook in my life, but am looking to get into them this year, as I am planning on doing a lot of walking, and this would be a good thing to keep me entertained! Bone Gap sounds really good – thanks for the recommendation!
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