Audiobooks- One for the Ear Readers

[Mr_Danger]

Finished my chronological listen through of the Lonesome Dove series today starting at Deadman’s Walk and ending at Streets of Laredo. Lonesome Dove is obviously the standout and it’s a straight up masterpiece I think. I’m still not sure how I feel about Streets of Laredo, it suffers greatly off the events of Lonesome Dove but more than that it feels like an extended fuck off epilogue and some of the things in it are hard to get your head around. 

Spoiler

By the end of the book I sort of buy in to the Lorena and Pea Eye thing but only just.  Killing Newt off ‘off screen’ was a real brow raiser. Without Gus there’s no heart and Newt could have went some way to providing that. Call without Gus is just a bummer. Joey Garza is the most interesting thing in the book by some distance.

Deadman’s Walk is fine enough and I really enjoyed Comanche Moon. I’ve seen there’s a dramatisation of Comanche Moon with Val Kilmer playing Inish Scull and I might have to brave it at some point. 
 

Lonesome Dove though, straight up there. Makes me wish there was a cattle driving sim mode of Red Dead where I could move cows across the map and fight off bandits. I’m halfway through the 80’s tv series of it and that’s holding up really well too, baring the Blue Duck actor ‘redding’ up.  I want to see the Coen Brothers take it on with Josh Brolin and Woody Harrelson as Call and Gus.

It’s gotta be said though, Woodrow Call is a cunt.

[Onyx2]

On 8/16/2022 at 11:12 AM, Chest Rockwell said:

Listening to Small Gods at the minute. First Pratchett one I've picked up. Really enjoying it! Scouse accent for Om is inspired. I don't particularly like the way the footnotes have been executed though. The pause is too long and kinda takes you out of it.

This is one that I've never read the book of, so will be interesting to see how I feel when I listen to one I already know.

Keen to hear your thoughts, @Onyx2

I would like to hear them very much but where the bloody hell are they? I've just spent 10 minutes googling and I'll I've discovered is that Bill Nighy is doing them, over and over again. 

[Chest Rockwell]

1 hour ago, Onyx2 said:

I would like to hear them very much but where the bloody hell are they? I've just spent 10 minutes googling and I'll I've discovered is that Bill Nighy is doing them, over and over again. 

Listen to Small Gods by Terry Pratchett on Audible. https://www.audible.co.uk/pd/B09LZ4LZ1X?source_code=ASSOR150021921000V

[Mr_Danger]

I’m finishing up Stephen King’s Fairy Tale and I think it’s mostly shite. The entire thing is told in a ‘You’re probably wondering how I got here…’ tone and the protagonist is the least realistic teenager ever. Nobody talks like him. It gets pretty good in places and there’s a part that resembles a bit of Dark Souls but it’s pretty brief. I find a lot of latter year King’s stuff reads like King fanfic and this is a bit like that. I think it’s been well received though and if the main characters’ tone and language don’t grate on you you’ll get a lot more out of it than I did.

Only just seen that Sandman Vol.3 is out so I’ll be cleansing my ears with that next, King can fuck off for a bit.

Edited October 9, 2022 by Mr_Danger

[Onyx2]

21 minutes ago, Chest Rockwell said:

Listen to Small Gods by Terry Pratchett on Audible. https://www.audible.co.uk/pd/B09LZ4LZ1X?source_code=ASSOR150021921000V

Thanks. Fucking Audible though! Off to the High Seas. 

[Chest Rockwell]

Ah yeah. I am pretty sure they're audible exclusive. So that explains why you've not found them anywhere else!

Edited October 9, 2022 by Chest Rockwell

[Chest Rockwell]

On 10/9/2022 at 9:48 PM, Mr_Danger said:

Only just seen that Sandman Vol.3 is out so I’ll be cleansing my ears with that next, King can fuck off for a bit.

Really enjoying this. Vol 2 was enjoyable but a bit all over the place, Vol 3 really benefits from having a solid arc tying it all together. I'm about halfway through though, so maybe it all goes to shit and I just haven't got there yet ??

[Mr_Danger]

Yeah Vol 2 missed that thread tying it all together that the stories in Vol 1 were built on. It just kind of ended out of nowhere too. I imagine the next series of the tv show will vary quite a bit from it.

[Chris B]

4 hours ago, Chest Rockwell said:

Really enjoying this. Vol 2 was enjoyable but a bit all over the place, Vol 3 really benefits from having a solid arc tying it all together. I'm about halfway through though, so maybe it all goes to shit and I just haven't got there yet ??

Worth bearing in mind that these are adaptations of a monthly comic book, which were collected into six-issue trade paperbacks. As Gaiman went on, he moved more towards writing for the trades - but he was still keeping in mind that it was a monthly comic. So, you tend to have a middle part of a longer story that's a sidebar (like the Deadboy Detectives), and he also roughly alternated 'single story over six issues' and 'six individual stories'.

There wasn't really an approach like this before in comics, really. Towards the end of his run, The Kindly Ones was a massive story, which was so clearly written to be read as one piece rather than monthly that it actually pissed some people off at the time. But it was also something of a gamechanger in terms of how comics and trade collections coexisted.

[Chris B]

Garth Marenghi's new novel, Terrortome, is out now on audiobook, read by Marenghi. About to start reading it, but in the first page alone, he claims to have foretold the pandemic (but didn't have a publishing deal at the time) and makes the point that podcasts aren't an art form.

[Keith Houchen]

2 hours ago, Chris B said:

Garth Marenghi's new novel, Terrortome, is out now on audiobook, read by Marenghi. About to start reading it, but in the first page alone, he claims to have foretold the pandemic (but didn't have a publishing deal at the time) and makes the point that podcasts aren't an art form.

I see he is doing a book tour (book not included) in support of it. No idea what kind of format it would take but it would be interesting nonetheless. 

[Onyx2]

Spotify have added Audiobooks to their main interface now. Thank fuck for that. It does have the new Pratchetts!

But you have to pay for the damn things!

[Jazzy G]

I've been listening to My Son's Not Rainman by John Williams (not that one). It's about his experiences with his Autistic son "the boy". It's funny, heartbreaking, such a great book. You can hear the love he has for the boy in his reading of it. Well recommended. 

[Mr_Danger]

The Corner by David Simon and Ed Burns. I think it was maybe @SuperBacon that I saw talk about this on here and it’s incredible. The only downside is that I couldn’t believe it as a piece of non fiction because of how in depth and descriptive it is and assumed it must have been heavily embellished with creative license. Then he explains the painstaking lengths they went to to write the book in the epilogue. I’ve got Homicide- A Year on the Killing Streets to hammer through next. Already started rewatching The Wire. 

[SuperBacon]

2 minutes ago, Mr_Danger said:

I’ve got Homicide- A Year on the Killing Streets to hammer through next

It was actually this one I was banging on about. An incredible work. You're in for a treat.