I must’ve missed the podcast suggestion thread, was there no love for the Giant Bombcast? I never would’ve known about meh if not for them mentioning it almost 2 years ago.
Audio books every day during my work commute. I started when I became frustrated with talk radio, and discovered I really enjoy them. As an added bonus, I can talk about the books I’ve “read” and people think I’m all intellectual and shit.
@ruouttaurmind I used to do audio books, then got into radio plays thanks to Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. It’s like the best audio books, with multiple voice actors and sound effects.
The Undead series by RR Haywood (think The Walking Dead in the UK; Audible offers a free 1 hour primer to get you hooked… try it out and see if you like it)
The Gone-Away World by Nick Harkaway (the narrator took some getting used to, but after an hour or so I began to appreciate his craft).
Close runner-ups include White Fang by Jack London (unlike much older fiction, this one stands the test of time quite well), The Dead Republic by Roddy Doyle, The Ghosts of Belfast by Stuart Neville… ok, let’s face it… I liked nearly everything I’ve listened to in the last year. Either I’m very selective about what I choose to listen to… or more likely I’m just easy. LOL!
I visit Audible every day and check the Daily Deal. I’ve managed to buy several winners “on sale” for $3 or $4. Three bucks for 15 or 20 hours of entertainment is not a bad investment in my opine.
@sammydog01 Oh, shoot, I nearly forgot to mention The Long, Dark Tea-Time of the Soul by Douglas Adams (yes, Hitchiker’s Guide Douglas Adams). It’s an awesome, whimsical story about mythical Gods of the past and how they’re being put out to pasture by today’s jaded society. For example Odin is in an old folks home, Thor is addicted to Coke (the drink, not the drug)… it’s a short six and a half hours, but possibly has been my favorite listen so far.
@ruouttaurmind Darn, my library doesn’t have any Douglas Adams on audiobook. I have read them all but wouldn’t mind listening to them. Maybe I need to get an Audible subscription. I’ll check out the others on your list. So far the daily deals haven’t been that great but I’ll keep checking.
@sammydog01 Dredging up this old thread to make sure you’re aware of the Audible “Anniversary Sale”. 200 titles for $4 or less. I just picked up 8 new titles for $27 including tax.
@ruouttaurmind Thanks! When I first went through the list I had a cart of fifty dollars but got it down to twenty- too much good stuff there. I bought the Douglas Adams book.
@simplersimon
I’ve heard that the radio play versions of Douglas Adams stuff are the original formats of his work. The print versions and single-narrator audio versions, at least of the early works, are adaptations I think?
@f00l Exactly. I hunted them down finally after the mediocre movie. The radio plays are definitely some of his finest work. A little rough in places, but you get to see a little more how he developed the world. I can’t recommend them enough.
@simplersimon
Before those shows came over here I worked at a place w a Brit who was a huge fan and a gifted mimic. He used to get his London friends to tape the Adams shows and send him the tapes. He would memorize them and practice, then he would come in and “perform” them for the office - while writing code!!!
Way past awesome. He was good, too. Could do all sorts of voices.
@ruouttaurmind My favorite audiobooks are the Stephen King books he read himself. He has a very relaxed, warm tone, and there’s something special about the words being his own. The emphasis and inflection are canon, not interpretive. I love having Uncle Stevie tell me a scary story.
@moondrake Although Stephen King writes a genre that’s not really in my general area of interest, I have enjoyed some of the movies and miniseries made from his stories. I’ll have to keep an eye out for narrations by him. Thanks for the tip!
@InnocuousFarmer “Long dark tea time” certainly has been among my favorite listens. Unfortunately Audible doesn’t offer an unabridged version of Holistic Detective Agency. There’s a dramatized version, and an abridged version (though that one is actually read by Douglas Adams).
BBC America recently started a new series based on the Dirk Gently character. I’ve only watched the first episode, but it was great fun.
I live 7 miles from work and don’t always turn on the radio before I get there, but I do usually listen to music the whole way to practice on Sundays and that’s an hour each way
We just got home from a Florida - Alabama - Tennessee - Kentucky - Ohio (Ugh!) - Kentucky - Tennessee - Mississippi - Alabama - Florida see the kids and grandkids tour. (went to the top of the pyramid in Memphis) Listened to The Fifth Wave and The Infinite Sea, the first and second books in the trilogy, on audio books. Audio books seem to make the trips to go faster.
BTW: If anyone saw a white Prius C pulling a white trailer (you read it right; a Prius pulling a trailer) that was me! And we still averaged 44.8 MPG during the trip.
Now that I can pull my playlists via the external hd attached to my NEW Netgear router and send them to the Roku 2, which has a connection to my tuner/receiver here in the family room, I’m rocking out. Once again!
I definitely didn’t read this one right, and I likely voted myself short. I can’t really handle podcast or audiobooks, my brain handles the written word much better than the spoken. I listen to music on the train at times, but often I just sleep. I guess I listen to a few hours of radio now that it’s bases and balls season.
@brhfl
Listening to audiobooks and podcasts takes s bit of practice before it gets really good. At first -decades ago - thought it was a poor substitute for reading. But there were so many hits were I could listen but I couldn’t read, so I kept at it. And I kinda learned whatever attention adjustments I needed to learn, and it got way way better. Sometimes you get a narrator do good that the narrated version might even improve on a text masterpiece.
It’s key to use a player that lets you adjust narrative speed. I use 1.25 or 1.5 usually.as most audiobooks are recorded at a pace slightly slower than normal speech.
Also jet that your player handles 15 sec or 30 sec jump back or jump forward well and easily, with Bluetooth controls.
As for the near-constant interruptions of life - at first that drove me nuts. Then I got used to that also, and no so bad. I mean, if my choices were either audiobook w interruptions risk, or no audiobook at a given time, that’s an easy one. Or if my choices are to not have the time to sit and read, and so not encounter a book, vs not be able to read it, but can work in listening to it, that’s also an easy choice.
Now audiobooks are one of the most cherished features of my life.
For people looking for some of the other audiobooks and podcasts that have been discussed or recommended here:
Here is a product announce page w podcasts lists from @JasonToon
(Click on the product image to see @JasonToon’s recommends on the original product page)
(In case you’re trying to remember what you read about, got intrigued by, then forgot.)
Best not to awaken the old threads by posting in them, the cranky people will all wake up too. Just post new stuff here.
…
Some favs:
A lot of deep knowledge is not required, but knowing at least the headlines of the era would help with the following:
If someone wants something long that’s caught somewhere between thriller and masterpiece; can tolerate Britspeak; knows who Kim Philby was; understands a bit of the the Cold War atmosphere from 1970 thru detente (before the Wall came down); knows a little of SE Asia land wars of the 1950’s-1970’s; understands the tensions between Russia and China before and after the Cutural Revolution; understands a bit of the threat and risk created by Nixon’s troubles and resignation; understands how competent intelligence professionals can be stuck in the past; or can be pushed around by political fashions from above; knows how political operators and bureaucrats gain and cede turf control: knows a little of British and French colonial history and what sort of soft access comes with that history; understands a bit of the necessary bureaucracy of intelligence and the constant power play between govt agencies:
…
In order, by John Le Carre, his masterful trilogy, The Quest For Karla collection:
Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy 1974
The Honourable Schoolboy 1977
Smiley’s People 1979
And a kind of soft coda, also by JLC
The Secret Pilgrim 1990
…
Unabridged only. The narrator, Muchael Jayston, gets it. Use Wikipedia and Goigle Maps to get through the confusion.
Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy was recently filmed. Tho the film is good in its own right, it is barely about the book, and does not convey the book’s substance, going instead in another, still worthy direction. As tho the director took most of the plot without actually reading the book, it feels a bit like clothes that fit someone else. The director got the plot, sorta, but completely missed the book. Which is a bit odd.
Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy and Smiley’s People have been made into masterful miniseries by the BBC, with Alec Guinness at the center. Forget the lack of HD. If you want a vid version, it’s here. These are prob as good as it gets for filmed versions. But they’re not quite there, even with Guinness. Because Le Carre leaves it all on the page, in narrative language, in storytelling words, and if you want it, that’s where you start.
The Honourable Schoolboy was skipped for filming by the BBC, because at that time the BBC couldn’t afford to stage a Brit, European, US, and 6 country SE Asian shoot, with three of the Asian counties being, as settings, total war zones.
…
These books were from a era before the total takeover by tech in espionage - written when tech meant microdots and tunnels and mics and pinholes in books and low res tiny cameras using film. The espionage world has traveled toward the NSA now. All tech and code and way too much info you can’t sift. But there are things you can learn only from human intelligence. And that cost is still payable in lives lived, almost in full, in lies. The in-place spy is always playing a game, with self, with targets, with local people, with innocents, with masters and handlers, just to get thru a day. After years of it, who or what, exactly, has the loyalty of one’s soul?
If you want to know what it means to be a spy in the field, esp in a hostile setting, or how the Soviets handled things way back when: it’s here, and not pretty. Le Carre was a spy, before he got published, before his govt career and those of so many others were destroyed by Kim Philby and the Cambridge Five.
Le Carre is this dead-on: he invented a lot of jargon for his books: tradecraft, pavement artists, lamplighters, coat-trailing, angels, janitors, ferrets, scalphunters, wranglers, mothers… In an ultimate tribute to the accuracy of his literary world-view, his invented jargon was actually adopted by the trade itself, in much of the English-speaking world. Because it was right.
Last chance for Audible’s Daily Deals bestsellers audiobook sale, if you are interested. A lot of worthy stuff is included. Ends tonite 11:59PM Pacific Time.
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Garrison Keillor retired as host of A Prairie Home Companion in July 2016. Chris Thile, longtime performer on the show, is taking over as host. I don’t think he’s started yet. I have not listened for some years, but I can’t imagine that anyone other than Keillor can handle the News Ftom Lake Wobegon segment.
The entire show has never been available for purchase or rental. According to Wikipedia, the musical licensing is so complex (both performers and songs), that most archived shows are only available streamed - thru Real Audio streaming. Oh My. That Hurts.
I don’t even know if the shows can be streamed on iOS or Android. Need to experiment.
…
Live shows are streamed here: http://prairiehome.publicradio.org/netcast/
Or thru your public radio app
These do not require real audio.
They run live at 5pm CT for 2 hours. The Woebegon story segment is usually midway thru the second hour, and lasts say 15-25 minutes.
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Some show archives used to be at archive.org but were removed after a copyright claim was sent by Minnesota Public Radio, upon insistence by music rights holders (the big music companies most likely.)
But what if you want the live outdoor Los Angeles A Prairie Home Companion with Marni Nixon as featured guest? What if you must hear “The Ghostest With The Mostest”
(Because she did the film singing vocals for The King And I, West Side Story, and My Fair Lady (excepting parts of Just You Wait). And appeared on-screen singing in The Sound Of Music as a nun.)
Thanks to @chienfou
Who hunted this down in between doing amazing things to his house:
…
The News From Lake Wobegon segment is not so tangled in rights issues.
A podcast feed is here: http://prairiehome.org/listen/podcast/
I don’t know if very old segments from the 1970’s and onward can be retrieved from the podcast.
Audible seems to acquire rights to a given segment upon 1st broadcast or recent re-broadcast. The weekly availability started in Jan 2010 and continued thru the most recent show Sept 10, 2016. The show may currently be in re-runs until the new host takes over. Not sure when Mr Thile does his first show on his own.
I don’t know if previously inavailable Woebegon segments will be added to the audible collection over time. Audible does have a very few segments broadcast from 2007-2009.
Some of these are likely old stories from earlier shows, but I don’t know for certain.
Will the 1970’s 80’s 90’s 00’s Woebegon stuff show up on audible later? Dunno. Have not yet explored all these sites or read their FAQs.
…
Need a great Woebegon tale? A classic for the ages? Or just need a little help with your septic tank? Or with a rural Homecoming at the HS? Broadcast Sept 1984.
(The vid is just a still, it’s the audio that matters.)
YouTube appears to have nearly endless results for News From Lake Woebegon. Perhaps a lot of the older stories are there. And free. And works fine on phone.
…
I can’t find Marni Nixon-Prairie Home performances on YouTube tho. Sigh.
@f00l
Here is the Prairie Home Companion Show from June 1. 2002 (the show they kinda handed to Marni Nixon.)
Live from the Greek Theatre in sunny Los Angeles, California, with Taj Mahal, Stephanie Davis, Marni Nixon, Peter Ostroushko and Greg Leisz.
Unfortunately, it’s streamed in real audio. This causes me pain. I think the lawyers and producers can’t clear the legal musical rights and performer rights, so they never release the show as s podcast. Streaming in that undesirable real audio format is the best you can get unless you can find or create a ripped version.
Audible Has Free Stuff @sammydog01 said an hour ago
0
The Dispatcher by John Scalzi is free on Audible.com. FREE! I love free. Plus it’s narrated by new Spock. I downloaded some other free stuff but it looks like crap. But FREE!
@f00l So I just realized that you can generally get audiobooks cheaper if you buy the kindle edition too (less $$ for both). Interesting. I refuse to get a membership.
@sammydog01
The combined Kindle and audio price is s joy. That’s one of the reasons my library is so large now.
The combo price is usually pretty great for older books.
Out of copyright books (complex law, but basically anything before 1923), Kindle books are often free or perhaps $.99 with nice formatting. If there is a combo audible price, there can be many audible recordings, and it can be hard to match the right kindle book to the right discounted audible version. Usually for these books the added audible cost after Kindle purchase will be very cheap, say $2-3 or similar.
Audible books that have a discounted price in relation to a Kindle book purchase are supposed to have a link on the audible book she back to the Kindle page, but sometimes they don’t.
It’s best to start of the amazon site, find a book, see if there is a combo and price, and if the combo price seems good, but the Kindle book 1st, or purchase them both at the same moment from the Amazon book age, not the audible page.
some new books come with combo prices : esp genre books - SF, fantasy, mystery/thiller, romance, food, humor, travel, etc. usually best sellers won’t have this, but it’s hit and miss. Always worth checking, if you want an audiobook. And sometimes the combo price is awful.
Many classic authors’ books get great combo prices: Oz, Jane Austin, the Brontes, Kipling, Twain, most Sherlock Holmes, Fenimire Cooper, many classic kid’s books.
The credit system can drive you nuts. If you listen to audiobooks a lot, then fine, just remember to use up the credits before they expire. Check in at least once a month. Credits don’t expire by time - they expire if you have more unspent credits than your particular plan allows.
If you have credits and wanna cancel a membership, spend any credits first. You keep any book you bought w a credit after you cancel the plan, but if you have unspent credits when you cancel, you lose them.
The cheapest way to buy books you can’t find otherwise at a bargain price is to get the 24 credits a month annual plan. Then the credits work out to something a bit more than $9 each, varies because they charge sales tax based on local rates.
I purchase then annual plan 24 credits a year to keep the per book price down. But I listen to way more than 100 audiobooks a year so it works out. I share my library w one other person. This means I am willing to trust that person w my Amazon login. We have been sharing audio libraries for more than a decade, it’s worked out.
You can also share by burning the books to cd or virtual cd and then ripping to MP3. There are supposedly drm removal programs on the net that work. I never use them. I don’t put books out for file-sharing. I suspect Audible will eventually start watermarking audiobooks individually to a single user, so that they can tell whose books are being shared on torrent sites.
One way to make the annual plan affordable - use a one-use credit or debit card to pay, or an add-cash debit card like the ones Walmart sells. Then you won’t be hit with an auto-renewal if you forgot to cancel. Share the cost of the plan between yourself and one or a few other audiobook lovers. (People you really trust and who are easy to deal with - patience and tolerance and zero drama). Then, when someone wants to “buy” a book, the person who’s account has the credits uses a credit to “gift” a book to the other person. The other person receives the gifts thru an email link, accepts, and now owns the book.
I am able to make this work a bit w family members. I don’t try outside family and the one other person. However, once in a while I gift books to people they may like, just not as a shared credit plan arrangement.
That way, all these books cost a bit less than $10 each.
It’s all too complicated for many casual listeners to want to manipulate. Most people are prob better just getting a 1 credit a month plan, or getting audiobooks from the library, or buying them thru Kindle combo pricing or booking for a sale. The outright purchase costs are very high.
Other formats
You can get all sorts of used audiobooks cheap on cd or cassette from Amazon or eBay. PITA to deal with tho. But some books have never been offered digitally. And the rights are such a mess. I prefer cassette to cd if listening on that media - D.C. And tee are better on cassette and they are cheaper. But if you wanna rip, you want cd.
And both Amazon and EBay sellers sometimes don’t make it clear whether a copy is abridged or unabridged. Sometimes you have to ask, or read the cassette or cd count to make a guess. I don’t buy abridged - those were a big deal in the early years of audiobook commuting.
Some admirable books from the era before early 2000’s were never recorded unabridged tho; back when the publishing industry assumed people would only listen in their cars, and personal playback devices were cassette players and later, cd players… An unabridged book might easily run way more than 12 cassettes. The Harry Potter books can run to near 20 cd’s. The IPod and its cousins kinda “made” the unabridged audiobook recording into the preferred format.
If you are willing to be patient and to play cd’s or rip them, you can get most audiobook oks free they interlibrary loan for the time being.
Re geographic rights:
Last time I checked, you could buy all the Agatha Christie stuff on audible.co.uk but we can’t legally shop there. Her short stories are missing from audible.com in the US because the publisher never bothered to do a digital rights deal here. You’ll see gaps in the catalog of all sorts of non-US writers, whose Kindle books or audiobooks are digitally available in the U.K. Makes me mental. It’s not Amazon or Audible doing this. It’s lazy publishers.
If you try to circumvent geographic restrictions, for instance for the Christie books mentioned - often normally goes badly. You would need a UK billing address on a credit card or bank account at the least - perhaps even a payment method from a U.K.-based bank. In addition to always always always using a VPN with a U.K. IP exit address to view, purchase, and download every time. And Amazon is really good at tracking this abuse. They collect data the way google does, and they correlate everything. Supposedly your entire Amazon account can get cancelled and banned. Same things applies to trying to purchase the Kindle daily deal in the U.K, which is a different deal from the one here. I have never tried this. I want to be ok w Amazon as a customer.
Amazon has to police this as a condition of getting the Kindle and Audible publishing rights.
Audible starts free credit plans
Some people re-use the audible startup offers to get free or nearly free books. I don’t know how long you have to wait before you are eligible for a new user freebie plan after you cancel your old one. Perhaps 6 months or a year? Usually, they give you a credit or two for free, 1 credit per month, then start charging. You must use the credits to buy books before you cancel then plan. All these plans can be cancelled at any time. The trick here is just to remember to cancel the plan. If you are in the freebie phase of a new plan, you can’t use the credits to gift books I think. You can, with paid-fir credits.
Other stuff.
Audible does have tolerable 24 hour CS. Lower-level is based in the Philippines. Most people near Manila grow up speaking English as a holdover from being a US colony and hosting US military bases, so they are normally comfortable with American idiomatic usage. They grow up watching American TV and film as much as Tagolog stuff. 3rd tier and above tech stuff is in NJ.
Someone who owns a copy of a book can, 1 time per each other account, gift a copy of the same book to someone else. So if you know someone who owns a book, and hasn’t given you a book, that person can give you that book. This is all free.
The audible Daily Deal is usually pretty decent stuff. They also run pretty constant sales - these are normally on the homepage. Many of them - perhaps about half - are limited to people who have current credit plan subscriptions.
The whole audio literature thing is obviously way older than Homer; spoken or sung literature is older than written lit. But the audiobook industry’s biggest early promoter, if not the industry’s genesis, was from a cooperation between the Library of Congress and the Books For The Blind program (aka Talking Books) as a result of the Pratt-Smoot act of 1931.
There was since the 1930’s and is still a massive mailing service for audiobooks sent out free to the sight-impaired and other impaired listeners. Also now I think a digital device. There are format and playback controls to make pirating difficult and the devices or sw must be easy for the sight-impaired and physically impaired to control.
This program created some remarkable recordings, most notably those of the great Alexander Scourby. He narrated 422 audiobooks, including the first unabridged vinyl recording of the King James Bible, which took him 4 years. He re-recorded it later in life. It was much pirated by companies who sold it via late night tv, and his recordings are still among the most popular Bible recordings. He has an astonishing voice - powerful, gentle, deep, peaceful, strong. His recordings are still worth the listening, even when the recording quality is poor.
Histories of the book often move straight from the codex to the digital screen. Left out of that familiar account are nearly 150 years of audio recordings. Recounting the fascinating history of audio-recorded literature, Matthew Rubery traces the path of innovation from Edison’s recitation of “Mary Had a Little Lamb” for his tinfoil phonograph in 1877, to the first novel-length talking books made for blinded World War I veterans, to today’s billion-dollar audiobook industry.
The Untold Story of the Talking Book focuses on the social impact of audiobooks, not just the technological history, in telling a story of surprising and impassioned conflicts: from controversies over which books the Library of Congress selected to become talking books—yes to Kipling, no to Flaubert—to debates about what defines a reader. Delving into the vexed relationship between spoken and printed texts, Rubery argues that storytelling can be just as engaging with the ears as with the eyes, and that audiobooks deserve to be taken seriously. They are not mere derivatives of printed books but their own form of entertainment.
We have come a long way from the era of sound recorded on wax cylinders, when people imagined one day hearing entire novels on mini-phonographs tucked inside their hats. Rubery tells the untold story of this incredible evolution and, in doing so, breaks from convention by treating audiobooks as a distinctively modern art form that has profoundly influenced the way we read.
100% of that 8 or more is music. I really never listen to podcasts, audiobooks, or even the radio…
I must’ve missed the podcast suggestion thread, was there no love for the Giant Bombcast? I never would’ve known about meh if not for them mentioning it almost 2 years ago.
Blast, clicked on less than one before I saw music…oh well. Now I guess I have to cut back on listening to music to make it true. So sad…
Audio books every day during my work commute. I started when I became frustrated with talk radio, and discovered I really enjoy them. As an added bonus, I can talk about the books I’ve “read” and people think I’m all intellectual and shit.
@ruouttaurmind I used to do audio books, then got into radio plays thanks to Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. It’s like the best audio books, with multiple voice actors and sound effects.
@ruouttaurmind I’m listening to Ready Player One these days read by Will Wheaton. How about you?
@sammydog01 Loved RPO! Spielberg is making a movie.
I just finished the Magic 2.0 series by Scott Meyer. I have This Book Is Full of Spiders: Seriously, Dude, Don’t Touch It by David Wong queued up for tomorrow morning.
@ruouttaurmind Thanks- I copied these down and will look for them.
@sammydog01 The Magic books are fun. Tongue in cheek scifi/fantasy-ish pulp fiction. Not in my top five listens, but I enjoyed them.
I would say my top 5 faves are:
Close runner-ups include White Fang by Jack London (unlike much older fiction, this one stands the test of time quite well), The Dead Republic by Roddy Doyle, The Ghosts of Belfast by Stuart Neville… ok, let’s face it… I liked nearly everything I’ve listened to in the last year. Either I’m very selective about what I choose to listen to… or more likely I’m just easy. LOL!
I visit Audible every day and check the Daily Deal. I’ve managed to buy several winners “on sale” for $3 or $4. Three bucks for 15 or 20 hours of entertainment is not a bad investment in my opine.
@sammydog01 Oh, shoot, I nearly forgot to mention The Long, Dark Tea-Time of the Soul by Douglas Adams (yes, Hitchiker’s Guide Douglas Adams). It’s an awesome, whimsical story about mythical Gods of the past and how they’re being put out to pasture by today’s jaded society. For example Odin is in an old folks home, Thor is addicted to Coke (the drink, not the drug)… it’s a short six and a half hours, but possibly has been my favorite listen so far.
@ruouttaurmind Darn, my library doesn’t have any Douglas Adams on audiobook. I have read them all but wouldn’t mind listening to them. Maybe I need to get an Audible subscription. I’ll check out the others on your list. So far the daily deals haven’t been that great but I’ll keep checking.
@sammydog01 Dredging up this old thread to make sure you’re aware of the Audible “Anniversary Sale”. 200 titles for $4 or less. I just picked up 8 new titles for $27 including tax.
If nothing else, make sure you grab Douglas Adams “The Long Dark Tea Time of the Soul” for $3!
@ruouttaurmind
Thx, saw this. Meant to post, got distracted.
These 200+ audiobooks are all prev customer favs. Bios, history, non-fiction, classics, and all the fictional genres
Sale runs thru end of Aug 31, 11:59pm Pacific Time.
@ruouttaurmind Thanks! When I first went through the list I had a cart of fifty dollars but got it down to twenty- too much good stuff there. I bought the Douglas Adams book.
@ruouttaurmind Just added a Scalzi book too.
@simplersimon
I’ve heard that the radio play versions of Douglas Adams stuff are the original formats of his work. The print versions and single-narrator audio versions, at least of the early works, are adaptations I think?
@f00l Exactly. I hunted them down finally after the mediocre movie. The radio plays are definitely some of his finest work. A little rough in places, but you get to see a little more how he developed the world. I can’t recommend them enough.
@simplersimon
Before those shows came over here I worked at a place w a Brit who was a huge fan and a gifted mimic. He used to get his London friends to tape the Adams shows and send him the tapes. He would memorize them and practice, then he would come in and “perform” them for the office - while writing code!!!
Way past awesome. He was good, too. Could do all sorts of voices.
@ruouttaurmind My favorite audiobooks are the Stephen King books he read himself. He has a very relaxed, warm tone, and there’s something special about the words being his own. The emphasis and inflection are canon, not interpretive. I love having Uncle Stevie tell me a scary story.
@moondrake Although Stephen King writes a genre that’s not really in my general area of interest, I have enjoyed some of the movies and miniseries made from his stories. I’ll have to keep an eye out for narrations by him. Thanks for the tip!
@ruouttaurmind That’s the sequel to Dirk Gently’s Holistic Detective Agency. I love(d) those two!
@InnocuousFarmer “Long dark tea time” certainly has been among my favorite listens. Unfortunately Audible doesn’t offer an unabridged version of Holistic Detective Agency. There’s a dramatized version, and an abridged version (though that one is actually read by Douglas Adams).
BBC America recently started a new series based on the Dirk Gently character. I’ve only watched the first episode, but it was great fun.
I live 7 miles from work and don’t always turn on the radio before I get there, but I do usually listen to music the whole way to practice on Sundays and that’s an hour each way
@MsELizardBeth what are you practicing?
@DMlivezey I’m guessing
@Ignorant that’s it, except Sunday is men’s practice
@Ignorant three of the girls I’ve trained with and coached play for the pink and black team in that clip though
@MsELizardBeth yay I was actually right…kind of.
We just got home from a Florida - Alabama - Tennessee - Kentucky - Ohio (Ugh!) - Kentucky - Tennessee - Mississippi - Alabama - Florida see the kids and grandkids tour. (went to the top of the pyramid in Memphis) Listened to The Fifth Wave and The Infinite Sea, the first and second books in the trilogy, on audio books. Audio books seem to make the trips to go faster.
BTW: If anyone saw a white Prius C pulling a white trailer (you read it right; a Prius pulling a trailer) that was me! And we still averaged 44.8 MPG during the trip.
@Mehrocco_Mole
@heartny 44.8 mpg. Normally we get 50+ mpg.
Cool? Absolutely!
@Mehrocco_Mole “And we still averaged 44.8 MPG during the trip.”
Yes, yes. We all know your vehicles only strength. Now, if you replace “44.8 MPG” with “88 MPH”…
@simplersimon I drive my prius at 88mph often. My avg is still over 40mph.
@heartny I like how the close quote is single, open quotes double.
@PocketBrain It’s an energy saving feature.
The commute. It must have noise that isn’t traffic. I will listen to anything to avoid listening to traffic.
How many hours
Many many many
I recently discovered Wooden Overcoats, an audio drama sitcom about rival funeral home directors on a small island. It’s hilarious, highly recommend!
@ianrbuck I need to check this out. Thanks!
I forgot that I’m subjected to music all day long at work. Most of it becomes white noise. I should of voted 10+ hours.
Now that I can pull my playlists via the external hd attached to my NEW Netgear router and send them to the Roku 2, which has a connection to my tuner/receiver here in the family room, I’m rocking out. Once again!
What’s playing now:
I definitely didn’t read this one right, and I likely voted myself short. I can’t really handle podcast or audiobooks, my brain handles the written word much better than the spoken. I listen to music on the train at times, but often I just sleep. I guess I listen to a few hours of radio now that it’s bases and balls season.
@brhfl
Listening to audiobooks and podcasts takes s bit of practice before it gets really good. At first -decades ago - thought it was a poor substitute for reading. But there were so many hits were I could listen but I couldn’t read, so I kept at it. And I kinda learned whatever attention adjustments I needed to learn, and it got way way better. Sometimes you get a narrator do good that the narrated version might even improve on a text masterpiece.
It’s key to use a player that lets you adjust narrative speed. I use 1.25 or 1.5 usually.as most audiobooks are recorded at a pace slightly slower than normal speech.
Also jet that your player handles 15 sec or 30 sec jump back or jump forward well and easily, with Bluetooth controls.
As for the near-constant interruptions of life - at first that drove me nuts. Then I got used to that also, and no so bad. I mean, if my choices were either audiobook w interruptions risk, or no audiobook at a given time, that’s an easy one. Or if my choices are to not have the time to sit and read, and so not encounter a book, vs not be able to read it, but can work in listening to it, that’s also an easy choice.
Now audiobooks are one of the most cherished features of my life.
For people looking for some of the other audiobooks and podcasts that have been discussed or recommended here:
Here is a product announce page w podcasts lists from @JasonToon
(Click on the product image to see @JasonToon’s recommends on the original product page)
…
Another thread from the past
https://meh.com/forum/topics/want-some-free-kindle-classics-a-free-audiobook-and-a-bunch-of-0-99-audiobooks
…
Another old thread
https://meh.com/forum/topics/whats-the-most-popular-way-to-pass-the-time-for-you-and-your-familyfriends-on-road-trips
…
A radio thread
https://meh.com/forum/topics/do-you-listen-to-the-radio
…
Another thread
https://meh.com/forum/topics/what-do-you-listen-to-the-most-while-youre-doing-other-stuff
…
(In case you’re trying to remember what you read about, got intrigued by, then forgot.)
Best not to awaken the old threads by posting in them, the cranky people will all wake up too. Just post new stuff here.
…
Some favs:
A lot of deep knowledge is not required, but knowing at least the headlines of the era would help with the following:
If someone wants something long that’s caught somewhere between thriller and masterpiece; can tolerate Britspeak; knows who Kim Philby was; understands a bit of the the Cold War atmosphere from 1970 thru detente (before the Wall came down); knows a little of SE Asia land wars of the 1950’s-1970’s; understands the tensions between Russia and China before and after the Cutural Revolution; understands a bit of the threat and risk created by Nixon’s troubles and resignation; understands how competent intelligence professionals can be stuck in the past; or can be pushed around by political fashions from above; knows how political operators and bureaucrats gain and cede turf control: knows a little of British and French colonial history and what sort of soft access comes with that history; understands a bit of the necessary bureaucracy of intelligence and the constant power play between govt agencies:
…
In order, by John Le Carre, his masterful trilogy, The Quest For Karla collection:
Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy 1974
The Honourable Schoolboy 1977
Smiley’s People 1979
And a kind of soft coda, also by JLC
The Secret Pilgrim 1990
…
Unabridged only. The narrator, Muchael Jayston, gets it. Use Wikipedia and Goigle Maps to get through the confusion.
Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy was recently filmed. Tho the film is good in its own right, it is barely about the book, and does not convey the book’s substance, going instead in another, still worthy direction. As tho the director took most of the plot without actually reading the book, it feels a bit like clothes that fit someone else. The director got the plot, sorta, but completely missed the book. Which is a bit odd.
Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy and Smiley’s People have been made into masterful miniseries by the BBC, with Alec Guinness at the center. Forget the lack of HD. If you want a vid version, it’s here. These are prob as good as it gets for filmed versions. But they’re not quite there, even with Guinness. Because Le Carre leaves it all on the page, in narrative language, in storytelling words, and if you want it, that’s where you start.
The Honourable Schoolboy was skipped for filming by the BBC, because at that time the BBC couldn’t afford to stage a Brit, European, US, and 6 country SE Asian shoot, with three of the Asian counties being, as settings, total war zones.
…
These books were from a era before the total takeover by tech in espionage - written when tech meant microdots and tunnels and mics and pinholes in books and low res tiny cameras using film. The espionage world has traveled toward the NSA now. All tech and code and way too much info you can’t sift. But there are things you can learn only from human intelligence. And that cost is still payable in lives lived, almost in full, in lies. The in-place spy is always playing a game, with self, with targets, with local people, with innocents, with masters and handlers, just to get thru a day. After years of it, who or what, exactly, has the loyalty of one’s soul?
If you want to know what it means to be a spy in the field, esp in a hostile setting, or how the Soviets handled things way back when: it’s here, and not pretty. Le Carre was a spy, before he got published, before his govt career and those of so many others were destroyed by Kim Philby and the Cambridge Five.
Le Carre is this dead-on: he invented a lot of jargon for his books: tradecraft, pavement artists, lamplighters, coat-trailing, angels, janitors, ferrets, scalphunters, wranglers, mothers… In an ultimate tribute to the accuracy of his literary world-view, his invented jargon was actually adopted by the trade itself, in much of the English-speaking world. Because it was right.
Last chance for Audible’s Daily Deals bestsellers audiobook sale, if you are interested. A lot of worthy stuff is included. Ends tonite 11:59PM Pacific Time.
A Prairie Home Companion
And
News From Lake Woebegon
…
This came from the Contractor thread, but I don’t want it getting lost. So putting it here. The original thread is here.
https://meh.com/forum/topics/whats-the-biggest-home-constructionrepairmaintenance-job-youve-ever-hired-someone-to-do
…
Garrison Keillor retired as host of A Prairie Home Companion in July 2016. Chris Thile, longtime performer on the show, is taking over as host. I don’t think he’s started yet. I have not listened for some years, but I can’t imagine that anyone other than Keillor can handle the News Ftom Lake Wobegon segment.
The entire show has never been available for purchase or rental. According to Wikipedia, the musical licensing is so complex (both performers and songs), that most archived shows are only available streamed - thru Real Audio streaming. Oh My. That Hurts.
I don’t even know if the shows can be streamed on iOS or Android. Need to experiment.
…
Live shows are streamed here:
http://prairiehome.publicradio.org/netcast/
Or thru your public radio app
These do not require real audio.
They run live at 5pm CT for 2 hours. The Woebegon story segment is usually midway thru the second hour, and lasts say 15-25 minutes.
Another live show streaming site
http://jrabold.net/radio/2pra.shtml
…
Some show archives used to be at archive.org but were removed after a copyright claim was sent by Minnesota Public Radio, upon insistence by music rights holders (the big music companies most likely.)
One archive, for some shows
http://prairiehome.org/shows/
http://prairiehome.publicradio.org/programs/
…
Marni Nixon sings! (Real audio, ugh!)
But what if you want the live outdoor Los Angeles A Prairie Home Companion with Marni Nixon as featured guest? What if you must hear “The Ghostest With The Mostest”
(Because she did the film singing vocals for The King And I, West Side Story, and My Fair Lady (excepting parts of Just You Wait). And appeared on-screen singing in The Sound Of Music as a nun.)
Thanks to @chienfou
Who hunted this down in between doing amazing things to his house:
http://prairiehome.publicradio.org/programs/20020601
Can I listen to this on mobile? Dunno. Gonna try.
…
The News From Lake Wobegon segment is not so tangled in rights issues.
A podcast feed is here:
http://prairiehome.org/listen/podcast/
I don’t know if very old segments from the 1970’s and onward can be retrieved from the podcast.
And audible had 350 of theses or sale st $.66 each. Unfortunately, you can’t purchase a bundle - say, a year’s worth -to save money, not sold that way.
http://www.audible.com/search/ref=a_search_c8_1_srchPg?searchRank=-publication_date&audibleGroupID=RT_KEIL_000001
Audible seems to acquire rights to a given segment upon 1st broadcast or recent re-broadcast. The weekly availability started in Jan 2010 and continued thru the most recent show Sept 10, 2016. The show may currently be in re-runs until the new host takes over. Not sure when Mr Thile does his first show on his own.
I don’t know if previously inavailable Woebegon segments will be added to the audible collection over time. Audible does have a very few segments broadcast from 2007-2009.
Some of these are likely old stories from earlier shows, but I don’t know for certain.
Will the 1970’s 80’s 90’s 00’s Woebegon stuff show up on audible later? Dunno. Have not yet explored all these sites or read their FAQs.
…
Need a great Woebegon tale? A classic for the ages? Or just need a little help with your septic tank? Or with a rural Homecoming at the HS? Broadcast Sept 1984.
(The vid is just a still, it’s the audio that matters.)
YouTube appears to have nearly endless results for News From Lake Woebegon. Perhaps a lot of the older stories are there. And free. And works fine on phone.
…
I can’t find Marni Nixon-Prairie Home performances on YouTube tho. Sigh.
@f00l
Here is the Prairie Home Companion Show from June 1. 2002 (the show they kinda handed to Marni Nixon.)
Live from the Greek Theatre in sunny Los Angeles, California, with Taj Mahal, Stephanie Davis, Marni Nixon, Peter Ostroushko and Greg Leisz.
Unfortunately, it’s streamed in real audio. This causes me pain. I think the lawyers and producers can’t clear the legal musical rights and performer rights, so they never release the show as s podcast. Streaming in that undesirable real audio format is the best you can get unless you can find or create a ripped version.
http://prairiehome.publicradio.org/programs/20020601/
If you are a Lee Child - Jack Reacher fan, 14 of his audiobooks are on sale for $6.95 each thru 11:59pm PT on Tuesday Oct 23 2016.
www.audible.com/mt/Lee-Child-Sale/ref=a_hp_c2_2?ie=UTF8&pf_rd_r=1ZRFT9B6BQDFPG0ESX1G&pf_rd_m=A2ZO8JX97D5MN9&pf_rd_t=101&pf_rd_i=5000&pf_rd_p=2662276342&pf_rd_s=center-2
@f00l
Apologie, I got the date correct but the day wrong on the Jack Reacher audible sale. The sale ends today (Sunday) not Tuesday.
@f00l You are forgiven.
By me at least
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
@therealjrn
Thx.
A freebie from audible
Here is a direct link to the book
https://mobile.audible.com/pd/Sci-Fi-Fantasy/FREE-The-Dispatcher-Audiobook/B01KKPH1VA/?ref=msw_search_c1_0_1_AL
@f00l
Freebie Scalzi offer ends midnight Pacific Wednesday (Nov 2 2016).
A permanent freebie from audible
The Wizard of Oz by L Frank Baum
Read by Anne Hathaway
http://www.audible.com/pd/Classics/The-Wonderful-Wizard-of-Oz-Audiobook/B007BR5KZA/ref=a_search_c4_1_1_srTtl?qid=1477777427&sr=1-1
@f00l It’s $.99 for me, because I own the kindle edition, it says.
@sammydog01
Oops. It was free for a year or more. I may have misread the book page.
@f00l So I just realized that you can generally get audiobooks cheaper if you buy the kindle edition too (less $$ for both). Interesting. I refuse to get a membership.
@sammydog01
The combined Kindle and audio price is s joy. That’s one of the reasons my library is so large now.
The combo price is usually pretty great for older books.
Out of copyright books (complex law, but basically anything before 1923), Kindle books are often free or perhaps $.99 with nice formatting. If there is a combo audible price, there can be many audible recordings, and it can be hard to match the right kindle book to the right discounted audible version. Usually for these books the added audible cost after Kindle purchase will be very cheap, say $2-3 or similar.
Audible books that have a discounted price in relation to a Kindle book purchase are supposed to have a link on the audible book she back to the Kindle page, but sometimes they don’t.
It’s best to start of the amazon site, find a book, see if there is a combo and price, and if the combo price seems good, but the Kindle book 1st, or purchase them both at the same moment from the Amazon book age, not the audible page.
some new books come with combo prices : esp genre books - SF, fantasy, mystery/thiller, romance, food, humor, travel, etc. usually best sellers won’t have this, but it’s hit and miss. Always worth checking, if you want an audiobook. And sometimes the combo price is awful.
Many classic authors’ books get great combo prices: Oz, Jane Austin, the Brontes, Kipling, Twain, most Sherlock Holmes, Fenimire Cooper, many classic kid’s books.
@sammydog01
Re audible, and other ways to get audiobooks.
Audible credits
The credit system can drive you nuts. If you listen to audiobooks a lot, then fine, just remember to use up the credits before they expire. Check in at least once a month. Credits don’t expire by time - they expire if you have more unspent credits than your particular plan allows.
If you have credits and wanna cancel a membership, spend any credits first. You keep any book you bought w a credit after you cancel the plan, but if you have unspent credits when you cancel, you lose them.
The cheapest way to buy books you can’t find otherwise at a bargain price is to get the 24 credits a month annual plan. Then the credits work out to something a bit more than $9 each, varies because they charge sales tax based on local rates.
I purchase then annual plan 24 credits a year to keep the per book price down. But I listen to way more than 100 audiobooks a year so it works out. I share my library w one other person. This means I am willing to trust that person w my Amazon login. We have been sharing audio libraries for more than a decade, it’s worked out.
You can also share by burning the books to cd or virtual cd and then ripping to MP3. There are supposedly drm removal programs on the net that work. I never use them. I don’t put books out for file-sharing. I suspect Audible will eventually start watermarking audiobooks individually to a single user, so that they can tell whose books are being shared on torrent sites.
One way to make the annual plan affordable - use a one-use credit or debit card to pay, or an add-cash debit card like the ones Walmart sells. Then you won’t be hit with an auto-renewal if you forgot to cancel. Share the cost of the plan between yourself and one or a few other audiobook lovers. (People you really trust and who are easy to deal with - patience and tolerance and zero drama). Then, when someone wants to “buy” a book, the person who’s account has the credits uses a credit to “gift” a book to the other person. The other person receives the gifts thru an email link, accepts, and now owns the book.
I am able to make this work a bit w family members. I don’t try outside family and the one other person. However, once in a while I gift books to people they may like, just not as a shared credit plan arrangement.
That way, all these books cost a bit less than $10 each.
It’s all too complicated for many casual listeners to want to manipulate. Most people are prob better just getting a 1 credit a month plan, or getting audiobooks from the library, or buying them thru Kindle combo pricing or booking for a sale. The outright purchase costs are very high.
Other formats
You can get all sorts of used audiobooks cheap on cd or cassette from Amazon or eBay. PITA to deal with tho. But some books have never been offered digitally. And the rights are such a mess. I prefer cassette to cd if listening on that media - D.C. And tee are better on cassette and they are cheaper. But if you wanna rip, you want cd.
And both Amazon and EBay sellers sometimes don’t make it clear whether a copy is abridged or unabridged. Sometimes you have to ask, or read the cassette or cd count to make a guess. I don’t buy abridged - those were a big deal in the early years of audiobook commuting.
Some admirable books from the era before early 2000’s were never recorded unabridged tho; back when the publishing industry assumed people would only listen in their cars, and personal playback devices were cassette players and later, cd players… An unabridged book might easily run way more than 12 cassettes. The Harry Potter books can run to near 20 cd’s. The IPod and its cousins kinda “made” the unabridged audiobook recording into the preferred format.
If you are willing to be patient and to play cd’s or rip them, you can get most audiobook oks free they interlibrary loan for the time being.
Re geographic rights:
Last time I checked, you could buy all the Agatha Christie stuff on audible.co.uk but we can’t legally shop there. Her short stories are missing from audible.com in the US because the publisher never bothered to do a digital rights deal here. You’ll see gaps in the catalog of all sorts of non-US writers, whose Kindle books or audiobooks are digitally available in the U.K. Makes me mental. It’s not Amazon or Audible doing this. It’s lazy publishers.
If you try to circumvent geographic restrictions, for instance for the Christie books mentioned - often normally goes badly. You would need a UK billing address on a credit card or bank account at the least - perhaps even a payment method from a U.K.-based bank. In addition to always always always using a VPN with a U.K. IP exit address to view, purchase, and download every time. And Amazon is really good at tracking this abuse. They collect data the way google does, and they correlate everything. Supposedly your entire Amazon account can get cancelled and banned. Same things applies to trying to purchase the Kindle daily deal in the U.K, which is a different deal from the one here. I have never tried this. I want to be ok w Amazon as a customer.
Amazon has to police this as a condition of getting the Kindle and Audible publishing rights.
Audible starts free credit plans
Some people re-use the audible startup offers to get free or nearly free books. I don’t know how long you have to wait before you are eligible for a new user freebie plan after you cancel your old one. Perhaps 6 months or a year? Usually, they give you a credit or two for free, 1 credit per month, then start charging. You must use the credits to buy books before you cancel then plan. All these plans can be cancelled at any time. The trick here is just to remember to cancel the plan. If you are in the freebie phase of a new plan, you can’t use the credits to gift books I think. You can, with paid-fir credits.
Other stuff.
Audible does have tolerable 24 hour CS. Lower-level is based in the Philippines. Most people near Manila grow up speaking English as a holdover from being a US colony and hosting US military bases, so they are normally comfortable with American idiomatic usage. They grow up watching American TV and film as much as Tagolog stuff. 3rd tier and above tech stuff is in NJ.
Someone who owns a copy of a book can, 1 time per each other account, gift a copy of the same book to someone else. So if you know someone who owns a book, and hasn’t given you a book, that person can give you that book. This is all free.
The audible Daily Deal is usually pretty decent stuff. They also run pretty constant sales - these are normally on the homepage. Many of them - perhaps about half - are limited to people who have current credit plan subscriptions.
The whole audio literature thing is obviously way older than Homer; spoken or sung literature is older than written lit. But the audiobook industry’s biggest early promoter, if not the industry’s genesis, was from a cooperation between the Library of Congress and the Books For The Blind program (aka Talking Books) as a result of the Pratt-Smoot act of 1931.
There was since the 1930’s and is still a massive mailing service for audiobooks sent out free to the sight-impaired and other impaired listeners. Also now I think a digital device. There are format and playback controls to make pirating difficult and the devices or sw must be easy for the sight-impaired and physically impaired to control.
This program created some remarkable recordings, most notably those of the great Alexander Scourby. He narrated 422 audiobooks, including the first unabridged vinyl recording of the King James Bible, which took him 4 years. He re-recorded it later in life. It was much pirated by companies who sold it via late night tv, and his recordings are still among the most popular Bible recordings. He has an astonishing voice - powerful, gentle, deep, peaceful, strong. His recordings are still worth the listening, even when the recording quality is poor.
@f00l TL;DR
I listened, tho
@f00l Audible also has some streaming only books for Amazon Prime users. One is Dracula with Alan Cumming and Tim Curry. I need to check that one out.
@sammydog01 do you get to those through your audible account or through your A-Prime account?
@Yoda_Daenerys Audible app- Channels- Prime exclusive audiobooks
@Yoda_Daenerys
The Audible account uses the same login as your Amazon Prime account.
Just load the Audible app onto your phone. Login like Amazon.
To have a better vision of the catalog you get with Prime, use a web browser with a non-mobile view.
Today’s Veteran’s Day Audible Daily Deal
Born of the Forth of July
Ron Kovics
$1.95 thru midnight Pacific Time
This book appeared on the 14th. Just heard about it in a across a news story.
The History of the Talking Book
Matthew Rubery
Published Nov 14, 2016
By Harvard University Press
Matthew Rubery (Professor Matthew Rubery, BA (Texas) PhD (Harvard)
Professor of Modern Literature
Queen Mary University, London
The only Amazon review so far is a single 4-star review for the HB.
http://www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog.php?isbn=9780674545441
Not that cheap.
(No Kindle version! Hmmm.)
Hardback (new)
$29.95 at Amazon and Bn.com
Both stores have used (prob review copies) for less $.
https://smile.amazon.com/Untold-Story-Talking-Book/dp/0674545443/ref=tmm_hrd_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=1479826994&sr=1-1
http://www.barnesandnoble.com/mobile/w/the-untold-story-of-the-talking-book-matthew-rubery/1123646598?ean=9780674545441
Audible audiobook
$17.13 or 1 credit to members in a credit plan
https://mobile.audible.com/pd/History/The-Untold-Story-of-the-Talking-Book-Audiobook/B01M72U2R8/?ref=msw_search_c1_0_1_AL
Barnes and Noble digital audiobook
$17.99
https://www.nookaudiobooks.com/audiobook/126076/untold-story-of-the-talking-book-the
From the Harvard Press Synopsis:
Free audiobook
Ralph Ellison’s astonishing
Invisible Man
Don Katz, founder of Audible, had Ralph Ellison as a professor at NYU. They had a lifelong relationship after that.
The book appears to be free at audible in perpetuity, but I’ve no certainty.
Don Katz’s essay on Ellison can be seen here:
http://www.audible.com/mt/ellison2?source_code=PJEORTR1111160001&ref=ts’
The free audiobook can be added to an audible library from that page by clicking the orange link.
The direct link to the standard page for that book is here:
http://www.audible.com/pd/Classics/Invisible-Man-Audiobook/B004GAN8H2/ref=a_search_c4_1_1_srTtl?qid=1479924043&sr=1-1
This page has the usual publisher’s summary, and editorial and reader/listener reviews.
@f00l
Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison is currently free as an audiobook at audible.com.
The links to get the audiobook free are in the previous post. You will need to have an audible or Amazon account. Audible is wholly owned by Amazon.
This audiobook will be free thru the end of this year.
To be precise, this audiobook being free ends at 11:59pm Pacific Time on Dec 31, 2016.