TTT: Favorite Audiobooks for Road Trips

Top Ten Tuesday: Favorite Audiobooks for Road Trips (with Input from Don)

I'm off-topic today.

We are leaving on a road trip later this week. One of the things we always do on long trips is have plenty of audiobook choices for our listening enjoyment. If something doesn't work we can quickly switch to another book since we have lots of options.

When I discussed this list with Don he said the best audiobooks do something that the print version couldn't. Either it allows us to digest a book we wouldn't have read on our own or it benefits from the community experience, allowing us to discuss the topic or the plot as it is unfolding. Audio enhancements can bring aspects of the story alive and so do the narrators. If the book utilizes foreign words or made up ones (fantasy) they help with pronunciation or accents. So by and large, we the readers, liked the books better because we listened to them.

A Confederacy of Dunces by John Kennedy Toole
This is the first book Don thought of when I mentioned my project this week. Barrett Whitener, the narrator of the audiobook, was brilliant. He had the Louisiana accent down pat and the comedic timing pitch perfect. I don't think we would have caught all the humor without the assist he provided. 13 hr. 32 min.

Lincoln in the Bardo by George Saunders
This book won all kinds of awards for its production. It used 166 unique narrators, some of them famous, making it especially delightful to listen to. In my book club I was the only one who listened to it and the only one who liked it. I know it was because I listened and the other gals didn't. 7 hr. 25 min.

Project Hail Mary by Andy Weir
The production of this wonderful book is why it is on my list today. Rocky, the alien creature, speaks to Ryland Grace in musical tones. They use those tones in the production. I missed that aspect of the story in the movie where they went straight to the interpretation. 
16 hrs. 10 min.

The Anthropocene Reviewed: Essays on a Human-Centered Planet by John Green
I can picture where we were on our road trip to California while we were listening to this book -- Lake Tahoe! John Green narrates his own book and the essays are all interrelated, many having to do with the COVID lockdowns which we were experiencing right at that time. We talked and laughed and relistened to parts. It was a fantastic listening experience. 10 hr. 42 min.

Cloud Cuckoo Land by Anthony Doerr
This book is long, 626 pages, and the plot unfolds in four different timelines. Don and I both enjoyed the book because of the assist we gave each other. When one of us was confused, we'd stop and discuss what was happening to bring the other person up to speed. Marin Ireland and Simon Jones shared narration duty. 14 hr. 52 min.

The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay by Michael Chabon
Another tome of a book, 639 pages. Likely neither of us would have read this alone. We had the benefit of a long trip and time to enjoy it together. And, boy, this is a good story. 26 hr. 20 min.

James by Percival Everett
Language was a really big deal in the story. There were lots of instances where, James, the black slave who is educated and can read, has to speak in the slave dialect to not draw attention to his education. This was a perfect book to listen to for all this code switching. 7 hr. 49 min.

Shakespeare: The Man Who Pays the Rent by Judi Dench, with Brendan O'Hea
Dame Judi Dench is interviewed by Brendan O'Hea and the two talk about all the Shakespeare roles she played while in the Royal Shakespeare Company. A voice actor, Barbara Flynn, was used for the parts that needed to be read out since Dench now has vision problems so she can no longer read. 12 hr. 5 min.

A Swim in a Pond in the Rain: In Which Four Russians Give a Master Class on Writing, Reading, and Life by George Saunders
We debated whether to add this book to the list but Don, who references this book probably more than any book we've listened to together, won out. He felt the form of having Saunders essentially teach the reader what makes a good story followed by one of the many narrators of this audiobook, read out a whole short story by one of four Russian authors as examples to make his point, was so effective. 14 hrs. 45 min.

Motherless Brooklyn by Jonathan Lethem

The main character, Lionel, had Tourette's Syndrome, and has dramatic verbal tics. "Frank Muller’s narration is nothing short of astounding. He gives Lionel’s Tourette’s persona a distinctly different voice and makes the lightning transitions from voice to voice with never a slip. Somehow he manages to make Lionel not a sentimental sideshow, but a fully human character you like right away. In less capable hands this might have been a disaster, but with the consummate skill of this audio superstar it becomes an achievement unlikely to be equaled--by him or anyone else." (AudioFile) We laughed out way through this book. I'm not even sure if readers of the print version would find these outbursts funny or not. 10 hr. 9 min.

-Anne