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Which is your favourite audiobook ?


Mine is Middlemarch by George Eliot (Mary Ann Evans) read by Maureen O'Brien. It runs for 32 hours and 21 minutes and I have it on MP3 CDs from Brilliance Audio although they no longer sell the book read by this narrator.

Middlemarch is my favourite English period drama novel and is about the lives of various characters from the landed Gentry to merchants, doctors and tradesmen and their families set in and around the town of Middlemarch in the mid 1800's. Mary Evan's insights into human nature are deep and penetrating and Maureen O'Brien is the perfect reader for the book. She has the ability to capture and convey the sometimes acerbic humour as well as the sense of pathos that the author uses when writing about her characters.

There is a sample available from Audible:
https://www.audible.com.au/pd/Middlemarch-Audiobook/B00FOBSSR2



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funny you should mention middlemarch - i just downloaded the e-book from our library after one of the podcasts i follow told me my life wasn't complete until i read it.

maybe i'll see if they have an audio version as well.

i don't really listen to audiobooks in general. i mostly listen to podcasts, which fills all the time when i'm walking, biking, jogging, whatever.

but i do really love the original radio dramatization of the hitchhiker's guide to the galaxy. & i really liked greg sestero's reading of the disaster artist. he does a very spot on tommy - better than james franco's, i'll daringly suggest.

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Middlemarch is to me in some ways similar to Jane Austen's Mansfield Park in that the prose can at times be quite dense and a little difficult to unpack due to the manner of putting things. Oblique and roundabout you might say. I find it easier to follow when it's read by someone who understands it. Somehow they seem to help me get the meaning more easily. But then maybe that's just me.


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Interesting. I find Jane Austen very easy to read, even easier than modern best sellers.

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Because of Winn Dixie.

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...you hate audiobooks ?

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I've only listened to one. The kid stays in the picture by Robert Evans. He did a pretty good job reading it and the book was entertaining. It's all about his life in the movie business, moving up to become a producer. He was a character.

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I found the audiobook The Road, by Cormac McCarthy and read by Tom Stechschulte very moving.. more so than reading it which I also did.

I also really loved "The Dog Stars" by Peter Heller.. about a guy that lives in a Hangar and flies around in a Cessna with his dog as co-pilot after a virus takes out the majority of the population. Haunting and beautifully written.

I was always an avid reader but came to appreciate audiobooks after listening to audio drama.

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These two by Daniel Suarez are great.

Daemon
and
Freedom

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