Audiobooks

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Mongrel
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Audiobooks

Postby Mongrel » Thu Feb 06, 2014 12:06 pm

http://www.pastemagazine.com/articles/2 ... obook.html

“They were talking about ‘pegasuses’ and ‘pegasi.’ That’s horses with wings,” he continues. “This motherfucker got a sword that talks to him… Motherfuckers live in places that don’t exist, and it comes with a map. My God.”
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Büge
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Re: Audiobooks

Postby Büge » Wed Sep 03, 2014 2:16 pm

Audible's got a collection of The Legend of Drizzt for free. Cast includes David Duchovny, Weird Al Yankovic and Ice-T.

No, I'm not making this up.
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Blossom
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Re: Audiobooks

Postby Blossom » Wed Sep 03, 2014 2:40 pm

Yeah, it's ... magical. Also apparently I've been mispronouncing Drizzt all these years, it is actually one syllable.

Sadly, Audible offers shit riddled with DRM and has the whole thing in two tracks of five stories each, instead of one per story. Untenable. Let's just say it might be possible to get a version that has it cut out into tracks, though.

Ice T's story is 93 minutes long.
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Thad
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Re: Audiobooks

Postby Thad » Wed Sep 03, 2014 2:54 pm

Wow, that's crazy.

Sounds like it might technically fit the ACX submission guidelines (not sure without actually looking a little deeper into it), but it's really pushing the limits.

Presumably Amazon/Audible wants you to use their software, which will keep your place.

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Grath
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Re: Audiobooks

Postby Grath » Thu Sep 04, 2014 12:14 am

Büge wrote:Audible's got a collection of The Legend of Drizzt for free. Cast includes David Duchovny, Weird Al Yankovic and Ice-T.

No, I'm not making this up.


Well now I know what I'm listening to on my 12-hour roadtrip this weekend...

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Thad
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Re: Audiobooks

Postby Thad » Thu Sep 04, 2014 12:40 am

Looks like you can get the 12 individual stories for free too.

So that's 12 tracks, anyway; still not as many as there probably should be, but more than 2.

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Blossom
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Re: Audiobooks

Postby Blossom » Thu Sep 04, 2014 12:41 pm

Still tied to Audible's client, though.

Remind me of our policy regarding convenient mega.co.nz links.
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Re: Audiobooks

Postby Grath » Sun Sep 07, 2014 9:10 pm

TA wrote:Yeah, it's ... magical. Also apparently I've been mispronouncing Drizzt all these years, it is actually one syllable.

Ice T's story is 93 minutes long.


Apparently according to Ice T, I've been mispronouncing Sword all these years.

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Re: Audiobooks

Postby Thad » Tue Oct 07, 2014 5:23 pm

Gillian Anderson reads the first 27 minutes of A Vision of Fire, written by Gillian Anderson and Jeff Rovin.

There's something soothing about that calm, measured Scully voice (it's like a lava lamp). And hey, she does a (to my ears) decent Indian accent too.

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Re: Audiobooks

Postby Thad » Thu Dec 25, 2014 2:20 am

This is a radio adaptation of a book, not an audiobook, but it's probably not an important enough distinction to start a new thread, unless we start talking a hell of a lot more about audiobooks and radio plays.

SO: BBC Radio is adapting Good Omens by Gaiman and Pratchett. And the radio version of the iPlayer isn't region locked like the TV version.

Episode 1
Episode 2

With more to come.

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Mongrel
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Re: Audiobooks

Postby Mongrel » Thu Dec 25, 2014 4:31 am

Saw that. I think it's supposed to be six episodes total?
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Re: Audiobooks

Postby François » Sat Dec 27, 2014 7:12 pm

I'm going through a Dune audiobook while I do the dishes nowadays.

Never thought I'd ever look forward to doing the dishes.

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Re: Audiobooks

Postby Thad » Fri Jan 02, 2015 1:29 am

Doctorow just brought my attention to Downpour, which sells DRM-free audiobooks. If you're into audiobooks, you should check 'em out.

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Re: Audiobooks

Postby Thad » Mon Mar 30, 2015 12:17 pm

BBC to rebroadcast Good Omens next week in memory of Pratchett; the online version won't be region-locked.

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Re: Audiobooks

Postby Thad » Sun Aug 23, 2015 1:56 pm

The BBC is currently streaming Flywheel, Shyster and Flywheel, Dirk Maggs's 1990's remake of a 1930's-era Marx Brothers radio show whose original recordings are mostly lost.

The first episode's up and it's a lot of fun. The next one will be up Thursday, and each episode stays up for a month after it's posted.

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Re: Audiobooks

Postby Thad » Fri Mar 09, 2018 12:40 am

Hitchhiker's Guide, Hexagonal Phase

I haven't listened to it yet, but here's the description:

Starring John Lloyd as The Book, with Simon Jones as Arthur, Geoff McGivern as Ford Prefect, Mark Wing-Davey as Zaphod Beeblebrox, Sandra Dickinson and Susan Sheridan as Trillian, Jim Broadbent as Marvin the Paranoid Android and Jane Horrocks as Fenchurch. The cast also includes Samantha Béart, Toby Longworth, Andy Secombe, Ed Byrne, Lenny Henry, Philip Pope, Mitch Benn, Jon Culshaw and Professor Stephen Hawking.

The series is written and directed by Dirk Maggs and based on And Another Thing... by Eoin Colfer, with additional unpublished material by Douglas Adams.


I didn't like And Another Thing. But Dirk Maggs did a great job improving So Long and Mostly Harmless when he adapted them for radio, so I'm hoping he's done the same here.

And oh hey, I see that this was my last post in this thread, back in 2015:

Thad wrote:The BBC is currently streaming Flywheel, Shyster and Flywheel, Dirk Maggs's 1990's remake of a 1930's-era Marx Brothers radio show whose original recordings are mostly lost.

The first episode's up and it's a lot of fun. The next one will be up Thursday, and each episode stays up for a month after it's posted.

And by an amusing coincidence, that post is now current again; Flywheel, Shyster and Flywheel is back up. I don't know if the new Hitchhiker's Guide series is any good because I haven't listened to it yet, but I do know Flywheel, Shyster and Flywheel is good. Give it a listen.

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Re: Audiobooks

Postby mharr » Fri Mar 09, 2018 9:20 am

Assuming that platform locked media players that revoke access thirty days after broadcast are inconvenient to you in some way, the relevant get_iplayer commands (Windows) are:

cmd.exe /k get_iplayer.cmd perl get_iplayer.pl --type=radio --pid=b09th4hf
cmd.exe /k get_iplayer.cmd perl get_iplayer.pl --type=radio --pid=b007jv6w

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Thad
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Re: Audiobooks

Postby Thad » Tue Jul 03, 2018 11:49 pm

Current Humble Audiobooks Bundle is DC Comics "Graphic Audio" full-cast audiobooks.

I don't know nothin' about none of these except that Green Lantern: Sleepers was a novel trilogy written by Christopher Priest and Mike Baron and I've been meaning to check it out for 15 years or something but never got around to it.

Also apparently Tracy Hickman wrote a book about Batman?

There are some other good names in there too, including Denny O'Neil, Alan Grant, and Roger Stern.

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Re: Audiobooks

Postby Thad » Wed Jul 04, 2018 2:07 am

Tangentially, I remember Priest discussing Sleepers on his blog. My recollection is that the first book is about Kyle Rayner, the second is about Alan Scott, and the third is about Hal Jordan. And that this presented a problem, mostly because whatever division of Warner was handling the DC novels does not seem to have been in very good communication with DC editorial.

Because the third book was written at the time when Hal was dead and had become the new Spectre. So Priest had to come up with a convoluted explanation for how Hal would temporarily become GL again and then be the Spectre again by the end of the book.

Except that by the time the book was actually published, none of that shit was necessary anymore, because Hal Jordan was back to being Green Lantern in the comics, and if only everybody had been on the same page they could have saved a lot of hassle accommodating a comic book status quo that would no longer exist by the time the book hit shelves.

And also, Priest wound up dealing with an editor or company rep or something who insisted that he couldn't mention God.

That's in a book about the Spectre. God's Spirit of Vengeance. A character whose whole deal is that he serves the capital-G God of Abraham and metes out punishments to evildoers.

So apparently Priest just alluded to God as "the Boss" throughout the book.

Anyway. Should be interesting. Don't know when I'll get around to it, but that could just as well be the Humble Bundle Motto.

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Re: Audiobooks

Postby Thad » Mon Dec 20, 2021 3:50 pm

Not sure if a full-cast radio series is better-suited for the "Podcasts" or "Audiobooks" thread, but putting this here:

BBC's got a radio adaptation of Starship Titanic, starring Michael Palin and Simon Jones. No region lock; it'll be available to stream for the next 28 days. (I'm not seeing any obvious way to download it, but I'm sure there's a way.)

I haven't listened to it yet -- for that matter, I've never played the game or read the book, either; I keep meaning to get around to it.

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