Let’s Talk Bookish: The Makings of a Great Audiobook

Hey, everyone! I hope you’re all doing well. I seem to have a trend these past few months of disappearing for a week or two and then coming back. I blame it on school and how busy I’ve been.

Today, I’ll be taking about audiobooks!

Let’s Talk Bookish is a weekly meme created by Rukky @ Eternity Books and now hosted by Aria @ Book Nook Bits where we discuss various topics and share our opinions. Today’s topic is The Makings of a Great Audiobook (suggested by Mikaela @ Mikaela Reads).

Prompts: Do you listen to audiobooks? If so, what makes a good audiobook? Is it the narrators or does it depend on the genre? What are some of your recommendations for amazing audiobooks? If you don’t listen to audiobooks, why not, and do you ever plan on doing so?

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I love audiobooks. They’re great for making a boring task less boring, like folding wash, doing the dishes, etc. I mainly listen to them on long car rides, but I’ll occasionally have one playing in the house.

The most important, and really only, aspect of what I look for in an audiobook is the narrator. I’ve heard amazing people read stories and I’ve heard not so amazing people read stories. Their voice needs to have emotion in it, changing tone and style for each character and scene in the story. I want to be pulled in and engaged with the story. The people should come alive with the narration and feel real. If their voice is monotone or just doesn’t fit the mood of the story, it’s going to put a damper on my liking of it.

A small thing I look for is the person’s pronunciation of words. This is harder to do from a sample, but I have heard narrators pronounce a word wrong multiple times. It’s just a huge thing I look at, but if a word is pronounced wrong multiple times, it can be a bit of an annoyance.

Something I love about audiobooks is the music played between chapters. This isn’t a necessity, but it’s an added bonus I’m happy to take. Sometimes the music will be mysterious, if the chapter ends on a cliffhanger; or it will be upbeat, if it ended happy. I love it when the music is dramatic. One book that has great music is Wintersmith by Terry Pratchett. The music played between chapters was so pretty and perfectly captured the feeling of winter.

I’ve actually done a whole recommendations post on worthy audiobooks to listen to, so I’ll link it here. There, I recommended six audiobooks I loved listening to, and what I liked about them. To pick my favorites from there, here are some audiobooks you should definitely listen to:

• Nevermoor by Jessica Townsend (narrator Gemma Whelan) – This is probably one of my favorite audiobooks of all time. The narrator has such a distinct voice for each character and makes them come alive. The music between chapters also adds to the magic of it all.
• Percy Jackson by Rick Riordan (narrator Jesse Bernstein) – Percy Jackson made up a majority if my childhood and these audiobooks added to it so much. Bernstein totally captures the essence of a middle school boy in his narration, making the books all the more fun to listen to.
• The Night Diary by Veera Hiranandani (narrator Priya Ayyar) – Not only was this book educational, it was such an engaging book to listen to. The emotions were written and expressed so well in Nisha’s mind and were reflected true in the narration.

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Do you listen to audiobooks? What do you love about them?
What are some of your favorites?