Find your next great audiobook on our podcast, Behind the Mic with AudioFile Magazine. Every Monday through Friday, AudioFile Editors recommend the best in audi...
FOOD FOR THOUGHT by Alton Brown, read by Alton Brown
Add outstanding audiobook narrator to Brown’s deep resumé. He is aftercall a Food Network personality, cookbook author, and avid food science researcher. Given his long running gigs on Iron Chef, Good Eats and his work as a pitchman for GE, among others, no surprise that he performs his “essays and ruminations” smoothly, smartly and wittily. His range of interests is expansive: blue crab (eat in the soft shell variety), martinis (be wary of ice), Japanese cuisine (seek it out), but it’s his funny and quirky opinions—men should dress like Bond villains, kitchen tables must be wood, utensils need to multitask--that stay with the listener. A master of the bon mot, he tells stories creatively with excellent pace and tone. Highly recommended.(123)
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
--------
7:07
FOUR POINTS OF THE COMPASS by Jerry Brotton, read by Liam Garrigan
Host Jo Reed and AudioFile’s Alan Minskoff discuss Jerry Brotton’s brief but delightful and highly informed audiobook exploring geographic direction. Narrator Liam Garrigan has a natural storytelling style, and his British accent and professional delivery work well for the material. The central idea is how the cardinal directions gave life meaning throughout history but are now being displaced in the digital age, when the ideas of east against west and south versus north have geopolitical, rather than geographical, meanings.
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
--------
5:46
THE RIVETER by Jack Wang, read by Feodor Chin
Set in Canada and the European theater during World War Two, this moving debut from Jack Wang tells the story of Josiah Chang, a Canadian logger and riveter of Chinese ancestry. Host Jo Reed and AudioFile’s Alan Minskoff discuss Feodor Chin’s precise and clear narration. The novel details Chang’s challenges and unveils a love story with Poppy, whom he meets when he and she both work at a Vancouver shipyard. This is a wartime novel (Josiah is a heroic paratrooper), a love story (Josiah and Poppy flout convention) and an indictment of restrictive laws on race. Meticulously researched and well written.
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
--------
7:24
PLAYGROUND by Richard Powers, read by Edoardo Ballerini, Robin Siegerman, Eunice Wong, Pun Bandhu, Krys Janae, Kevin R. Free
"The fate of continents is written in water," this audiobook professes, and the vital role of the ocean is at the heart of this expansive listening experience. Host Jo Reed and AudioFile’s Alan Minskoff discuss Richard Powers’s new audiobook, narrated by a full cast. At the start, the narrators' words flow forth, immersing the listener in four central characters and the minute details that comprise their respective worlds. Sections lack titles or labels, so the distinct voice of each narrator is key to distinguishing which story is which. All six narrators' performances are equally deft; in fact, there is a consistency in pace and tone that makes this complex story accessible.
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
--------
7:28
GRANDDAUGHTER by Bernhard Schlink, Charlotte Collins [Trans.], read by Richard Burnip, Sarah Moule
Host Jo Reed and AudioFile’s Alan Minskoff discuss an exceptional audiobook from Bernhard Schlink. Both Richard Burnip and Sarah Moule are fine narrators who perform with an impeccable tempo, pace, and cadence. The mysterious plot concerns a Berlin bookseller, Kaspar, who engineered his wife Birgit’s escape from East Germany 40 years earlier. After her death, Kaspar finds her memoir, which reveals she had given birth to a daughter. His relationship with his ultra-nationalist granddaughter occupies much of the second half of the story. Schlink masterfully reveals the complexity of a reunified Germany.
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Find your next great audiobook on our podcast, Behind the Mic with AudioFile Magazine. Every Monday through Friday, AudioFile Editors recommend the best in audiobook listening. All in 6 minutes or less. It’s short, sweet, and just what your ears need. Want more? Listen to our bonus episodes featuring conversations with the best voices in the audiobook industry.