A Review of 5 Outstanding Audio Books

When fellow tribe member and blogger friend, Ellie Heller, asked me to write a post featuring my five favorite audio books, it took me less time to jot down those titles than it did for WordPress to process my user name & password so I could keypunch my reply: “I’m in.”

Oh! Oh! And this one, and that one…and that, one, too!

That’s how near and dear my little nuggets of “Once Upon a Time’s” are to me, and it was tough to narrow it down to just five. I listen to audio books at least four afternoons a week at my job as a personal chef. While my hands slice and dice, my mind leaves the building as sneakily as Elvis ever did, wandering along spoken footpaths or hurtling down multi-tiered, L.A. style freeways…And sometimes footpaths that merge with such freeways in the same breath! Literary–if not literal journeys–I embark on effortlessly, letting the narrator take the lead on vistas carved by author imagination.

Synapses TrailHead

In the case of audio books, the voice is everything. The same book enjoyed in hardcover can be an excruciating assault to author, listener, and the work itself as easily as it can be a mesmerizing escape into the delightful place of: “Tell me a story”. Conversely, a book that’s only so-so in print can become sassy and engaging when read aloud by a favorite narrator. It’s no small skill to modulate your voice from character to character, and convey action and emotions with only inflection, timing and words—musicians appreciate this nuance, I’m sure–but the best of them do it seamlessly. Like a smooth ride in a fine-tuned car, the method of conveyance falls away and the listener simply experiences what becomes the listener’s story as it unfolds.  And the first narrated tale I’d like to note is…ta-ta-ta-ta-ta-ta-ta-ta —(ta—koff, koff—ta!)

The Grapes of Wrath. Author: John Steinbeck; narrator: Dylan Baker. Dylan Baker does a fine job narrating all the characters in John Steinbeck’s Pulitzer Prize winning novel. It doesn’t hurt that Baker’s sometimes reedy voice is reminiscent of Henry Fonda’s vocalizations, the actor that starred in the movie version of the epic, but in the case of this first book, I simply must focus on the material itself. It transcends any MOD, be it page, audio, film or adaptation, and if you’re a Steinbeck fan, I know you’ll agree. Continue reading →…