#Best audiobooks of all time skin#
#Best audiobooks of all time series#

So it seems fitting to experience her greatest novel вЂ“ Their Eyes Were Watching God, written in 1937 вЂ“ in audio form. In Red Dust Road(2010) she takes you on a journey through adoption in the 1960s, a gay black coming of age and a battle to find and love her biological parents and her Nigerian heritage.ДЄnthropologist Zora Neale Hurston believed profoundly in the literary genius of African American oral traditions, and set about documenting them at great personal cost. I also think that Scots Makar Jackie KayвЂ™s voice is itself a form of poetry. Her replacement showed me an odd-looking object called an iPod, and I knew that we were nowhere near the end. The head of the audiobook division at my publisher resigned in around 2003, telling me that cars no longer having cassette decks had killed the audiobook format. The best thing about the audiobook format has been watching the past two decades of change. ItвЂ™s a joy hearing him take the longest possible route through any sentence.ДЄnd IвЂ™ve got Stephen KingвЂ™s The Bazaar of Bad Dreams (2015) on the go вЂ“ a short story here, another one there, for walks or times when I want a snack and not a meal. IвЂ™m also listening to Robert BurtonвЂ™s The Anatomy of Melancholy, narrated by Peter Wickham (2020). Beneath the glorious surrealism and the joy of the tall tale, I found a level of existential horror and of fear. Irish actor Jim NortonвЂ™s reading of The Third Policeman (2012) is one of my favourite audiobooks, because it added a layer to Flann OвЂ™BrienвЂ™s novel that I had failed to perceive when I read the prose. I listened to these examples of triumph while starting my Couch to 5K programme and started to confront the things I deem as disadvantages in my life and work.

#Best audiobooks of all time series#

The book is a series of case studies exploring how underdogs beat the odds. Trevor Noah quoted from David and Goliath (2013) by Malcolm Gladwell when speaking about power and legitimacy on The Daily Show. Her voice captures the thrill of live music and performance in the recordings. I went to look for her albums, Hadeel and We Teach Life, in which you get lessons in the plight of Palestine, protest and celebration of the Arabic language. The line вЂњToday, my body was a TVвЂ™d massacreвЂќ just kept ringing in my ear. But then we migrate to the midwest United States and weвЂ™re standing in the cold, with Darling realising that the grass is not always greener.ДЇor a different voice, I saw a video on YouTube of spoken word artist and activist Rafeef Ziadah performing We Teach Life, Sir. To see the country through a childвЂ™s eyes is joyous and heartbreaking. In the coming-of-age story We Need New Names (2013) by NoViolet Bulawayo, you are transported to Zimbabwe through the voice of Darling, a 10-year-old girl growing up in the shanty town of Paradise under MugabeвЂ™s regime. Both cover these actorsвЂ™ lives from childhood to the present with humour and candour. ItвЂ™s not every writer that can narrate their own stories well but Pictures in My Head by Gabriel Byrne (1995) and Nevertheless by Alec Baldwin (2017) are outstanding.

#Best audiobooks of all time skin#

He gets under the skin of the central character, an ageing QC, with such skill that you feel youвЂ™re reading his thoughts. Jane GardamвЂ™s Old Filth (2015) is also superb in every way, brought to life by an amazing performance by the actor Bill Wallis, of Blackadder fame. The sentence вЂњThere has been a breakdown in chimp managementвЂќ had me howling with laughter. ItвЂ™s such a serious subject, yet the narration by Peters is delivered quite flat, with a strong northern accent, which somehow makes it matter of fact and easily digestible. The Chimp Paradox by Prof Steven Peters (2012) is a fascinating book about cognitive behaviour that deconstructs the different parts of all of us: the human, the chimp and the computer.