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Audible, Libby or non-fiction recommendations?

Boopadaboo
5 years ago

With my now long commute I have been listening to books to kill time. For some reason I am drawn to non-fiction and author read books. I have loved:

  • 10% happier
  • fast food genocide
  • raising human beings
  • love warrior
  • always too much and never enough


i did not like girl, wash your face although I did listen to the whole thing.


any suggestions! hopefully this does not post twice as I just lost it. Sorry about caps having trouble with my iPad.

Comments (11)

  • Fun2BHere
    5 years ago
    last modified: 5 years ago

    Scrappy Little Nobody by Anna Kendrick and read by Anna Kendrick

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  • Bestyears
    5 years ago

    Have you tried Scribd? I really like it. For $8.99 per month, you get all the audio or print books you can read. I've been very pleased with the selection.

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  • bpath
    5 years ago
    last modified: 5 years ago

    We just listened to an incredible reading of Endurance, Ernest Shackleton's adventure in the Antarctic. I hear that another Endurance, Scott Kelly's memoir of his life as an astronaut and on the space station, is also excellent (and read by the author).

    AJ Jabos' books (The Know It All, The Guine Pig Diaries, The Year of Living Bibilically) are fun, funny, and interesting. Though I can only listen to his voice for about 20 minutes at a time.

    Munro's What If? is a good listen, as was a The Disappearing Spoon. We tend toward the geeky and memoirs in our family lol. Those two books were good when I was driving kids to school.

    Gary Sinise (local boy!) reading Steinbeck's Travels with Charley was really good.

    Other memoirs we liked include Steve Martin, Nora Ephron, Carol Burnett, Julie Andrews (that voice!), Martin Short, two by Amy "Ask Amy" Dickinson, and a couple by (local gal) Jen Lancaster.

    You can get Terry Gross' NPR Fresh Air interviews on CD. Also NPR "Driveway Moments" and an NPR anthology of animal stories, they were a good listen.

    We get all our audiobooks on CD from the library...free.

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  • Boopadaboo
    Original Author
    5 years ago
    last modified: 5 years ago

    Thank you Best Years I will check it out. I had a subscription to Audible on my husbands Amazon account but it got a glitch in it and I could not use my credits and I was getting very frustrated. Then I signed up with Libby which is an app from Librarys and you can check out books in the app similar to the CD"s that bpath is mentioning.

    I didn't think to look at CD's at the library I will do that. I am sure there are more options there.

    Thank you for the list too Bpath - I will check those all out. Very much appreciated!


    I don't know who Anna Kendrik is but I will check that one out too Fun! thank you!

  • 4kids4us
    5 years ago

    I had audible for a while, mainly b/c I kept forgetting to use my credits and you have to use the credits or lose them when you cancel your account. I ended up buying a couple of books that turned out to be a waste of money (bad narration or didn't like the story). Now I pretty much exclusively use my library via the Libby app. However, note that just like regular books, libraries choose which audiobooks to purchase so Libby through your library won't be the same selection as what my library owns.

    I started listening to audiobooks regularly last year when my younger son started at a private h.s. that is a 45 minute commute. It really has made that commute much more bearable but it did take me a while to adjust to listening to books and for me, the narration and the subject matter can make or break an audiobook for me.

    Here have been my nonfiction favorites so far:

    Bad Blood: Secrets and Lies in a Silicon Valley Startup by John Carryrou - I just finished this one and mentioned on the December Reading thread how riveting it was. I really enjoyed it.

    A Walk in the Woods: Rediscovering America on the Appalachian Trail by Bill Bryson

    Born a Crime by Trevor Noah

    Just this morning I started Killers of the Flower Moon: The Osage Murders and the Birth of the FBI by David Grann. While I'm not far enough into it to know whether I will like it, it has gotten great reviews by readers here and other boards I visit.

    For fiction, so far my favorite audiobooks have been:

    Lucky Boy by Shanthi Sekaran

    Every Brave is Forgiven by Chris Cleave

    An American Marriage by Tayari Jones

    Americanah by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

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  • bpath
    5 years ago
    last modified: 5 years ago

    4kids, thanks for reminding me about Born a Crime. My mom had a caregiver who is from S.A. and she had recommended the book, too.

    The reader makes a big difference in the book. I heard that Eddie Izzard's memoir goes off-track more in the audio version than the print version. I picked up a book by Sarah Vowell, she reads some and other known actors read other chapters, but I couldn't get past the first 4 minutes--her voice just grated on me. And after listening to an utterly charming, relaxing tale by Miss Read, soothingly read by...someone...I picked up another in her series, and this reader was the polar opposite, had me tense instead of carrying me along. I couldn't get past the first chapter.

    For those reasons, I always pick up a couple of books at a time, figuring at least one will very listenable.

    Oh, Billy Crystal's memoirs are lots of fun, too, as you might imagine.

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  • Fun2BHere
    5 years ago

    A mystery series I like that is well-read by the book actor is the Maggie Hope series by Susan Elia MacNeal...various titles.

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  • l pinkmountain
    5 years ago

    If you're into science in the least bit, "You're Never Alone" by Robert Dunn. Heard him on NPR. Fascinating. But it's about microbes so probably not for a germ-a-phobe.

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  • Sugar Plum
    5 years ago

    4kids -- I LOVED 'A Walk in the Woods'... my 24 year-old son is prepping for a 2019 AT thru-hike, and this (although 20+ years ago) was a great exposure to the Appalachian Trail experience.

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  • bpath
    5 years ago

    Pink, is it on audio? I think he's the guy I heard on NPR--fascinating! I'll have to listen to that on my own; DH and DS are kind of "phobic" about such talk. Go figure.

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