For June Is Audiobook Month here’s another by-no-means-inclusive collection of articles and blog posts about audiobooks, culled from Twitter, Google+, Facebook, and my news feed. I hope you find them interesting, informative and/or fun.

Enjoy!

When Words Sing – “If you spend a lot of time with audiobooks, you start paying close attention to the people who read them, and probably develop a stable of favorites. Listeners know that the best narrators can make a good book take wing and a merely decent book grow more engaging. They can carry us through the dry parts of nonfiction, and might get us to try something we otherwise might not have.”

Non-Speaking Autistic Woman Writes Book – Author Barb Rentenbach on working with her book’s narrator, Ariane Zurcher: “she got out and selflessly let me drive her luxury voice for a full week to transport my 10 years of pecked letters to let my 40 years of not talking be heard.”

The Voices in My Headphones: Listening to Audiobooks on the Go – “I’m an audiobook junkie. I can’t hide it. It’s a sickness. An obsession. And I love it. However, the general public does not always share my affection for aural literacy.”

David Sedaris has a pleasingly strange voice – “The brilliant essayist already writes for the listener, which makes his new audiobook yet another triumph”

The First LPs Weren’t for Music – They Were Audiobooks for the Blind – “In the 1930s, records weren’t played on the radio or at concerts. They didn’t flood people’s homes with music. The first long-playing records, now commonly known as LPs, weren’t for music at all: they were audiobooks designed for the blind.”

An Audible Feast – The Ernest Hemingway Audiobook Library – “Freed from the page, I could close my eyes and lie on some mental living-room rug and dream my way in all over again.”

“Listening to Books is Cheating” and 7 More Myths About Audiobooks – “So here’s my heartfelt attempt to dispel some widely believed myths about audiobooks and hopefully coax the audio-curious among you to explore how amazing and wonderful and revelatory they can be.”

Care For The Storyteller-Self: Exercising Storytelling Muscles by Redefining the Purpose of Book Preparation – “In order to act like storytellers, I’d argue that narrators must become storytellers, not only while recording, but before, while prepping their book. Consistently and correctly narrating like a storyteller means: Prep the book like one, so that once the recording begins, narrators have become their storyteller selves.”

[Image credit: Michael Cooper]

What better way to kick off the June Is Audiobook Month celebration than by being able to say Congratulations and Thank You to the narrators who made the 2013 Audies® Award-winning audiobook titles what they are.

The 18th Annual Audies Gala and Awards Presentation was held on Thursday, May 30, 2013, at the New York Historical Society. Sponsored by the Audio Publishers Association, the Audies Competition recognizes “distinction in audiobooks and spoken word entertainment.” Click here for the official Audio Publishers Association (APA) press release, or visit TheAudies.com for a list of winners and nominees and further details, including Audiofile Magazine reviews and audio samples.

Every audiobook win is a group win

For every title named the winners, of course, are everyone involved in the creation – authors, narrators, producers, directors, engineers, designers, etc. They all deserve congratulations, and they all can claim bragging rights.

But for me, it’s one group of people that merits special recognition, because it’s that group that makes every audiobook a unique and potentially memorable experience. I’ve written elsewhere about how I feel about the role of the narrator, so I won’t repeat that here.

This post is just my personal thank you to…

The narrators of the 2013 Audies Competition winners

(Note: Links below are to Twitter.)

James Adams
Adjoa Andoh
Edoardo Ballerini @edoballerini
Nicola Barber
Joe Barrett
Becca Battoe
Fred Berman
Emily Janice Card
Orlagh Cassidy @OrlaghCassidyFN
Ralph Cosham
Steven Crossley
Alan Cumming
Tim Curry
Claire Danes
Susan Duerden
Robert Fass @RobertFass1
Colin Firth
Dion Graham
Charlton Griffin @andergriff
Silas House
Khristine Hvam
Janis Ian
Simon Jones
John Keating
Katherine Kellgren @katykellgren
Ellen Kushner @EllenKushner
James Langton
John Lee
Graeme Malcolm
Wanda McCaddon
Paul Michael
Dan John Miller
Robert Petkoff
Bronson Pinchot @BronsonAP
Simon Prebble
Kate Reading
Kate Rudd @katerudd
Sean Schemmel
Nick Sullivan
Suzanne Toren
Simon Vance @SimVan
Donna VanLiere
Neela Vaswani
Julia Whelan

This is a by-no-means-inclusive collection of articles and blog posts about audiobooks, culled from Twitter, Google+, Facebook, and my news feed. I hope you find them interesting, informative and/or fun.

Enjoy!

How is an audiobook made? – A video interview with Bob Deyan, “an audiobook producer who has won numerous awards during a career of nearly 25 years in the audiobook industry.”

Giving voice to books – “Tavia Gilbert has recorded more than 200 audio books, learning along the way that sometimes it gets deeply personal.”

Audiobooks are the new “running mix” – “The perfect way to zone out during a long run is to really have to listen to and care about something.”

Recordings – “The work will convince you of the possibilities of audio versions of stories and present an amazing experience that is beyond the mere reading of the words.”

Prioritizing the Messenger & Don’t Say It at APAC – “The audio book reviewer’s mandate should be to disaggregate narrative from narrator and then prioritize the storyteller’s performance. Critiquing the narrative should be secondary.”

[Photo Credit: eschipul]

First, I’d like to congratulate the publishers and authors whose audiobooks were named as finalists in the 2013 Audies® Competition. Click here for the official Audio Publishers Association (APA) press release, or visit TheAudies.com for a list of nominees and further details, including Audiofile Magazine reviews.

But the real reason for this post is to congratulate the group of people without whom there probably wouldn’t be an Audies competition.

There’s a tendency to think of audiobooks as just another book format, along with hardcovers, trade paperbacks, mass market paperbacks, ebooks, etc. This is reinforced by technologies like Whispersync for Voice, where you can switch seamlessly between the ebook and the audiobook version of a title. (I’m still trying to figure out why someone would want to do this.)

Maybe this in part grew out of an effort to legitimize audiobooks, a planned misdirection to convince skeptics that audiobooks were not that different from and as good as the “real thing.” I’m not sure. But whatever the reason, it’s a disservice to audiobooks.

All formats of the “printed” book are identical in terms of content. The only difference is the physical method of delivering that content.

An audiobook is something else entirely. The content now includes something the other “formats” don’t: performance.

Image © Travis Gluckler - Fotolia.com

Many people can contribute to the creation of a book: author, editor, proofreader, etc. And many more can contribute to the creation of an audiobook: narrator, producer, director, sound engineer, etc. All of these people give shape to the final work, and all of them share in the quality and success of the title. (And yes, there can be multiple authors and multiple narrators. And yes, the author and narrator can be the same person.)

But with modern technology, only two people are essential for the creation of an audiobook: the author and the narrator. And of these two, the narrator is the person whose work distinguishes the audiobook from the book. The narrator’s voice adds to the original book’s content and shapes it into something new.

No narrator, no audiobook. No audiobook, no Audies.

So Thank You! and Congratulations! to the more than 170 narrators whose work is applauded by the 2013 Audies Competition.

The Narrators of the 2013 Audies Competition Finalists

[Note: The links in the list below are Twitter links. They are either from the list of people I follow or from the excellent Twitter audiobook list at MissSusie’s Reading & Observations.]

James Adams
Noah Adams
Ayad Akhtar
Mathieu Amalric
Adjoa Andoh
Macleod Andrews
David Aaron Baker
Edoardo Ballerini @edoballerini
Nicola Barber
Joe Barrett
Aimee Bender
Emily Beresford
Fred Berman
Holly Black
Kevin Bleyer
Mark Bramhall
Scott Brick @ScottBrick
Stephen Briggs
Eleanor Bright
Tina Payne Bryson
Andrea Burns
Kate Burton
LeVar Burton
Dan Butler
Cassandra Campbell @campbell_cass
Emily Janice Card
Orlagh Cassidy @OrlaghCassidyFN
Paul Castree
Michael Chabon
Josh Charles
Mary Lou Ciulla
Andy Cohen
Stephen Colbert
Kevin T. Collins
Ralph Cosham
Steven Crossley
Alan Cumming
Tim Curry
Willem Dafoe
Claire Danes
Luke Daniels @luckylukeekul
Jonathan Davis
Angela Dawe
Felicia Day
Gabrielle de Cuir @GiftoGab
David de Vries
Gerard Doyle
Susan Duerden
Olivia DuFord
William Dufris @WilliamDufris
Armando Duran
Tanya Eby
Samantha Eggar
Linda Emond
Nathan Englander
Robert Fass @RobertFass1
Jesse Tyler Ferguson
Colin Firth
Anne Flosnik @AnneFlosnik
Jonathan Safran Foer
Ben Foster
Neil Gaiman @neilhimself
Grover Gardner @GroverGardner
Wendy Giebler
Tavia Gilbert @taviagilbert
Ira Glass
Dion Graham
Emily Gray
Charlton Griffin @andergriff
George Guidall
Anne Hathaway
Simon Helberg
Edward Herrmann
Kirby Heyborne
John Hodgman
Dustin Hoffman
Casey Holloway @CaseFace83
Silas House
Stephen Hoye
Jack Hume
Joe Hurley
Khristine Hvam
Janis Ian
Samuel L. Jackson
Suzy Jackson
Lloyd James
Elton John
James Earl Jones
Simon Jones
Miranda July
Josh Kaufman
John Keating
Diane Keaton
Eve Keller
Katherine Kellgren @katykellgren
Michael Kramer
Ellen Kushner @EllenKushner
James Langton
Adam Lashinsky
January LaVoy
Jenny Lawson
John Lee
Ashford MacNab
Graeme Malcolm
Michael Maloney
Ben Marcus
James Marsters @JM_Live
Kathe Mazur @kathemazur
Wanda McCaddon
Allison McLemore
Paul Michael
Robin Miles
Dan John Miller
Lizann Mitchell
Arthur Morey @arthurmorey
Christopher Myers
Walter Dean Myers
Cynthia Nixon
Sandra Oh
Johanna Parker
Tom Parks
Lina Patel
Will Patton
Robert Petkoff
Bronson Pinchot @BronsonAP
Therese Plummer
Nick Podehl
Davina Porter
Ray Porter
Kirsten Potter
Colin Powell
Simon Prebble
Josh Radnor
Renee Raudman
Tim Gerard Reynolds
Molly Ringwald
Jerry Robbins
Barbara Rosenblat
John Rubinstein
Kate Rudd @katerudd
Seth Rudetsky
Stefan Rudnicki @StefansEcho
Christian Rummel
Sean Runnette @seanrunnette
Robin Sachs @RobinSachs
Marcus Samuelsson
Adriana Sananes
George Saunders
John Sayles
Sean Schemmel
Stella Schnabel
Kaipo Schwab
Rick Scott
Neil Shah
Yelena Shmulenson
Gary Shteyngart
Daniel J. Siegel
Pat Simpson
Diane Steele
Fred Stella
Neal Stephenson
Mary Kay Stratis
Nick Sullivan
Joshua Swanson @Joshua_Swanson
Keith Szarabajka
The Colonial Radio Players
Baratunde Thurston
Suzanne Toren
Christina Traister
Simon Vance @SimVan
Donna VanLiere
Neela Vaswani
Marc Vietor
Julia Whelan
Cher Willems
Mo Willems
Trixie Willems

This is a by-no-means-inclusive (or regularly-scheduled) collection of articles and blog posts about audiobooks, culled from Twitter, Google+, Facebook, and my news feed. I hope you find them interesting, informative and/or fun.

Enjoy!

Hearing Voices – “I’ve only had my tablet a few weeks, and I’m already so hooked I must have an audiobook at my disposal at all times. I’m loving it that much.”

Speaking of Audiobooks: Untrained Narrators? I’m Not Interested – “There’s a new trend sweeping the audiobook industry and it’s the frequent use of untrained narrators. Narrators who are more likely to take away from the audiobook experience rather than add to it.”

Writing & Narrating Is Apples and Apples: Green and Red – Award-winning audiobook producer Paul Ruben ponders “an aesthetic bridge between writing and narrating, to connect one to the other with the hope of better understanding what I suspect writers and narrators share.”

Laura Kinsale – Making the decisions for her audiobooks – “When I turned down an offer from an audiobook publisher and embarked on this journey to produce my own books in audio, that was the reason I did it: I wanted to create something new out of what I’d done before.”

My First Audio Book – Author Anne Gracie writes about her conversion to audiobook fan.

My Love Affair With Audio Books – Author Shelly Reuben writes: “And as a listener, I am an addict. If audio books were human, I would be a stalker.”

Audiobooks. They exist. And I like them. – The title says it all.

In the World of Audiobooks, the Narrator Rules Supreme – “I am currently chasing narrators. Narrators who successfully deliver a variety of voices without a hint of caricature and can convince me that there are, indeed, more than just two characters in the book.”

This is a by-no-means-inclusive collection of articles and blog posts about audiobooks. I saved them and am passing them on because I think you’ll find them interesting, informative and/or fun.

Enjoy!

My Super Weapon to Becoming More Fit & More Productive – “I have discovered the amazingness of audiobooks in helping me curb the lazy and get done All Of The Things I Hate To Do But Have To Because I’m A Grown-up.”

A Narrator’s Quick Fix Guide to Improving Performance – Part 1: The Ballpark – “The ballpark is a communion, really, between text (the author’s words), narrator (the text’s voice), and listener (whose emotional connection to the words is the sole responsibility of the narrator).” [Also, Part 2: Co-Director Interview with The Text and Part 3: Interview with Co-Director,YOU]

Audiobooks Aren’t As Cheesy As You Might Think: A Resmarted Collection – “The amount of knowledge you gain in a handful of hours can be extraordinary when contrasting to the same amount of time spent numbing your brain into oblivion.”

Sound Check – “As a listener, I’ve been transported by some recordings and bored to flinders by others. It was time to try to figure out the trick of it. My motives weren’t purely journalistic: with my third book coming out in November, I was planning to record an audiobook myself.”

What Makes Dickens a Lousy Running Buddy? – “Joe Flood, for one, says the spoken word imbues him with an inexplicable desire to keep going.”

How Listening to Audiobooks Can Help Your Marketing Strategy – “When businesses and individuals are trying to up their game when it comes to marketing, many may hire a consultant or outside professional; others may buy a ton of marketing books on Amazon, only to never open them as they collect dust on a bookshelf on their office…. There is a better way.”

Talking With: Janis Ian – “I always wanted this title to be released as an audiobook so I had recording it in the back of my mind from the beginning.”

Dedicated MP3 Players – Obsolete? – “Long live dedicated audiobook players!”

This is a by-no-means-inclusive collection of articles and blog posts about audiobooks, randomly selected because they’re interesting, informative and/or fun.

Enjoy!

Going Public – “Going Public is a celebration of work in the public domain or shared via Creative Commons licensing, recorded purely for the joy of reading something that truly resonates with the narrator and then sharing that joy with others.”

I Am Not Your Blowing Wind: Audiobooks and the Endless Road – “There’s a mentality, a groove to find, in which your mind stops choking itself and starts listening and watching. I’ve always found it in audio books.”

The Affordable Audiobook Player: SanDisk Sansa Clip+  – This is a very nice overview of a non-iPod audiobook/MP3 player.

When ‘Bad’ Books Happen to ‘Good’ Narrators – “How then does the storyteller/artist, who I’ll argue will be fortunate to record one good book for every 50 turkeys, address this distressing fact of artistic life?”

Guide to Choosing an Audio Book – “In our modern and largely safe world we have mostly forgotten the thrill of listening to a well told story. But we now have audio books offering us a small glimpse into what used to be.”

Pros and Cons of Audio Books – “For times when I am unable to hold that book in my hand, I find audiobooks a godsend. While there are downsides to the medium, the benefits, when outlined, certainly outweigh the negatives.”

This is a by-no-means-inclusive collection of articles and blog posts about audiobooks, randomly selected because they’re interesting, informative and/or fun.

Enjoy!

Tracking Audiobooks will be an on-going, though possibly not regular feature at Audiobook Insights.

How Do You Stay in a Story? — This Huffington Post article suggests: “So next time you’re feeling yourself pulled out of a novel for whatever reason, give another medium a shot. You may find a new way to read in the process.”

A Waterproof iPod Makes the Laps Swim By — A dedicated listener searches out and finds a way to take her audiobook passion into the water.

Audiobooks on Twitter — If you’re looking for fellow audiobook enthusiasts on Twitter, here’s a great list to start with, one that includes narrators, bloggers, reviewers, publishers, and other industry professionals.

The Dangers of Audio Books — The writer makes a (very funny) case that “audio books should come with warning labels.”

The Perks of Audiobooks — After years of thinking of audiobooks as a “cop-out” one listener discovers that “an audiobook could be a literary experience in itself.”

Our Narrator Friends — Check out the bios and interviews with audiobook narrators at the new site AudioGals. As of today there are six – Tavia Gilbert, Karen White, Susan Duerden, Justine Eyre, Xe Sands, and now Anne Flosnik – but there might well be more by the time you visit.

If you’re like me when you hear the word audio, book is the next word that comes to mind. But does your mind’s eye see audiobook or audio book?

Since I’ve been in the audio business for years, I think about things like this more often than most. But I hadn’t given this question much thought recently, until:

• I ran across a post on the Audiobooks.com blog titled Audiobook, Audio Book or Ȯ-dē-ō-bu̇k? [Someone else is thinking about this!]
• I searched Google+ and other social media sites for pages and posts about audiobooks and ended up having to do four searches – singular and plural for both terms – to get what I wanted. Each search produced different results.

Obviously, individuals and companies – including publishers – are using the two terms interchangeably and inconsistently.

So, if “audiobooks” and “audio books” mean the same thing, does in really matter?

If you’re a listener who just wants to download an audiobook or buy a CD, the answer is no. Either term will get you to a download site or retailer. (Most know enough to play the system by using both terms as keywords.)

But if you’re looking for information about the industry, audiobook publishers, reviews, interviews with narrators, market trends, etc., then the inconsistency really does matter. If you don’t explore all the variations, you miss a significant amount of data.

A post on the Social Media Examiner site titled 8 Ways to Drive Traffic to Your Site With Google+ sums it up. Their first tip is Use “Their” Keywords, Not Just Yours :

Most of us have our industry-specific dialect. So we naturally try to use those words and phrases when we’re being intentional about our keywords. The problem is that most of our customers don’t use those terms or phrases.

In other words, from a searcher’s point of view, even though you use one phrase for a subject, other people use a different phrase or phrases. You have to take all into account.

Some background on how the word “audiobook” evolved

Back in the early 1990s the Audio Publishers Association (APA) decided to address the issue of what to call the product produced by its members.

At the time there were many names: audiobooks, audio books, spoken word audio, talking books, books on tape (actually a company name, but many people used it generically, and still do), recorded books (also a company name), and others I’m probably forgetting.

This variety wasn’t a huge problem for the public. People knew what you were talking about when you used any one of the terms.

But it was a significant problem if you were trying to promote the industry to consumers and to the media. And this is what the APA was charged with doing. It’s hard to talk about something when you don’t know what to call it. And it’s hard to have an impact when you don’t have a consistent vocabulary with which to talk about your subject.

So Just Pick One, Right?

You’d think it would be that easy, but of course it wasn’t for a variety of reasons:

• This was a committee trying to make the decision (Board of Directors = committee) and that never makes for easy decisions.
• It was a committee of strong egos with strong opinions trying to reach a consensus (another bad formula).
• It was a committee of people from companies with very different publishing agendas.

This last was probably the biggest issue.

In order to have a single name you need to convince everyone that you’re dealing with a single product. When you have companies that are producing full length (unabridged) audio adaptations of books, abridged adaptations of books, dramatized adaptations of books, original audio productions (not related to books), motivational and inspirational spoken audio, business audio (often lecture-based), instructional audio, etc., it’s not easy for them all to agree that they’re all in the same business. But this is exactly what everyone needed to believe if the APA promotional efforts were to be successful.

It appeared that “Audiobooks” won.

After much, often heated, discussion the APA Directors settled on “Audiobooks” (one word, small “b,” as former APA president Seth Gershel adamantly and rightly insisted).

Feeling pretty good about our accomplishment we got the word out – to publishers, producers, retailers, media, PR people, copywriters, etc. – that this great, diverse product category was now known as Audiobooks.

That was roughly 20 years ago.

Where are we today with acceptance of the term “audiobooks?”

• When you search Google for “audiobooks,” often the first thing you see on the results page is “do you mean audio books?”
• A Google search for “audiobooks” returns 113,000,000 results. “Audio books” returns 84,100,000.
• A search on iStockPhoto for “audiobooks” returns 42 images. “Audio books” returns 702 images, at least half of which are relevant.

It would be nice if there were one universally accepted term – so people could find what they want without so much fiddling – but that’s not likely to happen. It hasn’t in 20 years. It’s not even likely that one term will start to dominate. Listeners are setting the standard – and listeners appear to like both terms equally.

I like “audiobooks.” That’s the term I’ll use most often here. But you and I know that these things we listen to go by more than one name. And we know what we need to do cover all the bases.

But I’m still curious: What’s your preference?

Since I like really long audiobooks, it’s no surprise that The Mists of Avalon, The Lord of the Rings and Stephen King’s Under the Dome are some of my favorites.

And for me, a good audiobook series is like a very, very long audiobook. Potentially weeks and weeks – if not months – of great listening.

So a few years ago I decided to get recommendations from a group of serious listeners. At the time there was a very active email list of audiobook fans with approximately 220 members – including librarians, narrators, recording professionals, reviewers and editors – all of whom cared deeply not only about the stories themselves but also about the narrator and the production quality.

I posted a simple “What’s your favorite audiobook series?” question to the list.

The response was pretty impressive, both in volume and variety. Here’s the compiled list – in no particular order. (The first 12 listed are series I would have contributed but didn’t have to. Others did it for me.)

62 Recommended Audiobook Series

• The Anna Pigeon series by Nevada Barr and narrated by Barbara Rosenblat
• Lee Child’s Jack Reacher series
• The Amelia series by Elizabeth Peters
• No. 1 Ladies Detective Agency books
• Lincoln Rhyme series by Jeffery Deaver
• J. P. Beaumont series by J.A. Jance
• Joanna Brady series by J.A. Jance
• The Paul Madriani series by Steve Martini
• Donna Leon’s Venetian Guido Brunetti
• James Lee Burke / Robicheaux
• Jonathan Kellerman – Det. Milo Sturgis/Dr. Alex Delaware
• Michael Connelly  – Harry Bosch
• The Pendragon Cycle
• The Circle Trilogy (Black, Red and White), Ted Dekker
• Pern Series
• Callahan’s Crosstime Saloon/Lady Sally series
• The Key to the Kingdom series by Garth Nix and narrated by Allan Corduner
• Monster Blood Tattoo series by D.M. Cornish and narrated by Humphrey Bower
• Septimus Heap series by Angie Sage and narrated by Gerard Doyle
• The Bloody Jack series by L.A. Meyer and narrated by Katherine Kellgren
• The Diana Gabaldon “Outlander” series read on Recorded Books by Davina Porter
• J.D. Robb – In Death series
• Stephen Cannell – Shane Scully
• The Spenser series by Robert B. Parker
• The Ceepak series by Chris Grabenstein
• The Grave series by Charlaine Harris
• Craig Johnson’s Walt Longmire books (The Cold Dish, Death without Company, etc.)
• Hamish Macbeth series
• Isabel Dalhousie books by Alexander McCall Smith
• Terry Pratchett’s Discworld series – Stephen Briggs
• Elizabeth Peters “Vicky Bliss” series
• Harry Potter
• Percy Jackson series by Rick Riordan
• Rick Riordan – Tres Navarre series
• The Goldy Bear series by Diane Mott Davidson, read by Barbara Rosenblatt
• The Thursday Next series by Jasper Fforde
• Larry McMurtry’s  Berrybender Chronicles
• The detective novels of John Lescroart (Dismas Hardy)
• Commonwealth series by Peter Hamilton
• Agatha Christie’s Hercule Poirot Mysteries read by Hugh Fraser
• James Bond Series read by Simon Vance
• The “cat who” series by Lillian Jackson Braun
• George R.R. Martin – Song of ice and fire
• The Memory Sorrow and Thorne Trilogy by Tad Williams
• The Fortress series by CJ Cherryh
• The Codex Alara by Jim Butcher
• The Malorian by David Eddings
• Saga Of The Seven Suns by Kevin J Anderson
• The Pendergast series by Preston and Child
• Stephen King’s Dark Tower series
• Bloody Jack Adventure Series by L.A. Meyer
• The Sir John Fielding series by Bruce Alexander
• Steven Saylor’s Roma Sub Rosa
• Lindsey Davis’ Falco
• Michael Pearce’s Mamar Zapt and Seymour
• C.J. Sansom’s Shardlake series
• Stuart M. Kaminsky’s inspector Rostnikov and Toby Peters series
• Andrea Camilleri’s Sicilian Inspector Montalbano
• “Ballad” books by Sharyn McCrumb
• Maisie Dobbs by Jaqueline Winspear
• Patrick O’Brian’s Aubrey and Maturin
• Gail Connor series written by Barbara Parker

There are certainly several titles I’d add to this list now. But I’m more interested in having you add your favorites.

What audiobook series can’t you get enough of?