I listen to things as I work, and sometimes that's podcasts, sometimes it's audiobooks. Looking for suggestions on audiobooks, preferably fiction. Sci-fi, fantasy, urban fantasy, but anything goes. Bonus points for long, consistently good series since, as mentioned, I listen to it daily as I work, so we're talking dozens of hours per week.
What does everyone like and recommend? Thanks.
Hope everyone is having a good weekend, too!
If you can get over the reddity/geek & sundry -esque cringe to the whole performance, Dungeon Crawler Carl by Matt Dinneman is a surprisingly good listen. 'LitRPG' is what the kids call the genre, I believe... Basically a dungeon game/isekai-esque scenario with a Douglas Adams/Pratchett-adjacent tone - considerably less tongue in cheek than those authors but with the same kind of slightly ludicrous world setting used as a backdrop for more serious character moments. The setting boils down to sci fi since the starting premise is essentially Hitchhiker's Guide, but rather than turning Earth into a hyperspace bypass, aliens turn earth into a dungeon survival reality show instead. However the dungeon in the story is so vast and flexible it may as well be an isekai too.
A friend sent me their copies and I listened grudgingly, because I'm mostly allergic to anything that smells of video gameplay systems in story form - isekais, quest-based adventures and such, basically all modern anime. Around the end of book 2 I was having to ditch the idea that I was listening grudgingly or annoyed by the tropes or the hit-or-cringe voicing any more. Instead I was consistently entertained by the high stakes buildup and payoffs in the absurd scenarios that the dungeon keeps spewing out. There's 7 books out now with around 20-30h of listening in each.
If you like British humour, I recommend the in-character autobiographies of Alan Partridge, written and voiced by Steve Coogan: 'I, Partridge', 'Nomad' and 'Big Beacon'. Matt Berry has done a similar book from the perspective of his character Stephen Toast from the series Toast of London: 'Toast on Toast: Cautionary tales and candid advice'. It's a touch more surreal and absurd than the Partridge ones, but if you've seen the show you'll know what to expect. If you haven't, it's a kind of absurdist parody/satire about British actors, on a similar level to Garth Marenghi's Darkplace.