Jul 1, 2009

It's finally here. Our long-promised and long-awaited audiobooks episode. We turn the podcast over to you, our listeners and we really want to thank everyone who called in and left us a message:

Heidi Estrin who writes the great Book of Life podcast asks the question: does listening to an  audiobook count as reading the book?

Carla Thompson, one of our Goodfriends from Goodreads describes herself as a "blind audio reader and... a book junkie." Narrators are very important to Carla as are detail-filled and fast-paced stories.

Tanya shares several of her favorite audios and raves about all of the narrators.

Melissa Klug also loved the narrator of The Thirteenth Tale, an audio Tanya recommended

Heather Elia, from the Colgate Bookstore, called in with two older titles that still entertain.

Stanley Hadsell, manager and buyer at Market Block Books recommended The Graveyard Book to me a few months ago. I loved it so much and I'm glad he called in with that recommendation!

Julie from Minneapolis recommends Barbara Kingsolver reading her own book Prodigal Summer.

Hope from Australia buys her audios from Audible.com and raves about the versions of several wonderful books she's found there. [Note: We're unsure if those same versions will be available in other countries] Other ways online to get your audios are Emusic.com and Librivox.org.

Ann and I throw in our two cents throughout and recommend several of our favorites along the way.

This call-in format worked so well, we're opening it up to another topic, one suggested by Melissa on Goodreads: Is there a book that you hated when it was assigned in school, but loved when you read it later in life? Call our voicemail line at (206) 350-2068 to share your story.

NOTE: Michael misremembered... John Irving does not read The World According to Garp. Sorry if he got anyone's hopes up!

Full details of the books discussed are at our blog: www.booksonthenightstand.com

Please visit us there.