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<\/a><\/p>\nIf you listen to audiobooks very much, you’ll probably agree that the right narrator can add a lot to the story.\u00a0Great audiobook narrators enhance the “read” and can make a good book\u00a0great! Here are a few of my\u00a0favorite audiobook readers, all available here at the library. Try them, or share some of your favorites in the comments.<\/p>\n
Tip<\/strong>: If you have favorite audiobook narrators, you can keyword search the library catalog with their name(s) and the words “sound recording” to find other books they’ve recorded.<\/p>\n Simon Vance<\/a><\/p>\n Jim Dale<\/a><\/p>\n Jim Dale’s performance of the Harry Potter series by J.K. Rowling is brilliant, laugh-out-loud fun. He uses different voices and varieties of British accents to distinguish each character, and listening to the audiobooks is cracking good fun, whether the audience is 7, 17, or 70 years old. Besides the seven Harry Potter works, Dale has narrated many other children’s titles, such as J.M. Barrie’s Peter Pan<\/em> and Charle’s Dickens’\u00a0A Christmas Carol<\/em>,\u00a0and some books for grownups, including Erin Morgenstern’s\u00a0The Night Circus<\/a><\/em>.<\/p>\n John Lee<\/a><\/p>\n Lee’s audiobook recordings are numerous, and it’s \u00a0a good thing. He has\u00a0a lilting delivery, and his narration of Ken Follett’s three-title “Century” trilogy<\/a> and two-book series\u00a0following 12th- and 14th-century cathedral builders,\u00a0Pillars of the Earth<\/em> and\u00a0World Without End<\/em>. He narrates other novels\u00a0by Maeve Binchy, Jo Nesbo, and Graham Swift. He reads plenty of nonfiction, as well, including\u00a0A Spy Among Friends: Kim Philby and the Great Betrayal<\/em>\u00a0by Ben Macintyre, and Barbaray W. Tuchman’s World War I history\u00a0The Guns of August<\/em>.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n Adenrele Ojo<\/a><\/p>\n Ojo reads\u00a0Someone Knows My Name<\/a><\/em> by Lawrence Hill with wonderful finesse. The novel is the story (based on true details) of 18th century African Aminata “Mina” Diallo, a woman\u00a0brutally kidnapped, brought to America and forced into slavery.\u00a0Ojo’s performance is subtle and affecting as she tells Mina’s story into old age. Ojo’s other recordings include\u00a0The Twelve Tribes of Hattie<\/em> by Ayana Mathis,\u00a0 Jefferson’s Sons: A Founding Father’s Secret Children<\/em> by\u00a0\u00a0Kimberly Brubaker Bradley, and Eric Jerome Dickey’s\u00a0The Blackbirds<\/em> and\u00a0One Night<\/em>.<\/p>\n Robin Miles<\/a><\/p>\n The Garden of Burning Sand<\/a> by Corban Addison\u00a0is a crime novel set in Zambia. A young American attorney and a Zambian police officer work to find the assailant who attacked a young girl. Miles’s work brings each character to life, with changes in tone and accents–American, Zambian, South African–and draws the listener deep into the story and the suspense as events unfold. Miles has many other audiobook performances to try, from several novels by\u00a0Dorothea Benton Frank to Edwidge Danticat’s novel\u00a0The Dew Breaker<\/em> and memoir\u00a0Brother, I’m Dying<\/em>. Miles has recorded other nonfiction, including a memoir by Margo Jefferson (Negroland)<\/em> and Isabel Wilkerson’s excellent\u00a0The Warmth of Other Suns: The Epic Story of America’s Great Migration<\/em>, which won the National Book Critics Circle Award.<\/p>\n Miles has also\u00a0cast and directed performers in other audiobooks, including\u00a0Here in Harlem: Poems in Many Voices\u00a0<\/em>by Walter Dean Myers.<\/p>\n Bill Bryson<\/a><\/p>\n For those of us who like great nonfiction, author Bill Bryson narrates some of his own audiobooks (though not all of them). Some are better at writing than reading, but Bryson brings his work to wry, informed life–if you know his work, you are familiar with his dry wit, thorough research, and attention to the quirkiest and most fascinating details when he covers a topic: the\u00a0room-by-room\u00a0history of private life in\u00a0At Home: A Short History of Private<\/a><\/em> Life<\/a>; physics, geology, chemistry, and more in\u00a0A Short History of Nearly Everything<\/a><\/em>; and research into the biography of William Shakespeare (Shakespeare: The World as Stage<\/a><\/em>). If you read a lot of nonfiction (or you’ve never tried it), Bryson’s work is great fun–both his writing and his reading.<\/p>\n A\u00a0colleague, who is a big audiobook fan, shares a few other names to try:\u00a0Juliet Stevenson<\/a>\u00a0(including books by Edna O’Brien, Ian McEwan, Elizabeth Gilbert), and\u00a0Matt Bates<\/a>,\u00a0narrating Bernard Cornwell’s “Saxon Tales” series.<\/p>\n Happy listening!<\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<\/a>Simon Vance reads the “Millennium” \u00a0trilogy<\/a>\u00a0by\u00a0Stieg Larsson, (he rounded out the series by narrating David Lagercrantz’s followup\u00a0The Girl in the Spider’s<\/a><\/em> Web<\/a>), and he brings his elegant tone and a thrilling pace to these suspenseful novels.\u00a0Like many narrators, Vance has recorded many other titles, including another series, the seafaring “Jack Aubrey” novels by Patrick O’Brian and some classics by Charles Dickens, Alexandre Dumas, and Mary Shelley. His nonfiction audiobooks include\u00a0Catastrophe 1914: Europe Goes to War<\/em> by Max Hastings,\u00a0The King’s Speech<\/em> by\u00a0Mark Logue and Peter Conradi, and\u00a0Rod: The Autobiography<\/em> by Rod Stewart.<\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n