Audio Books

Audible has a great selection. Dostoevsky novels are always a good bet, because they're well performed.

Tess of the d'Urbervilles.

i keep wanting to get that Dream of a Ridiculous Man, because it's my favorite short story. But i'm having a hard time talking myself into using my one free book for something that's just an hour long when I can get Crime and Punishment and get 30+ hours worth.

Plus i'm thinking about using it to get an author i haven't read before (which means where in the world to begin!) Maybe Jack London or Steinbeck. I already checked for that Faulkner book and they didn't have it.
I looked for any of those Daniel Woodrell books nightrious is so high on and they didn't have any. Sucks too, i figured one of those would have been perfect for putting on and just going walking around the neighborhood.

So far the other ones i got in my wish list are:
Shalimar the Clown - Rushdie
An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge - Bierce
The death of Ivan Illych - Tolstoy

look at short stories by Roald Dahl. He is seriously good, he does great adult stuff.

I don't know. PBS did a whole mini theatre show of them. They were called Tales of the Unexpected. One is about two best friends who deceide to switch wives. They learn each other's sexual habits, and when the lights are turned out, they go and have sex with each other's wives! In the morning, one wife says to her original husband who has returned after sexing the other wife, "Honey! That was amazing last night."

The other wife says, "Honey, you were completely off last night. Didn't feel a thing."

He's really perverse in the nice, clever british way.

Any David Sedaris is great, as well. He's not only a wonderful humorist, but his timing is impeccable.

also, does anyone have any particular preference on narrators?

I should've stated that David Sedaris does his own narration, too. But I wouldn't want to sound like a Sedaris loon...

yeah, i should have put something about narrators that aren't the original authors. I think pretty much any newer book that comes out now you can find it read by the author.

on an unrelated note....Johnny Cash Reads the Complete New Testament!

I say you get Augusten Burroughs new book Wolf at the Table. I heard an excerpt from it and it is excellently performed.

Whaddaya know? A completely FREE audiobook anyone can get, in a buncha different formats. Also one of the most important books ever written...

http://freekeene.com/free-audiobook/

/shamelessplug

The one about the lighter and the bet and the fingers really freaked me out! My mum told me it and as she finished the story she lent forward and picked up my lighter with just her index finger and thumb, it was reeeaaally scary!

On isohunt.com, you can get Nassim Taleb's The Black Swan Theory: The Impact of the Highly Improbable. He narrates it himself and he's hilarious, and it's very interesting. The founding concept is mediocrastan vs extremestan, the latter being what we're living through now. His idea is that, in extremestan, logic of numbers doesn't apply quite the same, and without being aware of this, people are destined to spend their lives preparing for things that can't possibly be predicted.

One example he gives of mediocrastan vs extremestan is this: If you have 100 people and you calculate their average weight, and then take one of those 100 people and alter the weight drastically, to the highest point possible. IE: The lightest man now weighs what the heaviest man ever weighed. Look at the average, it has barely changed. This is mediocrastan, the world of natural values that we no longer live in.

In extremestan, take 100 people and calculate their average income. Change one of them so that their income is equal to Bill Gates', and you have an average that is severely different.

Statistically, Nassim says, most statisticians are failures.

And he goes on about the bombings in his home country, he goes on about rebellion in his youth, about his job in risk management and how he believes risk management is entirely useless. He tries to convince the audience not to assume that things are within their comprehension, the philosophy of uncertainty, and he goes on to tell you how to make safe estimations and use the black swan to your advantage.

There's a bit about the publishing industry that's especially interesting. And there's a lot about the fallacy of the bell curve theory. Nassim is an angry man, though, and he hates pretentiousness and he hates what he calls 'empty suits'. He believes a lot of people don't deserve the credit they get, and he's right in a lot of cases, but I don't like how he's so intent on convincing the audience of his own sophistication. He leaks praise for himself in anywhere he can and you have to wonder, is this guy jealous of all these empty suits? Did he get kicked out of the country club or something? Still, he's brilliant for sure, and of all philosophy I've read and listened to, this guy seems to be putting words around concepts I've believed in all my life. His frustration in life is similar to my own, and he is the one philosopher that I really want to believe in. But alas, he's just not good enough in the vast pool of philosophy. Which makes him easy to learn from.

How thick is his accent? Is it easy enough to understand the words coming out of his mouth?

The accent is fine. The words, very understandable.

ya!! the man from the south.

that was the very first one.