audible

Listening to books, part V (Fiction edition)

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It’s time for another update on the audiobooks that I’ve been listening to. As mentioned last time, I’ve been listening to a few fiction books lately, rather than just yet more celebrity memoirs. As someone who hasn’t read (or indeed listened to) fiction in many years, this was a bit of a departure for me. Indeed, Mitch Benn’s book Terra was the first in a long time.

Here’s what I’ve listened to:

Battlemage by Stephen Aryan

The cover of Battlemage by Stephen Aryan

I’ll disclose a minor conflict of interest here: I used to work with Stephen’s partner. At the time, I remember hearing about how he was struggling to get a publisher. This was when self-publishing on Kindle and the like was becoming more popular. I’m pleased to see that Stephen’s persistence paid off, with this book being published by Orbit in September 2015. It’s available as an actual paperbook in real shops (or Amazon – sponsored link), and an audiobook on Audible.

Battlemage is among the longer books that I’ve listened to – roughly on a par with a typical Game of Thrones book. It tells the story of several battlemages, powerful and feared wizards, who are recruited to fight in a war against the ‘warlock’. It’s firmly in the ‘sword and sorcery’ subgenre of fantasy.

I really enjoyed this book; whilst I chose it principally to support someone I know, the story was good and the characters had depth. The narration by Mark Addis on the audiobook is good as well. It’s the first in a trilogy, and I’m looking forward to listening to Bloodmage, the next book in the series.

Dietland by Sarai Walker

I listened to this book on a recommendation from Sofie Hagen, formerly one half of The Guilty Feminist podcast. I didn’t really know what to expect, other than that it would likely criticise the diet industry.

Dietland (Amazon link – sponsored) tells the story of Plum, a fat girl who doesn’t want to be fat. She signs up for a weight loss scheme called ‘The Baptist Plan’, but is left looking for other options when the company is closed by its founder’s daughter. Considering bariatric surgery, she’s recruited into a secretive collective and finds out the truth about dieting.

The reviews of this book are mixed, perhaps due to its controversial second half where the story takes an interesting twist. For me, I found the second half much stronger than the first. Initially I almost wrote this book off as being typical cheap ‘chick lit’, but I stuck with it and was rewarded. Drawing parallels with real-life events, it’s hilarious and empowering.

Lauren Henderson narrates the book, and whilst she does so well, she wouldn’t be my favourite voice actor.

The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho

I listened to The Alchemist (Amazon link – sponsored) because it was available as a freebie on Audible back in November. I had run out of credits, didn’t fancy paying full price for another audiobook and saw that it was a relatively short 4 hour listen, which I completed in a week thanks to a few long car journeys.

It’s certainly not the sort of book that I would normally listen to, and it was okay, I guess. The story follows a young Spanish shepherd, as he travels to Africa to find treasure. The revelations he has on his journey end up changing the course of his life.

There’s a lot of religious imagery in the book, even if it isn’t overtly Christian. The narration was good, but you can tell that it has been translated into English. There’s not the level of nuance that I expect it would have if read in its original Portuguese.

Good Omens by Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman

The cover of Good Omens by Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman

As a child, I read a few Terry Pratchett books – namely the Johnny Maxwell trilogy, but as yet I haven’t dabbled my toe into any of Pratchett’s books for adults. Similarly, I’ve not really read any Neil Gaiman books apart from a couple of short stories. So I thought that Good Omens (Amazon link – sponsored), a collaboration between the two of them, would be a good introduction to both authors. It’s a standalone book that is not part of any wider series.

Good Omens follows Crowley and Aziraphale, a demon and an angel who live on Earth, and who aren’t very happy about its imminent destruction. As the four horsemen of the apocalypse gather, and the anti-christ goes missing, it’s up to them to save the world, with the help of a surprisingly accurate book of prophecies written by one Agnes Nutter.

There are some laugh-out-loud moments in Good Omens, especially in its comments about the M25, and how every cassette that spends more than a couple of weeks in a car becomes songs by Queen. Some of the pop culture references are a little dated – this book was first published in 1990 – but on the whole, it holds up well. Stephen Briggs offers an excellent narration in the audiobook.

Update (May 2025): This was written before the allegations about Neil Gaiman’s sexual abuse were made public. Also, the original Stephen Briggs audiobook has been replaced with a newer recording narrated by Martin Jarvis.

Up next

At present I’m back to celebrity memoirs, but will be listening to more fiction books in future. I’m considering making a start on Game of Thrones, and perhaps making inroads into Terry Pratchett’s Discworld universe.

Listening to books, part IV

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It’s time for another update on the audiobooks that I’ve been listening to, this time since December.

Bossypants

Continuing my trend for listening to memoirs by female comedians, I spent December listening to Bossypants by Tina Fey (Amazon link – sponsored). Fey is a comedian and actress for whom I’m broadly familiar with – particularly her Sarah Palin impressions. Alas, having not watched 30 Rock, I missed some of the references in the book. This perhaps ruined my enjoyment of it slightly.

Fey’s advice on improvisation is something that has stuck with me – the ‘Yes, and…’ response when asked a question. It’s a key part of keeping improv sketches moving, but can be applied to many other situations too.

The book is now six years old and it sort-of shows. But it’s enjoyable and I recommend it.

Where am I now?

Growing up, I was a fan of Roald Dahl’s books, and enjoyed Danny DeVito’s film adaption of Matilda. The starring role in that film was Mara Wilson, and Where am I now? (Amazon link – sponsored) is her story.

Mara isn’t so well-known nowadays. As a child actor, she was in a string of well-known films, but she wasn’t able to continue this fame into adulthood. The book covers how she never quite fitted in, her battles with mental health and her sometimes difficult family life. It’s a charming book that will take you through many emotions, both happy and sad.

After listening, I bought this book as a Christmas present for Christine, as many of Wilson’s life experiences mirrored hers. That, and it’s a book that I really enjoyed.

Be Awesome: Modern Life for Modern Ladies

I’m not a lady, but this book by Guardian journalist Hadley Freeman was recommended to me. Be Awesome: Modern Life for Modern Ladies (Amazon link – sponsored) is part-memoir, part advice column, and partly an opportunity to rant about patriarchal oppression and the rubbish that modern women have to put up with.

Freeman’s wit livens up a book that I’d otherwise have stopped listening to partway through. Again, a lack of familiarity with the many TV series that Freeman references in the book made it hard to follow in places. And like her columns, this is a very light-hearted read that shouldn’t be taken too seriously.

As with Lindy West’s audiobook Shrill that I reviewed last time, Freeman isn’t the best person to speak her own work. This is especially noticeable at the beginning when her performance isn’t great. Again, I put this down to Freeman (and West) being journalists rather than actors and performers.

Update (May 2025): I wouldn’t now recommend this book due to Freeman’s transphobic views.

Algorithms to Live By: The Computer Science of Human Decisions

Making computer algorithms both interesting and relevant to the wider public is a hard task, but this book does it well Algorithms to Live By: The Computer Science of Human Decisions (Amazon link – sponsored) is by Brian Christian and Tom Griffiths, and Christian himself reads the audiobook. It takes the concepts of various common algorithms and shows how these can be applied to real life. The collision detection algorithms used in computer networking are a good example. We use the concept naturally when talking in a group, to ensure that we don’t speak over others.

Because computers follow every instruction explicitly, the book shows how actions that we humans take for granted have to be unpacked for a computer, and how we can learn from this process.

Some of the concepts can be a little hard to get your head around, and having a background in computer science definitely helped me. Whilst it’s not your typical self-improvement book, I picked up a few tips for dealing with real life situations based on this book’s concepts.

In addition to these books, I’ve been listening to some fiction books, which I’ll write about later. Next up, is Steve Coogan’s Easily Distracted.

Listening to books, part II

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Back in 2012, I signed up for Audible and listened to a couple of audiobooks – ‘How to be a Woman’ by Caitlin Moran and ‘God Collar’ by Marcus Brigestocke. And then cancelled my subscription, as there wasn’t anything else that I wanted to listen to at the time.

Fast forward to the beginning of this year, and I started to realise that I was missing out on books that had been written by public figures that I liked. An Audible subscription made sense again, and there was a good offer on, so I signed up again.

You’re Never Weird On The Internet (Almost)

The first was You’re Never Weird On The Internet (Almost) by Felicia Day (Amazon link – sponsored). It’s a memoir that chronicles her life, but especially her early acting career, and how she came to write and star in the ground-breaking web series The Guild. I came across The Guild towards the end of season one, but enjoyed every subsequent season as the episodes came out, and I’ve regularly watched Felicia’s YouTube channel.

Felicia talks candidly about her issues with anxiety and gaming addiction, and how these have affected her career. Whilst I’m lucky to not suffer regular anxiety attacks, I found it enlightening how Felicia dealt with them. It was also interesting to hear about someone who was educated outside of the mainstream schooling system, but who subsequently went on to excel at university.

The audiobook includes PDF with photos from the book, so that you can get the references.

A Book For Her

I followed with Bridget Christie’s A Book For Her (Amazon link – sponsored). The title satirises Bic’s ‘For Her’ (sponsored link) range of pens that were also ridiculed by Ellen DeGeneres.

Like ‘How To Be A Woman’, ‘A Book For Her’ is a book about feminism that would sit in the comedy shelves of a book shop. It’s not a laugh a minute, and deals with weighty subjects like female genital mutilation with the seriousness required. Bridget talks about her life and upbringing – leaving school at 15 – and the difficulties she encountered in her early years as a stand-up comedian.

Bridget’s humour is very sarcastic, and this extends to her narration. As a listener, you are frequently chastised for being too lazy to read the book, and that you’ll miss out on some of its illustrations. For this reason, I would suggest reading the book and listening to the audiobook, as both offer some things that the other doesn’t.

And I think most people will come away from reading/listening to it having learnt something, like how feminists have never actually burned bras. They weren’t allowed to, due to health and safety.

Cheer Up Love

This book (Amazon link – sponsored) is subtitled ‘Adventures in depression with the crab of hate‘ and is about author Susan Calman’s issues with chronic depression. The aforementioned ‘crab of hate’ is the antagonist of the book, and is the manifestation of Susan’s bad thoughts. It’s also a memoir (you may be detecting a trend here) and chronicles Susan’s life and career, first as a lawyer and then as a stand-up comedian. (Christine and I went to see her in Hebden Bridge in 2014)

If you suffer from depression, then I think you’ll get some mileage out of this book, as Susan covers how she’s able to deal with her condition and her coping mechanisms. If you don’t, then you’ll still get something out of it – the title, ‘Cheer Up Love’, is a listed example of a phrase that well-meaning people say to her that really doesn’t help. But there are some tips for dealing with a friend or loved one who suffers with mental health issues.

Back Story

‘A book by a bloke, at last!’, you may think. I haven’t specifically gone out of my way to listen to feminist memoirs – it’s just happened that way – but the latest book that I’m listening to is Back Story by David Mitchell (Amazon link – sponsored). Yes, it’s another memoir; David tells the story of his life whilst on a walk from his flat in Kilburn, north London into the city. The title refers to the problems he has had with a bad back, and how walking has been one of the few non-medical interventions that has helped relieve the pain.

I’m only about an hour in so far, having started listening on Monday, but if you’re used to David’s monologues from his Soapbox web series or work on 10 O’Clock Live, then you’ll know what to expect. You’ll also find out that David isn’t quite as posh as he’s made out to be, especially on shows like Would I Lie To You? on BBC1. Yes, he was privately-educated, but his parents encountered significant financial hardship to be able to do so. And yes, he went to Cambridge and is on TV, radio and has a newspaper column, but at the time that he wrote the book he was still renting a flat and didn’t own a house.

I’m a fan of David’s work and so it’s not surprising that I’m enjoying the book so far.

Up Next

I still have three more books to listen to after I’ve finished Back Story:

It takes 2-3 weeks to get through each one so it’ll be a while before I’m looking for any more books, but if anyone has any suggestions then I’ll be happy to hear them.

Listening to books

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Those who know me well know that I don’t ‘do’ books. I’m never find reading a book – it’s always either a magazine, or, most likely, a phone or computer screen. And I particularly don’t do fiction – what I read tends to be factual, news, or opinion pieces.

However, this does not mean that I completely ignore books. One or two books have come out recently that have intrigued me, but I don’t really have the time to read them. Thankfully, someone came up with the idea of the audiobook; you can listen to someone – usually the author – read the book to you, so you don’t have to.

This may seem lazy but there are times when having your head in a book is impractical – like walking to work, or at the gym. This is why I’m growing to like audiobooks – you can do something else whilst listening (although, in my experience at least, nothing that requires a large amount of concentration).

I’m only on my second audiobook so far, which I’ve downloaded from Audible, Amazon’s audiobook store. The first was ‘How to be a Woman’ by Caitlin Moran (Amazon Link). You may wonder why a heterosexual male like me has any interest in a semi-autobiographical feminist book, but I would call myself a feminist, since anyone who believes that men and women should have the same rights and opportunities can call themselves a feminist, whether they themselves are male or female. Plus, it’s a very good read – or, listen, in my case – and may have you laughing out loud.

Having finished that, I’ve started on ‘God Collar’ by Marcus Brigstocke (Amazon Link), another lefty-liberal book, but this time on religion and atheism in particular. So far I’m only around half an hour into it, but as someone who enjoys Marcus’ stand-up routines I’ve not been disappointed.

Both books are around the same length – about 8 and a half hours – and the first took me exactly a month to listen through. Unfortunately, some days I can only fit in around 20-25 minutes of listening as I walk to and from the railway station, so it’s only when I go to the gym that I get to listen in longer stints, which hasn’t happened as often as it should lately. In fact, Saturday was the first time I’d been to the gym since, um, February. Ooops.

With this in mind, I’m on Audible’s 1 book credit per month package at the moment, whereby you pay a monthly subscription and get one free audiobook included with it. Subsequent books bought in that month cost extra, and that can be a big extra cost – although there’s a sale on, to buy ‘How to be a Woman’ at full price would set you back over £20, as opposed to £7 for the dead-tree actual book and only £3.67 to read on a Kindle. That said, the 1 credit package is £8 per month – cheaper than £20, but still quite a bit of money to pay every month. If I’m able to get through one audiobook a month, and don’t run out of things to read, then I suppose it’s worth it, but it’s not cheap. I’ll see how I go.

Playing back audiobooks from Audible can be done in a couple of ways. Support for Audible’s .aa format has been built into iTunes for a few years now and so audiobooks can be played back on almost all iPods, including those that don’t run on iOS. For those that do run on iOS, you can either use iTunes, and play the audiobooks in the Music app, or you can install the Audible app which runs on the iPhone and iPod Touch (but not the iPad as yet). The app lets you manage audiobooks on the device without having to involve iTunes, and has a few advanced features like stepping back 30 seconds if you get briefly distracted. It doesn’t, however, let you purchase more audiobooks from within the app – presumably because Amazon doesn’t want to give a 30% cut of its sales to Apple.

So, that’s me and audiobooks. If you have any suggestions for other books that I should be listening to, let me know in the comments.