AudioFile's
Best Audiobooks of 2007
AudioFile's editors recommend 45 must-hear audiobooks of the past year. From great literature to explorations of current events, these audio experiences represent the very best of the medium.
TOP 12 FICTION | |||
THE ECHO MAKER Richard Powers | UN | ||
FRAGILE THINGS Neil Gaiman | UN | ||
THE INHERITANCE OF LOSS Kiran Desai | UN | ||
THE LAY OF THE LAND Richard Ford | UN | ||
MONTREAL STORIES Mavis Gallant | UN | ||
PONTOON Garrison Keillor | UN | ||
THE ROAD Cormac McCarthy | UN | ||
SELECTED SHORTS Various Authors | UN | ||
SHANTARAM Gregory David Roberts | UN | ||
TALLGRASS Sandra Dallas | UN | ||
WAR AND PEACE Leo Tolstoy Read by Neville Jason (Naxos AudioBooks) Read Review | UN | ||
WHAT IS THE WHAT Dave Eggers Read by Dion Graham (BBC Audiobooks America) Read Review | UN | ||
Symphony Space has released several best-of collections of its popularSELECTED SHORTS series, also heard weekly on public radio, this year--short stories about food, about travel, about pets, about ordinary and extraordinary lives, written by the likes of T.C. Boyle, John Cheever, and Joan Didion and performed onstage at New York City's Symphony Space in front of a live audience by stage and screen luminaries such as Isaiah Sheffer, Dylan Baker, and David Strathairn. Recent anthologies include Pets!, Tales of Betrayal, Travel Tales, Family Matters, Food Fictions, and Wartime Lives. | |||
In his marathon 60-hour narration of WAR AND PEACE, Neville Jason "gives a fresh and consistently insightful interpretation of the action, atmospheres, numberless characters, and author's apostrophes. An accompanying booklet, intended to help the listener keep characters and events straight, is unnecessary, thanks to Jason's skill." Add Naxos' elegant packaging of the two volumes, and you have a keepsake audio edition of Tolstoy's classic. | |||
TOP 8 NONFICTION | |||
THE ASSAULT ON REASON Al Gore | UN | ||
50+ William D. Novelli, Boe Workman | AB | ||
INSPIRED BY . . . THE BIBLE EXPERIENCE: THE NEW TESTAMENT | UN | ||
THE LOOMING TOWER Lawrence Wright | UN | ||
THE SECRET Rhonda Byrne | UN | ||
STATE OF DENIAL Bob Woodward | AB | ||
THIS I BELIEVE Jay Allison, Dan Gediman [Eds.] Read by Various Readers (Macmillan Audio/BBC Audiobooks America) Read Review | AUD | ||
THE WORLD WITHOUT US Alan Weisman Read by Adam Grupper (Macmillan Audio/BBC Audiobooks America) Read Review | UN | ||
The hugely successful INSPIRED BY . . . THE BIBLE EXPERIENCE: THE NEW TESTAMENT was a breakout audiobook: It garnered national press coverage, was named Audiobook of the Year by the Audio Publishers Association, and was so successful that the producers followed up with a 90-hour COMPLETE BIBLE. It's a fully dramatized aural kaleidoscope of music, sound effects, and a star-studded cast of more than 200 African-American actors, including Denzel Washington, Cuba Gooding, Jr., and Samuel L. Jackson. | |||
TOP 5 AUTHOR-READ | |||
ABOUT ALICE Calvin Trillin | UN | ||
ANIMAL, VEGETABLE, MIRACLE Barbara Kingsolver et al. | UN | ||
I FEEL BAD ABOUT MY NECK Nora Ephron | UN | ||
LONG TIME LEAVING Roy Blount, Jr. Read by Roy Blount, Jr. (HighBridge Audio) Read Review | UN | ||
TALK TALK T.C. Boyle Read by T.C. Boyle (Books on Tape) Read Review | UN | ||
ANIMAL, VEGETABLE, MIRACLE is a perfect example of how author-read audiobooks can be winners--Barbara Kingsolver, her husband, Steven Hopp, and their daughter, Camille, narrate their own sections of this memoir about their family's yearlong local food experiment. Add in the occasional background sounds of clucking chickens, and listeners are right there on the farm. | |||
TOP 5 BIOGRAPHY & HISTORY | |||
CHINA ROAD Rob Gifford | UN | ||
EINSTEIN Walter Isaacson | UN | ||
MUHAMMAD Karen Armstrong | UN | ||
ROOTS Alex Haley | UN | ||
THE WAR Geoffrey C. Ward, Ken Burns | AB | ||
To correspond with the 30th anniversary of Alex Haley's Pulitzer Prize-winningROOTS, BBC Audiobooks America recorded an all-new unabridged audio version, narrated by Avery Brooks. As we noted in our review, "Being the consummate actor, Brooks has immersed himself into the role of narrator. In fact, it is difficult to describe what Avery Brooks does in this audiobook. He neither narrates nor performs, rather, he conjures. He brings the plethora of characters to life as memory, as history, as the pawns of diaspora." We hope this audio edition makes Haley's literary masterwork accessible to a whole new generation. | |||
TOP 7 FAMILY LISTENING | |||
BEHOLD THE BOLD UMBRELLAPHANT Jack Prelutsky | UN | ||
HARRY POTTER AND THE DEATHLY HALLOWS J.K. Rowling | UN | ||
THE INVENTION OF HUGO CABRET Brian Selznick | UN | ||
JAZZ Walter Dean Myers | UN | ||
THE ONE AND ONLY SHREK! William Steig Read by Meryl Streep, Stanley Tucci (Macmillan Audio) Read Review | UN | ||
PETER PAN IN SCARLET Geraldine McCaughrean Read by Tim Curry (Simon & Schuster Audio/Recorded Books) Read Review | UN | ||
TREASURE ISLAND Robert Louis Stevenson Read by Alfred Molina (Listening Library) Read Review | UN | ||
Scholastic Audiobooks' innovative audiobook adaptation of THE INVENTION OF HUGO CABRET includes a DVD of bonus material: a fully produced, filmed conversation with author Brian Selznick as well as his 284 illustrations from the print book. The result is a wholly original integration of audio narration, soundscapes, illustration, and author discussion. | |||
Longtime team Lee Child and Dick Hill score another hit in BAD LUCK AND TROUBLE, the eleventh story in the Jack Reacher series. As we wrote in our feature, "Two-Part Harmony," about their author-narrator partnership, "Dick Hill loves being the voice of Reacher, a fearless one-man SWAT team whom he describes as a 'compelling character.' Hill's interpretation of Reacher is so convincing that Lee Child now hears it when he reads his work to himself. 'Dick's just got it, period,' he says. 'He connects.' And Child adds, 'I know for a fact that he has won me thousands of new fans.'" This latest collaboration should win them even more. Read Review | |||
TOP 8 MYSTERY & SUSPENSE | |||
BAD LUCK AND TROUBLE Lee Child | UN | ||
THE CHOPIN MANUSCRIPT Jeffery Deaver et al. | UN | ||
THE DOGS OF RIGA Henning Mankell | UN | ||
HIDE Lisa Gardner | UN | ||
THE OVERLOOK Michael Connelly | UN | ||
PLAY DEAD David Rosenfelt | UN | ||
THE SUSPECT John Lescroart | UN | ||
THE TIN ROOF BLOWDOWN James Lee Burke | UN | ||
"If this isn't the best iteration of the long-running Will Patton/James Lee Burke audio collaboration, it has set the bar very high." Our review calls THE TIN ROOF BLOWDOWN "a stunning elegy to New Orleans and the physical and cultural losses suffered by all of south Louisiana from the devastations of Hurricane Katrina. Burke's novels read by Will Patton, as nearly a dozen have been, are perfect partnerships. Patton exquisitely captures the visceral and vivid prose style. He makes the crooks and psychopaths menacing and utterly frightening, and the descriptions of the bayou and the pecan trees lyrical and dazzling." Choose from the unabridged version or the well-crafted abridgment--even listeners who haven't followed the whole Robicheaux series will find this entry, with its New Orleans setting and compelling language and imagery, a superb starting point. | |||
UN = Unabridged AB = Abridged AUD = Audio program |