The best audiobooks to listen to right now

Few issues are higher than settling down with an excellent e-book, however typically the settling is simpler mentioned than achieved. Between an extended commute, making dinner, or simply getting some recent air outdoors, there are some instances {that a} conventional e-book (and even an e-reader) simply gained’t reduce it. For all these instances, there’s no higher place to show than audiobooks.

However not all audiobooks are created equal. Some have a narrator you simply can’t stand, a solid that’s a bit too stuffed with vitality, or a plot and construction that’s far too complicated to comply with simply by listening. All these choices making selecting your subsequent audiobook a little bit of a chore, however don’t fear, we’ve obtained you coated.

Whether or not you’re a seasoned audiobook listener who’s on the lookout for a hidden gem, or a busy traveler seeking to hold make amends for some trendy classics, listed here are a couple of of Polygon’s favourite audiobooks assembled to your enjoyment.

Narrated by: MacLeod Andrews, Michael Crouch, Ramón de Ocampo, Emily Ellet, Sisi Aisha Johnson, Adam Verner

There are 62 books within the sci-fi younger grownup collection Animorphs, a surprisingly darkish collection a few group of children who acquire the flexibility to show into animals and should use their powers to battle an ongoing alien invasion. And since 2020, each single e-book within the collection has slowly been popping out on audiobook, all the way in which as much as the 54th e-book within the collection, titled The Starting. Though I’m undecided when all the collection shall be recorded, it’s completely well worth the journey — and the look forward to the previous couple of books to complete recording. Completely different actors learn every e-book within the collection, since every e-book is narrated by a special child within the group of super-powered buddies; the identical actors play the identical youngsters throughout all the run to date, and all of their performances are incredible. —Maddy Myers

Narrated by: Carolyn McCormick, Bronson Pinchot, Xe Sands

Jeff VanderMeer’s Southern Attain trilogy blossomed into the world over a decade in the past, seeding itself throughout the literary panorama and propagating a wave of ecological horror fiction in its wake. Printed all through 2014, the collection facilities on a trio of characters, although most notably a biologist who embarks on an expedition into Space X — an anomalous, abandoned wilderness the place the boundary between the surreal and actual, the human and the unfathomable, has been rendered porous, if not outright obliterated. This defiance of categorization applies to the tone and substance of the novels themselves; shifting seamless forwards and backwards between apocalyptic sci-fi, pulp thriller, psychological horror, and ecological treatise. The Space X audiobook compilation collects all three installments of the unique trilogy — Annihilation, Authority, and Acceptance — every learn by a terrific solid who seize the eerie, haunting tenor of VanderMeer’s prose. For those who’re on the lookout for an audiobook expertise that’ll sink its roots into you (or if you wish to re-familiarize your self with the collection earlier than diving into Absolution), the Space X trilogy is an ideal alternative. —Toussaint Egan

Narrated by: Quentin Tarantino and Edoardo Ballerini

Quentin Tarantino’s essay assortment — loosely centered on the style cinema of the Seventies — glides between movie criticism, criticism of movie criticism, and self-criticism. One second, Tarantino’s sharing an in depth account of his childhood journeys to finances theaters together with his mother’s boyfriend, the subsequent he’s chronicling the careers of the LA movie critic scene, after which, together with his iconic spitfire tempo, he whips collectively a five-course meal from a largely forgotten neo-noir.

Whereas it’s good to be taught extra about Tarantino, he can’t shake his career-long behavior of self-mythologization. The e-book’s most memorable sections permit the director to rave (or shred) the flicks that contributed instruments to his cinematic package. Tarantino himself supplies narration for a portion of the e-book. Whereas it might be good to have had the author/director/writer’s narration for all the essay assortment, his VO companion is certainly one of my favourite audiobook voices: Edoardo Ballerini, a two-time winner of the Audie Award. (Sure, audiobooks have awards too!) —Chris Plante

Narrated by: Jennifer Ikeda and Stina Nielsen

Listening to faerie smut like this obtained me into operating, as a result of I’d moderately run one other 100 yards than cease mid-chapter. The dramatized audiobooks for A Courtroom of Thorns and Roses are in all probability the most well-liked possibility — they’re solid with completely different voice actors for every character, and the audio-engineered foley sounds enable you to envision the scenes as they occur. Personally, I like common, single-narrator variations, notably A Courtroom of Silver Flames, narrated by Stina Nielsen — her husky voice is ideal for Nesta’s perspective. —Zoë Hannah

Narrated by: Scott Brick, Orlagh Cassidy, Euan Morton, Simon Vance, Ilyana Kadushin, Byron Jennings, David R. Gordon, Jason Culp, Kent Broadhurst, Oliver Wyman, Patricia Kilgarriff, Scott Sowers

After studying Dune in hardback as a youngster, I wished a special expertise once I joined a e-book membership in 2013 and agreed to reread Frank Herbert’s trippy sci-fi tome. I went with an unabridged audiobook model that has not one, not two, however 12 readers switching off between all the main characters within the story, including beautiful vocal shade to its complexity with every of their performances. It’s a incredible solution to expertise a e-book that has a variety of completely different folks and views. —MM

Narrated by: Simon Templeman, Anthony Heald, Stefan Rudnicki

There are three narrators in Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, and due to this fact three readers for this audiobook, every with a pitch-perfect voice for the creepy story. I listened to Victor Frankenstein’s shaky, nervous tremor whereas shoveling my automobile out throughout a snowstorm, and I’ll all the time keep in mind that completely lonely and unsettling audiobook expertise. It’s a scrumptious hear even in the event you don’t have the suitable setting, after all. —MM

Hell Is a World With out You is the debut novel of journalist Jason Kirk, my former boss and a buddy. That disclosure may lead you to take my suggestion with a grain of salt, however I urge you: don’t. What Kirk has achieved here’s a marvel, making a bracingly humorous and deeply felt coming-of-age story about post-9/11 America, informed from the very particular perspective of a youngster raised in an evangelical family who breaks from the restrictive mould his church needs to comprise him in.

The audiobook solely provides to the expertise. Kirk, additionally a podcaster, is the very best option to translate his singular humorousness into audio kind, and the addition of sound results like AIM alert noises solely enhances one of many 12 months’s finest and funniest books. Don’t simply take my phrase for it – the e-book has gotten rave evaluations from Kirkus, Independent Book Review, and the Columbia Daily Tribune, amongst different publications. —Pete Volk

Narrated by: Cindy Kay, Justis Bolding, Laura Knight Keating, Susan Bennett, Jasmin Walker

For those who like actuality TV like The Bachelor and also you additionally like horror films — which, very similar to The Bachelor, can even finish with a last woman — Patricia Needs to Cuddle is the e-book for you, ideally in audiobook kind with completely different readers for every of the feminine contestants on a fictional actuality courting present that goes horribly incorrect. Since this e-book was written by an excellent buddy of mine, I did count on to listen to her voice narrating the story, however as an alternative I’m thrilled to suggest the roster of readers who deliver her characters to life. —MM

Narrated by: Liyah Summers

I had already learn The Priory of the Orange Tree as soon as once I picked up the audiobook, however listening to the sweeping fantasy epic as learn by Liyah Summers was a very new expertise. (And I don’t simply imply the right pronunciations of names that have been completely different from my pronunciations of these names.) The e-book is such a winding story that it lends itself simply to being learn aloud, so Summers’ narration felt like a bedtime story. For those who’ve already learn this one, I like to recommend the audiobook for its standalone prequel, A Day of Fallen Night time, which is narrated by the writer, together with a couple of different voice actors to symbolize quite a lot of factors of view. —ZH

Narrated by: George Saunders, Phylicia Rashad, Nick Offerman, Glenn Shut, Keith David, Rainn Wilson, BD Wong, and Renee Elise Goldsberry

George Saunders is that instructor who cracks open the universe and allows you to have a look at its million interconnected gears. He doesn’t clarify how the universe works (he wouldn’t fake that’s attainable) however factors towards essentially the most lovely, puzzling, and enlightening patches and warmly asks, “How does this make you’re feeling? And why?”

I need to communicate broadly concerning the energy of Saunders’ work as a result of I concern you’ll hear, “It is a assortment of traditional brief tales by Russian authors accompanied by companion lectures,” and reply, “I solely have a lot time in life, and I’ve no plans to get a doctorate in Comp. Lit.” And sure, the e-book — constructed from Saunders’ college programs — would construct the inspiration for the budding profession of a novelist or tutorial. But it surely’s a lot extra enjoyable and, with the danger of busting my metaphor, common.

Saunders makes use of lovely writing concerning the that means of life to show us easy methods to write, learn, and admire lovely writing, and easy methods to dwell our most significant lives. Plus, he invited a bunch of good actors to learn the brief tales, together with Phylicia Rashad, Nick Offerman, BD Wong, Keith David, and Rainn Wilson. Have I offered you but? —CP

Narrated by: Jennifer Kim, Julian Cihi

With solely two readers, Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow’s solid isn’t as stacked as a number of the different audiobooks that I’ve advisable for inclusion on this record. But the mild voice of Jennifer Kim (and rather more occasional chapters with Julian Cihi) is a big a part of what made me love this novel a few group of buddies who make a online game collectively and fall out and in of friendship, and love, with each other alongside the way in which. Kim and Cihi are terribly gifted at conveying the emotional weight required for this tender story. —MM

Narrated by: Edoardo Ballerini, Jonathan Davis, Mozhan Marnò, and Orlagh Cassidy

I hesitate to suggest Belief, co-winner of the 2023 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction, on this specific record. The problem isn’t high quality and even leisure. The e-book is a literary masterpiece and a surprisingly pleasurable seaside learn. However its construction appears — not less than at first — superb for the web page, not the audiobook.

Belief is, on a macro stage, concerning the nature of utmost wealth. And on a micro stage, concerning the solitary keeper of a fortune, his inescapable gravity, and the people who get caught in orbit. Creator Hernan Diaz break up the e-book into 4 fictional texts: a novel, an autobiography, a memoir, and a day. Some are full and polished; others, works-in-progress. All are from completely different factors of view. Consider it as The Nice Gatsby by the use of Rashomon.

Diaz makes use of formatting to seize a sure feeling for every textual content, and in principle, that’s motive sufficient to seize a bodily copy. However! (After all, there’s a “however.”) The audiobook performs its variation of this magic trick by casting 4 completely different narrators with 4 completely different kinds. Instructed to you by distinctive actors, it appears like listening to folks plead their case for the reality as in the event you’ve organized a most eloquent interrogation.

Look, in the event you don’t belief me, not less than trust Dua Lipa! —CP