So I spend several hours each day listening to audiobooks while working and doing chores. I love audiobooks, not only for the hands and eyes free reasons, but for the way a really good reader can make dialogue and character come alive.
I've been on a historical romance kick lately, sifting for gems among lots of um, mildly entertaining pulp. Here are some that I thought were really exceptional for the genre for writing as well as narrator:
For My Ladies Heart - Laura Kinsale, northern England knight errant meets Medici-ish Italian princess on the run. Heavily influenced by Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, some dialogue is middle English-lite but there is an online glossary and you can follow it from the excellent delivery (also if you read Chaucer, The Once and Future King, or Le Morte d'Arthur at some point in the past, it's not hard to follow). Excellent historical world-building and character complexity.
Flowers from the Storm - Laura Kinsale, Quaker daughter of mathematician meets regency era Duke who is in an insane asylum but is actually just unable to speak. Very intense, but again, very realistic and detailed world building and world-view building on the part of the characters. Lots of examinations of class and culture.
I've listened to a bunch of her other books and they are all really excellently written, although they push the conventions genre of romance further than some readers are comfortable with. (i.e. character conflicts are real, not artificial conflicts that can be easily overcome if only they would talk to each other).
The Proposition - Judith Ivory, A gender switched Pygmalion story with a cockney/west country rat-catcher as Eliza Doolittle, and an impoverished nobly born elocution teacher as Henry Higgins. Delightful and slow building, and the reader really makes the whole examination of accent, word choice, and the vocal exercises come alive.
I'm now listening to sci-fi, A Long Way to A Small Angry Planet, which is great so far -- very like Firefly.
What have you listened to and loved?
