Congratulations on the return of the oldest, Katy! That must be lovely.
Juliet Stevenson is an incredible narrator – I'm thinking of Learwife by J R Thorp or the The Testament of Mary by Colm Tóibín. And Ben Miles is just magnificent reading Hilary Mantel's Cromwell books. Simon Vance is also top rate.
Simon, THANK YOU for this amazing list! I can’t wait to search these narrators and pick from their work to find great new listens :-) I appreciate you taking the time to share them all with us!
I bet you love having your oldest home! I just went to visit my kiddo at university last weekend and it was a delight to see him flourishing on bis own-- looking forward to having him home for breaks though!
I keep a notes file with my favorite narrators -- here is my list:
Julia Whelan
Marin Ireland
January LaVoy
Bahni Turpin
Cassandra Campbell
Robin Miles
Saskia Maarleveld
Robin Miles
Kimberly Farr
The new Erdrich was an ALC from Libro.fm and I immediately downloaded it because I took love Marin Ireland!
Thank you so much for this great list - yay for having more narrators to get excited about! I am on the Libro Influencer list, not the librarian one, so I think that we must have different titles - it wasn’t offered on mine! I was more than happy to use a credit on it though :-)
Loved reading this and getting to nerd out about some of my favorite audiobook narrators! I sometimes regret having such favoritism though, because on the flip side I have some that I let keep me away from books for the opposite reason - through no fault of their own, I should say! I’m the one with the weird “voice preferences” and I will own that lol. Unlike my husband, who only reads via audiobook, and thus will listen to ANY narrator.
I too appreciate Julia Whelan and Teddy Hamilton, and will have to check out the others you listed here. A few of my favorites, through whom I also have discovered many wonderful new books, are, in no particular order: Angele Masters, Mary Jane Wells, Kate Reading, C. J. Bloom, Charlotte North, Elizabeth Evans, Rosalyn Landor, and Heather Wilds. I will read ANY HEA books they narrate, no questions asked! (I’m in my HEA time of life, though I will periodically throw in a nonfiction title and as an English teacher teacher I must also mix in some YA lit (Jason Reynolds narrating his own “Long Way Down” and Elizabeth Acevedo narrating her book “The Poet X” are both stellar YA audio reads!).
Thank you as always for such a relatable post! So happy to also read about your daughter returning home for a bit - enjoy!
I have a definite voice preference too! If a female narrator sounds way older than the actual character in a romance I will quit listening immediately - I just can’t handle that. A very specific quirk I know - ha!
I’m always so happy when my oldest comes to visit!! Enjoy!!
Two of my additional favorites are Kristen Sieh and Luke Daniels. If you ever listen to Kevin Hearne’s Iron Druid series narrated by Luke Daniels, he will also become one of your favorites. He’s like Bahni Turpin with the breadth and depth of accent and voice mastery.
And congrats on one year sans bookstagram. I’ve been so quiet on mine the last year, too, and I’ve been much happier for it. I miss the connections there but I feel like it’s really let me explore and understand my reading tastes without the constant influx of seeing a zillion other books.
I definitely have gotten to follow my own reading whims better without it, although Substack is full of book eye candy as well 😉 The thing I have noticed most is less outrage and the feeling like I need to instantly chime in on something or react to it. If I hear of drama in the publishing (or greater) world, it’s usually well after the fact and I don’t feel like my newsletter is the venue for hot takes or outrage, so I get to just sit back and process rather than chime in. It’s very freeing!
Katy you're really giving me food for thought about Instagram- I've been up and down for the last couple years on what I want to do there or even if I still want to be there. As for audiobook narrators, I also love Cassandra Campbell, she narrated one of my top books of the year - Father of the Rain by Lily King- and she absolutely elevated the reading experience for me. Other favorite narrators of mine - Robert Petkoff, Saskia Maarleveld, Santino Fontana, Dion Graham
It's such a hard topic for me to write about, Renee, since I don't want to seem preachy or prescriptive - social media is such a personal thing, and some things work for some people and not for others. Eventually, Instagram became less a place of joy for me and more a place of pressure, strife and stress. That's when I knew had to be done. I'll definitely check out Father of the Rain - I love Lily King!
Congratulations on the return of the oldest, Katy! That must be lovely.
Juliet Stevenson is an incredible narrator – I'm thinking of Learwife by J R Thorp or the The Testament of Mary by Colm Tóibín. And Ben Miles is just magnificent reading Hilary Mantel's Cromwell books. Simon Vance is also top rate.
Oh I forgot Colin Firth reading The End of the Affair by Graham Greene and Alan Rickman reading The Return of the Native. Both brilliant!
Simon, THANK YOU for this amazing list! I can’t wait to search these narrators and pick from their work to find great new listens :-) I appreciate you taking the time to share them all with us!
I bet you love having your oldest home! I just went to visit my kiddo at university last weekend and it was a delight to see him flourishing on bis own-- looking forward to having him home for breaks though!
I keep a notes file with my favorite narrators -- here is my list:
Julia Whelan
Marin Ireland
January LaVoy
Bahni Turpin
Cassandra Campbell
Robin Miles
Saskia Maarleveld
Robin Miles
Kimberly Farr
The new Erdrich was an ALC from Libro.fm and I immediately downloaded it because I took love Marin Ireland!
Thank you so much for this great list - yay for having more narrators to get excited about! I am on the Libro Influencer list, not the librarian one, so I think that we must have different titles - it wasn’t offered on mine! I was more than happy to use a credit on it though :-)
It is always interesting to see how different the titles are for educators, librarians and influencers!
Loved reading this and getting to nerd out about some of my favorite audiobook narrators! I sometimes regret having such favoritism though, because on the flip side I have some that I let keep me away from books for the opposite reason - through no fault of their own, I should say! I’m the one with the weird “voice preferences” and I will own that lol. Unlike my husband, who only reads via audiobook, and thus will listen to ANY narrator.
I too appreciate Julia Whelan and Teddy Hamilton, and will have to check out the others you listed here. A few of my favorites, through whom I also have discovered many wonderful new books, are, in no particular order: Angele Masters, Mary Jane Wells, Kate Reading, C. J. Bloom, Charlotte North, Elizabeth Evans, Rosalyn Landor, and Heather Wilds. I will read ANY HEA books they narrate, no questions asked! (I’m in my HEA time of life, though I will periodically throw in a nonfiction title and as an English teacher teacher I must also mix in some YA lit (Jason Reynolds narrating his own “Long Way Down” and Elizabeth Acevedo narrating her book “The Poet X” are both stellar YA audio reads!).
Thank you as always for such a relatable post! So happy to also read about your daughter returning home for a bit - enjoy!
I have a definite voice preference too! If a female narrator sounds way older than the actual character in a romance I will quit listening immediately - I just can’t handle that. A very specific quirk I know - ha!
I’m always so happy when my oldest comes to visit!! Enjoy!!
Two of my additional favorites are Kristen Sieh and Luke Daniels. If you ever listen to Kevin Hearne’s Iron Druid series narrated by Luke Daniels, he will also become one of your favorites. He’s like Bahni Turpin with the breadth and depth of accent and voice mastery.
I don't listen to a lot of audiobooks, because I have no attention span, but I really like Richard Armitage, Dion Graham, and Juliet Stevenson.
I’m off to explore these narrators, thank you!
And congrats on one year sans bookstagram. I’ve been so quiet on mine the last year, too, and I’ve been much happier for it. I miss the connections there but I feel like it’s really let me explore and understand my reading tastes without the constant influx of seeing a zillion other books.
I definitely have gotten to follow my own reading whims better without it, although Substack is full of book eye candy as well 😉 The thing I have noticed most is less outrage and the feeling like I need to instantly chime in on something or react to it. If I hear of drama in the publishing (or greater) world, it’s usually well after the fact and I don’t feel like my newsletter is the venue for hot takes or outrage, so I get to just sit back and process rather than chime in. It’s very freeing!
Yes, I can relate to this too! I don’t feel like I need to have a voice or an (outward) opinion on everything bookish here. It is definitely freeing!
Why yes, I do have a list of favorite audiobook narrators! We have some overlap.
- Paul Woodson
- Julia Whelan
- Caroline Hewitt
- Lisa Flanagan
- Callie Dalton
- Andrew Eiden
- Rupert Hawthorne
- Saskia Maarleveld
- Brittany Pressley
- Jason Clarke
Thank you so much for sharing yours, Kyleigh! I’ll be looking these ones up!
Katy you're really giving me food for thought about Instagram- I've been up and down for the last couple years on what I want to do there or even if I still want to be there. As for audiobook narrators, I also love Cassandra Campbell, she narrated one of my top books of the year - Father of the Rain by Lily King- and she absolutely elevated the reading experience for me. Other favorite narrators of mine - Robert Petkoff, Saskia Maarleveld, Santino Fontana, Dion Graham
It's such a hard topic for me to write about, Renee, since I don't want to seem preachy or prescriptive - social media is such a personal thing, and some things work for some people and not for others. Eventually, Instagram became less a place of joy for me and more a place of pressure, strife and stress. That's when I knew had to be done. I'll definitely check out Father of the Rain - I love Lily King!
Thanks for this list of narrators, some of them are my faves (Julia Whelan) but some are new. I would add Scott Brick to the list.
Grover Gardner