Site: http://www.audiobooks.com/podcast | Email: podcast@audiobooks.com
Welcome back to the Audiobooks.com Podcast! We're wrapping up this year in audiobooks with the Best of 2015. We've coalesced this list of top audiobooks based on sales and public response and segmented them by fiction and non-fiction so we can dish it up for you with some color commentary.
You'll recognize several titles on these two lists from previous discussions on the podcast. We talked about Elon Musk in episode 2. Why Not Me, Go Set a Watchman and Girl in the Spider's Web in episode 12. And even though Addy has been struggling to read a Stephen King novel, we got a voicemail from a listener encouraging her to give it another go!
Reflecting back on 2015, we see trends amongst the most popular books. One is gender flipping, such as with Grey by E. L. James, when an author, who has written from one gender’s point of view, writes another novel in the voice of another gender in the original, or a novel that jumps between the point of view of a man and a woman.
Another trend is comedians writing autobiographies, or otherwise works of non-fiction. In addition to Aziz Ansari and Mindy Kaling on the non-fiction list below, 2015 also saw books from David Spade, Rainn Wilson, Tim Hawkins, Amy Poehler, and Judd Apatow. We’re not complaining!
The final trend is similar to the second but even more, indicative of how much our culture is changing. YouTubers and Bloggers are also writing books, which brings us new authors like Miranda Sings, Shane Dawson, and Jenn McAllister, amongst a shocking number of other book deals from the visual internet mediums.
Without further ado, here are the lists! Let's see if they match up with your top 10 of 2015!
Fiction
The Girl on the Train by Paula Hawkins
Grey by E.L. James
Go Set a Watchman by Harper Lee
The Nightingale by Kristin Hannah
Luckiest Girl Alive by Jessica Knoll
Girl in the Spider's Web by David Lagercrantz
Finder's Keepers by Stephen King
Rogue Lawyer by John Grisham
See Me by Nicholas Sparks
Seveneves by Neal Stephenson
Non-Fiction
Modern Romance by Aziz Ansari
Down the Rabbit Hole by Holly Madison
The Wright Brothers by David McCullogh
Elon Musk: Tesla, SpaceX, and the Quest for a Fantastic Future
Dead Wake: The Last Crossing of the Lusitana by Erik Larson
Why Not Me by Mindy Kaling
Troublemaker: Surviving Hollywood and Scientology by Leah Rimini
Between the World and Me by Ta-Nehisi Coates
The Road to Character by David Brooks
Big Magic: Creative Living Beyond Fear Elizabeth Gilbert
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Site: http://www.audiobooks.com/podcast | Email: podcast@audiobooks.com
A love of a particular book arises for many reasons. A premise, a concept, a theme often draws us to the book, but an author’s imagination is usually what makes us stay. This week on the Audiobooks.com Podcast, we speak with an author who has that envious and covetous imagination which brings books to life in a multidimensional sort of way. Lee Stephens, author of Dawn of Destiny, part of the Epic series, created a full production audio drama out of his first novel and joins us for a little chat!
To give you an idea of just how involved and exciting the audiobook is, we play a short clip of his epic science fiction adventure. In this clip we hear both the description of the action and the sound effects that accompany it. We hear unique voices for each characters. And, most importantly, we hear the result of four and a half years of commitment to a project Lee believed in and wanted to share with the world.
The plan for the Epic Universe is an 8-book series. Four are currently available, but only Dawn of Destiny is available in audiobook form. The fifth book, Lee promises, is nearing completion. We asked Lee if he has plans to turn the other books into the same type of audio drama as he did with the first one. You’ll have to tune in to the podcast for the answer!
The story featured here in this podcast, Dawn of Destiny, follows a young man heeding a call to war. Earth has been invaded by three alien species, and Scott Remington is one of a handful of young men that lead outstanding excursions onto the battlefield, coming up with the impossible, and igniting an action-packed story. This book explores though-provoking themes about the human condition, about God and faith, and about what it means to answer a call on one’s life.
A huge thank you to Lee for being on the show this week! Take a moment to go check out Lee’s website, epicuniverse.com, and then show him some love on Twitter: @epicuniverse. His first, and only, audiobook (thus far) is available at Audiobooks.com! Check out the Books and Resources section of this post to be redirected.
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Site: http://www.audiobooks.com/podcast | Email: podcast@audiobooks.com
In 2012, the world was made aware of a strange, desert town in the Southwestern United States. Details of this town were provided through advertisements and news segments on a bi-monthly basis. The name of this town? Night Vale.
This week on the Audiobooks.com Podcast we had the pleasure of speaking with the creative minds behind Welcome to Night Vale, the very podcast that made Night Vale one of the most popular fictional towns in the world. Or, at least, on the Internet. Joseph Fink and Jeffrey Cranor developed and released Welcome to Night Vale in June of 2012, providing bi-monthly installments since then, and became the most-downloaded podcast of 2013.
In the ongoing wake of the podcast’s popularity, the men wrote a novel which hit our hungry bookshelves in October 2015. Set within the same town, but narrated by two characters fans of the podcasts will recognize, the novel is for new fans and seasoned fans alike! We catch up with Joseph and Jeffrey just a couple months after the book’s release to learn about their motivation for writing it, their creative process and storytelling techniques, and how the book has been received by fans.
Joseph and Jeffrey, as well as many of the Night Vale cast members, belong to the New York-Neo-Futurist performance organization, which is known for its long-running show Too Much Light Makes the Baby Go Blind. For 50 weeks a year, the Too Much Light family puts on a different show, consisting of 30 plays in 60 minutes. The show format is quick, comic and light, the audience gets involved, and the plays are written by the performers. Both men say that they borrowed significantly from their experiences writing for a variety of people and styles, week after week, to make Welcome to Night Vale into what it is today. If you’re ever in New York, catch a show!
A huge thank you to both Joseph and Jeffrey for their time with us this week! Go show them some love on Twitter and Facebook. And then, listen to the book!
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Books & Resources Mentioned
Site: http://www.audiobooks.com/podcast | Email: podcast@audiobooks.com
Can you handle the truth? The Real Brian and the One and Only Addy serve it up on a silver platter in this week’s installment of the Audibooks.com Podcast! We had the great privilege of speaking with Neil Strauss, author of 2005 New York Times bestseller The Game and the newly released The Truth. From an elite player in a secret society celebrating the artistry of picking up women to a father and committed monogamist, Neil tells us about the amazing journey of writing The Truth that lead him away from being a monogamy nay-sayer.
Having already exposed his pick-up methods and encounters in a very detailed manner throughout The Game, and later Emergency, we were interested in learning about how his approach to the new book differed from his approach to the earlier ones. How did the writing process change for him? Did he continue to learn more about himself as he put it into words?
To our great surprise and interest, Neil says that he started out writing The Truth as a means to redefine relationships and speak out against monogamy, coming at the book with all sorts of research that exposed the inefficiencies of that lifestyle. But at one point, while re-reading his own words, he reflected on the voice coming from the page and thought he sounded like a man scared of intimacy and commitment. This reflection redirected his course and turned The Truth into what it is today, an uncomfortable book about relationships.
Neil leaves us with some excellent advice that corresponds directly to the wonderful conversation we had in the course of getting to know him and his new book. He gives this advice: “Lovingly and compassionately question and challenge yourself, question your presuppositions and the bases on which you have your thoughts. Challenge yourself to break habits and routines, to get outside your comfort zone.”
We want to thank Neil for being a guest on our show this week and hope that you will too! You can find him on Twitter, @NeilStrauss and keep up with his latest projects by visiting his website, neilstrauss.com. Check out his available audiobooks in the Books & Resources section in this blog post.
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Books & Resources Mentioned