The first thing that makes a good audiobook is a good book, which is why many of the titles on this list appear elsewhere in paste‘s “best of 2018” book coverage. . however, a great audiobook will offer more than just an alternate path to enjoy a good story. From exceptional accents to dynamic performances to layered sound effects, that something extra contributes to a book’s narrative in new ways.
This final list of the best audiobooks of 2018 celebrates the something the medium brings to the reading experience. These 20 titles, listed in order of running time from 90 minutes to nearly 24 hours, provide fantastic listening experiences across all genres.
You are reading: Best books on tape 2018
everyone’s an alien when you’re an alien too: a book by jomny sun
narrator: jonny sol (jomny sol)
run time: 1 hour and 32 minutes
audible
See Also: The Velveteen Rabbit
| book.fm | overdrive
everyone’s an alien when you’re an alien too was a phenomenon in 2017, one of the few genuinely incandescent places of pure, brilliant beauty the year had to offer. but it wasn’t until the end of january that @jomnysun’s person, writer jonny sun, had the opportunity to send a (really delicious) audio performance to the world. “Surprise!! I made an audiobook!!” he tweeted to his alien-loving fans on January 30. “always wanted to read the book to y’all so i recorded this with a brand new script that narrates what happens on every page!” he is the best twitter alien reading to you an unwatchable picture book with the most innocent and loving narration imaginable. You’ll listen to this one with a hand squeezing your heart for an entire hour and a half, so make sure you’re not operating heavy machinery when it turn on.
the poet x by elizabeth acevedo
narrator: elizabeth acevedo
runtime: 3 hours and 3 minutes
audible
See Also: The Velveteen Rabbit
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elizabeth acevedo’s bracingly fresh el poeta x is a novel in verse. but more precisely, it is a novel in spoken verse, which makes the audio version of it, performed by the author herself, the perfect way to experience it. With the powerful voice of Acevedo giving life to the narrator and poet Xiomara Batista, Harlem and Dominican adolescence are revived. The world of Xiomara is not easy, but it is exciting. And at just three and a half hours long, this audiobook is one you’ll return to again and again, capturing new nuances in X’s growing confidence bars, and new feelings about the love between X and the twin and the rest of their family and friends, every time.
convenience store woman by sayaka murata, translated by ginny tapley takemori
narrator: nancy wu
run time: 3 hours and 21 minutes
audible
See Also: The Velveteen Rabbit
| book.fm | overdrive
getting to hear the irasshaimase! greetings peppered throughout sayaka murata’s eerily anticlimactic novella, convenience store woman, with its appropriate Japanese inflection , is one of the keys to the excellence of this audiobook. But Nancy Wu’s brilliant and emotionally distant reading of protagonist Miss Furukura is what transforms the book into a harrowing look inside the mind of a potential sociopath. Miss Furukura is a woman who, as a child, threw a shovel in a classmate’s face because it seemed like the most efficient way to keep him from irritating everyone on the playground. that, despite what many goodreads readers seem to think, is not a quirk, a fact wu’s cool narration makes clear. Miss Furukura’s dispassionate interior monologue would be enough to set her apart from neurotypical adult society, but Wu goes beyond it, infusing every character in Miss Furukura’s orbit with emotion and shedding light on Miss Furukura’s own psychosocial gaps.
barracoon: the story of the last “black shipment” by zora neale hurston
narrator: robin miles
Runtime: 3 hours and 49 minutes
audible
See Also: The Velveteen Rabbit
| book.fm | overdrive
Zora Neale Hurston is remembered as a novelist, but she was just as dedicated to documenting real experiences. barracoon she compiles her interviews with cudjo lewis, one of the last known survivors of the atlantic slave trade, whom she spent months interviewing at her home in her plateau, alabama. His story, documented by Hurston in Lewis’s specific vernacular, is interpreted here by audiobook Great Robin Miles, who not only nails the accents but strikes just the right balance between the warmth of Hurston’s internal storytelling and the conversational eccentricities of Hurston’s. his spoken conversations with lewis. A new book by Zora Neale Hurston is something that, by definition, never happens, so don’t fall asleep with this necessary and entertaining listen.
marcus vega doesn’t speak spanish by pablo cartaya
narrator: pablo cartaya
run time: 4 hours 35 minutes
audible
See Also: The Velveteen Rabbit
| book.fm | overdrive
Pablo Cartaya reads his own middle grade story, which follows a six-foot-tall eighth grader visiting his paternal family in Puerto Rico, in a nonchalant tone that might start off sounding monotone. But listeners will soon realize that this is a facade that covers the depth of the feelings that Marcus Vega hides, that his size and his need to protect his younger brother, Charlie, make him afraid to reveal. Although Marcus may not speak Spanish, her family in Puerto Rico does, and Cartaya differentiates between her various Puerto Rican accents and accents, and the flat continental accent of Marcus’s white mother, with flair. Charlie’s portrayal of him, who has Down syndrome and speaks in a way that is difficult for his Puerto Rican family to understand, is also executed with consistency and care.
the master of crows by christopher skaife
narrator: christopher skaife
run time: 6 hours and 39 minutes
audible
See Also: The Velveteen Rabbit
| book.fm | overdrive
the warden yeoman christopher skaife, master of ravens at the tower of london, started out in the world as a soldier, but master of ravens: my life with the ravens at the tower of london illustrates just how lucky we are that he became a storyteller. alternately a memoir, a natural history text, a comedy of errors, a history of the British army, a history of the British monarchy, a literary history of England, a literary history of America, a literary history of world mythology, a history of ghosts and a collection of bizarre character studies, ravenmaster is intelligent and full of personality, just like the ravens themselves. This curious combination of themes makes perfect sense as a brilliant whole with skaife’s narration, brimming with unabashed warmth and a Dover accent. As a bonus, the audiobook is peppered with recordings of the tower ravens, both cawing and flapping, bringing to life the birds within the tower walls that Skaife adores.
sadie by courtney summers
Narrators: Rebecca Soler, Dan Bittner, Gabra Zackman, Fred Berman
runtime: 7 hours and 57 minutes
audible
See Also: The Velveteen Rabbit
| book.fm | overdrive
building on the recent explosion of true crime podcasts, courtney summers frames sadie as a meta-conversation over time between the podcast’s subject, sadie hunter, whose sister was found dead, and the resulting podcast about the murder. . This novel works in print—Summer is a skilled writer—but it’s tailor-made for the audiobook treatment. Interestingly, that treatment is done here with the help of a full cast both in the podcast transcripts and in the more traditional episodes from sadie’s perspective. Her mileage may vary on the success of this in the latter case, but even if full cast recordings aren’t her preference, sadie is worth a look. The host of Dan Bittner’s podcast is infuriatingly out of breath at his “search” for the “truth,” and Rebecca Soler’s caustic rendition of Sadie’s inner monologue, contrasted with Sadie’s audible frustration at her extreme stutter. prevents you from communicating with the world, makes this audiobook sing.
there, there by tommy orange
Narrators: Darrell Dennis, Shaun Taylor-Corbett, Alma Cuervo, Kyla Garcia
run time: 8 hours
audible
See Also: The Velveteen Rabbit
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Tommy Orange’s debut, a multi-generational story centered on the great Oakland powwow, is a novel constructed by weaving together narrative, experience, pain, love, and family. So it makes sense for the audiobook to weave its own fabric by employing multiple narrators to tell the stories of Jacqui Red Feather, Dene Oxedene, Opal Viola, Victoria Bear Shield, and nine other voices in the scattered group’s urban Oakland orbit. All four narrators infuse Orange’s prose with the poetry it inherently contains, but none go overboard with caricature. The voices of the characters flow from the speakers as if they are the true urban Native Americans that Orange has written them to be. you might want to have a hard copy of the book to reread parts of when you’re done listening, but missing the audio would be a loss.
not so bad: dispatches from rape culture edited by roxane gay
Narrators: Roxane Gay, Gabrielle Union, Ally Sheedy, Amy Jo Burns, Lyz Lenz, Claire Schwartz, Aubrey Hirsch, Jill Christman, Lynn Melnick, Brandon Taylor, Emma Smith-Stevens, A.J. mckenna, lisa mecham, vanessa martyr, xtx, sophie mayer, nora salem, v.l. search, michelle chen, liz rosema, anthony frame, samhita mukhopadhyay, miriam zoila perez, zoe medeiros, sharisse tracey, stacey may fowles, elisabeth fairfield stokes, meredith talusan, nicole boyce, elissa bassist
runtime: 8 hours and 41 minutes
audible
See Also: The Velveteen Rabbit
| book.fm | overdrive
This collection of essays from all angles of modern American rape culture, edited with palpable care by roxane gay, will be utterly familiar to most listeners. it’s necessary reading, but it’s also stomach-churning and impossible (at least emotionally) to finish in one sitting. the audiobook version will have you hooked, especially when you discover how much emotional dimensionality each writer brings to the narrative of their own first-person essay. some read musically, some angrily, some with studied monotony, some with no discernible style at all, but all make their experiences come true. use the audiobook as a tool to propel the most challenging narratives, with the strength of each writer urging you into an ever-evolving state of empathy.
something absolutely remarkable by hank green
narrator: kristen sieh, green skein
runtime: 9 hours and 25 minutes
audible
See Also: The Velveteen Rabbit
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something absolutely remarkable the synopsis reads like a typical romp of the cultural moment: protagonist april may stumbles upon a 10-foot-tall metal sculpture that looks like a cross between a transformer and a samurai . She calls the robot sculpture “Carl,” conducts a mock-serious interview with it that goes online, and then becomes the international “face of Carls” when more statues are discovered around the world. Acerbic and young Kristen Sieh’s April May Read is the perfect audio conduit for vlogbrother Hank Green’s jaw-dropping debut novel. As the surprise voice that comes in to wrap up April’s story in the book’s final moments, Green is also perfect in the role he plays, though explaining that role would be a spoiler. The book is entertaining in print, but don’t miss this highlight of the audiobook format; Being entrenched in April’s head as she navigates giant robots, world fame, and existential crises add valuable depth to a compelling work.
the girl who drank the moon by kelly barnhill
narrator: christina moore
runtime: 9 hours and 31 minutes
audible
See Also: The Velveteen Rabbit
| book.fm | overdrive
The story of a swamp-dwelling witch and her foster baby, The Girl Who Drank the Moon tackles faith, fear, sadness, superstition, kindness, grace, legacy, puberty and love, so lots of love! In the deft hands of storyteller Christina Moore, every declaration of love, whether it takes the form of the irascible witch’s aged voice, the swamp monster’s scratch, or the diminutive dragon’s gleeful screech, pierces straight to the soul. of the listener. Listening to this middle grade novel is like having your beloved grandmother read aloud to you while you snuggle under a comfy quilt in the moonlight. it’s just excellent, full stop.
one day in december by josie silver
narrators: eleanor tomlinson and charlie anson
run time: 10 hours and 27 minutes
audible
See Also: The Velveteen Rabbit
| book.fm | overdrive
josie silver’s
one day in december is the perfect romantic comedy to curl up and enjoy at the end of the long year that was 2018. and with narrators eleanor tomlinson and charlie anson in your ears expressing star-crossed lovers in time, that snuggling will feel more satisfying. Yes, British accents are a trap for American listeners, but the warmth of emotion that Tomlinson and Anson feed into their storytelling is remarkable, even without taking their accents into account. Fair warning: This is more of a “party kids growing up” story, so while the long-term love story offers plenty of charm, don’t be surprised that the full listen is a bit cheeky i>. if you’re the kind of listener who likes a little salsa with your romance, consider this a horn.
All the Eternals: The Untold Story of Cinderella’s Stepmother by Danielle Teller
narrator: jane copland
run time: 10 hours and 50 minutes
audible
See Also: The Velveteen Rabbit
| book.fm | overdrive
Danielle Teller dismantles the evil stepmother archetype by writing both to independent Agnes and to the unforgiving, patriarchal world in which Agnes and her daughters, one pockmarked, the other biracial, are forced to survive. therefore, it makes sense that only the most compelling storytellers can do the story justice. Jane Copland, with the wise patina she gives to Agnes’s current voice, and the subtle modulations of age, education, and class she bestows on the men, women, and children that govern Agnes’s every move from birth to death, is that narrator. In Copland’s hands, no one, no matter how evil, sounds like a clown, but none of them sound particularly virtuous. all are flawed and complex, proving that all the ever afters is not an inversion of fairy tale archetypes, but a searing illumination of cultural artifacts that force us to think in terms of such archetypes at first. place.
the radical king by martin luther king, jr. (edited by dr cornel west)
narrator: dr. Cornel West, Levar Burton, Mike Colter, Colman Domingo, Danny Glover, Gabourey Sidibe, Wanda Sykes, Leslie Odom, Jr. and michael kenneth williams, bahni turpin, robin miles, kevin free
runtime: 11 hours and 13 minutes
See Also: How Tall Are the Harry Potter Characters: Height Chart & Analysis – Fantasy Topics
audible (exclusive)
earlier this year, dr. Cornel West has partnered with Audible Studios to produce an exclusive multicast version of his 2015 anthology, The Radical King. The 23 essays, sermons, speeches, and assorted writings included in her curated anthology are performed by an ensemble of heavy hitters from the world of acting and professional audiobooks. As I described in my title review, it is these 23 unique performances that prove to be the audiobook’s greatest strength, placing Dr. the king’s famous words about new languages as an “object lesson in both the universality and the specificity of human experience” that gives them a “visceral clarity, an acuity that makes it possible to understand that these speeches, sermons, and essays are not a historical record but living documents.” none of the pieces in the collection sound like dr. the original version of the king, and therein lies the lesson. listen to this at home, listen in the car, listen with friends and family and, if you’re bold enough, with enemies.
circle by madeline miller
narrator: lost week
run time: 12 hours and 8 minutes
audible
See Also: The Velveteen Rabbit
| book.fm | overdrive
madeline miller’s greek mythology work topped many best of 2018 lists (including best paste novels and best fantasy novels lists), so it may be acquainted with the often dreamy, always infuriating story of the banished island-witch, Circe. But this lyrical novel deserves a second reading, especially in the form of an audio performance of Weeks Lost. In the clip below, Circe describes the halls of Oceanus’s golden palace as “softened by centuries of divine warmth,” but she might as well be describing a soothing, almost preternaturally calm, narrative of weeks. Her performance makes Circe’s forced interiority a vibrant thing that seethes with more life and imagination than any of the gods and nymphs whose worst behaviors never led to her own banishment.
beastie boys book by michael diamond and adam horovitz (and friends)
Narrators: Michael Diamond, Adam Horovitz and 42 of their creative celebrity friends
runtime: 12 hours and 41 minutes
audible
See Also: The Velveteen Rabbit
| book.fm | overdrive
the beastie boys have never been a musical group that follows the rules, so it should come as no surprise that their hardcore/hip hop memoir, book of the beastie boys, is not. . interested in the rules either. Constructed from a series of warm essays written and narrated by remaining band members Michael Diamond (Mike D) and Adam Horovitz (Ad-Rock), this memoir block also includes essays written and narrated by former bandmates. (kate schellenbach, from the band’s early hardcore days) and fans (jonathan lethem and amy poehler, the latter reviewing all of his music video oeuvre), cookie puss fanfic by colson whitehead, a cookbook by roy choi, half a dozen mixtape playlists from both beasts… and a ton of love for their third bandmate, adam yauch (mca), who they lost to cancer in 2012. this book tells the story of history of American pop culture over the last 30 years in a deep and fun way, which is endlessly enriched by audio. give it to everyone, but most importantly, give it to yourself.
the beauties by dhonielle clayton
narrator: rosie jones
runtime: 12 hours and 57 minutes
audible
See Also: The Velveteen Rabbit
| book.fm | overdrive
dhonielle clayton weaves brilliant finesse of the sharpest order with her first novel, the belles. The book takes the grotesqueness of the consumerist patriarchy that shapes power and social order in our real world and, with a single click of the knob into unreality, turns it into a full-fledged horror show. Narrator Rosie Jones is a perfect choice for the young protagonist Camellia Beauregard, a magical beauty who is both a wide-eyed Pollyanna in awe of the world beyond the walls of her sheltered upbringing and a sharp-eyed judge of the moral world hypocrisy. Despite the fact that Camellia is a magical creature in a world of a morally and physically devastated human majority, Jones imbues her narrative with a sense of tender wonder and aesthetic clarity that makes Camellia relatively human. One might wish that Camellia uncovered the secrets hidden in plain sight a little sooner than she does rather than leave all the good action for future installments, but the world of Orleans and the magic of the Beauties is fascinatingly novel, and offers such a provocative mirror of our own world: that, especially in the gifted hands of jones, the long journey through the first book will feel quite satisfying on its own.
obsidium by amie kaufman and jay kristoff
Narrators: Olivia Taylor Dudley, Johnathan McClain, Carla Corvo, Maccleod Andrews, Erin Spencer, Andrew Eiden, Lisa Cordileone, Lincoln Hoppe, Matthew Frow, Olivia Mackenzie-Smith and an entire cast
runtime: 13 hours
audible
The digital recording technology that makes audiobooks possible offers so much creative storytelling potential that it was only a matter of time before a producer got smart and found the right book to power the entire art form. this book? illuminae by amie kaufman and jay kristoff from 2015, an experimental novel in a computer file set aboard a corrupted spaceship controlled by ia hundreds of years in the future. the print version of the book is a visually erratic feast, and the audio version had an extensive cast and big special effects production to match. Obsidium is the third and final installment in the sci-fi trilogy already, and it has rich texture, exciting pacing and amazing movement like the previous two. In its commitment to both the diversity of the cast and the complexity of the production, obsidio reveals how irresistibly human the future of audiobooks is.
tess del camino by rachel hartman
narrator: katharine mcewan
runtime: 16 hours and 15 minutes
audible
See Also: The Velveteen Rabbit
| book.fm | overdrive
Whether you’ve been a fan of Rachel Hartman since her debut or new to the dragon-filled Southlands of seraphina author tess of the road is for you. . Raw, angry and self-immolated, the titular Tess is not someone whose head is easy to live with. But in Katharine McEwan’s empathic narration, the traumas that led Tess to become wild and acerbic unravel themselves, healing both Tess and the listener. tess suffers a trauma that forcibly restores her life, but mcewan takes it upon himself to make both her heroine’s suffering and healing equally ingrained. And if that empathic ability wasn’t enough, weeks kill in tess of the road‘s bonus audio element: all the weird, meandering babble of Quigutl language Tess speaks to her genderfluid Quigutl best friend, patka.
iron gold from pierce brown
Narrators: Tim Gerard Reynolds, John Curless, Julian Elfer, Aedin Moloney
runtime: 23 hours and 22 minutes
audible
| book.fm
Pierce Brown’s original Red Rising trilogy concluded in 2017, but the culmination of Darrow’s uprising against the “society” that reigned over his space dystopia was less a conclusion than a transition into brutality. brand new. iron gold, the first book in the second trilogy of the red rise saga, picks up 10 years after the rebuilding period that followed darrow’s great victory. the novel reframes the entire world by pulling the lens back to incorporate three new actors: a teenage girl who has lost her family to the consequences of the war; a rebellious former thief and con artist; a fallen prince in exile, who is experiencing the new order in completely different ways. As a result, iron gold‘s vocal talent includes not only the first trilogy’s accent-skipping narrator, tim gerard reynolds (see red rise excerpt below) , but also john curless as the heist man, julian elfer as the honorably aristocratic fallen prince, and aedin moloney as the raging teenager overcome by righteous pain. Trying to incorporate the vast gulfs of difference of those characters without overwhelming the reader is an ambitious move on Brown’s part, but between the world-building legwork he established in the first trilogy and the addition of the new voices of Curless, Elfer and moloney, that ambition is paying off.
Looking for more reading recommendations? Check out our lists of the best novels, best non-fiction books, best young adult novels, best fantasy novels, and best book covers of 2018.
Alexis Gunderson is a television critic and audio bibliophile whose writing has appeared on forever young adult, screener and birth.movies.death. she will fight 10 rounds for teens and cleverly executed genre fare to be taken seriously by pop culture. she can be found @alexiskg.
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