Audiobooks

[rob07]

I know I'm not the only one on this forum who has found audiobooks very helpful recently, so I thought I would start a thread to share recommendations.

So far, I've listened to four - the 圈子圈套 trilogy and 杜拉拉升职记. I picked those four because I am a sheep and blindly followed the dictates of the gods of Chinese publishing who blanketed the relevant shelf of bookstores with these trendy "business fiction" books, causing me to overlook the couple of dusty audiobook versions of classic novels pushed into the corner.

I was relieved to learn that in this haphazard manner I had managed to secure study material that would be even more important to me than "studying the life of Bill Gates" - at least this was what the box of 杜拉拉升职记 promised me. I must admit though, I secretly doubt the claim of the 圈子圈套 trilogy that I had no option not to listen to it because all of my "business competitors" would already have done so.

In all seriousness, I do think that there is scope for more "business fiction" that has some marginal relevance to the lives of those of us who toil away in office jobs. Neither the 圈子圈套 trilogy nor 杜拉拉升职记 were extremely good, but they were both good, and of great benefit to my listening skills.

Actually I was expecting audiobooks to be much harder than Chinese TV because of the absence of Chinese subtitles and visual input, but surprisingly, this is not so much the case. You can just put the audiobook on and listen, the reading voice is constant and pleasant and it is easy to just keep listening, but after I go back to TV after a few hours of audio book I find myself getting irritated at having to integrate both visual and auditory input and those subtitles just keep flashing.

There's a long discussion of 圈子圈套 here: http://www.chinese-forums.com/index.php?/topic/29523-book-of-the-month-december-2011-圈子圈套/

I'm not linking to the forums thread on the 杜拉拉升职记 movie, because it is possibly the worst movie I have ever seen. There is also a 杜拉拉升职记 TV series - not sure about that one, too scarred from the movie to watch it.

[roddy]

There's a gorgeous reading of 骆驼祥子 that's well worth the listen. Here. There's about 13 hours of that.

Oh, and there's also 空镜子, which is also an excellent TV show - it's in the First Episodes Project.

Both of those are genuinely good. Unlike, ahem, cough cough, your two ;-)

[Gleaves]

Good stuff. I'll point out BertR's excellent work on the 活着 audiobook. Good book and thread.

[Xiao Kui]

I enjoyed listening to Lu Yao's Ordinary World several years ago. I only got through the first of the 3 books but I've promised myself I'll finish it some day. It's a very engaging story and I found the passive listening did wonders for my pronunciation even though I was living in an Argentine town with few native speakers at the time. The site I downloaded my copy from is down - I hope the link I provided above is read by the same person. The site http://mmmppp333.com/ seems to have a decent selection though it's hard for me to know where to start - I'm really looking forward to everyone's recommendations.

[drungood]

See buonaparte's post in this thread:

http://forum.koohii....pic.php?id=7701

edit: does anyone with Thunder know if most of the links on mmmppp333.com are still valid? I'd seriously consider setting up Windows XP in a virtual machine just so I can download some of those files. I won't install Thunder on my normal OS since it's known to have malware on it...

[Gleaves]

悟空传 by 今何在 is a retelling of 西游记。 It is quite ridiculous, with plenty of funny and exciting moments. It reminded me of Stephen Chow's 西游记 movies. There is a great cast of voice actors and decent use of music. I really liked 唐僧 in this, I wish he was in it more. It's easy enough in the beginning, but by the end I became a bit overwhelmed by some of the plot points - it often switches time and place. I listened once, read it, then listened again. On my first listen, I really wasn't able to follow along. But it was easy enough after I read it and had my bearings. It is pretty short, about 4 hours. Available on verycd and tudou. Great fun.

By the same author, 中国式青春 is also on verycd. I haven't listened to to this yet, but I think I will tackle it next. It's been noted as a decent read elsewhere on the forum. I believe this is a "what if Superman landed in China instead of Smallville" story. It is a short story, so the audio is just over an hour. Because its shorter, I think I'm going to try to listen/rewind until I figure it out, then look at the text a last resort.

Also, I'm curious if anyone has tried the Magic Treehouse series. I think they could be a decent gateway to audiobooks.

[Gleaves]

I finished 盗墓笔记 a little bit ago. It is 100% pure pulp, so please stop reading this if you are looking for literature. It is an adventure/horror novel about tomb robbing (tomb robbing/raiding appears to something of a genre in and of itself in Chinese pop fiction). The story is straightforward. There is a team that sets out on an expedition only to find themselves in immediate and continuous peril from all sorts of fantastical creatures and traps. The story does a good job of switching scenery about half way through, which was much needed with all the claustrophobic caverns. I enjoyed it, but by the end, I was more than ready for things to wrap up as it gets pretty repetitive. This is book one in a series of eight, so there is no real closure at the end, unfortunately. The level is not too difficult, but I read it as well as listened, and I would have had a hard time keeping up with audio only. The books are all online here to read.