292. Amanda and Sarah Visit With Audiobooks

[music]

Sarah Wendell: Hello there, and welcome to episode number 292 of Smart Podcast, Trashy Books. I am Sarah Wendell from Smart Bitches, Trashy Books, and with me today is Amanda! We are here together, and we’re going to talk about audiobooks. We start with truly important topics like her cat Linus, and then we move on to all of the things regarding audiobooks that we’ve been listening to lately. We’ve both found that listening to books is perfect for our brains at this moment, though we do different tasks while we listen. So we discuss finding audiobooks and discovering what kinds of audiobooks work for us and why, and we cover incredibly important questions, you guys, super important questions such as: wait, are you saying Richard Armitage is narrating this book? Which is better, one narrator or two or more? Should you listen to a group performance or a single-narrator performance? What are you doing while you listen to a book? Are you working out? Are you walking? Are you commuting? Are you walking the dog? Or are you doing quiet activities at home? We discuss all of these options and more, plus we have audiobooks to recommend that we loved, and some that we disagree about too, which is always fun. We compare audio, print, and digital reading and how we respond and engage with each type, discovering slight differences that I found really interesting. And then we talk about our audiobook wish lists, and I shamelessly request your advice on what I should listen to next, so please help me out if you have an opinion about which of the three audiobooks I talk about I should start next. I know some of you are audiobook fans, so I expect that you have many opinions.

And if you do have opinions or suggestions or ideas, or you want to tell us about an audiobook you fleeping loved, email me at [email protected]. I totally want to hear about it.

Now, this is a cool sponsorship; I’m really excited about this one. A while back, Elizabeth P. sent me an email in December of last year and did something really special. She wrote, is it possible to purchase some advertising as a gift for an author? I really like supporting the podcast, and I like that you commission transcripts, and I was thinking about gifting a future podcast sponsorship to an author for one of their 2018 releases. That would check so many of my happy boxes. If this is a thing I can do, would you please let me know. Heck yeah, this is a thing you can do! Thank you so much to Elizabeth! Today’s podcast is sponsored by Dirty Sexy Scot by Melissa Blue, the sixth title in her Under the Kilt series. If you like Minx Malone, Jill Shalvis, and David Tennant’s Scottish accent, you’ll love this romantic comedy set in Scotland. Kincaid Cameron, fresh out of the military, is lost on what he should do next with his life when he meets the ultimate fangirl, Mia Jones, at a fan TV convention. She’s Sherlock; he’s Watson; their HEA is destined in the fandom. They become pen pals, then lovers, but Mia’s reticence to love, to experience passion and have a good, steady diet of dirty, hot sex gets in the way. Will she ever get over past heartbreaks to embrace her Scot bae? There’s also a Scottish curmudgeon, a witty best friend, and epic sex interruptus. Dirty Sexy Scot is a warm hug of a romance novel. It’s on sale wherever e-books are sold right now, and you can find out more about Melissa Blue at themelissablue.com. Thank you to Elizabeth and to Melissa Blue, and happy birthday, Melissa. We hope you have a wonderful birthday week.

Today’s podcast transcript will be commissioned and handcrafted by garlicknitter, who does an excellent job every week. This week’s transcript is sponsored by A Duke in the Night by Kelly Bowen. If you like Sarah MacLean and Tessa Dare and historical romance, you will love this Regency. August Faulkner has returned with his eye on expanding his business empire. He’s a duke, he’s a scoundrel, he’s a titan of business, and he wears his roguish reputation as a badge of honor. Clara Hayward is a respected headmistress. She is above reproach, but ten years ago she shared a scandalous waltz with August, and despite herself, she’s never forgotten the feeling of being in his arms. Can these opposites find a second chance at romance? RT Book Reviews raves, “What a way to start the Devils of Dover series!” A Duke in the Night is on sale now wherever books are sold. You can find out more at kellybowen.net or forever-romance.com, and of course I will have links to both of these books at smartbitchestrashybooks.com/podcast in the show notes!

Now, I have a compliment, and this is one of my favorite parts of the intro.

To Sara: If your steps and travels were plotted out on one map, the route you’ve taken in life would spell words that describe you, such as incredible, outstanding, and freaking rad.

If you would like a compliment of your very own, please have a look at patreon.com/SmartBitches. When you make a monthly pledge, beginning with one dollar a month, you’re helping the show, you’re helping me continue to produce this nice podcast, you’re helping me make sure there’s room for Orville to sit on the desk and thump the sound box with his tail, and you’re helping me commission transcripts for episodes that are in our archives.

I want to thank some of the Patreon folks personally as well, so to Christine, Christie, JJ, RegencyFan, and Riikka, thank you so much for being part of the Patreon community.

Are there other ways to support the show? I bet you know what they are if you’re a podcast listener. I’m sure you’re very familiar with what they are. Sing along with me! You can leave a review wherever you listen; it really does help other people find us. You can tell a friend. You can subscribe. You can just yell out the window, but either way, thank you for hanging out with me each week.

The music you’re listening to is provided by Sassy Outwater, and at the end of the episode I will be telling you about this fine, fine musical track, and I’ll also be telling you what’s coming up on Smart Bitches this week, and I have a terrible, terrible, terrible joke. I’ll also have links to everything we mention, as well as links to all of the books that we talk about.

Plus, if you’re a little new to audiobooks, I will have links to Audible, the Audible Romance Package, and several other options for accessing audiobooks, including Hoopla, which you may have access to through your library; Scribd, which you may already be a scribe, a subscriber to; and of course your local library often has a digital catalog of audiobooks for you to borrow, which is a pretty awesome thing, considering that audiobooks can be pretty expensive. I also know that Google Play is starting an audiobook library, and I will try to find out more and add to it in the show notes.

Without any further delay, on with the podcast! Here’s me and Amanda, and we’re going to talk about audiobooks. Thank you for joining us!

[music]

Sarah: Good morning, Amanda.

Amanda: Good morning!

Sarah: Thank you for recording so early in the morning.

Amanda: You’re welcome. If you hear thumps in the background, that would be Linus. He gets the zoom –

Sarah: Is it Linus?

Amanda: He gets the zoomies after he eats his breakfast.

Sarah: [Laughs]

Amanda: So he’ll alternate between running up and down the hallway and then meowing sorrowfully as if he’s been orphaned up and down the hallway. And if I hear him, I’m like, hey, bud, I’m in here! Hello! I’m doing work! And, you know, then he’ll settle down, but if you hear running, that would be my very large cat.

Sarah: He’s, like, nineteen pounds, right?

Amanda: Yes. He is that.

Sarah: Yeah, that’s a, that’s a lot of thumping. At night, does he turn into like a, like a, like a Clydesdale horse?

Amanda: No! He’s very quiet at night.

Sarah: Ohhh –

Amanda: He gets very opinionated when I’m not in bed, so –

Sarah: [Laughs]

Amanda: – if I am still at my computer at night at my desk, he will go up to my roommate Stephanie’s room, and she’s usually in bed, and then he’ll get in bed with her, and then the minute he hears me getting ready for bed, he’ll come down, ‘cause he’s like, Mom’s going into bed. He likes people to be in bed with him.

Sarah: You know, he has, he makes good decisions!

Amanda: Yeah, and we take naps all the time, so.

Sarah: Ohhh!

Amanda: [Laughs]

Sarah: That’s so good!

Amanda: Mm-hmm!

Sarah: He’s so lucky to have you.

Amanda: I’m lucky to have him! He’s the sweetest, most handsomest cat.

Sarah: I agree, but I won’t tell my cats that I agree.

Amanda: [Laughs] I won’t tell them either.

Sarah: I have zero cats at this moment, which means that I will also get thumping and flopping and possible noise –

Amana: Oh yeah, we’ll hear the butt rubbing up against the sound box, like, I’m sure.

Sarah: Oh, totally, totally. Orville is, is very ready for, for me to rearrange his belly fur when I least want to do it. I keep thinking about getting a new desk, ‘cause my desk is a, an old IKEA table. I think I got it in 1997 or 1998. Like, it’s old as hell, and it’s, like, well within reasons for me to, you know, replace it. It’s, it’s time –

Amanda: Yeah!

Sarah: – and it’s even warped a little in the middle. Like, it, it’s not flat anymore?

Amanda: [Laughs]

Sarah: But I keep fantasizing about getting one of those desks with a keyboard tray –

Amanda: Ooh!

Sarah: – because then he won’t able to flop over on my keyboard and interrupt me, because the keyboard will be under the desk, and he will be thwarted. And I’m like, I can’t believe I’m actually considering desk accessories because of my cat’s butt.

Amanda: I mean, you have to do what you have to do, I guess.

Sarah: [Laughs] It’s true! Okay, so you and I are going to talk about audiobooks, and I am so excited about this conversation, ‘cause I think that you and I have both gotten into audiobooks at the same time –

Amanda: Yeah!

Sarah: – very recently.

Amanda: Well, we both started cross-stitching around the same time. [Laughs]

Sarah: Yep! So tell me all the things about audiobooks that you’ve been trying.

Amanda: Okay. So I’m still in a place where I’m finding out what I like and don’t like about –

Sarah: Mm-hmm?

Amanda: – narrators. The, it’s been a learning process, and –

Sarah: It’s hard.

Amanda: Yeah, it is. And it’s really hard when you’re excited about a book and you see it on audio through your library or, like, I have the Romance Package, and they have some really good selections of books that have been on my, like, TBR for a while, and then you listen to them, and you’re like, ugh, the audio just does not work for me. [Laughs] So last weekend, I have a monthly book group, and afterwards, I was browsing in my local bookstore, and I cannot get out of that store without buying anything, it seems –

Sarah: [Laughs]

Amanda: – and so they had a nice selection of puzzles –

Sarah: Ooh!

Amanda: – and I got the idea of, what if I just bought a puzzle and just listened to an audio book and did this dang puzzle? And that was my St. Patrick’s Day. [Laughs] So that’s what I did. I sat on my floor for a few hours, worked on a puzzle, listened to an audiobook.

Sarah: Did it make you happy?

Amanda: It was really fun, and I didn’t want to go to bed –

Sarah: [Laughs]

Amanda: – ‘cause I wanted to keep working on the puzzle and listening to this audiobook, but the lighting in my apartment is terrible and, like, my eyes were going crossed because it was so dim. It’s like I was doing this puzzle by candlelight, and I was like, I need to go to bed.

Sarah: You’re like a Regency heroine!

Amanda: [Laughs] So –

Sarah: In a drafty room! Doing puzzles in the dark!

Amanda: Yep! The puzzle still isn’t finished. It’s covered up by a blanket and a poster board on my floor to keep Linus from getting at it, and I just have to live my life around this half-finished puzzle on my bedroom floor.

[Laughter]

Sarah: Do you find that doing a puzzle and listening to an audiobook is very relaxing because, like, two parts of your brain are engaged?

Amanda: Yes! With an audiobook, I usually do another activity, like cross-stitching. It’s really hard for me to, like, walk to the gym and listen to an audiobook. It’s really hard for me to be at the gym and listen to an audiobook for whatever reason. I’m, I usually listen to podcasts.

Sarah: I can’t either. I can’t, I can’t listen to people talking to me while I’m at the gym or – I’m not actually at the gym, I’m in my basement, but – I can’t listen to people talking to me when I’m working out. I need music because I, I’m just, it’s so noisy that I get distracted, and I’m like, a bunch of words just went by. So I can’t do audiobooks while I work out. Interesting that podcasts work for you, though!

Amanda: Yeah, I mean, I think it’s similar to you listening to music in that podcasts aren’t super important. [Laughs] You can miss a bit of conversation or information and you’re fine, but if I’m, like, miss a line or I find that I’m zoning out in an audiobook, it bugs the crap out of me, so I feel like –

Sarah: Yeah.

Amanda: – with a podcast, it’s a little more, like, low risk sort of –

Sarah: Yep.

Amanda: – sort of deal. Yeah, I can’t listen to them while I work out. I wish I could and just, you know, go to town on the treadmill or bike or whatever, but I, I just can’t!

Sarah: No, it doesn’t work for me either. I wish it did.

Amanda: Yeah. So the audiobook that I picked, I didn’t know anything about the description. I solely picked it based on the fact that it was a contemporary – I’m not a big historical reader anymore – and one of the narrators was Richard Armitage. [Laughs]

Sarah: This is an entirely awesome reason to pick an audiobook, and I’ve read, there’s, I want to say three Heyer novels; they’re abridged, but they’re narrated by Richard Armitage, and I was like, well, this is eardrum candy. Then you started telling me about this book, and I was very close to, to getting it for myself.

Amanda: [Laughs]

Sarah: Please tell me about this book.

Amanda: Okay.

Sarah: I’m so curious!

Amanda: So I’m only a quarter of the way through, but the, the heroine, her name is Joy, she’s in her thirties, and it sounds like she was in a relationship that wasn’t exactly bad, but it was very stagnant. It wasn’t going anywhere. I believe her partner, I don’t know if it was her fiancé or boyfriend, had, like, a back injury and just really couldn’t do anything anymore and didn’t want to do anything anymore. Like, she has, like, an anecdote of her going to this conference somewhere, and he’s like, I’ll go with you and we can spend time together, and it just wound up him wanting to stay in the hotel room and, like, sleep the whole time. So I thought that was interesting in that her past relationship wasn’t, like, traumatic or abusive but that they just clearly weren’t on the same page.

Sarah: It just didn’t work for her.

Amanda: Yes. And I think ‘cause some people have been in relationships where they’re dating someone and they aren’t happy, but they are more concerned about their partner’s happiness if they leave, especially someone who, like, if you’re dating someone that might have some, you know, depression issues or health issues –

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

Amanda: – and you kind of feel guilty if you leave for your own happiness.

Sarah: Right.

Amanda: So I thought that was interesting. But she is a chemist, and she gets this amazing job opportunity in Paris working for a fragrance company, and she knows little to no French. There’s a really cute scene where she’s, like, on the plane to Paris, and she’s trying to speak only in French, and –

Sarah: [Laughs]

Amanda: – this woman next to her, like, asks if she’s, like, excited or whatever, and she responds that she is excited, but she uses the form of excitement that means, like, she’s horny excited?

Sarah: [Laughs] Oops!

Amanda: [Laughs]

Sarah: Yeah.

Amanda: So she goes to Paris, and the company hires a translator to help her get settled in her apartment and deal with some clients.

Sarah: Very smart!

Amanda: Yeah, and the hero is the translator. He is British, but I think his parents are, like, British and French, and this is, like, his last job before he leaves to fulfill, like, this bucket list left over from his late brother who, like, died, so he wants to fulfill all these, like, travel things that his brother wants to do, and it’s very cute. When they first meet, they don’t know that they’ll soon be working together – naturally. [Laughs]

Sarah: Oh, of course.

Amanda: She goes to order a chocolate croissant, and she says it wrong, and he, like, corrects her but not in, like, a smarmy way?

Sarah: Mm-hmm?

Amanda: And they just kind of like flirt for a while, and it’s very adorable. They try to guess each other’s names, and she’s picking all of these really stereotypical, like, stodgy British names like Archibald and Rupert.

Sarah: [Laughs]

Amanda: But the thing I like –

Sarah: Wait, hold on.

Amanda: Yes.

Sarah: Time out. Are you saying that Richard Armitage speaks French in this audiobook?

Amanda: A little bit, yes. [Laughs]

Sarah: Oh my! Okay, please –

Amanda: English and French.

Sarah: – please continue this. This, this seems to be important detail that I would like to know, yeah?

Amanda: Oh, yeah, and, and when it’s from his point of view and he’s telling us what the heroine is saying, what Joy is saying, he’ll slip into an American accent –

Sarah: [Laughs]

Amanda: – so American, British, and a little bit of French.

Sarah: Oh, okay! Yeah! Uh-huh!

Amanda: [Laughs] It’s great. The book starts off with, I think Grace Grant is the female narrator? Joy’s narrator, and what I liked about it is that she started off talking about accents and the appeal of accents and how just hearing someone’s accent kind of evokes a place or a feel, like an Australian accent makes you think of, like, fun and the beach and, like, a laid-back attitude. So you hear her talking for a while –

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

Amanda: – and then once it switches to Griffin, who’s the hero, and the first time I heard his voice, I literally choked on my own spit while doing this puzzle.

Sarah: [Laughs]

Amanda: It was such, like, a visceral, like, reaction –

Sarah: Ooh!

Amanda: – that, like, built in my ovaries.

Sarah: [Laughs]

Amanda: Yeah.

Sarah: That’s amazing.

Amanda: [Laughs] So it’s lovely hearing him talk, and no offense to Grace Grant; she does a really good job. I think she narrates Christina Lauren’s Beautiful series?

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

Amanda: But it’s hard to hold a candle to Richard Armitage.

Sarah: It really is! It really, really is!

Amanda: But I’m enjoying it so far. I like when audiobooks have dual narrators, one for the heroine, one for the hero, because I found it’s harder for me to get into an audiobook if it’s just one narrator trying to do a voice or cadence or accent for, like, the opposite sex?

Sarah: Oh, that’s really interesting!

Amanda: I, I couldn’t finish Act Like It on audio because I did not like, who is it, Billie Fulford-Brown? I did not like –

Sarah: Billie Fulford-Brown.

Amanda: – yeah – the tone that she did for the hero. I felt like it made him sound much older than he was in the book?

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

Amanda: It was –

Sarah: That’s fascinating!

Amanda: Yeah, I couldn’t, but on the opposite side, the woman, Ashford McNab, who does all of the Maiden Lane series?

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

Amanda: I’ve listened to books one through three on audio. She’s the same narrator for all of them. Her male voices are top notch. She, like the –

Sarah: Really!

Amanda: – the last one I read, the hero was, like, an Irish pirate sort of guy? And the –

Sarah: As you do.

Amanda: – the accent is so, like, fun and flirty and Irish, and it, she just does, like, really good things with it? But I feel like I’m more likely to pick up an audiobook if I see that it has two different narrators for the corresponding characters.

Sarah: That’s really interesting, because I was trying to – hang on, I have to find my phone so I can look at my Audible app, ‘cause now, of course, I can – amazingly enough, this will shock you – I can remember the cover of the audiobook, but can I remember the words that are on it? Of course not, that’s ridiculous. Why would you –

Amanda: Also, the Audible app is garbage. And this –

Sarah: Oh, it’s so annoying. The website –

Amanda: [Laughs] Just going to say that right out.

Sarah: The website is so much easier to navigate. Like, I feel like, when I look at the Romance Package in the Audible app, I feel like I’m seeing one-tenth of what I know is there, and I have no idea –

Amanda: Yes.

Sarah: – how to get to the rest of it, and it makes me bonkers.

Amanda: And there’s no, like, save for later, like, wish list function in the app.

Sarah: Oh, there is! There is.

Amanda: There is?

Sarah: Yes, there is.

Amanda: Well, like, if, if the book is free, like, in the Romance Package, it’s just, there’s an automatic, like, add-to-library thing –

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

Amanda: – not, like, save-for-later thing.

Sarah: If you are in the Store and you scroll down in individual book listing, there is an option to add to a wish list, but it’s pretty far down. So it’s, it’s, it took me a couple tries to find it. It seems that I may have removed this from – it was a Karina Halle book that was in the Romance Package, and the hero –

Amanda: Was it Smut?

Sarah: You know what, it might have been. The hero was Scottish, and I think he was a pilot? And –

Amanda: Oh, not Smut. [Laughs]

Sarah: Let me think. You know what, I’m just going to have to look it up. Karina Halle. So the – maybe it wasn’t Karina Halle. Maybe I’m misremembering – you know what, it’s very possible that I am misremembering.

Amanda: [Laughs]

Sarah: No, The Pact. It was Karina Halle! Good job, Sarah’s Brain! I’m very proud of you today. So in The Pact, the hero is Scottish, and the heroine is, I think she might, yeah, I think she’s American, and the, the, the setup is that the hero and heroine have been friends for ages, and in their mid-twenties they made a, a pact that if neither of them was in a serious relationship by the time they hit thirty, that they would marry each other. And so it alternates between two narrators, and I was like, I could listen to a Scottish narrator; that sounds great. I, there is a YouTube video of Gerard Butler teaching you Scottish slang?

Amanda: Oh!

Sarah: I’ve listened to it, like, five times ‘cause (a) it’s hilarious. Do you know what an air beige is?

Amanda: An – no! [Laughs]

Sarah: It’s a fart!

[Laughter]

Sarah: I have to, I will link to this video and send it to you. So I was all about listening to – I happen to really like the different accents? I was all ready to listen to this, and the problem with me and dual narrators is that I start comparing the narrators, and I’m like, no, I like how this person does this voice better than that one, and I like how that person performed that scene better than this one. When I listened to How to Date Your Dragon, the male narrator was so much less polished than the female narrator that when he would start narrating from the hero’s point of view, I would, like, groan out loud, like, ugh! This fucking guy.

[Laughter]

Sarah: I’m, it’s amazing, I’m very impatient with the, the audio, audio styles, so it’s really interesting that you like a dual narrator, and I end up comparing them too much. Like, up, no, that guy’s not as good as this one. And I have listened to Billie Fulford-Brown narrating Act Like It, like, three times. Love it! Love. It. I haven’t tried Pretty Face; it’s on my list. So what did you like about the Ashford McNab narration? That was just all of the different accents and voices, right?

Amanda: Yes! So my main concern going from, going through a series with the same narrator was that I wouldn’t be able to, you know, find a distinction between the heroine from the first book and the heroine from the third book, because it’s the same narrator. Like, what the heck –

Sarah: Right.

Amanda: – could she do differently? And she manages to do a good job. I mean, there’s, you know, a scene where there’s, like, four women in a room, and that kind of gets confusing. [Laughs] But for the most part, like, she does a good job using her voice to create very distinct characters. I mean, I hated the second book, but that was, that had nothing to do with the narration and more to do with the characters. I don’t know; I just, her male voices are always really great. I feel like I’m definitely harder on narrators when they try to do the voice of the opposite sex, ‘cause sometimes it just seems silly, the way it comes across. With the dual narrators, I like when it feels like a radio play, I suppose?

Sarah: Yes, that is fun; I agree.

Amanda: Sleeping Giants, not a romance, but a sci-fi, has a, a larger cast of characters. I think it has, like, five separate characters, and they all have different narrators for each character, and –

Sarah: Ooh.

Amanda: – it’s amazing. It definitely feels like a radio play. And that was the first audiobook I finished and I listened to, so I felt that I got a little spoiled, ‘cause I was like, all the audiobooks are going to be like this! And they’re not. A lot of the time, for whatever reason, probably cost reasons, there’s just one narrator, and I’m like, oh. Maybe I was wrong.

Sarah: [Laughs]

Amanda: So for me, I’m trying to find what works for me and what –

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

Amanda: – narrators work for me, because not all of the books I want to listen to have the ability to have two separate narrators for the hero and heroine. But I’m definitely harder on the single narrators than I am the double narrators, I find?

Sarah: That’s really interesting.

Amanda: Yeah!

Sarah: With the books that you’ve enjoyed so far, all right, you have a bunch of things that you, like, would recommend very quickly?

Amanda: Well, Sleeping Giants; I would recommend that one if you’re into sci-fi, and it’s really neat because I love an unreliable narrator in books.

Sarah: Oh, and in voice, that’s like, that, like, adds a whole layer.

Amanda: Yeah. And one of the main characters is kind of like this weird government agent. You never know his name, and a lot of the dealings he has with these characters are, like, through interviews and stuff like that, and I don’t know who does his voice, but just, like, his scheme-y, I can’t trust this guy, but he’s also kind of charismatic. Like, he just was a bright, like, shining star in everything. I mean, everyone else was great as well, but, like, this character was just, like, fantastic to listen to.

Sarah: Isn’t that the best?

Amanda: Yeah. It was great.

Sarah: Like, there’s, something about audiobooks soothes a very specific, sort of jackrabbit-y part of my brain?

Amanda: [Laughs]

Sarah: Like, when my brain is too edgity, edgy and distracted and it’s, like, jumping around like a Jack Russell Terrier and I can’t calm down and I can’t focus, audiobooks just chill that part of my brain right out, and I can just relax into a great character so easily. I love it.

Amanda: Another audiobook that I started at the gym but then had to stop listening to because I just couldn’t do both, I started –

[Laughter]

Amanda: I started Dragon Bound by Thea Harrison?

Sarah: Oh, that’s good in audio, isn’t it?

Amanda: Yeah. And it only has one narrator, Sophie Eastlake, but, like, her voice does a great job of communicating, like, how, like, tough the heroine is, and how, like, kind of a rotten deal she’s getting. And when she does, like, the, the dragon’s voice, she does a really good job, so I, I’ve been enjoying that one as well.

Sarah: Fabulous!

Amanda: But definitely the Maiden Lane series, I have enjoyed so far. I’m only three books in, and I think I’d like to continue with audio for that series? Also, my main complaint with audio is I never know how a person’s name is spelled?

[Laughter]

Sarah: There’s a couple characters in the book I’m reading, and I’m like, what the hell is that guy’s name?

Amanda: Yeah, and I for-, there’s one character in the Maiden Lane series that I think I, like, made a note about it. Oh, Mother Heart’s-Ease, and I was like, how the heck is her name spelled? Like, H-E-A-R-T-S-I-E-S?

Sarah: [Laughs]

Amanda: But no, it’s Heart’s hyphen Ease.

Sarah: Uhhh.

Amanda: [Laughs] And I, I had to, like, look it up, and that’s, like, the one thing that bothers me is with, like, people’s names; I don’t know how it’s spelled. Like, there’s a character Winter; it was like, is it regular Winter? Is it W-Y-N-T-E-R?

Sarah: [Laughs]

Amanda: ‘Cause it’s romance, I wouldn’t be surprised if there was a, a Y in there.

Sarah: Of course.

Amanda: So that’s the one thing that, like, bugs me about audio is, I don’t really get to, to see how things are spelled. [Laughs]

Sarah: Another thing I’ve noticed about my own use of audiobooks is that when I’m reading text, especially if I’m reading text on paper, if I’m reading text on paper I’ll often remember whether it was the left side page or the right side page. With text on, on my Kindle, I’ll remember specific words, and I’ll be able to search for them to go back to a specific scene. With audio, I don’t remember the individual words; I just remember what happened? It’s almost, it’s a completely different kind of story input in my brain, and so I don’t remember the specific words or phrases; I just remember, like, almost like my brain condenses it into an abridged sort of Cliffs Notes version: okay, so in that scene, they were in the bathtub, and he was in front, or she was in front of him, and she was annoyed because –

Amanda: Yeah, there’s not, like, a search function with audiobooks.

Sarah: No! And I –

Amanda: That can be very frustrating.

Sarah: Yes, and I don’t, I don’t remember the specific words or scenes, and sometimes I like to go back and, being the word nerd that I am, sometimes I like to go back and read specific words or scenes ‘cause they make me so happy. With audio, that does not happen as much. It’s not that I’m enjoying it less; it’s that that doesn’t happen as often. I don’t remember the individual words; I just remember a sort of overview summary.

Amanda: And, like, even if you wanted to go back and enjoy a scene, trying to find that scene can be a pain.

Sarah: Oh –

Amanda: [Laughs]

Sarah: – when I did the review, when I did the review for How to Date Your Dragon, there were, there were two incidences that were really obviously edits of two very different recordings, and I included samples in the review. Since then, Audible has gone back and re-, remastered it, so I’m guessing that it’s better. I haven’t had a chance to go back and listen, because going to those individual scenes, even if I know the chapters, is a pain in the butt! I don’t exactly remember the timestamp of different things. It’s a number! You know what I’m not going to remember? Numbers. Brain doesn’t do that. Brain is like, ha-ha, no, that’s not going to happen. So being able to find things again, especially as, as avid a re-reader I am, I agree, not being able to remember where something is is super annoying.

Amanda: I know you listen to audio sped up a little, and –

Sarah: That is in my notes! Yes!

Amanda: [Laughs] And I haven’t been able to get there yet, ‘cause I’ll start listening and be like, all right, I feel like I can speed this up a little bit, it’s fine, and then the minute I jack up the, the thing to, like, 1.2 or whatever, I’m like, oh my God, they all sound like fast-talking, like, 1940s chipmunks.

Sarah: [Laughs]

Amanda: And, and it, like, freaks me out, and I get, like, really anxious about it, and I have to, like, put it back down to the regular – [laughs] – regular speed.

Sarah: Well, I fully acknowledge that in this, in this sense, my brain is an asshole, and –

Amanda: [Laughs]

Sarah: – if the – and I talk very quickly. I’m a very fast talker, and I – [laughs] – I remember, I was on the phone with a friend of mine from South Carolina when I was at my old job, and it was, like, my lunch hour, and I was talking to her about something, and I said, oh, okay, hang on a second, and someone came up to my desk, and I had a conversation with them, and I went back to her, and she’s like, oh my God, when you talk to people in your office, you talk so fast. It’s like you just sped up twice the speed you talk to me. And I, I was worried I’d insulted her. Like, no, no, I don’t think you’re slow! She’s like, no, I don’t think you think I’m slow; I think you talk really fast. And I’m like, well, you know, everyone’s in a hurry around here. If the people are talking very slowly I get bored, because my Jack Russell Terrier brain is like, what’s next, come on, come on, come on, come on, come on! Get on, get! So I invariably will listen to audiobooks at 1.3 or 1.4, partially because it forces that part of my brain to listen. I have to pay closer attention if the words are going faster. It’s kind of like when you watch a movie and there’s a lot of rapid dialogue, like if you’re watching old episodes of The West Wing, because Aaron Sorkin likes nine thousand words per second, you have to pay attention. That, that’s what I do to my brain; I force it to pay attention by speeding it up just enough that it’s just past what is comfortable and easy for me to use half my brain to listen to. I force my brain to use more of my attention to listen to the audiobook, but I’ve figured out, like, 1.35 is ideal for me, because they, they don’t sound like chipmunks –

Amanda: [Laughs]

Sarah: – but they do talk a little faster, and it’s to the point where if I hear, like, I listen to podcasts the same way, and if I hear the people from a podcast, like, on the radio, like on NPR or something, I’m like, oh my God, what happened to your voice? Oh, I speed you up normally. You, this is what you sound like as a normal human! Okay. [Laughs]

Amanda: I will admit that sometimes I can get bored listening to audio –

Sarah: Yeah.

Amanda: – and I have the same problem reading digitally too, in the sense that –

Sarah: Interesting!

Amanda: Well, like, in the sense that – [laughs] – I feel like I have read or listened to a lot, and then when I look at, you know, how many chapters I’ve gone through or, like, what the percentage is on my Kindle, it’s not as much as I thought it was.

[Laughter]

Amanda: But with, like, an actual paper book, I don’t know, I can kind of see my progress a little better, like when I put my bookmark in and I can compare it to, like, where it is in the total, like, page stack. So I have that problem with, like, digital aspects of reading in that I thought I read a lot, and then when I actually look, you know, I’ve only maybe gone through, like, two chapters.

Sarah: [Laughs]

Amanda: And it’s a real big bummer. [Laughs]

Sarah: I have that problem. I also notice that if an audiobook, like there’s one I’m listening to right now while I’m cross-stitching, it, it has a lot of chapters, but they’re very short chapters. Like, each chapter is maybe two scenes, and so I’m like, oh my God, I’m going to be listening to this book forever. No, I’m, like, more than halfway done with it, ‘cause they’re short chapters. I have to pay more attention to how many minutes are in each chapter so I sort of know how, what the pace of the story will be like from that information, not that I’ll remember it once I look at it, but it, it’s helpful. ‘Cause otherwise you get that, like, I’m never leaving this book, I’m stuck here forever feeling, which is not fun.

Amanda: Yeah. [Laughs]

Sarah: Are there any other books you want to talk about?

Amanda: So I think on our little fancy Google Doc we have, like, a little wish list option.

Sarah: Yes! I have –

Amanda: [Laughs]

Sarah: – I have questions for the listeners. I have come here seeking guidance because I am terrible.

Amanda: So my main source of audiobooks is through my library or the Romance Package.

Sarah: Right.

Amanda: And we had a pretty good review of the Romance Package up on the site.

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

Amanda: It, you know, it’s not perfect –

Sarah: Yeah.

Amanda: – but there’s one thing the home page does that I find so neat. They have a, a mash-up category, and I took a screenshot of it last night, if we wanted to include it in the show notes.

Sarah: Yes, please! I’m making a note.

Amanda: M’kay.

Sarah: Huge success. It’s hard to overstate –

Amanda: [Laughs]

Sarah: Sorry, go ahead.

Amanda: Portal is amazing.

Sarah: [Laughs]

Amanda: Come on, Sarah, like I wouldn’t get that reference.

Sarah: Oh, I knew you would!

[Laughter]

Sarah: No, I feel bad, ‘cause now that song’s going to be in your head for, like, the next eight years. [Laughs]

Amanda: Oh, I’m not sorry; that’s a great song.

[Laughter]

Amanda: But they have these cool, like, mash-up categories; there’s usually three at a time. I don’t know how much they switch over, but last night they had a galactic + prince and princess, Victorian + wallflower, and then they had, like, urban + biker, and they usually list –

Sarah: Whoooa!

Amanda: Yeah. They usually list three audiobooks in each category that, like, fit that mash-up.

Sarah: That’s cool!

Amanda: Yeah, I went for the galactic prince and princess.

Sarah: [Laughs] It does seem to be a bit of your catnip!

Amanda: Naturally. They had one that had something to do with, like, witches and werewolves was the mash-up? I was like, hello! [Laughs] So I find that really helpful, ‘cause I think that’s really interesting and kind of like gets to the heart of the tropes that are in there? There are –

Sarah: I feel like that should be, like, on a T-shirt for you: Amanda: Galactic Princess.

Amanda: [Laughs] I wish!

Sarah: [Laughs]

Amanda: But there are three books that I would love to listen to next: Sarina Bowen’s True North series, which is always constantly recommended on the site. I think books one and three are in the Romance Package; I could be wrong, but I know at least one and two are –

Sarah: Right.

Amanda: – and they have dual narrators, so.

Sarah: That’s cool.

Amanda: There was another one called Gentleman Nine by Penelope Ward. I don’t think it’s in the package; I’m not sure. But it has dual narrators, and one of them is Sebastian York, which –

Sarah: Oh, ohhh?

Amanda: – I, I have never listened to, but I know romance readers love his narration. It’s a name that I recognize, even though I don’t know what he sounds like. And then from February’s Whatcha Reading post, Jen M. posted a comment about a book called – I don’t remember the name of it, but it’s part of the How to Date a Douchebag series by Sara Ney, and with a series name like that I, like, rolled my eyes a little bit, but she says, like, the hero is a virgin, and he’s an athlete, and his teammates haze him by, like, putting his picture and phone number up around campus –

Sarah: Agh!

Amanda: – in order to find someone to, like, take his virginity?

Sarah: Ohhh-kay.

Amanda: And the heroine texts him as a joke, and apparently the heroine is kind of like an unlikeable character, I guess. So I find it interesting that there’s a lot of trope-switching –

Sarah: Yeah. It does sound that way.

Amanda: – in this one? Yeah, and I, I was very curious about it, and I think that whole series is on the audio package, and it has dual narrators! So –

Sarah: Which is so good for you!

Amanda: [Laughs] So those are the, the, yeah, three that I really want to check out next, but I’m kind of all over the place with my reading lately. I have picked up so many books lately and stopped, because they’re just, weren’t scratching that itch that I need, so it’s possible that I could find something else before I get to any of these books, but that’s what I’m looking forward to next.

Sarah: I think it’s really interesting that when you read audiobooks, you also are, like, you and I both, we do something else while we’re listening. It’s like, when I’m reading, maybe I can listen to music, but not music with words. If the TV’s on, forget it; I can’t pay attention. If, if I, if I’m hearing words, either from lyrics or from the television, I, I can’t focus on other words. I get one word input per, you know, in my brain.

Amanda: That’s interesting, because I feel like it’s hard for me to read, not listen to audiobooks, but it’s hard for me to read without some kind of background noise.

Sarah: I have a whole playlist of music for reading, but it’s all very long and slow without, without lyrics. There’s no words.

Amanda: I don’t –

Sarah: Even lyrics in another language, I’ll be like, wait, what? Somebody’s talking? I can’t do any talking.

Amanda: No, I will put on mindless television; like, I’ll put on, like, Forensic Files or, you know, just some YouTube video that’s about nothing and, like, thirty minutes long. No, I, like, need sound, but not music. I’m the opposite. I’m not –

Sarah: Oh, that’s so interesting! [Laughs]

Amanda: I’m not a big music listener to begin with, so I don’t listen to music when I work out; I don’t listen to a lot of music. [Laughs]

Sarah: Uh-huh. Don’t come over here, ‘cause both my kids play instruments, so if I’m not listening to music while I’m cooking, then someone is practicing the trombone, the drums, the electric guitar, or the saxophone; one, one of those is going. So there’s a lot of music in my house, and sometimes it’s, you know, loud. But I can’t –

Amanda: [Laughs]

Sarah: – I can’t, like, if I turned on Forensic Files, one, I wouldn’t sleep, and it would scare the crap out of me, and two, I, I, I would not be able to do anything else. I would be listening to the words, and they would, I would not be able to not pay attention to the words. It’s, that’s so interesting. My brain is very different. It’s, but it’s, it’s cool that we both listen to audiobooks and do something else while we’re listening.

Amanda: Yes.

Sarah: Like, I don’t think I could just sort of lie there and listen to an audiobook, unless – no, even if I was trying to fall asleep, someone talking to me would keep me awake. My kids listen to audiobooks that they’ve heard before when they’re having trouble sleeping; they put on an audiobook that they’ve already listened to, and that usually puts them right out.

Amanda: There, there is a function, I think, where you can, like, stop the audio after a certain amount of time.

Sarah: Yes! Yes, that’s –

Amanda: But I find that so weird! Like, what if you’re falling asleep to an audiobook, and it stopped –

Sarah: And you time it wrong!

Amanda: And you time it wrong, or you fall asleep and then you wake up the next day and you’re like –

Sarah: What?

Amanda: – shit, how far do I have to go back now?

Sarah: Oh, I did that. I was really tired on a flight that was about, maybe five hours long? So I put on the audio of The One-Hundred-Year-Old Man Who Climbed out a Window and Ran Away or did something [The Hundred-Year-Old Man Who Climbed Out the Window and Disappeared]. It was a one-hundred-year-old man went, one-hundred-year-old man, and somehow it involved a window, and it’s Swedish, and it’s really charming and kind of cute and adorable, and I fell asleep while I was listening to it, ‘cause I was so tired, which never happens. Not only was I sleeping on an airplane sitting up, but I was listening to somebody talking. I don’t even know where to go back to. I just have to start over. Like, I had –

Amanda: Yeah.

Sarah: – no idea when I tuned out. I came to, like, I woke up, and it wasn’t like I was unconscious; I can’t, I woke up and it was like, how did they get to a fjord? What are they, where –

Amanda: [Laughs]

Sarah: How, how are they here? Wait, who’s that? Like, people showed up, I didn’t know who they were. Like, it was very disorienting, so I can’t, I cannot. But it’s –

Amanda: Yup.

Sarah: It’s so neat to me that when we’re listening to audiobooks, ‘cause usually reading is something I, it’s, where it’s the only thing I’m doing. I can’t read and cook, and I can’t read and walk – I mean, I can, only if there’s no obstacles.

Amanda: [Laughs]

Sarah: But reading is when I do only one thing, and if my brain is super active and edgy and destructive, like a, you know, if I, I have Jack Russell Terrier brain, bounce bounce bounce bounce bounce, I can’t just read, but I can do an audiobook and walk my dogs, or I can listen to an audiobook and cross-stitch. [Laughs] Elyse, Elyse has commissioned a cross-stitch from me. Thank you for sending me floss to help complete this project.

Amanda: You’re welcome.

Sarah: It says – [laughs] – Do Not Try to Explain Yourself to Idiots. You’re Not the Fuckface Whisperer.

[Laughter]

Sarah: And like, what my, my, my kids’ friends come in the house, and I have to make sure my cross-stitch is hidden, ‘cause I’m right at the part where I’m doing Fuckface – [laughs] – so I have to make sure it’s, like, hidden and put away. What are you working on? Oh, nothing, nothing at all.

Amanda: [Laughs]

Sarah: So I’m always doing something else when I’m listening to an audiobook, but I still have to speed it up to, like, 1.3, 1.34, and I love historical mystery or/and accents, lots of accents, all the different accents, lots of them, now, I love it! Oh, it’s so good! And it’s funny, ‘cause I like to play with accents. I have a pretty good Australian accent; I’m working on my Kiwi. You know, I, I love different accents; I think it’s fascinating how people speak the same language so differently. So lately with my, with my dog walking, ‘cause I walk the dogs maybe half an hour, forty-five minutes every day, I’ve stopped listening to a lot of podcasts because I was tuning out and getting frustrated and, like I said, Jack Russell Terrier brain, so I started listening to the Captain Lacey series, which is by Ashley Gardner, who is also Jennifer Ashley, who wrote Death Below Stairs. The Captain Lacey Regency Mystery series is a multipart series. I want to say that they may have been self-published; I might be wrong about that. But there, there’s several of them; I think there’s, like, ten or eleven of them. So I started with the – excuse me – The Hanover Square Affair, and by the way, I am waiting for Audible to do a package for mystery and thrillers like they have for romance, like, with a slider that’s like guts and gore –

Amanda: [Laughs]

Sarah: – super cozy with kittens, baked goods! Like, baked goods and entrails. Like, I really think they could do an entire package of mysteries, contemporary and historical, but I so dig listening to historical mysteries. The Hanover Square Affair and all of the others Captain Lay-shee, Captain Lacey Regency Mysteries, which is not something I can say easily, are all narrated by, I think it’s James Gillies? And he’s really, really good. One, he does different accents for different characters based on where they’re from. If they’re from northern England, they are going to talk differently from someone who’s from London, obviously, and the, the cant and the way that they form different words varies by class and by background, and you can tell who’s talking, even though it’s the same narrator, because he does such subtle but distinctive differences between them? And plus there’s a really good bromance friendship between the, Captain Lacey and this guy Grenville, and the two of them talking is, like, the best thing. Like, I’m looking now for fanfic of, like, Lacey and Grenville go out for tea.

Amanda: [Laughs]

Sarah: You know, just ‘cause they’re so great! They’re so fun. The historical mystery plus the varying accents makes my brain so happy! Oh my gosh!

And then the one I’m currently reading right now is You and Me, Always by Jill Mansell. Jill Mansell is great for me when I’m really stressed out, because all of her books are charming and have lots of different characters. They’re almost always in a small town somewhere in England where everyone is always up in everyone else’s business, and there’s always a sense of real community and friendship that I like? This one is interesting because there’s the small town with nosy people, but there’s also multiple generations experiencing their own romances, and it’s really, really nice, and, and again, the narrator, I can tell the difference! Like, I, I know that – [laughs] – I know that you do not like one narrator. For me, one narrator – this one is narrated by Henrietta Meire – she does different, not accents, but rhythms of speech and cadence and pronunciation so that when, when a different character is talking, I almost always know who that character is, and I think that’s so cool.

Another one if you like –

Amanda: [Laughs]

Sarah: Well, I don’t know. I’m not sure if this is going to work for you. Just This Once by Rosalind James is in the Romance Package, and it’s narrated by Claire Bocking, but the hero is from New Zealand, and the heroine is from the US, and she does both accents brilliantly, and so there’s one narrator switching from Kiwi, which is very distinctive, to US west coast, which is also kind of distinctive, so it’s one person but with very, very different accents. You might like that one.

Amanda: I will give it a listen!

Sarah: Another one that my husband and I have both listened to is Midnight Riot by Ben Aaronovitch, which is narrated by Kobna Holdbrook-Smith. His narration is so good in the same way that he does different ways of speaking for each character, and they’re brilliant, especially because the lead character, one of the lead characters, his mother is from Sierra Leone, and she has a very distinctive way of speaking, but the minute he starts speaking as her you know that it’s his mother. Each character’s way of, of talking is so very distinct; that’s what, I think that’s what makes my brain happy. It’s like an auditory puzzle: can I guess who’s speaking before I’m told who it is?

But I have three things on my wish list, and I want to ask for listener feedback, because I’m a horrible person.

Amanda: [Laughs]

Sarah: So one of the problems with the Captain Lacey series is that it’s a murder mystery, and there’s a lot of violence and peril subjected to, to women, which I understand. It makes total sense, given the, the situation that Captain Lacey finds himself in, but I can’t listen to those one after the other. If I start mainlining women in peril, I’m going to start getting really anxious – me and my brain, we’re working things out – so I have to switch, and I want to try something else. So I have three books on my wish list, and I’m not sure which one to try.

So the first one is Her Royal Spyness by Rhys Bowen, which is the first book in a series, and I think the, the heroine is somewhat related to the royal family, but she doesn’t have boatloads of money, so she goes into, well, mystery-solving, because historical mysteries. It’s book one of a series; it has 4.2 stars with 9,500+ ratings, so a lot of people have listened to this. It’s not like four people were like, it’s the greatest thing I’ve ever heard! Like, a lot of people dig this, and I know people have recommended this series, so I’m curious if anyone has listened to it and they really liked it; I would like to hear about that.

The other two on my wish list are A Useful Woman by Darcie Wilde, narrated by Sarah Nichols. Her Royal Spyness is also narrated by Katherine Kellgren, who is really good at what she does. A Useful Woman is book one of a historical mystery series – are you sensing a theme? [Laughs] And it is set in 19th-century London with a woman who is just in, just over the border into high society, but her father ruins her prospects because he abandons them?

Amanda: Thanks, Dad!

Sarah: And so she –

Amanda: [Laughs]

Sarah: Yeah, dickbag. So she starts managing the private business of some of the women, because she’s, basically, she’s fluent in high society but can’t necessarily function as a member of it independently, but she can get shit done for other ladies, so I’m curious about that, because it sounds like there’s going to be cool relationships between her and these other women, and she’s going to, you know, have lots of behind-the-scenes details, and there is someone who’s described as an aristocratic wastrel –

[Laughter]

Sarah: – who is killed?! Now, I’m very curious about, you know, a historical mystery where it’s not a woman being killed, ‘cause so far, a lot of dead ladies.

And then the last one is, I’m not, I’m not sure how this got on my wait, on my wish list, but it’s there? Past Sarah must have added it, and Past Sarah knows what she’s doing, I suppose. Oh, I know why! This is the Sebastian St. Cyr series. So the first one is What Angels Fear by C. S. Harris. What, I can never remember words! Why would I remember words? That’s silly. This one, this is another one that has, like, thousands of ratings, and it’s four-plus stars, but this is book one of the Sebastian St. Cyr series, which a lot of people have also said they really like.

So I am curious, and I will ask for comments and, and email: should I read or listen to Her Royal Spyness, A Useful Woman, or What Angels Fear, or should I just walk the dogs for six days and listen to all three?

Amanda: [Laughs]

Sarah: I could do that. So that is what I am listening to right now. And it is so interesting to me that we have very different reactions to audiobooks, and that, that whereas you like multiple narrators, I like, I like multiple accents. [Laughs] I think that’s hilarious. So how is the puzzle coming? Are you going to finish it?

Amanda: Heck yeah, I’m going to finish it!

Sarah: What is it a puzzle of?

Amanda: So I don’t know if it’s – no, it’s not a New Yorker puzzle. I can send you a link, but it’s called “Secret Sanctuary”?

Sarah: Ooh!

Amanda: So the background is bright green, and it has all these illustrations; they’re very, like, geometric illustrations of, like, birds and, like, bees and chipmunks and, like –

Sarah: Ooh!

Amanda: It’s cute! It’s a cute puzzle! It’s five hundred pieces. I’m very happy that, like, Linus hasn’t gone after the pieces, because before –

Sarah: [Laughs]

Amanda: Well, like, I would do puzzles before, and my roommate’s cat Birdie would just go nuts and destroy the puzzle, but Linus doesn’t seem too interested, which I’m happy about it. I put his cat bed on top of it; that’s probably why he’s not interested, ‘cause I spent –

Sarah: Ooh, that was really smart!

Amanda: [Laughs] ‘Cause I spend money on this stupid cat, and he doesn’t care about anything I buy for him!

Sarah: Well, I mean, you said, you did send us a, a video of him going to town on his catnip beaver.

Amanda: On his beaver, yeah.

[Laughter]

Amanda: All he does is lick his beaver! That’s all he does! He holds it in his paws, and he just licks it!

Sarah: [Laughs]

Amanda: That’s pretty much the only toy he enjoys, and I didn’t even buy it for him, so – [laughs] – but I, I bought him a heating pad and a scratching post and a cat bed. Doesn’t really use any of it.

Sarah: Oh no!

Amanda: [Laughs] Yeah, I bought a new rug for my room, and that’s pretty much what he uses to scratch, is my, is my rug! It’s like, all right, thanks, Bud. Is this what we’re going to do now? Okay! Great.

Sarah: [Laughs] Is there anything else you want to add before we, before we disconnect? This is going to be such a fun episode; I’m so excited! This is going to be so fun!

Amanda: I don’t think so!

Sarah: Did we request audiobook recommendations? Like, people should write in and tell us what audiobook would people enjoy, either you or me or someone else.

Amanda: Yeah, I want to say maybe we did a Rec League, but perhaps I’m wrong.

Sarah: No, we definitely did at least some, but the more there are audiobooks, the harder it is to be like, tell me a good, tell me a good audiobook in romance, because that’s like saying, tell me a good romance. I need to know subgenre.

Amanda: Yeah, I hate it when people are like, oh, you read romance? Well, recommend one for me! I was like, well, there’s, like, eighty billion subgenres, so you’re going to have to give me a little bit more direction than “recommend a romance.”

Sarah: And, you know, eighty billion were published today, so even then I have to do some research.

Amanda: Yeah.

Sarah: Sorry!

Amanda: Do you want an older one? Do you want one in the last five years? Come on, help me out.

Sarah: I mean, do you want them to be in a ballroom, or do you want them to be in space, or do you want them to be in a ballroom in space? Like, what do you want here?

Amanda: [Laughs]

Sarah: Tell me; I need specifics. But I bet, I bet people listening will have ideas of what audiobooks we should listen to next.

Amanda: Yes, definitely.

Sarah: Oh, I just realized something!

Amanda: What? [Laughs]

Sarah: I just realized, I, when I’m listening to audiobooks, I gravitate more towards mysteries than romance, partially because I’m, I’m being asked to solve a puzzle.

Amanda: Ohhh!

Sarah: So in effect, we’re both puzzling with e-books, with audiobooks!

Amanda: [Laughs]

Sarah: We are both puzzling with audiobooks in different ways!

Amanda: My puzzle’s a little bit more tangible. Yours is a little bit more –

Sarah: Yeah, mine is just like my crazy brain, which makes no sense. And I guess cross-stitching is kind of like a puzzle, ‘cause you have to match the location to the stitch to the code. It’s all code in puzzle.

Amanda: There’s a lot, like, there’s some math and counting in cross-stitch.

Sarah: I know; I try to ignore that part, but I, I do have to do it.

[music]

Sarah: And that brings us to the end of this episode, and as you just heard, we have a small request for help. First, I’m being super, super selfish: should I listen to Her Royal Spyness by Rhys Bowen, should I listen to A Useful Woman by Darcie Wilde, or should I start What Angels Fear by C. S. Harris when I pick up my next audiobook? I would like your advice.

And if you have advice or suggestions of audiobooks that you think we absolutely should listen to, or you want to tell us about an audiobook that rocked your world, we so want to hear from you. You can find us on Twitter @SmartBitches; Amanda is @_ImAnAdult, or you can record a voice memo and email it to us at [email protected], or just email us at [email protected]. Amanda and I would totally love to hear from you about what audiobooks have rocked your world lately.

This podcast is brought to you by Dirty Sexy Scot by Melissa Blue. Elizabeth P. emailed me in December to ask if she could gift a podcast sponsorship to an author, and this is what happened, so thank you to Elizabeth for being so cool and so generous! Dirty Sexy Scot by Melissa Blue is the sixth title in her Under the Kilt series. If you like Minx Malone, Jill Shalvis, and David Tennant’s Scottish accent, you will love this romantic comedy set in Scotland. I just heard you sit up taller to listen to this; good plan. Kincaid Cameron, fresh out of the military, is lost on what he should do next with his life when he meets the ultimate fangirl, Mia Jones, at a fan TV convention. She’s Sherlock; he’s Watson! They’re HEA is destined in the fandom! They become pen pals, then lovers, but Mia’s reticence to love and to experience passion and have a good, steady diet of dirty, hot sex gets in the way. Will she get over past heartbreaks to embrace her Scot bae? There’s also a Scottish curmudgeon, a witty best friend, and epic sex interruptus. Dirty Sexy Scot is a warm hug of a romance novel. It’s on sale now wherever e-books are sold. You can find out more about Melissa Blue at themelissablue.com. Thank you to Elizabeth and to Melissa Blue, and again, happy birthday, Melissa! I hope your birthday week is totally excellent.

We transcribe every episode, and thank you to everyone who has reached out to me to let me know how much they appreciate the transcripts. Today’s podcast transcript will be transcribed by garlicknitter, who’s awesome, and it is sponsored by A Duke in the Night by Kelly Bowen. If you like Sarah MacLean and Tessa Dare, you will love this Regency romance. August Faulkner has returned with his eye on expanding his business empire. He’s a duke, he’s also a scoundrel and a titan of business, and he wears his roguish reputation as a badge of honor. Clara Hayward is the respected headmistress, and she is above reproach, but ten years ago she shared a scandalous waltz with August, and despite herself, she has never forgotten the feeling of being in his arms. Can these opposites find a second chance at romance? RT Book Reviews raves, “What a way to start the Devils of Dover series!” A Duke in the Night by Kelly Bowen is on sale now wherever books are sold. You can find out more at kellybowen.net or forever-romance.com.

We have a Patreon for the podcast, and your support makes a deeply appreciated difference in my ability to keep the show rolling, to keep the cat out of my sound box, and to sponsor transcripts for episodes that don’t have ‘em yet! Have a look at patreon.com/SmartBitches. Your support is deeply appreciated.

And I want to thank Leanne, Galina, Pamala, Elizabeth, Hannah, and Arabella for supporting the show and for being part of the Patreon community.

Are there other ways to support the show? I bet you know what they are. Pop quiz: what are they?

Uhhh, you’re right! Or whatever you said is totally fine. You – [laughs] – you can leave a review wherever or however you listen. You can tell a friend. You can subscribe. You can just tune in each week! Either way, your hanging out with me here is really cool. Thank you for that!

The music you’re listening to is provided by Sassy Outwater. This is the Peatbog Faeries from Live @ 25, and this is “Jakes on a Plane.” This is one of my favorite of their songs. You can find this album at Amazon and iTunes, and I will have links to the Peatbog Faeries as well in the show notes at smartbitchestrashybooks.com/podcast.

Speaking of the show notes, I’m going to have a lot of links in this week’s show notes, because I have a lot of options to share with you should you be interested in expanding your audiobook library. Audiobooks are expensive, I totally know this, but chances are you have a great collection through your local library, and there are other services you may have access to, either through your local library or through independent subscription, to access audiobooks to make your listening self very happy. I will also have links to all of the books and audiobooks that we discussed in this episode.

What’s coming up on Smart Bitches this week? Well, let me tell you! Coming up this week, we have me not eating bread ‘cause it’s Passover. Yay, Passover! If, if you are celebrating Passover, by the way, it starts tonight. Happy Pesach! I hope your matzo balls are just the way you like ‘em. And that would be the only wish I have for your balls at this time. But, you know, maybe I’ll have other wishes; you never know. Either way, this coming week on Smart Bitches, we have Cover Awe, where we look at covers that we like; we have a review for a historical and a magical historical; and we have a Rec League coming for heist romances, which I know you guys tend to love as much as I do.

And of course, I always end with a terrible joke. Are you ready for a terrible joke? This one comes from Elyse. One day at work, they were reading Laffy Taffy jokes at each other, which sounds like a really good work day to me. So this is from Elyse; thank you, Elyse.

Why was the broom late?

Why was the broom late? Give up?

It overswept.

[Laughs] So bad! I love how bad it is!

All right, well, on behalf of all the brooms and Laffy Taffy and all the people with Elyse’s workplace and Amanda and myself, we wish you the very best of reading. Have a great weekend. We will see you here next week.

[fine, fine music]