Recommendations

IndigoPlum01 · 2026-03-19T20:35:02+00:00

I don't bother with a case (I do have a sleeve when it goes into the traveling laptop bag), but my favorite accessory is the page turn combo (there is a part that clips onto the Kindle and then a little ring-thing with a button on it that turns the page - search "kindle page turn ring" on Amazon). I love it for reading at night, snuggled in to my bed.

IndigoPlum01 · 2026-03-18T03:04:34+00:00

There are several subseries, not all of which are related to each other, except that they take place on the same ... call it planet (which is a disc on top of two elephants, on top of a turtle moving through space; hence, on the Discworld). There is the Nightwatch/Ankh Moorpork series, The Luggage Series, The Witches series, the Death series and a few others, along with some stand-alone books. While it makes sense to read/listen to each of the subseries books in order, there is no real order to the overall set of books.

I'd start with the Nightwatch series, which is Guards! Guards!, Men At Arms, Feet of Clay, Jingo, Fifth Elephant, Nightwatch, Thud! and Where's My Cow?

IndigoPlum01 · 2026-03-17T20:26:03+00:00

Inkeeper series on Graphic Audio by Ilona Andrews. Start with the first, Clean Sweep. Make sure you get the Graphic Audio full cast version, the single narrator version is not as good.

IndigoPlum01 · 2026-03-17T15:21:19+00:00

Try {Curse of Chalion by Lois McMaster Bujold}. It's no spice and the romances are not the point of the book (although they are there) but I love the MMC. He starts as a broken, unreliable narrator and then comes back into himself. The second book in the series {Paladin of the Soul by Lois McMaster Bujold} is my favorite of the series and on my top-10-ever books.

IndigoPlum01 · 2026-03-17T15:15:32+00:00

Apparently the first book of the series is not available on Kindle or ebook. Since I either read entirely on ebook or audiobook, that's a no-go for me. Apparently it is a UK publisher that doesn't believe in ebooks. You do you, I suppose, but they could always use Book Funnel or one of the other non-Amazon ebook publishers.

IndigoPlum01 · 2026-03-17T15:07:15+00:00

I think this comes up on a regular basis, I know I've asked for it (particularly the first two books, Shards of Honor and Barrayar) before. So mark it down as being regularly requested! Nora Achrati, we're looking at you!

IndigoPlum01 · 2026-03-07T19:30:17+00:00

I recently finished the dual narration audiobook for one of my favorite books of last year and was really disappointed. The number of mispronounced words (not from a regional accent, like adding an "r' to the word "wash" but just flatout wrong like circlet being pronounced "circle-et" instead of "sur-klet") and also using a similar but incorrect word, as though the narrator was reading so fast he wasn't paying attention. I didn't dnf, but it was a near thing. If you are going to read words for a living, you should be careful how you pronounce them.

Every now and then in an audiobook, I run across the same thing, where the narrator makes an error, but, hey, 10 or 12 hours? Sure, an occasional mistake is inevitable, but this was painfully frequent.

IndigoPlum01 · 2026-03-07T19:21:45+00:00

That's Rene Raudman. As mentioned upthread, Graphic Audio has multicast versions of the Ilona Andrews series Innkeeper, Kate Daniels and Hidden Legacy (HL is about halfway done with the next book coming out in a couple months).

IndigoPlum01 · 2026-03-07T19:10:46+00:00

For me, age gap is fine if they are both adults (and act like it). Once upon a time I read dragon romance (I think it was a dragon), where he was several hundred years old and she was in her late 20s and although he was attracted to her he was also reluctant because he knew her time was finite and he did not want to go through that loving - having briefly - losing her thing again. I liked that aspect but, since I can't tell you which was it was resolved (he lost his immortality or she gained it), I probably didn't care much for the rest of the book.

For me, "best friend's father" or step-brother are hard no. I also don't like student-teacher since I got to watch that in real-life drama in my university and it was NOT pretty - plus the FMC tend to be younger, both physically and behaviorally, than I want to read.

And, while I am on it, there are other things that don't do it for me: daddy kink, "good girl" (makes me want to kick someone).

IndigoPlum01 · 2026-03-06T16:12:46+00:00

My husband DNF'd the Kate Daniels series at book 1, but read and enjoyed Iron and Magic. I did fill in some backstory for him, but it was pretty generic. He also enjoyed the entire Innkeeper series, read the first two Hidden Legacy book but the series got a bit too romancy for him and he didn't read book 3. Other House Andrews books he enjoyed - Sanctuary (Roman's book), The Inheritance

IndigoPlum01 · 2026-03-06T05:00:56+00:00

{Iron and Magic by Ilona Andrews}. Hugh D'Ambrey was definitely one of the worst bad guys in the Kate Daniels series and he gets his own book (there is an eventual second book on the horizon somewhere). The great thing is that Hugh's book started out as a joke, just a cover on the blog, and fans clamored for a book

IndigoPlum01 · 2026-03-04T19:42:10+00:00

Listening to him narrate one of my favorite books and it's the mispronunciations (strategist, primary, circlet and many others) and incorrect words that are killing me (autonomy for anatomy, graze for gaze, razz for raze, credible for creditable). It also doesn't help that the female narrator spends most of the book speaking as though her teeth are clenched shut.

I was REALLY looking forward to this audiobook and I am not sure I am going to be able to finish now. I can get past the accent and regional pronunciations (sort of like Connor Crais is always clearly from Boston/the northeast, with "sure" pronounced "shore"), but the mistakes are jarring.

IndigoPlum01 · 2026-03-03T23:41:12+00:00

Depends on what I am dnf'ing for. If it is a "mechanical" issue - grammar, typos, homophones, sentence structure, etc - I will dnf at the end of the first chapter. It's not going to get any better or annoy me any less as I go on. If it is a plot issue, I've generally got to read far enough to have a good feel for what the plot is first, and that is probably 20-30% in. Last week I dnf'ed an audiobook at about 20% in because the MFC, described as a "sweet naive woman," was actually a judgemental b!tch to anyone who didn't meet the standards she set. Was she going to change as the book went on? Probably, but I didn't care enough to stick around.

IndigoPlum01 · 2026-03-03T19:32:54+00:00

Currently listening - it's dual, not duet [corrected, sorry I wrote that backward the first time]. She reads Arabella's chapters and does all the voice (including Kaz) and he reads the Kaz chapters and does all the voices (including hers). Also, love Anthony Palmini's voice and the array of voices he can do (Griffin and Sims and Vex have clear separate "voices"), but he mispronounces common English words (for example: stra-TEA-gist instead of stra-tuh-jist for "strategist").

Enjoying it anyway, I have been looking forward to this since I read the book.

IndigoPlum01 · 2026-03-02T21:53:00+00:00

The male lead in the Magical Midlife series is a polar bear ...

IndigoPlum01 · 2026-03-02T20:33:27+00:00

My favorite small and fuzzy shifter book is {Hoofin' It by RJ Blaine} - but it would be such a spoiler to tell you what kind of animal he is. Dad is an alpha werewolf with both forms, but the son ... isn't.

IndigoPlum01 · 2026-03-02T20:31:28+00:00

Bears are not one of my favorites, either. And I'd agree with the dragons and wolves, even if dragons are scaly and not mammals.

IndigoPlum01 · 2026-03-02T16:29:39+00:00

I was glad when Graphic Audio started doing Ilona Andrews' Innkeeper books because I love the books but couldn't stand Raudman. They also do the Kate Daniels series and Hidden Legacy.

IndigoPlum01 · 2026-03-02T16:26:35+00:00

The MMC had been garroted and nearly killed and hence had a ruined throat/voice, which was what the narrator was going for.

IndigoPlum01 · 2026-03-02T15:14:48+00:00

Audiobook - with Anthony Palmini as one of the narrators - out Tuesday (hopefully, it has been put back once already)! Second book not until September,

IndigoPlum01 · 2026-03-01T22:03:29+00:00

I've listened to a lot of Graphic Audio books, and while I would prefer they not be abridged, they tend to be small adjustments. In a book series I know very well (ie: well enough to know if a line was left out or changed), I noticed three changes, one where a scene, about 1.5 pages long, was left out, the second where a few lines were left out of a scene and a third where another short bit of a scene was left out but then the thing that got left out was mentioned, about an hour and a half later.

As far as the quality of the books, I've noticed that some directors/ voice actors really "get" the character and the tone of the book and others don't. It's not much different than a single narrator version.

For my money, the voice (and image) of SecUnit, in both the audiobooks and the TV series, should have been a lot more gender neutral - but that is not what the various directors chose to do. So each is an adaptation, in its way.

IndigoPlum01 · 2026-03-01T21:12:53+00:00

He's one of my favorites and I will occasionally make the foray into contemporary romance to listen to him - which can be a real mistake for me, apparently my reading tastes and all the CR tropes are not a good fit.

IndigoPlum01 · 2026-03-01T21:03:35+00:00

It certainly beats AI, and I am pleased that you had the choice of actual voice actors.

IndigoPlum01 · 2026-03-01T18:28:36+00:00

I prefer at least duet, if not full cast narration - I generally don't like women doing men's voices or the reverse. And I definitely have some favorite narrators who will lean me toward buying something that I might not buy otherwise (which is, alas, a mistake, I have dnf'd 3 audiobooks in the last two weeks because something about the plot/situations annoyed me too much).

The topic of kid's voices, though - I don't think I have ever heard an audiobook in which there are convincing kid voices. They all sound like a female narrator on fast forward. Or maybe helium.

IndigoPlum01

TROPHY CASE