Do you think we'll ever really belong anywhere? 'I suppose not,' said Papa. 'Not the way people belong who have lived in one place all their lives. But we'll belong a little in lots of places, and I think that may be just as good.' Actor Helen Barford talks with Jessica about Judith Kerr's classic children’s novel When Hitler Stole Pink Rabbit, which she narrated for Listening Books' Sound Learning production. Helen also shares some good advice for anyone interested in taking up audiobook narration.  Books Helen and her children recommend for the Audiobook Listening Challenge   Beast Quest (series), Adam Blade  Harry Potter (series), JK Rowling  The Secret Seven (series) and The Famous Five (series), Enid Blyton  Julia Donaldson’s books, especially Tyrannosaurus Drip and What the Ladybird Heard  Roald Dahl’s books, especially Matilda, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, The BFG  The Secret Garden, Frances Hodgson Burnett  The Railway Children, Edith Nesbit  We’d love to hear from you!  Here’s a good place to review the podcast.  You can also give us a shout on Twitter: @ListeningBooks,  Or Instagram: @ListeningBooks,  Or Facebook,  And we also have some content on YouTube.  For more information about Listening Books, whether you’re interested in our Sound Learning initiative or our collaboration with PressPreader, head to www.listening-books.org.uk. 

Voluminous by Listening Books

Actor Helen Barford

'My reading experience with poetry is that I'm in the presence of some...body and we're in that kind of potentially ... it might be that slightly late night kitchen table moment where you've sort of got through all the news and the stuff and you actually enter into where you really are, and what's going on, and what you really need to talk about.' Poet Fiona Bennett and Actor Michael Schaeffer talk with Jessica about how The Poetry Exchange began, why the poems are introduced as friends, and how the way we encounter poems can shape our experience of them.  Fiona’s recommendations for the Audiobook Listening Challenge  Rapture, by Carol Ann Duffy  A Sleepwalk on the Severn, by Alice Oswald  The poem that has been a friend to Jessica  We’d love to hear from you!  Here’s a good place to review the podcast.  You can also give us a shout on Twitter: @ListeningBooks,  Or Instagram: @ListeningBooks,  Or Facebook,  And we also have some content on YouTube.  For more information about Listening Books, head to www.listening-books.org.uk 

Poet Fiona Bennett and Actor Michael Schaeffer

The kayak gives this incredible perspective on the world, where you are really embedded in the worlds of the species, you're surrounded by other animals, they don't respond to you in the way that they respond to humans on foot because obviously they are so much more skilled in and on the water than you are. Writer and historian David Gange talks to Jessica about his book The Frayed Atlantic Edge: A Historian’s Journey from Shetland to the Channel, describing his adventures by kayak, his encounters with wildlife, the importance of poets to history, and why he was discouraged from narrating his own audiobook.   David's book recommendations for the Audiobook Listening Challenge: Floating Coast: An Environmental History of the Bering Strait by Bathsheba Demuth Braiding Sweet Grass by Robin Wall Kimmerer Fathoms: The World in the Whale by Rebecca Giggs Moder Dy/ Mother Wave by Roseanne Watt Links: The Frayed Atlantic Edge www.listening-books.org.uk  Here’s where you can review the podcast.  Twitter: @ListeningBooks  Instagram: @ListeningBooks  Facebook  YouTube 

Author David Gange

It does play huge roles in describing the character and circumstances, but really it’s there because I love food! Author Claire Fuller talks with Jess about her latest novel, Unsettled Ground, shortlisted for the 2021 Women’s Prize for Fiction, and her third novel, the simmering, suspenseful Bitter Orange. Claire reflects on the roles music and food play in her story-telling, and she describes how someone who never aspired to be a writer became one nonetheless.  Books Claire Recommends for the Audiobook Listening Challenge  Ian McEwan's Atonement Donna Tartt's The Secret History Links! Claire’s Playlist for Unsettled Ground  www.listening-books.org.uk  We’d Love to Hear From You!  Here’s where you can review the podcast.  Twitter: @ListeningBooks  Instagram: @ListeningBooks  Facebook  YouTube 

Author Claire Fuller

My other conviction here, is that when you're writing difficult things, you should make them as rich and pleasurable as possible for the reader, that there need to be compensations... Author Francis Spufford talks about what it's been like to launch his new novel, Light Perpetual, during a pandemic, the many talents and accents required of audiobook narrator Imogen Church, the fondness he holds for his 'unlikable' characters, and why the narrator was especially important for his historical novel Golden Hill. To top it off, he delivers a beautiful reflection on the extraordinariness of our ordinary lives. Books Francis Recommends for the Audiobook Listening Challenge Historical Fiction: Antonia Hodgson's Tom Hawkins series, specifically The Last Confession of Thomas Hawkins and The Silver Collar Penelope Fitzgerald's The Blue Flower, The Beginning of Spring, Innocence, and The Gate of Angels Nonfiction: Oliver Morton's The Moon: A History for the Future Get in touch Here's where you can leave a review. Twitter: @ListeningBooks Instagram: @ListeningBooks Facebook YouTube For more information about the charity, www.listening-books.org.uk

Author Francis Spufford

I was telling a story, and as an actor, as an artist, that’s the central love.  Actor and audiobook narrator Kobna Holdbrook-Smith talks about what it was like to voice Rivers of London as his very first audiobook, what he had to unlearn to do voice work, how Frank Sinatra inspired his mic technique, and even his first experience of snow. He also offers a heap of recommendations for your reading list:  Books Slough House series by Mick Herron, narrated by Sean Barrett  The Architect’s Apprentice by Elif Shafak, narrated by Grant Cartwright  The Terrible: A Storyteller’s Memoir, by Yrsa Daley-Ward, narrated by the author and Howard Daley-Ward  She Would Be King by Weyétu Moore, narrated by the author  The Milkman by Anna Burns, narrated by Bríd Brennan  Mr Loverman by Bernardine Evaristo, narrated by James Goode  Circe by Madeline Miller, narrated by Perdita Weeks  The Rosewater books (The Wormwood Trilogy) by Tade Thompson, narrated by Bayo Gbadamosi  Authors Anne Carson, Roxane Gay, Toni Morrison  Narrators Imogen Church, Anna Bentinck, Nicole Davis, Raj Ghatak, Tania Rodrigues, Adjoa Andoh, Bayo Gbadamosi  Links Jess promised to include! The 2021 Audiobook Listening Challenge  Where to leave a review Twitter & Instagram: @ListeningBooks  Facebook YouTube www.listening-books.org.uk 

Actor Kobna Holdbrook-Smith

'I wanted it to look like how it feels like, and how it feels to be Irish sometimes is that you are in a murder mystery.' Caroline O'Donoghue, host of Sentimental Garbage and author of Promising Young Women, Scenes of a Graphic Nature and the forthcoming YA novel All Our Hidden Gifts, tells Jess about playing with different genres, how some endings are too unbelievable to work, the inherent witchiness of being a girl, and how annoying it is for a movie to share your book's title. She also gives some stellar book recommendations for all those taking up this year's Audiobook Listening Challenge. If you enjoy this episode, consider leaving us a review. You can also find us on Twitter and Instagram @ListeningBooks. We'd love to hear from you. For more information about Listening Books, head to our website www.listening-books.org.uk

Author Caroline O'Donoghue

Coming to a feed near you Thursday, 18 March 2021.

Series 3 Trailer

The second episode of our 2020 two-part special, and our festive holiday gift to you. Amy, Abbie, and Jess talk about how their reading habits changed during the pandemic and which books and audiobooks saved the day. We also hear from authors Jenny Eclair, Bali Rai, and Sally Gardner about their comfort reads. Tayari Jones, Yangsze Choo, Georgette Heyer, Jane Austen, Sue Townsend, L.M. Montgomery, Marian Keyes, Roald Dahl, Gabriel García Márquez, Maggie O'Farrell, P.G. Wodehouse, Kiley Reid—all get a look-in as writers that have brought us comfort and cheer. There's also a literary game with absolutely no prizes but lots of jingly bells.

May your books be the best kind of company — Audio Comfort Blankets

Writer and comedian Adam Buxton misses David Bowie, and he misses his dad. Here he talks with Amy about his new book Ramble Book: how it started, why it changed, how humourist David Sedaris influenced his process, and what might be next. With him, we ramble through pop culture, comedy, audiobooks, the 80s and 90s, boarding school, and more.

Skip to the famous parts! — Adam Buxton on Ramble Book

For the last episode of the series, Jess talks to Gillie Howarth, who chairs the Listening Books Board of Trustees, about how it all began, and how it’s grown along the way. We also hear from Listening Books ambassadors Sally Gardner, Bali Rai, Kit de Waal, and Jenny Eclair. Finally, Nik de Garis, on his last day as audio producer, recalls proud achievements, embarrassing moments, and meeting Stephen Fry.

‘As an Irish person I have no such inhibitions’ - 60th Anniversary Special

Wail Qasim makes his debut appearance on the podcast, joining Amy Flinders and Jessica Stone for a chat in celebration of Listening Books' 60th birthday, focusing on books popular with Listening Books members before turning to some of Wail's and Amy's favourites.

'I know not of the squeaky wheel' - Books Popular with our Members

The ever so charming author of the Charles Paris, Mrs Pargeter, Fethering and Blotto & Twinks series of crime novels joins Jessica in the studio to talk about the experience of narrating his own work, how to spot a crime writer's misdirections, and even what it was like to work with Douglas Adams on the pilot episode of Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. Listening Books is an audiobook charity for anyone who struggles to read or hold a book due to illness, disability, learning difficulty or a mental health issue. To find out more about what we do, go to www.listening-books.org.uk.   

"I wasn't that sorry"- Author Simon Brett

Andrew Bell and Sarah Matthews join Jessica to round up some books they feel are even better as audiobooks than in their traditional printed format. From author-read autobiographies to full cast performances, they talk about which books and why they'd rather listen to.

'And suddenly it starts to make sense' - Books Even Better as Audiobooks

Jess meets the person behind the microphone to find out more about what it takes to be a narrator. Voice artist Bronwen Price talks about what it is like to record stories in the studio, what helps her give her best performance and what her dream books to read would be. Listening Books is an audiobook charity for anyone who struggles to read or hold a book due to illness, disability, learning difficulty or a mental health issue. To find out more about what we do, go to www.listening-books.org.uk.

"Being read to is a basic human need" - Audiobook narrator Bronwen Price

Voluminous is a podcast from the team at Listening Books, talking literature with an audio slant. It will feature discussions, interviews and even a literary quiz or two. Listening Books is a UK charity that provides audiobooks for those who struggle to read or hold a book due to an illness, disability, learning difficulty or mental health issue. Find out more at www.listening-books.org.uk.

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Voluminous by Listening Books

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