It’s time for another Top Ten list from That Artsy Reader Girl, and today’s topic is a genre freebie. To come up with an idea for my post, I started by looking at the list of shelves on my Goodreads page, since mine is almost exclusively genres, hoping for inspiration. What stood out to me was how many audiobooks I’ve read, when a few years ago, I didn’t think I’d really like listening to audiobooks. Of course, “audiobook” isn’t a genre, but that did get me thinking about some of the more special audiobooks I’ve listened to—those that are narrated by the author or narrated by a notable actor. Sometimes, when I see a narrator like that for an audiobook, I decide to listen to it even if I didn’t otherwise have much interest in the book.

For example, I only listened to A Series of Unfortunate Events because Tim Curry narrated them (except 3 narrated by the author). It turns out I’m not a fan. And though I didn’t like The Great Gatsby when I read it in high school, the narration by Sean Astin compelled me to give it another try. 

For the books in my list, though, I picked books for 2 specific reasons:
1.) The book is narrated by the author.
2.) The book is narrated by an actor in a movie or TV show related to the book.

Brant Hansen books (read by the author)
Radio show host Brant Hansen has a lot of great insight in his 4 (and counting) books, and listening to the books narrated by him makes them all the better! See my reviews for his books here.

As You Wish by Cary Elwes with Joe Layden (read by the author)
What’s better than reading about Cary Elwes’s experience on the set of The Princess Bride? Hearing him tell about them himself! See my review here.

And on a related note, if you’re a fan of The Princess Bride and one of the “An Inconceivable Evening with Cary Elwes” events, where the audience watches the movie on a theater screen (quoting along with the movie) and Cary Elwes answers questions submitted by the audience in advance, is anywhere near you, consider going! It was so much fun!

I Can Only Imagine by Bart Millard with Robert Noland (read by the author)
The story of Bart Millard’s relationship with his abusive dad and his dad’s transformation shortly before his death is emotional enough, but hearing it from his own mouth makes it so much more real. See my review here.

The Office BFFs by Jenna Fischer & Angela Kinsey (read by the authors)
For fans of The Office, the audiobook is the best way to experience this behind-the-scenes look at the show. People like Rainn Wilson and Creed Bratton even make appearances. Though there’s something to be said for the text version, too, since there are pictures all throughout it. See my review here.

Keep Moving by Dick Van Dyke (read by the author)
I have long been a fan of Dick Van Dyke, and I appreciate how much energy he has, even in his 90s. Though I’m not the target audience for this book, I still enjoyed hearing him talk about his life and growing old. See my review here.

The Wingfeather Saga by Andrew Peterson (read by the author)
Andrew Peterson is ridiculously talented! Not only are these books amazing, but he does the most fun and engaging character voices when he narrates them. He started out reading the first book live on Facebook during the quarantine, a few chapters a week, and eventually went on to read them all. Though the pictures in the books are worth seeing too, the audiobooks are great! See my reviews here.

The Veritas Project series by Frank E. Peretti (read by the author)
Full disclosure—I haven’t listened to these yet. I didn’t know he narrated them until today. I have, however, listened to his narration of some kids books he wrote. Peretti is my all-time favorite author, and I also really appreciate him in the various movie and kids’ show roles he’s done, so it’s not a surprise that I enjoyed his narration. I had tried to find versions of some of his adult books that I know he narrated in the past but didn’t have easy access to them. This series of young adult books are amongst my absolute favorites of his, so now that I know he narrated them and that I have access to them through my library, they’re near the top of my “to listen” list. See my reviews of the (print) books here.

The Princess Diaries by Meg Cabot (read by Anne Hathaway)
I like the movie but never cared to read the books. But somehow, finding out that the first are narrated by by Anne Hathaway made me give them a try. I didn’t decide to continue past those 3, but they were fun to listen to. See my reviews here.

The Thousand-Dollar Tan Line by Rob Thomas & Jennifer Graham (read by Kristen Bell)
I love Veronica Mars, so it was an easy choice to listen to this book when I heard about it and that it’s narrated by Veronica herself. She does a pretty good job imitating her fellow actors/characters from the show, too. It’s just too bad that the 2nd book wasn’t narrated by her too. See my review here.

The Hobbit by J.R.R. Tolkien (read by Andy Serkis)
From my review: It’s no surprise that Andy Serkis does a great job with the different voices for different characters. Though I’ve only seen the movies based on this book a small handful of times, it seemed to me that some of his characters sounded similar to how they did in those movies. It may have been a coincidence (excepting, of course, for his portrayal of Gollum, which is just how you would expect), but Thorin sure did sound like Richard Armitage. Considering that this audiobook came out several years after the movies, I did go into it wondering how much from the movies might seep into it, and since my favorite thing about the movies (which were otherwise just kinda okay, to me) is the music, I was thrilled to hear a few familiar melodies in Serkis’s narration. See the rest of my review here.

Have you read any of these? What’s on your list this week?