The Irish Times looks at a selection of audio books
Songs of the Kings
Barry Unsworth
Read by Andrew Sachs
Chivers Audio Books, 8 tapes, 11 hrs, £16.50
Agamemnon's invasion of Troy is given a chillingly contemporary spin in this post-9/11 retelling. As the Greek army waits, trapped in the straits of Aulis by an adverse wind, somebody has the bright idea of sacrificing the king's favourite daughter to the gods in a move that combines fundamentalist religion, political expediency and unadulterated misogyny. Songs of the Kings is a story about story, about the role of myth and propaganda, about politics, and about perception: but it is also an old-fashioned adventure packed with vivid characters, tension and tragedy. Unsworth's clever narrative sweeps the action along, and Andrew Sachs uses his celebrity cast - Achilles, Odysseus, Ajax, et al - to weave a sound-world whose magic never slips for a second. Bookshops often don't stock unabridged recordings, but you can get it online at www.bbcshop.com. Highly recommended.
Status Anxiety
Alain de Botton
Read by the author
Penguin, 3 CDs, £12.99
Strikingly similar topics are addressed - though with considerably less lyricism - in Alain de Botton's latest helping of self-help for the smart-assed. Status anxiety is the sneaking feeling that we're not quite up to the mark. It leads to worry, overwork, misery and, sometimes, death. De Botton, needless to say, has the cure. It seems that while we're out there frantically chasing money, success, consumer goods and celebrity lifestyles, all we really need is - all together, now - love. Ho-hum. If you can work your way through these three CDs, read by de Botton himself in frightfully reasonable tones, without hurling either them or your state-of-the-art CD/MP3 player at the wall, you're probably going to be just fine.
Dubliners
James Joyce
Read by T.P. McKenna
CSA Word Classic, 6 CDs, 7 ½ hrs, £19.99
OK, OK, we know there's no escaping big J.J. at the moment. But this is a real goodie; all the stories read in T.P.'s plummiest tones, no fuss, no frills, no nasty surprises, just superb writing superbly read. What more could you want from an audiobook? To get hold of this you'll definitely have to go online, to www.csaword.co.uk. Do: you won't regret it.
The Winter Queen
Boris Akunin
Read by William Hootkins
Orion Audio, 5 CDs, 6 hrs, £16.99
Now here's something you don't hear every day: a best-selling Russian literary thriller. Set in Tzarist Moscow, The Winter Queen introduces Erast Fandorin, a minor civil servant (14th grade), an endearing combination of bumbling bureaucrat and James Bond, whose flair for detective work sees him turn a routine suicide investigation into the stuff of sinister international conspiracy. The tone is self-consciously leisurely, quirky and wry - a Sherlock Holmes for our times - and reader Hootkins recreates it with relish. Fandorin is about to hit the big screen: catch him before he's hyped out of the water.
A Short History of Nearly Everything
Bill Bryson
Read by William Roberts (BBC Word for Word, 12 tapes, 19 hrs, £18.50
"It is a slightly arresting notion that if you were to pick yourself apart with tweezers, one atom at a time, you would produce a mound of fine atomic dust, none of which had ever been alive but all of which had once been you . . ." William Roberts sounds slightly panicky as he embarks on Bryson's breezy journey into science - as well he might, for he must trip lightly through the tangled undergrowth of geology, paleontology, chemistry and particle physics, and keep everybody awake for what is, let's face it, almost an entire day. Reader, he does it: and the result, though not every science purist's cup of tea, is a delightful voyage of discovery, with plenty of laughs to lighten the learning and entire fistfuls of quotes with which to astonish your friends and silence a dinner-table.
The No 1 Ladies' Detective Agency
Alexander McCall Smit
Read by Adjoa Andoh
Time Warner audiobooks, 5 CDs, 6 hrs, £14.99
Dodgy dads, errant daughters, wayward husbands, over-confident snakes: Botswana's only female private detective sorts them all out in double-quick time. It would be hard to overstate the charm of this delightful recording, read with lustrous musicality and gentle wit by the actress Adjoa Andoh. When you've made your way through the first instalment, you'll surely want to proceed with the further adventures of Precious Ramotswe and her gentlemanly friend, Mr J.L.B. Matekoni of Tlokweng Road Speedy Motors, as described in subsequent volumes Tears of the Giraffe and Morality for Beautiful Girls. Add in a smattering of incidental music and you get an audio experience so convincing you can almost smell the Kalahari.