Ep. 14: An Awesome Year, We Hear: Talking About The Best of 2018

Now that you’ve seen our Best of the Year picks (at https://www.audible.com/Bestof2018, if you haven’t), hear what went into making the list. The Audicted Editors discuss the audiobooks that were sweated and argued over, listened and re-listened to, and talked endlessly about to finally determine the best. Plus: a special guest appearance by Amazon Book Review editor, Adrian Liang, to talk about how her team of editors came up with their “best” choices.

The books the editors discuss in this episode are:

Educated by Tara Westover

Becoming by Michelle Obama

Small Fry By Lisa Brennan Jobs

Heartland by Sarah Smarsh

If You Love Me by Maureen Cavanagh

Dopesick by Beth Macy

Rising Out of Hatred by Eli Saslow

The Poisoned City by Anna Clark

How to Change Your Mind by Michael Pollan

Bad Blood by John Carreyrou

Circe by Madeline Miller

Speak No Evil by Uzodinma Iweala

Where the Crawdads Sing by Delia Owens

My Year of Rest and Relaxation by Ottessa Moshfegh

Washington Black by Esi Edugyan

Children of Blood and Bone by Tom Adeyemi

What If It's Us by Becky Albertalli & Adam Silvera

Obsidio by Amie Kaurman & Jay Kristoff

The Beastie Boys Book by Michael Diamond & Adam Horovitz

Lincoln in the Bardo By George Saunders

See You in the Cosmos by Jack Cheng

The Library Book by Susan Orlean

West Cork by Sam Bungey and Jennifer Forde

I'll Be Gone in the Dark by Michelle McNamara

Evil Has a Name by Paul Holes, Jim Clemente, & Peter McDonnell

The Radical King by Martin Luther King, Jr. 

Barracoon by Zora Neale Hurston

The Dark Between the Stars by Atticus

Milk and Honey by Rupi Kaur

The Poet X by Elizabeth Acevedo

If They Come For Us by Fatimah Asghar

The Poems of T.S. Eliot by T.S. Eliot

The Kiss Quotient by Helen Hoang

The Wife Between Us by Greer Hendricks & Sarah Pekkanen

The Woman in the Window by A.J. Finn

My Sister the Serial Killer by Oyinkan Braithwaite

The Outsider by Stephen King

Rosewater by Tade Thompson

Heavy by Kiese Laymon

Indianapolis by Lynn Vincent & Sarah Vladic

Parker: Selected Stories by Dorothy Parker

The Incomplete Book of Running by Peter Sagal

Out of My Mind by Alan Arkin

Jingle Bell Pop by John Seabrook

The Diary of a Hounslow Girl by Ambreen Razia

Zero G by Dan Wells

Alien by Tim Lebbon

©2018 Audible Originals, LLC (P)2018 Audible Originals, LLC

i stopped listening

You ladies are awesome in terms of your opinions and ideas on the discussions BUT please stop uttering "ums" or "ahs". It's contagious. All of you have it. Even the person you've invited. I can't continue. It just throws me of. It's sad because all of you have great discussions but I just can't focus on what you actually say because of all the ums and ahs.

Episode 14

Some of the books in this category sound really interesting. I'm happy to find more books to put on my wish list since it was getting a little low.

Great review podcast

started me on a few new books, one being CIRCE. Gave many synopsisses of so many books, need to listen to again and write down all the titles.

More Isn't Always Better

Story: 2-Stars
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In my opinion, there is far too much material here to be effective, with many of these titles receiving coverage in prior installments. Clocking in at over an hour, the longest episode to date by a significant margin, the editors attempt to cover the best audiobooks of 2018 across a wide swath of genres. Those covered at the beginning receive some in-depth treatment. The hosts, seeming to be conscious of the length of the session, then rush through the final titles. If possible, I would suggest multiple, shorter episodes for end-of-year recaps such as this, which would allow for deeper treatment of each genre.

The inclusion of the Amazon editor was an interesting addition, especially since their choices for the best of 2018 closely mirror those of Audible.

Performance:
************

This is a strong performance, highlighted by Abby's coverage of the collection of Dr. King's work. The hosts are given a difficult task to cover so much material, and they do about as well as one could expect.

Useless, full of stuff I don't care about

I got an email about this so I feel like that entitles me to let folks know why it's annoying and spammy to have to deal with. These books are super generic and almost genre-less. As someone who consumes almost exclusively sci-fi and fantasy books I can't care less about this list of books. If Audible genuinely wanted folks to be interested in first party podcasts, they'd have one for as many genres as possible, but they clearly don't and have this generic garbage amalgamation instead. Sick of getting emails about this and boring audible originals for crap I'll never be interested in.

completely obnoxious

it this what Amazon thinks their typical Audible listener is? a panel of leftist feminists snorting about their narrow perspectives.
not what I thought was promised. i learned nothing, but I only made it about 20 minutes in.