# looking for good audio book...



## sudeki300 (May 9, 2022)

recently i've been getting into mythology after playing Hellblade :Senua's sacrifice, i've been wanting to read about the gods but don't reaaly get time to sit and read. so i was hoping to find a good audio book i could listen to when going to sleep, it has to be in story form and not like a text book if you get my meaning. any help would be great.


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## FAST6191 (May 10, 2022)

So Norse/Celtic mashup? As opposed to Greek/Roman, Egyptian or further afield?

There are very few written Celtic things so you might have a harder time there if you want to go "accurate", but there are some efforts otherwise (mostly going to be Irish takes rather than Scottish*, and next to no chance of Cornish, maybe a few Welsh but that gets very muddled. Anything Gaulish or Iberian peninsula is almost certainly going to be reconstructed).

For Norse stuff you can probably find someone read the Prose Edda (Icelandic but most of what current Norse mythology tends to be reverse engineered from as a fair bit got lost during Christianisation**, and generally considered fairly true to things) but I don't have a specific audiobook there.

*Scotichronicon and then mumble mumble mumble Tales of a Grandfather from early-mid 1800s tending to be how that one goes.

**indeed a fair bit that is not Prose Edda coming from monks sent to convert people noting down what the filthy pagans and heathens believed with all the distaste and lack of objectivity you might imagine there with the remaining being a few oral traditions.

If you did want the Greek (things are rarely covered from the Roman aspect these days it seems, though Roman=Greek with different names for the most part) then you can have short form and long form versions depending upon age bracket (kids stuff tending to be shorter, and not always sanitised which is nice). Fewer do Egyptian but it is popular among the kids so you can find it.

There are also likely to be about 5000 readings of Beowulf (it is popular among students of English literature usually because it is old rather than any great fondness for it if my experiences are anything to go by, and that usually translates as a bunch of said students giving it a go) if you want that. That is less gods and such but still foundational mythology. Likewise if you expand Greek and Roman beyond basic origin stories of gods and short stories involving them (see stuff like the Minotaur) then you will likely find plenty of readings of the epic poems which are far better than any filmic take I have ever seen of them (I have never seen a film involving the siege of Troy, which you will likely encounter in the Iliad and Odyssey for the Greek side and Aeneid for the eventual Roman one -- Rome in myth being founded by the survivors of Troy, that I consider anywhere near as good as the works mentioned in the aside) and still feature plenty of gods and mythology.

Going further afield you might get a few Indian things and then have to hit Japan*** before it really picks up again, with maybe some enterprising type doing Thai or something.
Middle Eastern is going to be fun -- I do recommend Arabian Nights (think Aladdin not the Disney version, and that can also go for the Chinese telling if you want). Might do something for Code of Hammurabi (technically a legal code but short and features some gods give me authority/stories thereof) and other things written in cuneiform or that fall under Assyria and Mesopotamia.

***Japan and audiobooks is an odd one in that they are not as popular as some might imagine. Indeed if you did want Japanese folklore then there are a variety of truly fantastic short story anime covering things here. Folktales from Japan probably being the main effort there but there are lots of others.


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## sudeki300 (May 10, 2022)

FAST6191 said:


> So Norse/Celtic mashup? As opposed to Greek/Roman, Egyptian or further afield?
> 
> There are very few written Celtic things so you might have a harder time there if you want to go "accurate", but there are some efforts otherwise (mostly going to be Irish takes rather than Scottish*, and next to no chance of Cornish, maybe a few Welsh but that gets very muddled. Anything Gaulish or Iberian peninsula is almost certainly going to be reconstructed).
> 
> ...


hey Fast6191, thanks for taking the time to write such a detailed response to my question. it would mainly be greek mythology i would be looking for with stories with zues, loki and others. not sure if clash of the titans is one or if kratos is in there also, i managed to get "Mythos" read by Stephen Fry which is supposed to be the kind of thing i'm looking for which i'm going to start tonight. but if you have any other suggestions please let me know, they will be most welcome.


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## FAST6191 (May 10, 2022)

Zeus is Greek (same as Jupiter in the Roman stuff)
Loki is Norse, and one of the major players in it.
Clash of the Titans might just about be Perseus if you squint but it is taking many many liberties.
Kratos is a figure but a really minor one as these things go -- God of War really was the thing to bring him to the fore in the modern world, and has about as much connection to the ancient Greek myth as Percy Jackson, though some older art was fond of Prometheus where he is a named figure in the main stories there.

I did get a really kids greek myth CD for a friend the other month which covered a lot of the major and some minor Greek myths. Don't have the name to hand though and can't find a similar cover in a casual search.

Trouble for me here is I don't tend to do this sort of thing in audiobook form -- I did it all to death pretty much as a kid so today if I am doing ancient things in audiobook form then it is more likely to be either the epic poems I mentioned earlier or one of the more mundane sources from around then (Juvenal's Satires, letters from the Pliny's, Aristophanes and such like, though stuff like Euripides and Sophocles do provide us with some of the myths as well as more mundane).


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## stephaniesmith44 (May 31, 2022)

honestly, I've been reading stories about greek gods, and all I can say is that it's very weird and boring. It was this boring, that I am already reading only summaries of this kind of books. Recently I have read the summary of "quicksand" on https://freebooksummary.com/category/quicksand , and honestly, I can say that I wouldn't be able to read the whole book. This is definitely not the literature that I like.


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## asc53087 (Jul 17, 2022)

sudeki300 said:


> recently i've been getting into mythology after playing Hellblade :Senua's sacrifice, i've been wanting to read about the gods but don't reaaly get time to sit and read. so i was hoping to find a good audio book i could listen to when going to sleep, it has to be in story form and not like a text book if you get my meaning. any help would be great.


I highly recommend "Gilgamesh", a translation of the Epic of Gilgamesh by Stephen Mitchell that's narrated by George Guidall. If I'm not mistaken, I believe it's actually free on Audible, or if not, it's very cheap.


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## twako (Jul 19, 2022)

Audible is good. And listen to Dark Matter by Michelle Paver. Perfect winter listening.

And Dominion by CJ Sansom.


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