Episode: 4511
Title: HPR4511: Audio-books
Source: https://hub.hackerpublicradio.org/ccdn.php?filename=/eps/hpr4511/hpr4511.mp3
Transcribed: 2025-11-22 15:15:02

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This is Hacker Public Radio Episode 4,511 from Monday the 17th of November 2025.
Today's show is entitled Audio Books.
It is hosted by Lee and is about 30 minutes long.
It carries an explicit flag.
The summary is Lee walks through his audiobook library.
Hello I'm Lee.
Today I'm going to walk through the books in my audiobook library.
I don't have an audible subscription at the present time.
I have had one for some years though.
I first started an audible subscription in about 2014.
On this PC I'm using OpenAudible to access the books.
I've also backed up the majority of my purchases, ZVET MP3 or .M4B files.
Typically I'd actually listen to them via Bluetooth headset, pad to my iPad.
I have in the past and I did three audio books from Project Gutenberg.
At one time I got four DVD ROMs worth of supposedly free audio books posted to me
from an online marketplace.
Doing this seemed a little shady.
However it turns out I've never listened at length to any of these two aforementioned sources.
As you'll hear my favourite genre is sci-fi, then my taste evolved over the years.
Also like some genres of non-fiction.
My first ever audible purchase was Excession, Culture Series,
Book 5, Buy in and Banks, Read by Peter Kenny, 16 hours long.
The story was set in the far future mainly about sentient starships.
There were also some human characters, an interesting part of the plot was
people could through genetic re-engineering reassign their
agenda within a short space of time.
Right now I don't exactly remember how the plot transpired,
but I did find the author's work worth listening to.
Next was The Martian by Andy Weir, rated by RC Bray.
I've seen an interview with the author on one of the
this week in tech video podcasts and the then upcoming movie had probably prompted this.
It's a story about an astronaut left for dead, the only inhabitant of an entire planet.
At the time I listened to this I was moving out from my parents' house into a flat
and did not have a TV or good internet so I was quite absorbed by this book
and the theme of isolation was quite apt.
My next book was Alien, Out of the Shadows, written by Tim Levin,
Dirt Mags, and narrated by a host of readers, including the famous Rutger Hauer,
who takes on the voice of the android famously played by In Home
in the original film Alien.
I chose this due to my obsession with these series of films
that had at one point seen me studying the Open University course called
Gender Technology in Representation, simply because these films were on the syllabus.
My full 4J book was another sci-fi offering, this time an anthology from multiple authors called
The Best Science Fiction of the Year, Volume 1. It had a whole bunch of different stories,
most of which I found engaging. My next book, which in fact turned into a whole series of books,
I got from a recommendation by Steve Gibson on his security now podcast.
For some years I'd found myself unwittingly involved in cyber security,
as I had to get a web server to pass credit card compliance scans every three months.
I've been watching the other podcasts on the Twitch network.
After watching security now a few times, I got quite obsessed by the topic,
to the extent I later studied it at postgraduate level.
The series of books recommended were Rick Brown's Frontier Saga,
the first one being Aurora CV-01, narrated by Jeff Caffer.
I won't list all the books in the series, they are about interstellar war,
though with humans only, no aliens. That's as far as I've got through them at least.
Including the one just mentioned, my next 10 audio books were from this series,
each book is about 5 hours long. I'd sometimes be listening
while playing computer games solo, like Call of Duty, Modern Warfare,
since these two activities sometimes could complement each other.
Possibly because I reached a natural pause in the storyline,
next I broke away and went for something totally different.
This was a translation of Ancient literature from the Far East, called The Journey West.
I knew of this tale from a TV adaptation I'd watched as a child called Monkey,
and the writer of the audio book was one of my favourite childhood presenters,
also an accomplished comedian, called Kenneth Williams.
The next book was another one by Andy Weir.
This was set on a city on the moon and was called Artemis,
read by Rosario Dawson. I don't remember the plot too well,
the cool parts I like, similar to with the Martian,
were characters navigating the realities of living daily life in this
potentially hazardous environment. That sort of thing has often been a staple of sci-fi.
I remember even from Alpha C Clark's books, like A Fall of Moon Dust.
At that point I think someone had suggested some Japanese literature to me,
and I ended up being interested in a book called Colorless,
Sukuru Tazaki, and his use of Pilgrimage by Haruki Murakami,
read by Michael Fenton Stevens. This is a realistic book
about man's life, dissociation from the friends he knew during his coming of age,
and reconnection with his past. The next book I will not mention, the author,
since he has since fallen to distribute, but it was about myths from Norse mythology.
The next book was stories from Celtic mythology,
classic stories of the Celtic gods goddesses, heroes and monsters,
classical mythology series book two by Scott Lewis,
and read by Oliver Hunt. I studied some of these poems about
its use by pronunciation, Kahulhan, in high school. At this point I revisited a series of books I'd
read in print decades previously. The next books were June, June Messiah,
and Children of June by Frank Herbert, with various narrators. It's a sci-fi inverse of the far
future, interspersed with mystic elements, and the idea of engineering religions. Then I
listened to a book telling the true story of the authors, C.S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien.
The book is called Band of Snatch by Diana Pavlat Glyar, and was read by Michael Ward.
It was fascinating to hear about the collaboration between these and other authors,
in a writer's club at the pub in Oxford in England. The fighters by C.J. Schivers,
read by Scott Brick, was another non-fiction book. It was about people in the military,
particularly those fighting overseas in the Middle East. It was interesting for anyone who'd
been following international events following on from 2001, to see the conflicts from a
not often misrepresented or untold perspective. The next book was Masters of Doom by David Kushner,
and narrated by Will Wheaton of Star Trek fame. It again is non-fiction, about the programmers
who created the eponymous 3D First Person Shooter. I have to say I love this kind of non-fiction.
Finally I returned to fiction with another recommendation from Security Now Steve Gibson.
This was salvation by Peter of Hamilton, read by John Lee, and it had my attention, but
fell a little flat on me, if I recall. But my next book was another sci-fi book. This was
from the expand series by James S.A. Corrie. I was an avid viewer of the TV series and had got
impatient waiting for the next season to come out to see what happened next. The book was called
Subbola Burn, narrated by Jefferson Mace. Then it returned again to non-fiction,
this time with a journalistic style of book. A series of different stories put together called
the John Ronson Mysteries, read by the author himself. This tells his true life interactions with
well or lesser-known people in somewhat offbeat scenarios that all seem to tell us interesting
things about the culture we live in. My next purchase was linked to my studies. The short title
is simply Data Science, the full title being too expansive to repeat. It was by Herbert James
and read by Sam Slydle. Then came another non-fiction by Adam Naiman, read by Rob Shapiro about the
director's known collectively as The Cone Brothers. The book's catalogue each of their films to date
at the time it was written. It was only reading this that I realised I'd fallen hookline and sinker
for the statement in the intro to the movie Fargo that it was based directly on actual events
with only the names changed. This book was followed by another of the expand series called Nemesis
Games from the author and narrator mentioned previously. At this point in time I was trying
moving out from my parents again and had gone into temporary accommodation. My key work
helped me navigate this process. It was very much into philosophical and psychology books.
And I believe he recommended my next book. This was The Ten Types of Human by Dexter Dias
and the audio book was narrated by Tom Klake. It was 26 hours long so I got my money's worth.
Now back to sci-fi and this was another book with the author interviewed on one of the shows of
the This Week in Tech Network. It was called Delta V by Daniel Suarez and read by Jeff Gerner.
I quite like this for perhaps not too distant future telling of potential working
on the calamity and the beginnings of the era of asteroid mining. It had both elements of adventure
and suspense as well as sci-fi and survival. A little similar to the Martian. I then continued with
another book in the June series called God Emperor of June. This was read by Simon Vance. The next
book was in my favourite genre of true life tech work called Dreaming in Code by Scott Rosenberg
read by Carl McCarley. I don't remember the exact contents as it blends in my mind with other
similar books. This was followed in a similar vein by Ghost in the Wires by Kevin Mittnik
and William L. Simon read by Ray Porter. It was a realistic first-hand portrayal of being an
actual hacker whose obsession with this special interest brought him into serious trouble with the
law in the early days of hacking as we know it. Then I seem to take another recommendation
from Steve Gibson and listen to Gibraltar Earth and Gibraltar Sun by Michael McCollum.
This was about discovery of imminent danger from the stars and the proactive attempt to save
humanity from being enslaved by an alien empire. I ended up rather skimming the second book,
but I remember the first book in the series had a really good twist at the end, which out of
character for me I'll try not to spoil by revealing it. If my nature is correct, I have here Ramon
a campo down as the writer of the second book at least. Now I seem to be struggling for inspiration
and took a leap into Shakespeare, listening to another adaptation of the Tragedy of King Rich in
the Second. Perhaps I was still also trying to figure out why I failed my high school English literature
exam back in the day, since this was only of the text I studied back then that at the time I just
didn't get what it was about or what the point of it was. My next book was recommended to me by a new
friend I'd made called Beno. It was by the comedian Ben Elton and was called Blind Faith
narrated by Michael Maloney. It tells an o'wellian story of a future where social media does not
just dominate life, but is central to everyday existence. In this future, science is demonised
as heresy and things like inoculations to childhood illnesses are only accessible on the black
market and obtaining one force's parents to risk severe punishment by the state. I think my
key worker had recommended the next book which was called Talking to Strangers, what we should know
about the people we don't know by Malcolm Gladwell. It takes a studied look at human nature and how
humans have adapted to the modern age. Another fiction book I then listened to was The Hidden Life
of Trees by Peter Moirleben and read by Mike Grady. It is quite in depth and I remember touches on
theories that would be not out of place in a James Cameron film or Orson Scott Card novel.
With Trees in an ecosystem being able to communicate with each other in some restricted sense.
My next book was actually a physical book I found on the bookshelf at a day centre where there
was an employment service. It was called Orcs and irrespective of the content, they had me at the
title given my love of games like Walkraft 2, role-playing settings such as Warhammer 40,000
and Tolkienist worlds in general. I ended up getting the audio book finding it easier to take in
than reading the book. Although even in this form I ended up skimming or sleeping through much of
it. This book was written by Stan Nichols and read by John Lee. Another book recommended by
my key work was Behave by Robert M. Sapolsky and Read by Michael Goldstrom. It is again about
the science of psychology, the human mind and modern culture. Strangely now I find my next book
from Office E. Clarke was called City and the Stars, Read by Mike Grady but I have little recollection
of it at all. Now I went back to historical fiction prompted perhaps by the occurrence of me
moving into a new flat that was adjacent to a far eastern mini supermarket. The book was called
The Forbidden City by Charles River, read by Colin Fluxman. It was quite short just an hour or so.
I'm not sure if this predated the adaptation from Apple TV but I really listened to a book I'd
read decades previously called Foundation by Isaac Asimov and rated by William Hope. It was only
on this listening that I realised how dated it was, for example with every significant character
being male. And on that I do not excuse myself from the fact that every single book I'm
mentioning today perhaps with one or two exceptions has had an apparently male author. I next listened
to Children of the Mind by Olsen Scott Card, read by Gabriel D'Aquir and John Rubin Stein. This
continues the series that began with Ender's Game, a book I'd read actually before the film
coming out. Another exploratory for eight into ancient cultures took the form of listening to
the Epic of the Persian Kings with a notable introduction from Francis Ford Coppola. I have to say
I remember very little of this and may not have listened to all 12 hours. The next book I'll
meet due to the current disrepute of the author, as mentioned previously, but was a sci-fi fantasy
bridging time space heaven and hell. The key narrator James McAvoy portrays the protagonist
very well. Next was a nonfiction book about the true story of a female hacker called the
cuckoo's egg written by Cliffsk doll and read by Will Damron. I forget exactly how I ended up
listening to the next book, but it was called We The Living by Anne Rand, read by Mary Woods.
It was a story set in Russia many decades ago and I did not get the point completely, had read
some literary criticism about it. And it seems to be about whether serving the self isn't
intrinsically valuable goal, especially when the culture you might be in is ostensibly all about
serving society. I gathered this book may have been politicised to the extent it may be hard
to appreciate this work of fiction on its own merits nowadays. The clock mirage was a book I listened
to by Joseph Mazer, read by Keith Salon Wright, unsurprisingly about different concepts of time.
As an experimenter in creating software for my friend Beno who devised his own time system,
this was something that at least peaked my interest. The next book was instantalled to my studies
at the time called The Psychology of Information Security by Leran Zinnatoulin, read by Peter
Silva Leif. It was only two hours or so long. The next book I read after that I did not remember
clearly. It was called On Psychology Illustration in Psychopathology written and read by Jay Z Murdoch
and I must have come to it from my interest in mental health, but did not listen to it
since. Then I was back to historical nonfiction with a book called GCHQ Centenary Edition
by Richard Aldrich, read by Peter Noble. This may have come about through my interest in
cybersecurity and modern technological espionage, wanting to look back at this fascinating
institution with a remit that now includes protecting UK citizens from cyber threats. I've now
circled back to almost my first author Andy Ware with the novel Project Hell Mary. This I
found thoroughly enjoyable, even in so much as it puts the current threats to the world in perspective
with the idea that something might come entirely off left field, trumping all of those things.
If you don't want spoilers in my brief explanation of the plot and I suggest skipping ahead a few
seconds. Basically, a scientist discovers an unlikely form of microbial life that exists in space
and threatens the output of the Sun. This essentially leads him to going on a one-way trip into the
foyer to ask aliens how they survived the same catastrophe. I love this book, even with a joking
reference at the very end to an earlier book. Back to tech, nonfiction, I then listened to Sid Mayer's
memoir, a life in computer games by himself, and Jennifer Lee Noonan, read by Charles Constant.
If you like old computer games like SimCity, this is more worth the read or listen. The next book
was a textbook related to my studies at the time. This was Dockery in Action by Jeff Nicholoth,
read by Aidan Humphreys, and listened to a couple of books by Neil Stevenson, the first novel
cryptonomicon, read by William Duffrey. Weaves between World War II, espionage, and near- and modern
date computer hackery. The second book, Anatham, read by Oliver Wyman and others, was about the
inhabitants of a scientific monastery in a world not to unlike a future version of our planet,
discovering a spate scrapped from a parallel universe. Between these two novels, I've missed out
a religious fictional novel called The Testament of Mary by Colm Toibin. This retails some of the
story at the centre of Christianity from a different perspective, with a somewhat light touch,
suggesting events rather than being thoroughly explicit. The next true life story is about a
modern day outside by all accounts, called The Stranger in the Woods by Michael Finkel,
read by John Johnson. This is about someone who leaves society and goes to live in complete
isolation for decades in the woods, barely surviving, sometimes having to steal to survive,
hence his eventual prosecution, which we're told about from the beginning. With more and more
details about different aspects of this life, being filled in from chapters to chapter. Next,
I discovered what a sum of my favourite books. Those Warhammer 40,000 Far Dark Future books by
Dan Abner. These are quite gritty with lots of action and tech we would consider futuristic now,
but in the far future is considered to be ancient. The lore to recreate it haven't been lost.
He has a cast of characters not out of place in the real role-playing adventure,
heroes who are quite often antiheroes, given they work for a somewhat literally xenophobic
empire of humanity, where aliens are seen as a threat. There are a good smattering of monsters
from the realm of chaos, which one might well call demons. The first series of these books
centers around an imperial inquisitor called Eisenhorn. The second series is about the adventures
of another inquisitor called Ravenna. The latter is a unique hero being completely paralysed
due to events happening in the first series, but he has very strong psychic abilities which make him
formidable at his job of dealing with threats to the empire. Morality is often in question,
with the heroes sometimes at odds with the authorities who put them in their position. I won't
list all these books as there are quite a few, though each one is quite substantial, more than
just an episode, more a complete story in its own right, though the characters and stories from
novel to novel are generally linked. The next book is Have Space Suitable Travel by Robert A.
Highline, read by Martin Jurenski, which is a lighthearted adventure about a high school kids
pursuit of adventure and getting more than he bargained for. Then was another book by the aforen
not mentioned cancelled author. This had notable narration from as well as James McAlphoy,
also Brian Cox, the actor not the physicist, John Liff Goe and Bill Nye. The next book was
Claren the Sun by Katsuo Ishiguru, read by Sura Siu, about a terminally old girl who buys a robot.
The story is told from the robot's perspective. Ishiguru is probably most famous for the novel
remains of the day. My favourite Japanese literature led me to Sun and Steel by Yukiya Mishima,
read by Matthew Taylor. This outlines an interesting perspective on the world and the events of
the mid 20th century, if nothing else. Then I think the next book may have been another Steve
Gibson recommendation, called The Silver Ships by S. H. Dukea, read by Grover Gardner,
and I am somewhat ashamed to say I recall very little of it at all. My previously mentioned
interest in history and literature led me to a book called The Globe, Life in Shakespeare's London
by Catherine Arnold, read by Claire Stanford. This talks about some of the realities of that time
period, the context of the plays and the Bard's career. Then I listened to another Katsuo Ishiguru
novel called The Berry Giant, read by David Horowitz. This is set in a semi-fantastical time in
England, when the Saxons were mixing with the native inhabitants. It tells the later lives of some
characters from King Arthur, but is framed as a love story between a now elderly couple
as they seek eternity together. The next book then is a book in the realm of writing the
author Chuck Pahal New York, describes his transgressional fiction. It is highly historical,
and on the face of it describes the adventures of an adolescent girl,
finding herself passed away and in hell. The next book, Fallen Dragon, was a book by Peter
F. Hamilton, read by John Lee. This was definitely a Steve Gibson recommendation. It's quite an
explicit book and tells the lives of people in the future dealing with political issues,
and the life of a man who joins the military then inadvertently comes across highly
advanced technology from another civilization. It's a complex narrative spanning many years.
Finally enough, at this point, I must have decided to continue with the Rick Brown Frontier Saga,
though as the books are so numerous, I'm not detailing each one. After watching a film,
I was recommended to read the non-fiction novel on which it was somewhat loosely based.
This was The Revenant by Michael Punki, and the audio book was read by Jeff Harding. This
brings me to a novel that was recommended to me at a support group I was attending,
that it had ostensibly nothing to do with the reason we were there. This was tightest grain,
the first of the gormon-gast novels by Mervyn Peak. It is long an epic in nature,
setting a sort of medieval world for apparently European characters. Then I'll listen to some of
the works of Edgar Allan Poe, read by Jonathan Kebel, and Peter Noble. Mainly these are short
stories, also poems. The stories are all quite atmospheric and are imaginative, while also
setting their historical context that was contemporary when they were written. The next novel I
listen to, not forever, but for now. Again, in the realm of transgression or fiction by Chuck
Pahal Nguogh, is the strangest of love stories, and covers some quite out there topics that can
certainly be considered obscene. It's both tongue in cheek and satirical, probably not to many
people's tastes unless you get where the author is coming from. It is very well read by Raphael
Corkhill, though. I then listen to the sequel to tightest grain, called gormon-gast, read by
the same narrator as the previous book in the series. The prince, who was an infant in the first
novel, knows growing up. We see the character Steerpite, one of the key protagonists of tightest
grain, become the antagonist. This is something I did not see coming, for the hero to become an
all-out villain. Then, a book called British Woodland, is a nonfiction book for one of my favorite
TV presenters, Ray Mears, who also narrates it. It goes beyond talking about trees and delves into
how people all over the world lived in ancient times, using the reverses at hand. A canticle for
Lieberwitz by Walter M. Miller, Jr., read by Tom Wiener, is another famous literary novel,
I not encountered, but possibly came to me algorithmically. I did not get into it too deeply.
It carefully makes real for the reader, a long-term future encompassing repeated cycles of scientific
progress, leading each time to nuclear war. That, to be honest, seems a bit dated as future is
devised in the past often do. The narrative sometimes makes heavy reference to religious symbolism.
Moving the web is a book by Tim Berners-Lee, the inventor of the worldwide web,
who also narrates the audio book. It's quite interesting to think about the way the web
was destined to go because of technology and culture and economics, but also interesting to wonder
if the original vision could be recaptured now much later in the game. The plum in the golden
vase is a translation by David Todd Roy of a quite risque set of tales that follows some characters
in medieval China. It is read by George Batman. I not realised how explicit it was going to be when
I started listening, and this goes beyond what you might read in Chaucer's The Canterbury Tales
even. It has an episodic or my so-pop quality, and the authorship is unknown. Stranger in a strange
land is a book by Robert A. Heindland, read by Martin McDougall. It follows a man brought up by aliens
with special powers as he returns to earth and has to gun the run ending up staying with an old man
who runs a kind of commune, providing him sanctuary. A quasi-religion in shoes,
though set in the future the context centers on sexual political and religious issues
that were prevalent in the 50s and 60s America, like some works of fiction that may have been
forward thinking at the time they were written, this might now suffer from being dated.
My next book I listened to was Freakonomics by Stephen D. Levy and Stephen J. Dubner,
narrated by the latter. This is a set of journalistic essays that tell some stories about
social phenomena, especially in the west over the course of the last century and more recent
decades, all through the lens of statistics, human behaviour and money. The pragmatic programmer
by David Thomas and Andrew Hunt, read by Anna Katarina, is a guide for anyone doing serious
software development of any kind. I like the style and what it has to say, at risk of putting
myself into trouble with the person who has agreed to offer feedback to my script for this episode,
I admit I struggled a bit with the tone and female American accent of the narrator.
Nearly at the end, since I put my subscription to Audubon indefinitely at hold recently,
not for any other reason, but for a while my brain was processing a lot and I was getting
diminishing returns from listening to new material. I listened to I'm starting to worry about
this black box of doom by Jason Pargin, narrated by Ari Fliakos. He has a central character
who is certainly depicted as being neurodivergent and suffering with anxiety. This was not such a long
book, but I could not make it my way to the end. I normally like satire, but this was not hitting
the spot for me. It was well written, but was leaving me quite depressed about the things it was
referencing, rather than getting that it was a setup that would later have a payoff. The next book
I must have bought to use up my final credits but not listened to. I think it was after visiting
the Imperial War Museum in London that I saw this and saw positive reviews. I've probably been
searching for something related to the First World War. It's called Birdsong by Sebastian Fulkes
by Harry Lloyd and Pippa Bennett Warner. The penultimate book I listened to was The Loosen
Defense by Vladimir Nabokov, read by Mel Foster. This was recommended to me by friend who's
an avid chess player and also into this author's work. The final book is The Three Body Problem
and I was listening to some of this while I was on holiday in Netherlands recently. The authors and
narrator have names I won't try to pronounce correctly, but the title is unique and easy to look
up. It was made into a TV series though I've not watched it. It is set at different time periods
and the main premise is normal laws of physics are all screwed up and characters experience things
as a chess basically that someone is playing with their reality. I won't try to talk head
about what I've not got to yet, but suffice to say, Earth is in danger and there's a lot the
characters have to uncover before they can even start addressing the problem. This brings me to the
end of my list. I found this interesting myself uncovering what got me to listen to different
audio books, whether it was some algorithm or instance in my life or just random chance.
I hope you might have found some of this interesting, even sparking and interesting books you'd
like to read or listen to yourself. Anyway that's all for now, thanks for listening.
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