Audiobook enjoyment often hinges on the performer; Jim Dale is king

I resisted audiobooks for a long time. As a lifelong bibliophile, I simply loved the book as object, and I loved the private, personal, imaginative act of reading.

I didn't need to be read to out loud like a 3-year-old, thank you very much.

But for the past 10 years, my round-trip daily work commute has been about an hour and a half. That adds up to almost another 8-hour workday each week, and I was spending too much of it listening to the vast, boring wasteland that is commercial radio.

So several years ago I checked out a couple of audiobooks on CD at my local library. The first couple didn't grab me, but then I happened on the audio version of Laura Hillenbrand's Seabiscuit: An American Legend.

It's a terrific book, a thoroughly researched and engagingly written study of the plug-ugly little racehorse who became an icon, of America in the Great Depression and of the owner, trainer and jockey who made Seabiscuit a champion.

The audio version of Seabiscuit is a crisp but emotionally charged performance by actor Campbell Scott, so effective that I found myself experiencing what NPR calls driveway moments — I'd reach my destination and sit in the car rapt until the end of a chapter.

Then I checked out an audiobook of Michael Connelly's City of Bones, one of his series of novels about Los Angeles Police Detective Harry Bosch. It's a dark and gripping story about the murder of a long-lost child, and actor Len Cariou, who has performed several of Connelly's books, reads it compellingly in a cool, understated style that is just the right expression of Connelly's writing.

I was hooked — and I had discovered that who performs a book can make all the difference. Since I became the St. Petersburg Times' book editor a few years ago, publishers have been sending me audiobooks for review as well as printed ones. So, although I keep a couple of music CDs in my car's player, there's always a book queued up as well. Audiobook downloads on my iPod for plane trips are much better than trying to read by those lousy little cabin lights.

Here are a few of the audiobook readers who have become my favorites.

Actors

Jim Dale — If there is a king of audiobook readers, it's Dale. He is the multitude of wonderful voices on the American audio versions of J.K. Rowling's Harry Potter books (the equally fantastic Stephen Frye reads the British ones); Dale also reads two children's series by Dave Barry and Ridley Pearson, plus many more books. He has a reputation as a meticulous pro, a record 10 Audie awards and a couple of Grammys, not to mention the undying gratitude of an entire generation of parents.

Will Patton — An accomplished stage and screen actor, Patton is the pitch-perfect reader of all of James Lee Burke's brooding Dave Robicheaux mysteries and Billy Bob Holland Westerns. Patton's reading of Denis Johnson's noir novel Nobody Move is on my list of best audiobooks of 2009.

Blair Brown — The Tony winner and former star of The Days and Nights of Molly Dodd has lent her warm, expressive voice to audiobooks by Isabel Allende, Anne Tyler, Stephen King, Patricia Cornwell and dozens of other authors.

Robert Petkoff — Petkoff is something of a newbie to audiobooks, but two of his knockout tough-guy performances — Beat the Reaper by Josh Bazell and Ravens by George Dawes Green — are on my best-of-2009 list.

Maggi-Meg Reed — The stage and opera performer was Petkoff's excellent co-reader for Ravens, and she has lent her subtle skills to such audiobooks as The Time Traveler's Wife (listen to this instead of seeing the lame movie) and Marilynne Robinson's Home.

Lorelei King — Although she has performed books by Margaret Atwood and Jeffrey Archer, King specializes in reading the brain-candy adventures of Janet Evanovich's bounty hunter Stephanie Plum, bringing the books' wacky cast of New Jersey characters to life.

Ellen Archer — She has performed everything from Meg Abbott's 21st century noir to Candace Bushnell's edgy fluff, but Archer's bravura reading of Kate Atkinson's When Will There Be Good News? is simply one of the best audiobooks I've ever heard.

Authors

David Sedaris — As much as I enjoy reading his books, Sedaris performs them with such acerbic panache I can't resist the audio. I once almost drove my car into a ditch because I was laughing so hard at his performance of Me Talk Pretty One Day I couldn't see the road for the tears in my eyes.

Elizabeth Gilbert — I actually began reading the print version of Gilbert's hugely successful memoir Eat, Love, Pray and didn't warm up to it. Then I listened to the audio version and was totally charmed — her reading is so funny, warm and self-deprecating it's like listening to an extremely talented (but still lovable) girlfriend chat over coffee.

Barbara Kingsolver — She does a great job performing her nonfiction — she won an Audie for Animal, Vegetable, Miracle — but she's one of the rare authors who can knock it out of the park reading her fiction, too. Look for her reading of her new novel, The Lacuna, due in November, or download Prodigal Summer or Pigs in Heaven.

Stephen Colbert — No one else could perform I Am America (And So Can You!) with the appropriate bombast and brio.

Malcolm Gladwell — On Gladwell's audiobooks (Blink, The Tipping Point, Outliers and the upcoming What the Dog Saw), his elegant, subdued but intense voice always seems to me like exactly what a page of the New Yorker would sound like.