Each year, the American Library Association’s Listen List Council publishes a juried list of the year’s best audiobooks, highlighting extraordinary narrators and listening experiences. The librarians who make up the committee listen for hundreds of hours and are true listening experts. We asked 2022 Chair Nanette Donohue, 2023 Chair Janice Derr, and committee members Ron Block and Matthew Galloway to share their thoughts on what makes an outstanding audiobook.

What are the qualities that you look for in a first-class narrator?

Nanette: The best narrators are so much a part of the story that they are the story. Many of my favorite narrators have that quality, where you just sink into the narration so easily. Shayna Small is a narrator who is phenomenal at embodying a story. Her narration of Brit Bennett’s The Vanishing Half, which was on our 2021 list, is an excellent example of this skill. Another quality that I look for is the ability to give characters a unique and distinctive voice. This is especially important in books that contain a lot of dialogue; you want to know who’s speaking without depending too much on dialogue tags to get you there. January LaVoy is the queen of character voices, and Bahni Turpin is also a superstar in this realm. From this year’s list, I was particularly impressed by Rama Vallury’s character voices in Sanjena Sathian’s Gold Diggers.

Ron: Voice, accents, pitch, tone, inflection, rhythm, pacing—you need them all! On this year’s list, Adam Lazarre-White, narrator of S.A. Cosby’s Razorblade Tears, blew me away with his ability to voice [characters of different] races, genders, ages, and accents. His talent brought an already powerful and emotional book to new places and combined the violent scenes perfectly with the emotional core of the story. He is the perfect example of an amazing narrator.

What are some ways that exceptional audiobooks go the extra mile?

Janice: Brandi Carlile’s Broken Horses immediately comes to mind. Carlile’s reading is so candid and personal. It sounds like she is talking to you one on one, which can be difficult for someone who isn’t a professional narrator. Carlile also included a couple of songs at the end of each chapter, which was [a delight]. These were stripped-down recordings that gave the music a jam session feel, perfectly matched to her intimate narration. I’m sure that the print is good, but the audio really brings the book to another level.

Matthew: Many of the best audiobooks let you hear authentic accents and word pronunciation. One example from this year’s list is Black Water Sister by Zen Cho [narrated by Catherine Ho]. Some of the characters speak in a dialect of English called Manglish (Malaysian-English). When reading the book, I got tripped up by the unfamiliar grammar and Malaysian words, but listening was completely different. When I listened, my mind just had to catch up, no time to ponder, just enjoy and understand. My favorite thing is when something is supposed to be sung in the text, and the audiobook narrator actually does it. I’m not musically inclined, so it’s a treat to get a real idea of how it could sound. The narrator doesn’t even have to sing well.

What do you think a technically perfect audiobook looks like? Are there any production issues that are deal-breakers for you?

Nanette: Serving on the Listen List Council made me a much more critical listener—recording errors, like splices and variations in volume, stick out to me now. And the Listen List deliberations brought the concept of “mouth sounds” to my attention—noises made by a dry mouth, or sibilant “s” sounds are the most obvious examples. I can handle a splice here and there, but the variations in volume, especially in multi-narrator audiobooks, are a deal-breaker for me. I don’t want to have to keep adjusting my volume!

Matthew: One thing that really stands out to me is that I notice when narrators take audible breaths, and if that happens in a strange part of a sentence, I can’t stand it! For me, a technically perfect audiobook typically doesn’t allow traces of the world into the recording that remind me this is a recording unless, of course, sounding like a recording is important to the experience.

What would you say to persuade nonlisteners to give audiobooks a try?

Nanette: I think that a lot of nonlisteners have preconceived notions of what audiobooks are like, that they’re dry, boring, uninteresting, or slow. Maybe they’ve had a bad experience listening to an audiobook that was all of these things. But audiobooks have transformed over the last decade, and there are so many stellar narrators out there. My suggestion for nonlisteners is to listen to some samples (publisher websites and Libro.fm are good sources for samples) and find something that makes you think “I want to hear more.”

Ron: I always try to encourage new listeners to absorb a favorite author’s newest work in both print and audio. This allows them to compare and realize that yes, both are still reading, but also you can bring the audio along when exercising, crafting, driving, and so much more.

Janice: Podcasts are opening up many people to the idea of listening to audiobooks. If you listen to podcasts, what kind do you like—true crime, history? Check out audiobooks with a similar topic. It might also help to start with short stories or audiobooks broken up into short sections. Our committee listened to so many great short story collections this year that had multiple narrators. That is a great way to find a narrator you like listening to.