Great Actors Read Great Books
Last updated: September 25, 2024
If you enjoy listening to books as audiobooks, it's a great time to be alive. From Rosamund Pike narrating Pride and Prejudice, Jeremy Irons reading Lolita to Meryl Streep narrating Nora Ephron’s Heartburn, many prominent actors have signed up for performing their favourite books in unabridged versions. Some, like the British actor Timothy West, have narrated almost the entire work of a single author.
Below, some of the books that have been recommended by experts on Five Books that have been performed as audiobooks by well known actors.
Hamnet
by Maggie O'Farrell
🏆 Winner of the Women’s Prize for Fiction 2020
Maggie O’Farrell’s novel Hamnet, a fictionalised account of the short life of Shakespeare’s son, is read beautifully as an audiobook by Ell Potter.
Narrator: Ell Potter
Listening time: 12 hours and 42 minutes
“It reexamines the life and legacy of Shakespeare’s wife Agnes. O’Farrell has spoken about how Shakespeare’s many historians have, in the past, ridiculed Agnes. She’s been much maligned. O’Farrell’s book is all from Agnes’s perspective. It’s about her life as a woman and her particular skillset. I mean, she’s illiterate, but she has extraordinary gifts that her husband cannot understand. It also examines her as a mother—the title, is derived from the name of her and Shakespeare’s only son, who died from the plague. O’Farrell writes so deeply movingly about grief.” Read more...
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Flora Carr, Novelist
“Tom Hanks has a great voice. He did a great job…it’s not often that a celebrity narrator truly disappears into the book. It’s not a good thing when you hear a celebrity narrator like Tom Hanks, and the whole time all you can picture is Tom Hanks behind the mic, because then you don’t enter into the life of those characters. But when a celebrity narrator can disappear into the book, that’s when it belongs on that small shelf of truly amazing celebrity narrators. And that’s what Tom Hanks does in The Dutch House.” Read more...
The Remains of The Day
by Kazuo Ishiguro
🏆 Winner of the 1989 Booker Prize
If you’ve never read The Remains of the Day, the audiobook version is highly recommended. British actor and director Dominic West gives a pitch-perfect performance as the narrator of Ishiguro’s hauntingly beautiful, Booker Prize-winning novel; his Mr Stevens, an ageing butler looking back upon his life in service with mounting regret, a carefully-constructed shell of English restraint, within which tempests rage.
Narrator: Dominic West
Length: 7 hours and 5 minutes
“Remains of the Day is such a fantastically insightful study into the British character. This very British butler who doesn’t know what to make of change, being so rigidly adherent to his upbringing and he never gets to realise his true love. It’s all done in flashback so that we meet him going to visit her, the woman he loves, and he’s excited because finally now, after all this time, they might have the chance to be together, and he’s looking back at how he has been hurt by being who he is. And they meet, but there isn’t a love interest and nothing happens and he is sitting on a bench by the sea realising that he’s facing the remains of his day. It’s about missed chances and what the British character does to a person’s emotions. There is this brick wall that they can’t crack through and after a while a bit of the grout wears away and there is a chink to peer through, but it’s too late.” Read more...
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Riz Khan, Journalist
To the Lighthouse
by Virginia Woolf
The audiobook of To the Lighthouse has been performed separately by two great actors: Australian actress Nicole Kidman and British actress Juliet Stevenson.
Listening time: 7-8 hours.
“When all is said and done, I think it is her greatest novel.I find it still, every single time I read it—and I must have read it more than any other book in my reading life—very moving, tremendously impressive, extremely complicated and interesting in how it’s put together, and approachable in many different kinds of ways. It’s approachable as a love story, as a family story, as a ghost story, as an elegy for the nineteenth century, as a war novel—in an indirect and interesting way—and as an astonishingly ambitious experiment in a completely different way of writing fiction.” Read more...
Hermione Lee, Biographer
The End of the Affair
by Graham Greene
🏆 2013 Audie Award for Audiobook of the Year
The audiobook of Graham Greene’s 1951 novel about a doomed adulterous affair is read by British actor Colin Firth. It was published to great critical acclaim, with Firth’s reading of The End of the Affair winning the Audie Awards not only for the best audiobook of the year in 2013 but also best solo narration.
Listening time: 6 hours and 28 minutes
Narrator: Colin Firth
“The novel’s set in the Second World War during the Blitz. The protagonists are Morris Bendix, who is a very sarcastic, satiric, almost nasty kind of writer, and Sarah Miles, whom he falls in love with and who is married to a civil servant…you watch the two main characters have what St Paul would call a conversion experience. They’re both very sarcastic, but it’s pretty clear that he, Bendix, who tells the story, has had a conversion experience.” Read more...
Evan Zimroth, Literary Scholar
To Kill a Mockingbird
by Harper Lee
🏆 Winner of the 1961 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction
The audiobook of To Kill a Mockingbird is read by Academy Award-winning actress Sissy Spacek. Performed in her southern accent (Spacek is from Texas), she gives a warm and emotionally nuanced reading of this poignant American classic.
“It’s dated in many ways; it’s extremely sentimental. But it’s beautifully done – you can’t take a thing away from it.” Read more...
Scott Turow, Thriller and Crime Writer
“The book showcases both the allure and the ricketiness of the American dream. The story shows the American dream is fragile despite its potency and persistence. It shows its perpetual obsolescence. We often hear that it’s harder to rise from the bottom to the top in the US than it is in many other countries. Even in Fitzgerald’s day, the fluidity of society was fading. Perhaps The Great Gatsby still seems germane because of the way it showed the mismatch between American actualities and American ideals, the two-faced character of the American dream, its materialism and idealism.” Read more...
A Portrait of the Artist As a Young Man
by James Joyce
A Portrait of the Artist As a Young Man was James Joyce’s first novel, published in 1916, and the best one to start with if you’re new to his writing.
We highly recommend the audiobook of James Joyce’s A Portrait of the Artist As a Young Man. What better way to experience James Joyce’s first novel than hearing Colin Farrell, of In Bruges, dive into Joyce’s streams of consciousness with all the natural musicality of his Irish accent?
“Irish intellectual life is deeply indebted to its literary culture…Joyce’s depiction is one of Ireland in the aftermath of the fall of Parnell. At the start of the 1890s, much of Ireland glimpsed the prospect of national unity based around Parnell himself, embodying a national project, whilst offering credible leadership. This, as the Portrait reflects, fell apart under the weight of sexual scandal and ensuing religious polarities. One can see all the characters participating in the Christmas dinner scene as representing different strands of contemporary Irish opinion.” Read more...
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Richard Bourke, Historian
The Mirror and the Light
by Hilary Mantel
🏆 Winner of the 2021 Walter Scott Prize for Historical Fiction
Award-winning actor Ben Miles narrates the audiobook of The Mirror and The Light. “His voice is as close as can be to the voice that’s in my head as I write,” said Hilary Mantel. He also acted the part of Thomas Cromwell for the Royal Shakespeare Company. According to Mantel: “Ben understands the main character from the inside. His insights from the rehearsal room helped shape the story. He is familiar with how all the characters grow, from first page to last.”
Narrator: Ben Miles
Length: 38 hours and 11 minutes
“We start with an ending—Anne Boleyn’s head has just been severed. Nobody does an execution like Hilary Mantel…In The Mirror and The Light…the pace slowly but inexorably increases as the complications of Cromwell’s ambitions and responsibilities multiply. We know what the end will be, but the tension, the tension!” Read more...
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Katharine Grant, Historical Novelist
The Odyssey
by Homer and translated by Emily Wilson
The audiobook of Emily Wilson’s new translation of the Odyssey is performed by the American actress Claire Danes.
Narrator: Claire Danes
Length: 13 hours and 30 minutes
The Handmaid's Tale
by Margaret Atwood
The Handmaid’s Tale was adapted as a multi-Emmy Award-winning television series starring Elisabeth Moss, who also narrates the audiobook.
Narrators: Elisabeth Moss, Bradley Whitford, Amy Landecker, Ann Dowd
Length: 11 hours and 22 minutes
The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao
by Junot Díaz
🏆 Winner of the 2008 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction
The audiobook version of The Brief and Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao is narrated by the legendary Lin-Manuel Miranda and Karen Olivo, who also won a Tony for her role in West Side Story.
Narrator: Lin-Manuel Miranda, Karen Olivo
Length: 9 hours and 54 minutes
“The places he describes in his fiction are places where I grew up. In the Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, there’s a scene where Oscar Wao tries to kill himself by jumping off a rail bridge across the Raritan river. That bridge is just down the street from my house. To this day, I can’t take a train across it without thinking of that incident. As far as I’m concerned, it happened. Oscar Wao is very real to me. When I read Wao, I think, there but for the grace of God go I.” Read more...
The Long Take
by Robin Robertson
🏆 Winner of the 2019 Walter Scott Prize for Historical Fiction
The Long Take is the winner of the 2019 Walter Scott Prize for Historical Fiction, and shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize 2018, this powerful and extraordinary novel follows a D-Day veteran with post-traumatic stress disorder, as he goes in search of freedom and repair in post-war America. The audiobook of The Long Take is narrated by Canadian actor Kerry Shale.
Narrator: Kerry Shale
Length: 5 hours and 26 minutes
“Original, innovative and, in our judgement, durable, with writing of such power that you occasionally have to stop to recover. The Long Take is a work of supreme artistry. Walter Scott would have read it and marvelled.” Read more...
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Katharine Grant, Historical Novelist
“What I love about it is what I love about Nora Ephron’s screenplays. It’s the casually-worn yet acute insight she has into the human condition – particularly the female condition – and the comedy with which she explores serious issues….it’s about a woman claiming her own narrative. Nora Ephron wrote Heartburn in 1983, but I think that that’s still enormously important in the current political climate. Particularly given that the man that Nora Ephron was married to in real life was a journalist, and therefore had control of all sorts of narratives.” Read more...
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Elizabeth Day, Memoirist
The Thirty-Nine Steps
by John Buchan
Award-winning actor Robert Powell, who also played Richard Hannay in the brilliant 1978 movie adaptation of The 39 Steps, is the narrator of the audiobook of John Buchan’s 1915 adventure novel (listening time: just under 4 hours).
The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy
by Douglas Adams
The audiobook of The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy is narrated by the British actor, Stephen Fry.
Narrator: Stephen Fry
Length: 5 hours and 51 minutes
The Order of Time
by Carlo Rovelli
Actor Benedict Cumberbatch expertly narrates physicist Carlo Rovelli’s book The Order of Time. Listen to how this book brings together science, philosophy and art to unravel the mysteries of time.
Narrator: Benedict Cumberbatch
Length: 4hrs and 18 minutes
“Despite its subject matter, The Bell Jar is often a very funny novel. Perhaps we miss it because the pall of Plath’s biography descends across the whole work and reputation. But The Bell Jar is viciously funny. There are people still alive today who won’t talk about it because they were so badly hurt by Plath’s portrayal of them.” Read more...
Tim Kendall, Literary Scholar
“This one book, which was published in 1937, defined so many variables for the fantasy tradition that are still in place today. Tolkien’s extraordinary achievement was to recover the epic landscapes of Anglo-Saxon myth, bring them back to life, and then to take us through them on foot, so we could see the details up close, at human scale. The Hobbit is both mythic and relatable at the same time – The New Yorker writer Adam Gopnik called it ‘an arranged marriage between the Elder Edda and The Wind in the Willows’, and I think that’s entirely fair. Though I would give more credit to the bass register of Tolkien’s imagination, its abyssal depths. Mole never delved as deep as the Mines of Moria.” Read more...
Lev Grossman, Novelist
Frankenstein (Book)
by Mary Shelley
Frankenstein is fabulous to listen to as an audiobook, performed by the British actor Dan Stevens. Listening time: 8.5 hours.
Collected Ghost Stories
by MR James
MR James’s Ghost Stories are narrated in an audiobook by the legendary British actor Sir Derek Jacobi.
Lolita
by Vladimir Nabokov
We highly recommend the audiobook of Lolita. Jeremy Irons gave a brilliant performance as Humbert Humbert in the 1997 film of Nabokov’s most controversial work. Here, he reprises the role by narrating the whole novel. Irons’ mellifluous voice amplifies the beauty of Nabokov’s writing, while his reading renders the all-at-once sinister, deluded, and preposterous qualities of the character. A must.
Narrator: Jeremy Irons
Length: 11 hours and 28 minutes
Jane Eyre
by Charlotte Brontë
Pictured is the Harper Muse Painted edition of Jane Eyre
The audiobook of Jane Eyre is narrated by the British actress Thandie Newton. Listening time: 19 hours 10 minutes
“Jane Eyre in some respects—not in every respect but in some respects—is the original domestic noir…there’s a sense of building threat and building crisis in the book. But I also love the social commentary and the feminism. It’s my favourite book of all time…I read it out loud to my daughter when she was about 15 and it’s just an incredible book” Read more...
Lucy Atkins, Novelist
Barchester Towers
by Anthony Trollope
The audiobook of Barchester Towers is performed by the British actor, Timothy West.
Listening time: 19 hours.
“I like to read Dracula as one of the great novels of London. Stoker himself was an Irish immigrant to London. The Count is a central European immigrant to London. He initially moves to Carfax Abbey, in the suburbs, before gentrifying himself and moving to Piccadilly.” Read more...
Darryl Jones, Literary Scholar
The Complete Sherlock Holmes
by Arthur Conan Doyle
It turns out that the brilliant British actor, Stephen Fry, is a Sherlock Holmes books fan, which means that The Complete Sherlock Holmes is also available as an audiobook. Listening to Fry’s introduction and then Conan Doyle’s stories is a wonderful experience. Our favourite story remains the incredibly scary and mysterious The Hound of the Baskervilles but apparently, according to Washington Post book critic Michael Dirda, it’s important to start with The Study in Scarlet.
Narrator: Stephen Fry
Length: 71 hours and 57 minutes
“Persuasion is really the best of the Jane Austen books. As many people have pointed out, it’s different in tone from any of the others. It makes you realise that Austen was writing in the early 19th century, right along with people like Wordsworth and Coleridge, and that she was capable of having and expressing the same kinds of feeling. It’s a real love story, all the way through. You really feel it’s a romantic story – both with a small r and a big R – in which you’re rooting for the lovers to get together from beginning to end. “ Read more...
Patricia Meyer Spacks, Literary Scholar
Trainspotting
by Irvine Welsh
Irvine Welsh's cult classic, partly written in Scots, follows a group of heroin addicts in Leith, Edinburgh. Trainspotting has sold more than a million copies in the UK alone, and was adapted into a hit movie directed by Danny Boyle and starring Ewan McGregor.
The Trainspotting audiobook is narrated by the Scottish actor Tam Dean Burn (listening time: 12 hours).
One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest
by Ken Kesey
The audiobook version of One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest is notable. John C. Reilly, of Step Brothers and Stan & Ollie fame, gives a virtuosic performance as he narrates Ken Kesey’s 1962 novel, set in a psychiatric hospital.
“I think it’s the best of them, and it’s wonderful because it reveals what I think is the essential Bond. The film Bond is very, very different from the character that Ian Fleming invented. The real character was unknowable. There’s something rather creepy and peculiar about the original James Bond and you get that in buckets in Casino Royale. He’s a tough man and he’s absolutely ruthless.” Read more...
Ben Macintyre, Journalist
Pride and Prejudice (Book)
by Jane Austen
Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen is available as an audiobook, performed by the English actress Rosamund Pike.
Listening time: 11 hours and 35 minutes.