Two different holiday media things.

[dira]

1) Have some Christmas type music!

I'm Gonna Spend My Christmas with a Dalek (I found this online somewhere--the file info says the artist is "The Go-Gos", but I don't actually know if that's accurate. Anyone know what the provenance of this is?)

And assorted awesome people singing in French:
Bruce Cockburn - Les Anges Dans Nos Campagnes
Josh Groban - Petit Papa Noel
Annie Lennox - I'l Est Ne Le Divin Enfant

If you are looking for holiday music that is not in French or concerned with Daleks, feel free to ask! I have lots, and if I happen to have something you're looking for I'd love to hook you up. If you have some you'd like to share, please post a suitable sort of link!


2) So I have this eight-hour solo drive to my parents' house coming up in a couple of weeks (ETA: by which I mean a week from Wednesday. I ... really need to get on my Christmas shopping. o.O), and though I generally do not listen to audiobooks or podfic (I have the right combination of attention span and auditory processing fail to just ... zone out a lot) I have been stricken with the impulse to try again. Specifically, I'd like to listen to some audio non-fiction. (Yes! Yes I do know about the audiobook of One Bullet Away read by the author. I am just not ready for that particular... thing.)

Anyway, so--recs for engaging non-fiction audiobooks? I mostly read pop history and pop science, I think--not memoir or biography as much--but I'm a generally inquisitive person, so if you have something awesome to recommend I'd like to hear about it!

Comments

[riverlight]

I really enjoyed Malcolm Gladwell's books on cd; I hadn't read them, and they were the right kind of light-but-engaging to keep my attention while driving. I also tried a bunch of history—the recent book about Lincoln (Doris Kearns Goodwin, maybe? it's, um, the one with a brown cover) was good too.

[dira]

I wound up going with Bill Bryson, courtesy of a rec over on LJ, but if the experiment prospers I'll keep yours in mind!

[busaikko]

Apparently, there was a 1960s group called the Go-Gos: the Who Wiki page on the song. This looks awesome, thank you! (I think I'll put it in the playlist with the Cthulhu carols.)

[dira]

Good to know, thank you! And enjoy! :)

[celli]

I have mad love for Devil in the White City, book and audiobook. It's got some elements of biography in it, but it's Chicago porn and has a serial killer involved, so. :)

There are two versions - I can't remember who reads the unabridged, although he's good, but the abridged is Tony Goldwyn.

[dira]

Oooh, I will make a note of that.

[beck_liz]

I've been enjoying A Short History of Nearly Everything (Unabridged) by Bill Bryson. The book is informative yet humorous, and the British reader, Richard Matthews, is excellent. The only two caveats I have is that it's rather long (somewhere around 17 hours long), and that along with all the other really interesting stuff, he also includes the many and varied ways we could all perish without warning from natural disasters. :-)

[dira]

Oooh, that sounds awesome! I love Bill Bryson's books, and after someone on the LJ post suggested him I ordered At Home, so maybe A Short History will be up next. :)