Year-end Special: Favourite Books of 2025!
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What challenges are faced in book discoverability today?
Oh.
There is a talking point that's come up on the show multiple times now. But when it's been brought up, it's always been in passing. And that's that discoverability of books or audiobooks is the worst that it's ever been. There are more titles coming out than ever before. A bunch of them are AI slot, but that's another topic. But there are more books coming out than ever. And because of social media and algorithms and everyone being put in their own little bubbles... it's harder to get recommended things that are niche and sort of out of the mainstream and it doesn't really matter that there's a way wider selection and huge diversity of genres and sub-genres because we're only hearing about books that are in our bubbles right and the best way to get good recommendations is to get them from friends from word of mouth people not algorithms
Today, we're assembling a roundtable of longtime friends of the show to share with you our eight favorite audiobooks of the year. This is Audiobook Cafe. I'm Jacob Chayamahitsky. Today, I'm with Amir Khan. How's it going, Amir? Good. Hello, everyone. Nice to be back. We got Sarah Ellis. Hey. And Ramya Amuthan. What's up?
Hey. Hey.
Yeah. here's how it's gonna work we're going around the table twice the first time for our favorite audiobook of 2025 so this first round the book must have been published in 2025 and we're doing this because we want to show you that there are still good books coming out nowadays and for the second round you just have to have discovered it in 2025 it can be published any year all right so first round favorite audiobooks to be published in 2025 Who wants to go first? Okay, not everyone I want.
I'm sorry. I was waiting for you to volunteer us.
Okay, Ramya, you spoke first. You go first.
What's your favorite book of 2025? Thank you. So released in 2025, and I'm not even sure if this counts, but it does for us, Jacob, because it's the full cast audible edition of the Harry Potter series. It's the immersive... like i can't stop talking about the adjectives of all of this but essentially it's an immersive audiobook series it's an audible original with pottermore publishing um so they've got all fingers in the pot the first book which is the philosopher stone slash sorcerer's stone was released on november 4th 2025 and then the second one came out december 16th so but i haven't checked out that one yet But anyways, it's a full cast ensemble, hundreds of voices. It is full on cinematic storytelling in audio.
To me, it was epic. It was epic because you get the entirety of the book, it's unabridged, but you also get all the voices, all the moments, all the, if this could sound like this what would it sound like and they did it they went all in it's the best of both worlds because I did not enjoy the movies or the bits and pieces of the Harry Potter movies that I watched and yeah so having this was like It went straight to the soul because I always imagined what it could be like if it was if it was done in the best ways. And I thought this was the best way possible. I'm super psyched for books two to seven because the narration was great. The voices and the casting were great. The way that they play around with sound through Quidditch matches, through exploring Hogwarts the castle, through like.
And then, you know, who jumps in where and what happens when people aren't talking and it's just narration. You know, you get all this background kind of soundscape. And I thought everything was done brilliantly. Absolutely zero complaints. And I will say, whether or not you listen to it on speaker or through headphones, because obviously through headphones you get the spatial audio effect. But even through speaker, it is just cozy. It's wonderful. I love the tone of it. And it captures Harry Potter so well.
What are the favorite audiobooks published in 2025?
Yeah, the new editions of the Harry Potter full cast audiobooks are awesome. The production values are A++++. And the voice acting is ridiculously good. Like, say what you will about Harry Potter, the design of this production is next level.
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