THIS HAS BEEN AN exceptionally rich year for audio-listening. Naxos is proceeding apace with its magnificent range of unabridged Austens and Dickens. My favourite remains Bleak House (Naxos, 28 CDs, £85/offer £80.75 — less as a download), so much more than the diatribe against the legal system that abridgements can make it. It lends itself well to audio, told as it is in two voices, the narrator (Sean Barrett, mesmeric as chill Mr Tulkinghorne) and Esther Summerson (spoken with freshness and honesty by Teresa Gallagher).

Mary Elizabeth Braddon's long-neglected 1862 melodrama Lady Audley's Secret (CSA Word, 4 CDs, £15.99/£15.19) also proved to be enthralling. Juliet Stevenson deftly switches from the heroine's manic twitter to the dulcet warbling of the duller but nicer girls, and is equally adept at conveying the quavering adoration of old Lord Audley and the manly heroics of his nephew Robert, determined to find out whether his ruthless new aunt is guilty of murder.

Anthony Head was exactly the right narrator for Ben Macintyre's Agent Zig-Zag (Orion, 5 CDs, £14.99/£14.25), the story of an outrageous conman turned wartime spy that would have seemed far-fetched had it been fiction, but makes compelling listening as biography. The atmosphere of the decades before and after the Second World War — incessant cigarettes, East End dives, chaste picnics and secret sins — is almost photographically realised.

Ian McEwan's On Chesil Beach (Random House, 4 CDs, £12.99/ £12.35) was a slightly more modern period piece. Set in the early 1960s, it is the story of a wedding night that goes horribly wrong. McEwan reads, giving his own prose just the emphases he wants. In an interesting interview at the end he argues that the sexual inhibitions he describes remain remarkably widespread.

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Celebrity festive favourites

Britain's best-loved personalities tell the Times what they will be reading at Christmas

Background

• The Times Christmas choice: fiction

• The Times Christmas choice: crime

• The Times Christmas choice: history

• The Times Christmas choice: audiobooks

Background

• The Times Christmas choice: children aged 2-10

• The Times Christmas choice: gardening

• The Times Christmas choice: art

• The Times Christmas choice: memoirs and autobiographies

• The Times Christmas choice: graphic novels

Paul Torday's Salmon Fishing in the Yemen (Orion, 5 CDs, £16.99/ £16.15) involves a visionary sheikh who believes that he can bring his people closer to God through the spiritual peace to be derived from salmon fishing; its hero is a fisheries expert who finds love and new faith in the course of this all but impossible enterprise. The cast includes John Sessions, Samantha Bond, Andrew Sachs and Andrew Marr (as himself). (Also unabridged, 8 CDs, £21.99/ £20.90.)

Knowing one feathered friend from another has long been an ambition, so thanks to Simon Barnes for his reading of A Bad Birdwatcher's Companion (Naxos, 4 CDs, £16.99/ £16.15). The audiobook format means he can provide superb aural mnemonics. Chaffinch: think fast bowler warming up for his run: dadadadadada deeeeeee. Thrush: sings his song twice over, just as Robert Browning told us. Wood pigeon: “take two pies, taffy, take two pies taffy”.

Clarissa Dickson Wright's Spilling the Beans (Hodder, 2 CDs, £14.99/£14.25) has lingered in my mind since I heard her voice crack with emotion, then firm up with doughty panache. Her father was a tyrant who refused to pay for her education as a barrister. But she made her way until her mother's untimely death, and she turned to gin. She frittered away a fortune, then scanned the small ads for a job as a cook. How she got from there to Jennifer Patterson's sidecar is hilarious and moving.

Bestsellers 2007

1. Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows by J. K. Rowling
Bloomsbury, £74.99
Stephen Fry reads the seventh and final instalment of Harry's wizard adventures.

2. Thomas and Friends: the Railway Stories read by Michael Angelis
BBC, £5

3. My Completely Best Charlie and Lola Story Collection originated by Lauren Child
Puffin, £9.99

4. The Wit of Cricket narrated by Brian Johnston
Hodder Headline, £14.99

5. The Secret read by Rhonda Byrne
Simon & Schuster, £16.99

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