Flavorwire

Audiobook superstore Audible has recently rolled out a new series of books called the “A-List Collection,” featuring celebrities lending their vocal talents to classic books. They have some great talent on tap: Annette Bening reading Mrs. Dalloway, Colin Firth reading The End of the Affair, Dustin Hoffman reading Jerzy Kosinski’s Being There, but the project got us to thinking about the celebrities we’d pick to read our favorite novels to us if we had our choice. Click through to read our list of our dream audiobook narrators and why we think they’d be perfect for the gig, and let us know who you’d want to whisper sweet prose into your ear in the comments.

Pride and Prejudice — Maggie Smith

Obviously, we’ve been influenced by Dame Maggie Smith’s recent performance as the Dowager Countess on Downton Abbey, where she reminds us in every episode of her talent for both radiating and undercutting the snooty role of a “proper” upper class woman. But it’s not like this is the first such role for her — she’s a practiced talent at this kind of thing, and we think she’d read Austen’s classic tale of feminine wiles and marriage plots with just the right amount of exasperated sighs and arch tones.