Audiobooks

[Freddy-Fan]

I "work" eight hours a day sitting in front of a computer and doing database maintenance. I would probably go postal if it wasn’t for this wonderful little invention called "audiobooks." I love’em. . .can’t get enough of ‘em! I get two audiobooks out every week from the local libraries.

I have pretty much lost all interest in listening music. All of the new music I hear tends to suck big-time, and I'm all played-out on all the stuff I used to like to listen to. So, I thought I would start a thread on this topic, hoping that others here are addicted to audiobooks like I am.

If you are addicted to audiobooks, share some of your favorites. I’ve included my top ten below, as well as an article by Stephen King regarding his love of audiobooks (which also includes his top ten list).

My List (so far):

1. Black Boy (American Hunger) by Richard Wright
2. Ender’s Game by Orson Scott Card
3. Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoyevsky
4. Native Son by Richard Wright
5. Haunted by Chuck Palahniuk
6. Lullaby by Chuck Palahniuk
7. Angela’s Ashes by Frank McCourt
8. The Old Man and the Sea by Ernest Hemingway
9. On Writing by Stephen King
10. On the Road by Jack Kerouac


Hail to the Spoken Word (http://www.ew.com/ew/article/0,,1551492,00.html)
By Stephen King Stephen King

Some critics — the always tiresome Harold Bloom among them — claim that listening to audiobooks isn't reading. I couldn't disagree more. In some ways, audio perfects reading. One friend of mine likes to tell the story of how she got so involved in Blair Brown's reading of Sue Miller's Lost in the Forest that she missed her turnpike exit and ended up in Boston. Another swears he never really ''got'' Elmore Leonard until he listened to Arliss Howard reading The Hot Kid and heard the mixed rhythm of the dialogue and narration.

The book purists argue for the sanctity of the page and the perfect communion of reader and writer, with no intermediary. They say that if there's something you don't understand in a book, you can always go back and read it again (these seem to be people so technologically challenged they've never heard of rewind, or can't find the back button on their CD players). Bloom has said that ''Deep reading really demands the inner ear...that part of you which is open to wisdom. You need the text in front of you.'' Here is a man who has clearly never listened to a campfire story.

There are problems with audiobooks, sure. It's annoying to be on a long road trip when disc 12 of the latest Nelson DeMille has a nervous breakdown (this actually happened to me in North Carolina; somewhere between Nowhere and Nowhere in Particular, the reader, Scott Brick, developed the world's worst stutter). It's more annoying when a bad reader is paired up with a good book (a fate that has befallen every audio junkie at least once). Most annoying is when you have a certain book in mind and can't find it at a retail outlet, a thing that happens a lot. Once you get past the classics, the latest political bloviators, and Agatha Christie, audio pickings are apt to be mighty slim.

Worst of all? Abridgments. I hate abridgments. Abridgments should be outlawed. No, I take that back. Abridgments should be taken out and hung from the nearest lamppost. Why reputable and otherwise sane writers who labor for years on a book allow them to be snipped up by audio editors to fit a four- or six-CD format mystifies me. It's not as if the audio market generates billions, and the resulting chop-shop jobs go a long way toward justifying the critics' opinions. They're literary Diet Coke.

But man, when these things are good, they are really good. A Charles Dickens novel read by the late David Case is something you can almost bathe in. A suspense novel is more suspenseful — especially in the hands of a good reader — because your eye can't jump ahead and see what happens next. When I heard Kathy Bates reading The Silence of the Lambs (an abridgment, alas), I was driving at night and had to shut off the CD player, even though I knew how the story went. It was her voice, so low and intimate and somehow knowing. It was flat creeping me out.

I knew even better how the short story ''1408'' went, because I not only wrote it, I recorded it. Still, I wasn't prepared for the scream of trumpets the director had added at the very end of the story. My pulse rate spiked and I tore the headphones off my ears. That was a true sting.

There's this, too: Audio is merciless. It exposes every bad sentence, half-baked metaphor, and lousy word choice. (Listen to a Tom Clancy novel on CD, and you will never, ever read another. You'll never be able to look at another one without gibbering.) I can't remember ever reading a piece of work and wondering how it would look up on the silver screen, but I always wonder how it will sound. Because, all apologies to Mr. Bloom, the spoken word is the acid test. They don't call it storytelling for nothing.

One last thought for the audio critics: If ever there was an argument for audio as the perfect medium when it comes to novels and stories, it's Ron Silver's reading of the Pulitzer-winning American Pastoral. (That's why it ranks No. 1 on my top 10 all-time list, below. If you're an audio junkie, you may passionately disagree with my picks. If so, please fire away with your own on the message board that follows the list. Your Uncle Stevie's like Homeland Security: He's always listening.) This is what happens when a prodigiously talented, fully invested reader really ''gets'' sublimely written material. Silver delivers ''Swede'' Levov's story with a passion and a tenderness that only the spoken word can convey.

Listening to something like that, anyone might overshoot their exit.

KING'S TOP 10 AUDIOBOOKS

1. American Pastoral
Philip Roth (Read by Ron Silver)

2. Lonesome Dove
Larry McMurtry (Read by Wolfram Kandinsky)

3. The Harry Potter novels
J.K. Rowling (Read by Jim Dale)

4. That Old Ace in the Hole
Annie Proulx (Read by Arliss Howard)

5. Back When We Were Grownups
Anne Tyler (Read by Blair Brown)

6. Enduring Love
Ian McEwan (Read by Steven Crossley)

7. Aubrey/Maturin novels
Patrick O'Brian (Read by Patrick Tull)

8. Angela's Ashes
Frank McCourt (Read by Frank McCourt)

9. Oryx and Crake
Margaret Atwood (Campbell Scott)

10. American Gods
Neil Gaiman (George Guidall)

[The 5th Golden Girl]

My brother suffers from Central Auditory Processing Disorder which basically means he doesn't understand phonics (he can't sound out words) and therefore has a hard time reading and writing. Whenever he has a reading assignment in school (he's a senior in high school this year), I go to my college library and get the audio version of whatever book his class is reading.

I was tempted to get him the audio book of "The Devil in the White City" just because I read that book for a class last year, and it's really interesting. It's literary nonfiction and tells the story of the man killing women during the time the World's Fair was being planned in Chicago back at the turn of the century. It's a really interesting book. I may still get him the audio book for his birthday.

The only problem I have with my brother using audio books is that he does other things while listening to them. I think a person should devote himself to whatever he is reading (especially if its for a class), but my brother plays Playstation 2 the entire time he's listening to the book. I thought maybe if he followed along with the written book he might strengthen his reading, but I dare not mention it around here.

Oh, and he listens to the "Harry Potter" audio books a lot, and the guy who reads them has an annoying voice and does annoying accents for the different characters.

[Freddy-Fan]

I thought maybe if he followed along with the written book he might strengthen his reading, but I dare not mention it around here.

I thought about trying that myself. . .still might one day. There’s no reason why audiobooks can not serve as yet another study aid in anyone’s arsenal. However, I fear that people treat them like they are only for people with visual or auditory disorders (I’m not talking about you, 5th, but people in general). For instance, I search long and hard for literary classics or well known philosophy texts in the audiobook format, but whenever I find one on the computer, it usually states that access is restricted to patrons with such disorders. This is especially true of universities that have blind rehabilitation programs. My university’s library does not carry audio books. I asked a cataloger why this is the case (after all, they carry everything else, from comic book graphic novels to DVDs and CDs), and his response was: “I don’t know. . .probably because the university doesn’t want to advocate illiteracy.” This is such a wrong-headed notion. First of all, if you are at a university, you should already know how to read. Second, listening to audiobooks can broadened one’s knowledge of, and love for, literature as a whole (it has for me). Third, I believe that audiobooks should also be treated as an art form. I never considered them as such until I listened to a few and realized just how much a particular reader can add to (or detract from) the enjoyment of a book. Lastly, how soon we forget that the oral tradition dominated culture long before the written word took root. Both “modalities” have their pros and cons. . .but I digress. . .

Thanks for the tip about "The Devil in the White City." I'll have to check that out, it sounds interesting.