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Heard a good book lately?

In my never-ending quest to optimize my time, I've ventured into the world of audiobooks on CD (from the library because I'm cheap...I mean.. economical). I borrowed Water for Elephants by Sara Gruen. Audiobooks work for me because I could cook, clear up, fold laundry etc, while listening. (Watching television while doing chores didn't work out so well for me.)

I picked a book that I wasn't salivating to read, a "second-tier" book if you will. It so happened that in Water for Elephants the narrator was in his 20s for parts of the book and 90 (or 93) for other parts. A different reader read each part so it was easy to follow the transition from one to the other. The readers were professional so I felt that they added to the positive experience of the book by using different voices for different characters. There were no extra sound effects to detract from the words and because the story was being told to me, I remembered the turns of the plot and quotes much more clearly than books I have read, so it helped with retention. I listened when the children weren't around so I didn't have an issue with the language in the book.

Logistics was a bit challenging. Moving the CDs from car to house and back meant that I had to restart some tracks. Also, I missed some of the story if I left the room to put away the pesky laundry (since I didn't actually go out and buy a personal CD player). For those of you who have iPods for your podcasts and digital downloads, well you won't have that problem.

All in all, I would definitely do audiobooks for books I don't believe I will get around to reading, but want to. I will also try non-fiction and see if the experience is different. I just started one and already I know that an audiobook read by the author may not be as good as having a professional.

Did I like the book? Yes I did.

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Aels said…
We need to talk. I have "heard" about 30 audiobooks in the past 1-2 years. I started with the Kite Runner narrated by the author and it was remarkable. Even if you have read the book, listen to his reading of it. I mostly listen to them in the car and yes, I'm super cheap too - all from library! Although, in December I signed up for Audible.com and downloaded a few. My current read/listen is "Reading Lolita in Tehran"
1 June 2009 at 14:20
Austin Trini said…
I totally agree that the author brings a dimension to their own books that professional readers cannot. In my case the author did not have a very good speaking voice and the material was non-fiction which didn't help!
2 June 2009 at 12:59
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