Hello, my name is Sophie and I am an audiobooks snob.

If you’ve never met an audiobooks snob, then you should probably count yourself lucky.  We’re kind of like wine snobs, except way nerdier: we’ll talk your ear off about things that no one should really care about, and spend way too much time bemoaning the fact that 90% of the thing that we love is absolute dreck. 

Bartimaeus Trilogy

When the Library first launched its eLibraries Manitoba digital audiobook service, I went from CD audiobook tolerator to obsessed downloader pretty much overnight.  The moment of truth for me was the day I was refinishing my floors — audiobook player in pocket, sound-cancelling headphones in ear — and got to the end of Book 2 in a series of three and realized I could download Book 3, immediately, without even leaving the house. This was a *very* good thing, because I was covered head to toe in sawdust and only had so many hours left on my Home Depot floor sander rental.

I’m fiercely committed to audiobooks.  I might have REAL books and ebooks falling off my shelves waiting to be read, but if I’m getting to the end of my latest audiobook and don’t have a new one lined up, I go into panic mode.  Part of the lure is their fierce multitasking power: audiobooks allow me to devote time to books that would otherwise just be lost.  Take the morning commute, for example.  While I see other people reading ebooks and print books on the bus, I can’t do it because I’m paranoid about missing my bus stop, and looking down at a printed page (while it makes the bus ride fly by) puts you in this alterna-universe where you forget to notice ordinary things like “where you are” and “why it’s a good idea to occasionally look up.” 

Pathfinder

Audiobooks, though, are completely MADE for the bus. You get to read the book AND pay attention to the world around you.  And when you get off the bus, you don’t have to stop reading.  Extra time that can be harvested for reading?  GOLD.  Strangely, I find that looking around at the scenery actually helps me pay attention to the narrator; when I’m just sitting and listening and not also doing some other task, my mind wanders and can’t focus on the story.  That’s why audiobooks are also perfect for repetitive tasks like gardening and housework; the task keeps your mind on the book, and the book keeps your mind off the task. As an added bonus, you end up with a catalogue of associative memories tied to specific places/actions — the pit I just dug in my backyard brings up the bank scene in Orson Scott Card’s Pathfinder, and rereading The Book Thief takes me back to walking the bike path between the Forks and Osborne Village — strange, vivid sense memories that are burned into my mind by the combined enjoyment of both place and story.

So I love audiobooks, but yet I will also refuse to listen to the vast majority of them. I’m RIDICULOUSLY picky. A book that’s good on paper is not necessarily a good audiobook, and vice versa.  Award-winning?  Doesn’t matter. What I crave is that elusive audiobook experience that improves on the book, brings the characters to life in ways my own brain couldn’t imagine, makes me dread the last disc because it means it will all be over soon.

The Book Thief

Really, what it all comes down to is the narrator.  There’s a limit to how long I’ll spend listening to a voice that I don’t like, even if I’m just a tiny bit bothered by it.  Some audiobooks are 10 to 20 hours long, and that’s a pretty big commitment for someone who has a patronizing attitude, or who puts inflection on the wrong sentences, or leaves inflection out entirely, or reads EVERYTHING like it’s a fire alarm announcement, with Giant. Dramatic. Pauses between each sentence.  If the narrator is reading the book “wrong,” I give it the old heave-ho, delete, next! treatment so fast it spins.  It’s hard to explain how something can be “read wrong,” because everyone reads the way they read, right?  Wrong. Good audiobook narrating is not about reading, it’s about acting. Audiobook readers just say the words on the page, whereas audiobook actors rehearse, think about the character, build their backstory in their minds and say the characters’ lines deliberately with all of the characters traits, flaws, habits in mind.  I ONLY tolerate audiobooks narrated by people who get that difference.  And I’ll rarely pick up an audiobook with a full cast of voices, because the likelihood that they’ll ALL be good narrators is slim. Boy, does that ever limit my choices.

So, like all snobs, I’m hamstrung by my own refusal to accept the mundane.  And even though one of the top lessons I’ve learned in my years as a snob is to NEVER take advice about what to listen to (because how could anyone live up to impossible standards?), I’ll leave you with a list of my recent favorites:

His Majesty's Dragon

- Ender’s Shadow (and also Pathfinder, as mentioned above) by Orson Scott Card. There’s just something about Card’s books that translates well to the dramatic medium of audio.
- His Majesty’s Dragon and others in the Temeraire Series, by Naomi Novik. Brilliant series, even MORE brilliant in narration.  Simon Vance’s Temeraire voice is genius and has totally made it impossible for me to read this series on paper.
- Bloody Jack: Being an Account of the Curious Adventures of Mary “Jacky” Faber, Ship’s Boy by L. A. Meyer. A hilariously campy and contrived historical fiction series which is narrated BRILLIANTLY by Katherine Kellgren.
- The Ruby In the Smoke and others in the Sally Lockhart Mystery Series by Philip Pullman. The whole series is great–something about those British accents… 
- The Dead and the Gone, The Last Survivors Series, Book 2, by Susan Beth Pfeffer. Book one was terrible on audio; book two shook me to the core.

And of course my all-time favorites, a triumvirate of audio bliss:

- The Book Thief (again, as mentioned above) by Markus Zusak. I’ve listened to it twice now and both times had me weeping like a baby in public.
- The Amulet of Samarkand (Bartimaeus trilogy) by Jonathan Stroud.
- The Tale of Despereaux, by Kate DiCamillo. Three times so far.  And will probably listen again.

Sophie

Antidote for an endless winter

The price of oil is dictating frugal staycations and given the dubious pleasures of modern travel, I am opting to stay at home with a good book to escape the dreariness of this neverending winter. Here is my prescription for SAD (seasonal affective disorder) whilst living in the icy clutches of a long Winnipeg winter.

READ - Every Day in Tuscany, the sequel to Under the Tuscan Sun. Frances Mayes continues her memoirs of the voluptuous delights of life in Italy. You too can recreate those pleasures in the comfort of your own home and save a bundle to boot.

COOK – Ever since reading Nora Ephron’s Heartburn, a thinly veiled account of her divorce from Carl Bernstein of Watergate fame and one of the first novels to have recipes peppered throughout, I often cook up her pasta puttanesca. Nigella Lawson does her own version of pasta puttanesca which she calls “Slut Spaghetti” and she includes it in her latest cookbook Kitchen. Concocted by ladies of the night after a long shift, this pasta was composed of ingredients readily found in the cupboard: artichokes, anchovies, capers and tomatoes. It is incredibly simple to prepare but the flavours are intensely sophisticated. Follow up with a post prandial caffe correto espresso and a shot of Frangelico and you’ll swear you are on the Spanish Steps.

While the pasta is boiling LISTEN to Puccini Gold with arias  performed by renowned opera stars. Or pour a hot bath and brush up on your Italian  a la Julia Roberts in Eat, Pray, Love with an  audiobook courtesy of Electronic Libraries Manitoba. This database offers free downloads of ebooks or audiobooks free of charge.

WATCH the lavish HBO/BBC production of Rome on DVD. Set in 1st century BC, the series begins with Julius Ceasar’s conquest of Gaul and ends with the double suicide of Marc Antony and Cleopatra. One of the most expensive TV series ever, the $110 million budget allowed for the recreation of villas, the Forum and slum areas of ancient Rome. The score is recorded using the ancient instruments of the time and the extras play their professional counterparts - i.e. butchers play butchers.

There you have it. You have avoided the indignities of airport security and the misery of jetlag while enjoying la dolce vita like a true thrifty Winnipegger!

Jane