Patrick's comments (member since Aug 12, 2007)

Patrick's comments from the Audiobooks group.

I am listening to The Historian vampire thriller that was a bestseller last year, and I am enjoying it as an audiobook. I briefly checked it out last year in hardcover, and didn't care for it, but I am finding it more compelling in audio CD form.

I will be the dissenting view here, although I love audiobooks and find great joy in listening to them when I'm driving. I find that often the narrator's inflection or emphasis on a specific passage will draw my attention to a particular idea that I would have missed completely if I had "read" the book. You just can't beat a good narrator reading a well written book when you're on a long drive. It sure beats the Jim Rome show.

That said, I often like to go back through the hard copy of the book and skim through those areas that I was particularly interested in during the listening, usually because I want to see the footnotes or citations the author made when he or she made a certain statement. I should note that I primarily read heavy duty non-fiction for fun - especially history and biography, so I am intrigued by where authors get their ideas for interpreting specific events and I usually want to do personal research to find out more.

When I am listening to an audio book while driving or exercising, I find that I enjoy it as interesting background noise, but that I'm also mentally engaged in other activties, so I can't quite fully focus on the work as I can when I'm "reading." So, for me only, I consider myself to have "completed" a book only after I have gone through it and thoroughly extracted what I want from it - sometimes with highlighting and notetaking. (so, I usually have hard copies of the books I've listened to. Logistics of this: I check out audiobooks from our libraries all the time, and if I like the book I can usually find it in hard copy for under $1-$5 at a library sale, used book store, or on an Amazon associate. My challenges are book storage and overdue dates at the library.)

But that's the satndards I set for myself. As for anyone else, if you listened to it all the way through, you read it, as far as I'm concerned - with one other exception. I am NOT a literature lover, but I endured it in high school. I just don't think that you will get the full impact of certain books unless you actually "read" it and expose yourself to the language in that manner. Tolstoy's books come to mind, as do Dickens and Melville. If you just listen to those books passivley, you might miss some of the great language that makes them classics, and then you might do poorly on your book report if that's what your assignment. So, if you're in a literature class, audiobooks don't count.

That said, if you don't have a report due, and if it comes down to never exposing yourself to Shakespeare or Melville or Dostoevsky unless you listen to the audiobook, then yes, listen to the book. And maybe you'll dig it so much you'll be inspired to read it.

Attacks on this point of view are expected and welcomed. I've got tough skin from hanging out in Books I Loathed. (Note to the wise: don't slam Steinbeck over there.)

Bill Bryson's A Walk in the Woods is a very funny listen for a long uninterrupted drive. Gets a little choppy to listen to in city traffic.

Concur with all above on how superb Scott Brick. He is the narrator for my favorite audio book of all time, Crazy Horse by Larry McMurtry.

I am also a big fan of Grover Gardner and Alexander Adams. Some of my favorite Gardner audio books are Robert Caro's Master of the Senate on LBJ, Thomas Keneally's Abraham Lincoln, and Thoams Cahill's John XXIII, and Daniel Yergin's oil history The Prize.

The best example I know of for Alexander Adams is Jonathan Spence's short Penguin Lives biography of Mao Zedong.