Listen!

I have officially delved into the wide world of audio books!  Or, as the Bucks County Library system likes to classify them, Spoken Books.  Knowing I was going to be spending a decent amount of time in the car, moving from Maryland back up to PA, I decided to try it out.  I really have only ever listened to one other 'book-on-tape' in the past, and I couldn't recall if I'd enjoyed it or not, so I set out on a search for the perfect audio book for my trip.

First of all, trying to use a library catologue on my smart phone was painful.  The search options on the site were, even on the computer, confusing and difficult to sort through.  I just wanted a list of the audio books located at each branch, but instead spent time typing in different titles of the books on my reading list to see if an audio option popped up.  It took too much time, and even when I found a few, they were at libraries in the county too far away to justify the travel.

Secondly, in a world of advanced technology, it seems like libraries should be jumping on the app bandwagon.  How nice would it be to have the library at your fingertips, searching through books on my phone, requesting holds?  It's nice that the library works through email, and I get reminders about books, and I do love being able to check things online, but I rarely use my computer to get on the internet and browse anymore.

Finally I found a few options at our local branch.  Before work last Wednesday, I took a trip up the road to our library, which is, unfortunately, not very attractive inside.  I spent many years with my college library, and there is something be said about multiple floors and comfortable seating in a place that houses books.  I felt like I was in a warehouse, with light mustard yellow accents on the walls, and a few tables and chairs scattered around.  I'm not asking for a Beauty and the Beast library -- actually, I am; I wish I had a massive room of books with a ladder that rolled around the walls.  Heaven! -- but something attractive would be nice.

I found the audio books -- pardon me, Spoken Books, section and decided I would just see what titles were there.  I found a few, but in checking the timing, realized that only one really fit with my needs.  The Historian was only 10 CDs and 12 hours long.  Still double the time I'd be spending in the car driving to Maryland and back, but the other options were all around the 18-20 hour mark.  The Grapes of Wrath was 24 hours of recording.  24 hours!  That's an entire day!

Maybe I'm jaded, because I do read quickly.  I finished the last Harry Potter book in three-and-a-half hours (I didn't do much else in that time, to be fair) so 12 hours seemed like a lot for a book.  But in the sake of experimenting and not wanting to be rude on a car trip with my dad, I checked out the CDs.  I also checked out some books; Sophie's Choice, Watership Down, and Uglies.  All due back August 17th, so I think I'm going to be renewing a few online.

My dad and I settled in the car for the ride, and after a few work-related phone calls, I slid the first CD into the slot.  There was music.  What?!?  Each section of the book starts and ends with some music, all of it suspensful and romantic in nature.  Who made the decision to add music?  Do most audio books include music?  The recording also includes different narrators for each character, which I find a little confusing.  Mostly because having a different narrator means that there are no speaker tags.  No 'he said,' 'she replied,' 'I cried.'  Just people reading the parts meant for the character.

Now I'm all for creative expression, but this was too much for me.  I LOVE speaker tags.  Honestly, I do.  That section of my graduate class on memoirs was one of the more interesting.  Where an author places a tag and the tag he/she uses is all signficant.  Do you want to break up the text?  Lead in with the tag?  Are we avoiding 'said' and using more colorful language?  Personally it felt like the audio book was taking some of the personality and writing ability of the author and throwing it to the side.  The use of accents and different character voices and music all seemed to be forcing me to interpret the book in one way.  My imagination -- the main reason why many of us read fiction -- wasn't being put to use.

I think audio books have their place in the literary canon.  I use them to teach, because in a day and age where students have trouble reading and comprehending, listening is a way to let them work with literature.  I have used great recordings of The Secret Life of Bees and Night, but these are read by one person, as found in the text. No music is used.  Students are expected to follow along with the text.  This recording of The Historian felt like a radio show instead.

I will say this; although I primarily listened to this book, which I am almost completely through, in the car, I did spend a few hours cleaning and unpacking and listened to the recording in my room.  It was probably better than what I normally do, which is put a DVD of Always Sunny in Philadelphia on and have that play as background.  I do find myself getting confused while listening to the book, and sometimes I get distracted and my mind wanders, and being unable to turn back a page and re-read is frustrating, but I think if you had a lot of driving or traveling to do, audio books have a real place on a bookshelf.