by Kelly Pickerill
The drive from Jackson to “home” in southeast Florida is arduous, taking a whopping 15 hours from stem to stern. I usually fly, but the times I’ve driven have been rescued from monotony by audiobooks.
I love listening to a good audiobook. This is not always the same as a good book, however, as most of you who listen as well as read can attest. Just because a book is wonderful doesn’t mean its audio counterpart will provide equal enjoyment. It all depends on the reader. The words “read by the author,” for example, always give me pause. Some authors, despite their love affair with words, were never meant to be readers. Other authors, though, are great readers of their own work; they know their work intimately and are best able to grasp its mood. Neil Gaiman’s reading of his book Stardust is very good. I had already read the book when I listened to it during my move from Florida to Jackson, yet hearing his rendition of the fairy tale was wonderful. I bet Barbara Kingsolver’s The Lacuna is amazing read by her, though I’ve been unable to find anything on the web about how it is. Let me know if you’ve listened to it.
It seems like more and more audiobooks are being performed by an ensemble cast. The Help, Kathryn Stockett’s gem of a debut, is read by her actress friend Octavia Spencer along with three other women, who take turns voicing for Kathryn’s unforgettable characters.
Octavia signs a copy of The Help
Libraryjournal.com voted The Help audiobook one of the best of 2009, saying,
Actresses Octavia Spencer, Bahni Turpin, Jenna Lamia, and Cassandra Campbell “immediately pull listeners in, breathing life into this touching [debut] novel” set in early 1960s Jackson, MS. [read the entire article here].
The new book by Elizabeth Kostova, who will be autographing and reading at Lemuria on February 17th, The Swan Thieves, is also read by a full cast, including Treat Williams and Anne Heche.
My favorite audiobooks, though, are those that are a little easier to listen to during short drives. To and from work today I listened to David Sedaris’s new cd, Live For Your Listening Pleasure. This is a collection of live readings he made in Denver, NYC, Durham, LA, and Atlanta. On a short drive you can usually finish one of his stories, which you know is nice if you’ve ever tried to listen to a novel audiobook and sat in a parking lot for thirty minutes trying to get to a good place to stop. Also, the live audience laughter factor makes you feel like you’re right there listening with ’em.
If you don’t want funny, but still want something you can take small bites of, poetry is a good option. Mary Oliver has a new poetry collection on cd coming out in April, Many Miles, and I got a preview copy! In the liner notes she writes about the virtues of listening to someone read,
For there is something heard in the actual voice that cannot be accrued from the printed page, though we read with care and excitement, even with a real falling-into-it passion. There is simply no “connect” as there is between listener and speaker. That, at its best, is almost touch. Nuances unfelt on the page hang in the air.
Her first collection of poems, At Blackwater Pond, is still available!
“Read” an audiobook! You’ll be taking part in the great oral tradition, keeping alive the days when troubadours and bards recited epics to the townspeople! Well, I might be getting overexcited, but I can’t deny, as Mary Oliver says, “my joy and appreciation at the salvation of voices otherwise vanished into the unknowable darkness.”
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