Got two free downloads from audible.com. I'm currently listening to David Sedaris' Live at Carnegie Hall. Hilarious. I love this guy. Granted, I've already read all his books and the stories are all things I've heard before. Also downloaded the new Lewis Black. This is my first audiobook experience.

I'm not a big audiobook person, but I've taken a step in that direction myself.

We're allowed to listen to music at work. On headphones. I've been bringing in my iPod, but lately am sick of the music I own (and too poor to buy more music.) So I stopped off at the library and picked up two books: I, Robot and ... something by Carrie Fischer. I'll let you know how it goes.

i used to listen to audio books from the library a lot when i was in jr. high. then i stopped... not sure why.

I have the Neil Gaiman audio collection at home to put on my iPod. I listened to the David Sedaris yesterday here at work; I caught myself a few times laughing out loud. Luckily no one really cares. One of my reps is sending me the new Sarah Vowell that I'll put on my iPod once I get it and listen to that as well. It's definitely an efficient way to "read" more books, and if it's something that's decently read, it's worth it.

And all this time I've been resisting audio books.

I listened to the Sarah Vowell audio book - it's great! (Listened to I Robot as well in fact)
I'm just finishing A Confederacy Of Dunces today and starting Murder On The Orient Express. Still waiting for the Last Unicorn to arrive in the mail (y'all did see that on Neil's blog, right?)

I used to put books onto my Ipos to listen to when I took walks, but I'd most often walk by the side of the road and the cars made too much noise so I stopped

Was it Assassination Vacation? I heard the voices done on that one were fantastic. I really can't wait to start it.

This gives me an excuse to finally expose myself to Ayn Rand. I have both audio and hard copies of her books (well, Atlas Shrugged and Fountainhead, a few others I think), I just have to find them.

I'm pretty exited about this audio book stuff! Now I'm really glad I got the 40G iPod.

I've listened to both Assassination Vacation and The Partly Cloudy Patriot. (She has two other books, but they aren't on audio). I enjoyed both. PCP is a collection of essays, which is good and all, but AV has a unified theme. She does an excellant job of bringing history to life and making all these great connections. She's an USAnian history geek, big time, and even though I'm not into history as it were, her passion and geekiness is quite compelling. I can relate to the geek passion, being a geek in other areas myself.

What's her other one, besides Take the Cannoli?

The new Lewis Black is great so far. I'm really digging it. Highly recommended, in either book or audio form.

(Sarah Vowell is also a big TMBG fan. She was a main contributor to the Tale of Two Johns documentary.)

That's why I picked up the Partly Cloudy Patriot (well, besides knowing her from This American Life CDs) - TMBG contributed some songs to the audio book!
I don't recall the title of her other book - I think it had Radio in the title. I think it had to do with when she was doing music reviews

I recently listened to Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's A Study In Scarlet, the firt Sherlock Holmes story. I've got the next adventure, The Sign of Four on deck next.

I listened to both of those as well! The same company also released the short stories over several volumes, but I skipped those because, though the later volumes were unabridged, the first one or two were abridged.
I don't recall any complaints about the readings

Okay, iRobot was awesome!

I got The Best Awful (I think that's the title) by Carrie Fischer, Sarah by Orson Scott Card and I'm a Stranger Here Myself by Bill Bryson for next week.

I'm dissatisfied at my library's collection of books on CD (they have lots of books on tape, but I don't have a walkman - only a discman.) I don't have the money to purchase books on CD right now.

If anyone has any they'd like to donate to the Entertain Gina at Work fund, PM me.

I have a few audiobooks I got as samples, Gina, if you'd like me to send them. (On CD). I'll never listen to them. One's the Christopher Reeve autobiography, Nothing is Impossible, and the other is Annie Proulx, That Old Ace in the Hole. Lemme know if you're interested and I'll send them along.

The Lewis Black autobiography was great. Hilarious. I literally laughed out loud many times at work whilst listening to it. Luckily where I work no one really cares. I put Ayn Rand's Atlas Shrugged and Sarah Vowell's Assassination Vacation on my iPod this weekend; I'll start the Sarah Vowell on Monday.

As I've said before, I'm listening to Harry Potter 5 when Zoe is in the car. However, now I'm also listening to Around The World in 80 Days when she isn't. It's a bit odd to listen to one, drop her off, then listen to the other as they're both read by the same guy, so it's the same tone of narration (though not the character voices). Just takes a minute to get used to...

Assassination Vacation is GREAT. Really entertaining. I recommend it to anyone, even if you're not really into American history. I'm not, and it's still really good.

interesting bit in Neil's blog about Audio books today.
...
yes, that's all I had to say. Just pointing to it *points*

Saw it. I'm a bit leery of audiobooks myself, and still unconvinced. For the record, I've never tried an audiobook.

People say you can parallel-process with an audiobook, drive around or do something else while you're listening. But I don't want to parallel-process my reading! I want perfect immersion, I want to shut out the world ("Grr! Go away, reading now!") and fall in, Down the Rabbit-Hole.

Again, haven't tried audio yet, maybe it can still have that projection/transference thing, but I have a hard time imagining it. For me, silence is a big part of the reading experience.

Elsewhere in the blog, Neil excoriates Harold Bloom for valuing visual over audio input. I get that audio is equally valid, but I wonder if maybe visual and audio work best in different ways.

Of course, stories started in the verbal tradition, I've told stories myself. I think that talking makes stories more intimate, but complex worlds like Frank Herbert's Dune work best when read in print.

but I've listened to Dune! It works fine! you can still have an immersion experience with audio - I've lain on my couch just listening to stories before (mainly because I had no more reason to be in the car but was caught by the story I was listening to), it's just that many find it more convieniant to listen and drive

Neil said, with an audiobook you move at the speed of the narrator, you can't skip a boring block of text. But I like going at my own pace, especially in sf when I come across big, interesting ideas.

It's a bit like books and movies, apples and oranges, I guess. I cannot imagine enjoying William Gibsons's books in audio the same way I love them as print. The Hitchhiker movie might be good, but I'm not really worried, the books are the books, always.