Read With Me! Audiobooks while driving.

 In January and again in April, I made the twenty-hour drive to visit my daughter. Yes, flying is faster, but I prefer to drive as long as it's possible to do so. Driving that far in a day or two does wear on a person, though, but listening to audiobooks helps the time pass much more smoothly.

In my day-to-day life, I rarely listen to audiobooks because when I'm home, I prefer books I can hold, but I do appreciate audiobooks on a long drive, especially when I'm doing that drive by myself with no one to talk to. Because of those long drives this year, I've listened to more audiobooks in 2022 than in all the prior years combined. It still isn't that many compared to the number of audiobooks that others consume, but, as I said, I tend only to listen to them on long drives.

Some books don't work well as audiobooks, and some narrators are far superior to others. One thing that I don't like about audiobooks is their pacing -- I can read the physical book faster. In fact, the pacing of the narrator of "The Great Alone," by Kristin Hannah, became so tedious to me that I stopped listening to it and checked out a physical copy once I'd arrived at the town where my daughter attends college. Then, I flew through the rest of the book. Since it's such a long book, it would have taken over 15 hours to listen to the complete audiobook, and even though my drive was longer than that, I don't like listening to the same story for 15 hours straight.

Hannah does an excellent job of pulling her readers into the setting of this story. Alaska is by far the most important 'character' of the story. I hate snow and ice and cold, so this novel made me shudder for many reasons.

On the flip side, I listened to "The Book Woman of Troublesome Creek" by Kim Michele Richardson in its entirety on the drive home because the narrator was phenomenal. Katie Schorr narrated it, and her voice really pulled me into the story. This novel grabbed me more than the "The Great Alone," too, because it's a story about books and their importance upon the backwoods' people of Kentucky years ago. It's also about a unique blood condition that made certain people have blue-tinged skin.

Another novel that's about books is "The Lost and Found Bookshop" by Susan Wiggs. I listened to the audiobook, and enjoyed Emily Rankin's narration, but I need to find a physical copy to look back through it for all the great book commentary and recommendations that I couldn't take note of while driving. I love reading books that are set in places I've visited, so this book kept bringing up great memories of my trip to San Francisco from a few years ago, and it made me want to get back there again.

My least favorite audiobook this year, so far, was "Bastard Out of Carolina" by Dorothy Allison. As a literary person, I'd often heard of this book, but I'd never thought to read it. Then, I happened to see it on my library's bookcase of audiobooks to check out as CDs. I listen to some audiobooks that way while driving, and I listen to others via my phone and the Libby app. I was a bit surprised to find that book in my small town's library of audiobook selections, so I checked it out for my drive. 

What a crazy, horrifying story. It's semi-autobiographical, which makes the things that happened to the girl in the story even worse. I almost stopped listening numerous times, but I powered through in the hopes that there would be some sort of satisfying resolution at the end of the story. There is not.

I do believe that this is a novel I should have read in its physical form instead because it gave me no pleasure as I drove, which is one of the things I like about audiobooks.

My favorite audiobook, by far, this year has been "Never Have Your Dog Stuffed: And Other Things I've learned" by Alan Alda. I loved it so much because Alda narrated it, and I absolutely adore him as Hawkeye on M*A*S*H*. It's not a novel, but rather a memoir, so listening to the author share his own stories was simply heartwarming and quite comical at times. I learned a lot about him and his fascinating upbringing. 

This was a book I could easily listen to over and over. It's also very short with only four and a half hours of listening time needed to complete it.

I've long wanted to read a novel by Lisa See because I had a connection with her mother, the author Carolyn See. It was a small connection, but it was a meaningful one. Carolyn wrote one of my favorite books for writers: "Making a Literary Life: Advice for Writers and Other Dreamers." In it, she recommends sending out "charming notes" to editors, agents, publishers, writers, etc. five times a week. While I haven't been able to make myself do that (yet), I did write one to her years ago telling her how much I loved her book. And then she wrote back to me!! I've kept her postcard in a special place since then because of her kind words to me. 

Sadly, Carolyn passed away a few years ago. I sent Lisa a note saying how special her mother's postcard was to me and how much I love "Making a Literary Life." Lisa wrote back to me, too! Like mother, like daughter. Lisa is a much more successful author than her mother was, but Lisa writes almost exclusively about Asian women and culture, and I've never been interested in Asian things. However, I wanted to read at least one of her books because of how much I appreciate her mother, so I listened to the audiobook of "The Island of Sea Women."

I did enjoy this book because of the swimming aspect of it, but this story is full of tragedy, and I did get tired of that. I'm perfectly okay with things going wrong, but I like a bit more balance in stories. However, this novel is based upon the very real "sea women" divers of South Korea, and what they do is fascinating.

Another long audiobook I listened to is "Truly Madly Guilty" by Liane Moriarty. 

This story is set in Australia, and that was perhaps the most interesting part of the story for me. It was simply too long at over 17 hours of listening time, and I would have preferred reading the physical copy of this one. However, I think this would have been one of those novels where I just would have skipped to the end to find out what had happened at the barbecue to get it over with. Moriarty took up a lot of time to build up to something that wasn't really all that interesting, in my opinion.

While I didn't listen to the following audiobook this year, it's still my favorite audiobook I've done so far. 

"The Boys in the Boat" by Daniel James Brown is about the University of Washington's rowing crew and all they went through in their quest to get to the Olympics in 1936 and win the gold. While I probably would have enjoyed the print version, hearing Edward Herrmann narrate the audiobook kicked the story onto a new plane. He had an amazing voice, and his many acting years helped him hone it perfectly. If you don't know who he is, here's his photo from a while ago: 

If you've never heard of the book or only read it in print version, I urge you to get an audiobook version of "The Boys in the Boat" and give it a listen. 

With half a year remaining of 2022, I'm not sure how many more audiobooks I'll listen to because I'm not planning any long drives in the foreseeable future, but I have been listening to my book club's current selection through the Libby app. I started it that way and had fully intended to read the physical copy when the library got mine in, but I was so enjoying the audio version that I've just kept listening to it.

It's "The Fountains of Silence" by Ruta Sepetys. The reason I'm so enjoying the audio is because it's set in Spain during the time of Franco's dictatorship, so there are a lot of Spanish words sprinkled throughout along with historically significant moments that all pertain to the subject I used to teach. I enjoy hearing Spanish whenever possible to keep myself fresh. 

The Valley of the Fallen in Spain is mentioned a lot in the book, and I've been there. Bullfighting has a small part in the story as well, and I've been to a bullfight in Spain -- I don't plan to ever attend another one, but I wanted to have the experience at least once. The nice thing about this book is that the chapters are all extremely short, so I can listen to entire chapters in a matter of minutes while driving short distances or while doing my morning yoga.

The Libby app has made it easier for me to try more audiobooks, but I still prefer, and will always prefer, physical copies of books. However, I've come to see and appreciate the value of audiobooks more and more this year, so I expect that many of my future longer drives will be passed while listening to a book or two.