TSS: What I'm Listening To

This week, I've had the pleasure of listening to the audio book of Susan Beth Pfeffer's the dead and the gone. I'd read the ARC of it earlier in the year, you can read my review of that here. It is the companion novel to Life As We Knew It a novel that I first reviewed in November of 2006. In September of 2007, I reviewed the audio book of Life As We Knew It. My interview with Susan Beth Pfeffer can be found here.

While it took more than a few tracks for me to accept the narrator's voice, to get used to it as Alex's voice, it began to work for me after a bit. It was a teeny bit jarring to have a grown man trying to do the voice of a twelve year old girl. But I got used to even that after a bit. Still I found the man's voice very deep and pleasing. Easy to listen to. Does he sound like a seventeen year old boy? No. A Latino (Puerta Rican) boy? No. But it works after you accustom yourself to it.

Listening to the book, it makes for an "in-the-moment" experience. The emotions, the feelings resonate. I'm not sure if this is because it is an audio book. Or if perhaps it's just that it's a reread.

It's always interesting to listen to a book. Especially a book you've read before. It's strange in a way how different a book can "feel" to you as you listen to it. How different things make an impression or stand out to you. That's why I always prefer to meet a book in print before I attempt to listen to it. That's probably why I don't listen to that many compared to how many I read. That plus the fact that listening slows me down. I can read faster than I can listen. But is being slowed down a bad thing? Not necessarily! It's just different.

Slower pace means more time to think, to absorb, to dwell. A faster pace makes for a more intense experience, in some ways, as far as being "thrilling" or "exciting." You want to read and read and read and read without stopping, without moving at all really. But with audio books, you can't really indulge in the same way.

Both can make the world fade away, both can make you "lose" yourself into the story. Which do YOU prefer? Why?

Do YOU have any recommendations on which books work really well on audio? I ask because I've got a few slots to fill. I signed up (rather bravely) to listen to 8 audio books for the 888 reading challenge.

© Becky Laney of Becky's Book Reviews