Musing Mondays: We Are Listening...

Today’s Musing Mondays (from just one more page…) is as follows: What is your preferred method of listening to audiobooks? Where and when do you listen to them?

For the longest time, I was a book purist, meaning NO AUDIOBOOKS. I had a hard time concentrating on the book when I wasn’t reading the words on the page and so audiobooks seemed like something that I wasn’t cut out for.

Then, in 2003, a good friend of mine pushed me and pushed me and finally got me to listen to audiobooks. (At that time, it was still books on tape.) The audiobook that she got me hooked on was Stephen King’s Bag of Bones (I have since reviewed it twice on the blog HERE and HERE) and I have to say that after listening to King’s reading, I couldn’t get enough of audiobooks. Looking back at my old email reviews—from before I started this blog—after Bag of Bones I listened to three more Stephen King audiobooks, in that month, then another four the next month, two in June and then I discovered the Harry Potter audiobooks in July 2003 and my love affair with audiobooks was a sealed deal.

What changed? Well, I had to train my brain to be able to listen to a book while I was doing something else (usually driving) in such a way as to divide my attention, often in an unequal way (i.e. more devoted to driving than listening) but it soon became a great way to pass the time of my commute.

We were living in Seattle at the time and not only did the Seattle Public Library system have a great collection of audiobooks, but there was also Half Price Books where I could get audiobooks for very cheap. That is how I became the proud owner of Stephen King’s Bag of Bones and Hearts in Atlantis on cassette tape (for under $20 together) as well as quite a few other books on tape.

When we moved to Utah, I got a job at a place where they let us listen to music or audiobooks while we worked (it was interesting but painfully repetitive data entry) and my listening of audiobooks moved from cassettes to CDs to, eventually, MP3. In fact, it was another Stephen King audiobook that was my first MP3 audiobook: The Colorado Kid (read by Jeffrey DeMunn).

Once I started back to work on my Bachelors degree (in English—Literary Studies) audiobooks became the only way I was able to do leisure or pleasure reading, since my reading piles were soon dictated by a syllabus. Now, if you were to come across me, I will often have a print book in hand and an audiobook loaded onto my iPod for the car. So, audiobooks have become yet another way in which I get my literary fix.

Since I have had people ask me this in the past, here are some of my favorite audiobook readers; performers who I will go out of my way to get an audiobook that they read:

First and foremost is Frank Muller. Unfortunately Mr. Muller is no longer producing audiobooks, he was involved in a devastating motorcycle accident in 2001 in which he suffered severe head trauma. And, I have just found out that he died last year and that makes me very very sad. I can’t believe I missed that. Muller read many of Stephen King’s novels but he did other books as well, for example Moby-Dick and The Silence of the Lambs. Muller is the best there was, and you really haven’t experienced an audiobook if you haven’t heard one the Frank Muller narrated. My favorite Frank Muller audiobook is The Talisman by Stephen King and Peter Straub

Ron McLarty is another stellar reader. He also does a lot of Stephen King novels, but I also have heard him read Hunter S. Thompson and John Steinbeck. McLarty has a very earthy voice that gives any audiobook an immediate air of authenticity. He is a truly superb reader/performer. My favorite Ron McLarty audiobook is ‘salem’s Lot by Stephen King

Campbell Scott is another performer that I have discovered and absolutely love. He is the son of actor George C. Scott, and reads a number of great books, and is yet another reader who I discovered through Stephen King. (Scott reads The Shining which is a novel with special importance to me as I have staked my academic and professional career firmly in its pages.) However, like many other reads he narrates a number of great novels aside from Stephen King including Bryan Burrough’s Public Enemies and Annie Proulx’s “Brokeback Mountain.” He has a great authoritative voice and adds a certain veracity to any book he reads. My favorite Campbell Scott audiobook is The Shining by Stephen King

Jim Dale is an audiobook reader sans par. I know him chiefly through the seven Harry Potter audiobooks though he does read others (my favorite is his reading of Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol). The things that Dale can do with his voice in the service of Rowling’s story are nothing short of amazing. He makes an already magical set of books even more magical. In fact, in the service of Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix Dale creates 140+ separate and distinct voices for each of the speaking parts in the book. My favorite Jim Dale audiobook is Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix by J.K. Rowling

George Guidall is an okay reader, and one that is so prolific that it would be surprising if you haven’t already heard a book narrated by him. He is a kind of Poor Man’s Frank Muller or Poor Man’s Ron McLarty. This is not to say that he is a bad reader of audiobooks, but just that there are better out there, if you’d prefer. Guidall is a kind of second-string reader, if you will. I don’t love him, but I don’t hate him either. My favorite George Guidall audiobook is Eaters of the Dead: The Manuscript of ibn Fadlan, Relating His Experiences with the Northmen in a.D. 922 by Michael Crichton

There are others out there that I highly enjoy, Stephen Lang, Tim Curry, Nathaniel Parker, Jeffrey DeMunn, and Rob Inglis. Now, I know I’ve been heavy on the male readers, but there are female readers out there that I enjoy: Kathy Bates, Mare Winningham, Sissy Spacek, Emily Bauer and Sally Darling leap to mind.

There is one, in closing, that I will warn you against. Under no circumstances pick up and listen to a book read by Ilyana Kadushin who is bets known for her narration of Stephenie Meyer’s popular Twilight series. She is the most uninspired and dull reader that I have ever encountered. She drones on and on and sucks all the life and joy out of the story she’s reading. To trot out the old cliché, avoid audiobooks read by Ilyana Kadushin as if they were the plague.