I'm listening to a wonderful audiobook, Major Pettigrew's Last Stand. I am captivated by the stiff upper lip voice of the very British Major and have made a couple of trips to the grocery store just to hear what happens next between him and Mrs. Ali.
For me, audiobooks work best when I'm driving or during my early morning walks around the neighborhood. It's not always easy to find good ones. I'm just as picky about books on CD as I am about books in print -- even more so, in fact. If the narrator is simply reading the book aloud, it's all over for me in about two minutes.
That's probably because the audiobook bar was set high from the beginning. The first books I remember listening to were John D. McDonald mysteries. Darren McGavin didn't just read The Dreadful Lemon Sky and The Long Lavender Look. His gravelly voice brought Travis McGee to world-weary life.
Listening to Phillip Pullman's His Dark Materials trilogy, performed by a full cast, it's easy to imagine families gathered around those big radios in the 1930s, riveted by Orson Welles as The Shadow and Basil Rathbone as Sherlock Holmes.
Those guys had nothing on the great Jim Dale, who narrated all seven Harry Potter books. From Harry's boyish heroism to Voldemort's bone-chilling hiss, Dale created unforgettable voices for every one of the dozens of characters who roamed the halls of Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry.
Sometimes I suspect the audio version of a book surpasses the printed version in entertainment value. I'm not sure I would have made it all the way through The Help, but the three women who gave voice to Skeeter, Minnie and Aibileen propelled the story to its final dramatic confrontation.
Sometimes books really should be heard and not seen.
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