I listen to audio books at work for several reasons:
- Because I’m allowed to;
- Because I enjoy multi-tasking and, since I’m working primarily with numbers, I’m able to focus pretty well on both numbers and words;
- Because my co-workers have ridiculous conversations, including but not exclusively discussing things like the frequency of their children’s urination, how Barack Obama hates Neil Armstrong AND the moon, and how great Yahoo! is as an email service.
Okay, I’ll admit, it’s mostly number three. It’s better for everyone if I don’t get involved assuring everyone that Scott Brown was born in America and that he surely only has ten toes or whatever. So when I don’t have an audio book ready to go on my iPod, I get kind of nervous. I try to browse my library’s website as efficiently as possible because, well, I’m at work, although now that I’ve been listening to many, many audio books over the past three years, I have gone through many, many of the audio books in the online catalog.
Sometimes when I’m caught in this jam I’ll search for an author or a narrator that I tend to enjoy, just so I can stop browsing and feel reasonably assured I’ll be entertained for the next few hours. This week I did a quick search for “Stephen King”–I really like that guy and his books are always well narrated–and settled on The Tommyknockers, which was the only audio book of his available that I hadn’t read yet.
I’ve read a lot of Stephen King books this year.
The Tommyknockers is 200,000,00027 hours 48 minutes long and narrated by Edward Hermann, a narrator I really like even if he pronounces Bangor, Maine, as “Bang-er” instead of “Bang-or.” I vaguely remember seeing the mini-series starring Jimmy Smitts and being bored out of my skull. Also, I don’t really like alien stories.
I am on track (or disk, if you will) 22 of 28 and hey, I still don’t like alien stories, and hey, the mini-series has a lot in common with the book in that I am BORED OUT OF MY SKULL.
There should be a word for when you listen to an audio book just so you have something, anything, to listen to. Any ideas?
I call it Audio Filler. I’m surprised the Tommyknockers is boring. I am reading IT for the IT Along and it’s kept my interest pretty much. Some slow spots, but Steve Weber’s reading is fantastic. Can’t remember if you’ve listened to that one before.
Audio Filler works pretty well. Tommyknockers just isn’t doing anything for me, but if you enjoy alien invasion stories you’d probably enjoy it. I did listen to IT and really enjoyed it.
Audio Filler is probably a really good term! I cannot walk and chew gum so working and listening have never worked out for me. BUT, driving and listening — that’s prime time.
In the car is pretty much the only time I can concentrate on audio, too. I’m listening to 11/22/63 right now, and need a road trip if I want to finish any time soon!
I’m not sure how you feel about fluffernutter, but the idea makes me practically gag. It’s something that just should not happen. So I propose Audio Fluffernutter.
Of course Barack Obama hates the moon; Newt Gingrich lives on it. :p
Ha!
Sent from my iPod Touch
Everyone hates the moon! Up there controlling the tides like a dictator.
Tommyknockers was one of my favorite books in highschool. Now I want to re-read it.
And I didn’t know Obama hated the moon. I definitely need to keep up on things….
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