The Wordy Shipmates by Sarah Vowell
Born Standing Up by Steve Martin

While I've loved listening to both of those, I think that's it. was the god delusion this year? I rocked out on Soon I shall be invincible and brief history of the dead and a few Klostermans last year but I feel like I'm hitting my audio book stride again this winter. It could just mean that I'm not finding any inspiration in my recent jams and I'm getting desperate. The wife wants me to start Absurdistan by Gary Shteyngart but the russian accent the reader uses is pretty annoying to me so I'm not making much progress.

Anyway, the point of this post was to ask for recommendations.

does steve martin actually read his audiobook because i think that would be worth it. i have the actual book but haven't gotten around to it yet.

he does.

I'm still hit or miss with the Vowell. I think I just liked the previous one so much better...

I'm about to start a TC Boyle mini-marathon.

and I listened to Basil Rathbone reading a bunch of Poe not to long ago that I really liked. But I'm not sure that falls under audiobooks.

I keep meaning to check out this Absurdistan, but I think I'm free-associating it with Idiocracy and hence avoiding it.

I know your feelings on Steve King.

I can't imagine him passing that up...

I know that I'm being a slappy cunt over this, but what the fuck does liking her previous book have to do with how much you enjoy this one? they can both be good, it's not like you rolled a 16 sided die and have to allocate your nerd points between the two.

hey in other news, Campbell Scott is in Daytrippers! I haven't seen this movie in 12 years but I still like almost everyone in it.

They both are good, I guess. I just lost track or didn't care about the bulk of the characters discussed in the latter until the founding of Rhode Island, Anne Hutchinson's trial, or when I was trying to discern whose voice was who.
Unlike the one before that, where I was genuinely enthralled throughout.

Who knows, I might listen to it again in a year or so and love it.
But it currently stands as "old-timey ascetic bible fight including some backstabbing and conniving".
"and Campbell Scott".

yeah but I think that a lot of it is simply that stories about presidential assassination are a lot more compelling than those about the Puritans. I had a hard time myself because every male land owner in the Massachusetts Bay Colony was apparently named "john". That became confusing. and I can't tell the indians (feathers) apart. I'll cop to being interested mostly because of Rhode Island though.

all true. But I feel like the presidential assassination stories sort of branched out a lot more. There were more weird follow-ups (Robert Todd Lincoln, Dr. Mudd's exile, the Custom House corruption, Guiteau's batshittiness, etc...) that had me interested way more than the plots themselves.

It also might be the format and resulting presence of Guiteau that hold the edge for AV over WS, but it's a pretty broad edge...

oh yeah it was a much more sprawling and fertile ground for little stories to pop into it. I just don't see why your enjoyment of her books is a zero sum game. Do you like Party Cloudy Patriot less because Assassination Vacation was so compelling?

I don't really disagree with you on anything, shit, maybe I'll listen to AV again.

sort of, yeah. Although I haven't listened to Patriot in years, I remember loving her letter to her state senator and just getting annoyed when she devotes a whole chapter to attending the inauguration with liberal friends from a message board and I'm thinking "jesus, I could've been standing there next to her and I'd be bored with this".

It's not that it's zero sum game, I just like some of her books more than others. and unfortunately the works I like best will cast a shadow on the later works when they don't seem to impress me as much.

there any torrents of this?

I got it of waffles or something but I'll send it to you tonight.

I've thought many times about starting to do the audio book thing, but they're so god damn expensive, no?

they cost about as much as albums if you know what I mean

Aaaaaaannnd...pm sent.

excellent. thx.

I have Anthony Bourdain's No Reservations and Robert Evans' The Kid Stays In The Picture uploaded if anyone wants to trade...

why didn't david lee roth do an audiobook of Crazy from the Heat...

audiobooks? do you not have time to read, yourself?

i can't stand to listen to other people read to me. it's usually too slow, and i don't like the accents they have for certain characters..

what makes you listen to these rather than reading yourself?

You can also check them out from the library and rip them to your itunes or whatever (that's what my old man does)

not really, no. it's pretty sad but honestly after I get home from work, cook/chores and watch a sporting event it's time for bed. I remember how to read though, so if I'm on vacation I can swing it. Sometimes the reading becomes as entertaining a performance as anything else. The Sarah Vowell, for example, she reads with her own distinctive voice, which I like, and then she gets people that I like (jon stewart, john hodgeman, john oliver, john slattery, peter dinklage, campbell scott) to read the parts for John Winthrop or Charles Guiteau or something, so there's an entertainment value there. But the real answer is that I run a lot and for anything longer than 3 miles I don't really want to get pumped, I want to space on something and kill some time, and audiobooks are great for that. plus i like the stories.

my wife has both of those and I haven't listened to either...I should pick up on that Bourdain, the impression she does of him now is hilarious. The Henry Ownings interview in AvClub made Walter Yetnikoff's Howling At The Moon the next best thing to that roth, didn't it? I'll have to look for that.

I checked out that Walter Yetnikoff book on Amazon...the only audio CD they had was abridged...I don't want that...I'll have to read the book.

Yeah, Henry's interview made it sound amazing...he lives right by me and I see him all the time. Maybe he's got an unabridged audio, I'll ask him.


Also, CP...listening to an audiobook is a completely different experience than reading the book. It almost becomes like a performance piece, depending on who's reading...Hearing Bourdain imitate his latino employees swearing at each other just wouldn't be the same if you were reading the book.

plus, I kinda hate reading, except on the can.

Didn't DLR do something for Crazy From the Heat?

what were those extracts from?

amazon didn't have one listed...looks like the book is out of print too...