My commute is about an hour on a good day. After a few years of that type of commute, you get tired of every type of music (even your own mix tapes) and every variation of morning show antics. You get tired of people arguing, whether it’s know-it-all sports talk or 2 minutes of politics followed by 58 minutes of commercials. Twice a day, day after day, whatever button you push, radio gets redundant.
About 6 months ago, I switched to audiobooks. I never thought I’d like audiobooks much; it felt like cheating. But, it’s not like reading Cliff’s Notes. It’s not like seeing the movie instead. It’s like grown-up story time. It’s an engrossing time passer. It’s the complete opposite of road-rage. It’s delightful. There are even mornings when I look forward to getting in the car to go to work. (And those who know me well just fainted.)
Should you be interested, here are a few things I’ve learned about audiobooks:
1. Audiobooks are not just for old people. Really. They’re not.
2. Like real books, audiobooks can create goosebumps, cause you to tear up, make you laugh out loud. They can entertain. They can teach. They can inspire.
3. It may take a book or two before your brain adjusts to the experience. For example, without pages shifting from right to left in your hands, you won’t have indications of progress that your subconscious expects. After a book or two, the pacing of stories will reassert via the number of CDs and/or tracks.
4. Next to whatever makes a great book great for you, the most important thing about an audiobook is the narrator.
- Any author reading his/her own work is going to be great.
- Most well-known actors, actresses, or voiceover artists are going to be good, and some will be spectacular.
- A very proper enunciator is not the same as a good storyteller.
- Some male readers will try to do voices, including for the female characters. (Imagine someone from the cast of Monty Python or Kids in the Hall when they do voices for ladies. Now imagine one of them as a lady’s voice in a Dashiell Hammett novel. It ain’t right. Oh it can be funny, sure. But it ain’t right.)
5. You might want to look up a book before purchasing the audio format. Audiobook packaging doesn’t always include the same level of description as a physical book. And you might wind up, for example, tolerating 20 CDs read by some annoying, grating very proper enunciator before realizing it was book 1 of a trilogy.
Yeah, some cliffhangers I can live with.
6. Speaking of the angst of buying a bad audiobook, you can avoid this issue completely by joining a library and borrowing their audiobooks.
7. Keep in mind that it appears to be library policy to put all audiobooks on the shelves nearest the floor, with labels pasted alternately North-to-South and South-to-North, so you’ll squat there, tilting your head left to read one title, then right to read the next title. Squatting, head moving—chicken-like—left, right, left, right, pecking at row upon row of miniature books sorted only by author, not genre.
Still, it’s free, and if you get a bad book (or an enunciator), you can just take it right back and try another.
8. When you go to the library, don’t ask for “books on tape.” (They’re on CD now of course, and librarians, who are, apparently, rather literal people, will tell you they don’t have any.)
9. When you go to another library—because the first one you went to (near where you work, where your hours of being able to look at books best matches up to their hours of operation) can’t give you a library card unless you first get one from the neighborhood in which you reside (even though it’s all computerized and you have a valid driver’s license, and even though, once you get the card from your home library and go back again to the first library, they give you the option to use the exact same card)—don’t call them “books on tape.”
10. I am now looking into ways to download audiobooks from the web. I’ve looked at amazon’s audible.com ($14.95/month seems a bit high to me) or iBooks via the itunes store where, it appears, you pay per book, but I haven’t yet tried either.
I’m sure there must be other similar sites or apps. If you know of one that you enjoy, that seems reasonable, and is user-friendly, please share some details in the comments. Thanks!
April 27, 2012 at 9:51 am
After a debilitating four-day, 50-plus-hour week and a yet another teeth-grinding commute from North to South, my week ended on a high note.
After a pit stop at home, I took a relatively breezy drive into Oakland to get to the classy-comfy, ushered, delightfully step-back-in-time Carnegie Music Hall (where parking in the lot behind the museum is just 5 bucks!) to see the River City Brass Band.
Tickets to the show can be had for as low as $21. For just a bit more, you can get one of the best seats in the house, like second row, first balcony, center, where I eased into my red-velvet seat between two of my favorite people in the world, Mom and Dad, and felt the lasso that binds me to the Rodeo de Ridiculousness unknot and slip away.
Lights dimmed and the band came on stage and the Best Loved Marches-themed show began. For each number, the band’s Conductor, Scotland-born James Gourlay, provides interesting, entertaining information about the song, its composer, or other historical trivia.
And they play. Lord do they play.
A brass band—a great brass band—live. It is an experience. Trumpets, cornets, trombones, tubas, a lively group of percussionists. It is so American. (And, I think, so Pittburghian.) It is music that reverberates through your ears and down into your gut before slipping out through fingertips and toes that, even among the most unmusically inclined, move throughout the show in easy, involuntary accompaniment.
The music itself would be enough. It moves you to audible ooh and ahhs, a primal appreciation, an ancient-feeling of wonderment that such sounds could come from the brassy metal implements before you, and at times, like while hearing “to dream the impossible dream” (The Quest, Mitch Leigh), sung last night by flugelhorn player Drew Fennell, tears.
Yes, the music would be enough. But there is more. This group of incredibly talented musicians also has a delightful sense of humor.
The Imperial March (John Williams), which most would recognize immediately (dum dum da dum dum da dum) from Star Wars included an appearance by Darth Vader, who used The Force to take over and conduct with his light saber.
During a medley of Scottish tunes, Gourlay conducted in a kilt. After which, he asked the audience if they were wondering what people wonder about Scotmen and kilts. And then he removed the kilt to show . . . rolled up tuxedo pant legs, from the pocket of which he swished out and twirled a Terrible Towel.
And there was a Spike-Jonesian solo on a xylophone that included notes played on a block of wood, a pot lid, and squeaky toys.
So, yes, it’s a band concert, but it’s not quite like any band concert you’ve been to before.
Offer me tickets to anything in this amazingly big small Pittsburgh town—city, pavilion, or arena—and I will choose the River City Brass Band. They are talented. They bring goosebumps, cheers, tears, guffaws, and giggles. And they bring the music. They are an affordable marvel. They create moments of purest happiness. They infuse joy.
This is an experience that reminds you that the soul you had as a child still exists. The River City Brass Band is a musical life preserver.
The band’s season runs from fall to spring, with the last show of the current season coming next month: May 10 at the Carnegie Music Hall and May 3-13 at other local high school venues, which can be found on their website, www.rivercitybrass.org.
April 6, 2012 at 5:22 am
Life Preservers 
Commuter’s Life Preserver
My commute is about an hour on a good day. After a few years of that type of commute, you get tired of every type of music (even your own mix tapes) and every variation of morning show antics. You get tired of people arguing, whether it’s know-it-all sports talk or 2 minutes of politics followed by 58 minutes of commercials. Twice a day, day after day, whatever button you push, radio gets redundant.
About 6 months ago, I switched to audiobooks. I never thought I’d like audiobooks much; it felt like cheating. But, it’s not like reading Cliff’s Notes. It’s not like seeing the movie instead. It’s like grown-up story time. It’s an engrossing time passer. It’s the complete opposite of road-rage. It’s delightful. There are even mornings when I look forward to getting in the car to go to work. (And those who know me well just fainted.)
Should you be interested, here are a few things I’ve learned about audiobooks:
1. Audiobooks are not just for old people. Really. They’re not.
2. Like real books, audiobooks can create goosebumps, cause you to tear up, make you laugh out loud. They can entertain. They can teach. They can inspire.
3. It may take a book or two before your brain adjusts to the experience. For example, without pages shifting from right to left in your hands, you won’t have indications of progress that your subconscious expects. After a book or two, the pacing of stories will reassert via the number of CDs and/or tracks.
4. Next to whatever makes a great book great for you, the most important thing about an audiobook is the narrator.
5. You might want to look up a book before purchasing the audio format. Audiobook packaging doesn’t always include the same level of description as a physical book. And you might wind up, for example, tolerating 20 CDs read by some annoying, grating very proper enunciator before realizing it was book 1 of a trilogy.
Yeah, some cliffhangers I can live with.
6. Speaking of the angst of buying a bad audiobook, you can avoid this issue completely by joining a library and borrowing their audiobooks.
7. Keep in mind that it appears to be library policy to put all audiobooks on the shelves nearest the floor, with labels pasted alternately North-to-South and South-to-North, so you’ll squat there, tilting your head left to read one title, then right to read the next title. Squatting, head moving—chicken-like—left, right, left, right, pecking at row upon row of miniature books sorted only by author, not genre.
Still, it’s free, and if you get a bad book (or an enunciator), you can just take it right back and try another.
8. When you go to the library, don’t ask for “books on tape.” (They’re on CD now of course, and librarians, who are, apparently, rather literal people, will tell you they don’t have any.)
9. When you go to another library—because the first one you went to (near where you work, where your hours of being able to look at books best matches up to their hours of operation) can’t give you a library card unless you first get one from the neighborhood in which you reside (even though it’s all computerized and you have a valid driver’s license, and even though, once you get the card from your home library and go back again to the first library, they give you the option to use the exact same card)—don’t call them “books on tape.”
10. I am now looking into ways to download audiobooks from the web. I’ve looked at amazon’s audible.com ($14.95/month seems a bit high to me) or iBooks via the itunes store where, it appears, you pay per book, but I haven’t yet tried either.
I’m sure there must be other similar sites or apps. If you know of one that you enjoy, that seems reasonable, and is user-friendly, please share some details in the comments. Thanks!
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April 27, 2012 at 9:51 am 1 comment