Over the last few months I’ve been tearing through audiobooks like a mad thing. On the way to work. Making my work drawer tremble in fear as I lay waste to it’s contents. Washing the dishes. Cleaning. Cooking. It seems like suddenly my local library is bursting with amazing things to listen to versus the usual bestsellers. Did they get a grant? Did the audiobook fairy visit? Who knows? What I do know is I’m counting on my fingers trying to remember if I’m at my checkout limit of 5 audiobooks when I’m staring at the shelves.

So no surprise I’m writing about audiobooks right? Maybe it’s me but some of these treasures? End up right back in the library book bag before I can even finish the first disc. And it’s not the fault of the story. Many times the book is something I’ve read and loved but the audiobook version? Can’t get it out of the house so enough. Other times? The audiobook gets listened to so many times I can almost recite along. Why? It’s the narrator.

Confession time. This is most likely a huge and horrible thing given how large he looms in the audiobook world and you can certain tell me what a total idiot I am who doesn’t deserve to listen to audiobooks in the comments but <very small voice> I don’t like audiobooks narrated by George Guidall. I’ve watched interviews with the man and he seems like a lovely person. But when he puts on headphones and starts to narrate? THAT. VOICE. <shudders> I can’t quite describe why it annoys so very much. It just does and distracts me from the story at hand. Pity, since I do like to listen to classics and Recorded Books has some awfully good ones. If I pick up a Recorded Books offering and see George Guidall is the reader? Back on the shelf with you Mr Audiobook!

Then there are narrators who were so perfectly cast in one book that hearing them read another is a jarring experience. When I stumbled across the Recorded Books version of 84, Charing Cross Road read by Barbara Rosenblat? Perfection. The sassy Helene Hanff I imagined writing these zippy little letters was captured perfectly. Barbara Rosenblat reading If Life is a Bowl of Cherries, What Am I Doing in the Pits? Sure why not? Erma Bombeck always struck me as a very sassy lady and Barbara Rosenblat? Does sassy so well. Barbara Rosenblat reading a Diane Mott Davidson culinary mystery? <backs away> Nope. No thanks…

If you’re thinking “hey Gwen, maybe Diane Mott Davidson isn’t as good as Helene Hanff?” Yeah, that’s for sure.  While trying to get ready for the perfect storm of Coworker 123 retiring and an upcoming vacation I snapped up the unabridged audiobooks for Shirley Jackson’s We Have Always Lived in the Castle and The Haunting of Hill House. Both are fine Shirley Jackson novels that aren’t on my favorites list but I have friends who adore them. Popped in The Haunting of Hill House. Started listening. Hey, “Toby” from The Year of the Flood (aka Bernadette Dunne) is the reader. Elinor grates. I would like to smack Elinor really hard. Realize I would rather be listening to The Year of the Flood. Next day. Pop in We Have Always Lived in the Castle. Same darn thing.

Bernadette Dunne does such an amazing job bringing Toby in The Year of the Flood to life that no matter what I listen to that she narrates? Bernadette is always going to be Toby to me. It’s like watching a Harrison Ford movie, any Harrison Ford movie and only seeing him as Han Solo or Indiana Jones.

But even with narrators I can’t stand (sorry Mr Guidall), I’ll be in the audiobook section of my local library, picking up an audiobook, flipping it over and then sometimes popping it into my bag. Because, my commute isn’t going to get any shorter and there’s eight glorious hours at Company X to fill my ears with all the books.