Books on Tape

I've never listened to a book on tape. I tried once but didn't get far. My sister was taking a trip to Italy and Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince was being released on the day she came home. She had wanted to read Order of the Phoenix again before starting the new book, but with all of her vacation plans she wasn't going to have time. I used the dying tool known as file sharing and downloaded the book on tape so she could listen on the plane. Of course, the book is so freakin' huge that it took a mountain of CDs (this is the pre iPod world for us) to hold it and it was immediately apparent that it was terribly impractical. So defeat was admitted.

That didn't mean I that I didn't go absolutely nuts downloading different books on tape in the hope that some day some one would listen to them.

Fast forward to last night. The Mrs and I were both talking about the down side of authors writing long series of works, specifically the Harry Potter series and Stephen King's Dark Tower series. While we both really enjoyed both series (Jen hasn't finished Dark Tower yet, so no spoilers here) we both continually find ourselves re-reading parts of them.

For example, the film version of The Half Blood Prince came out this summer. I re-read that book before seeing the movie, and then when I finished I just had to re-read The Deathly Hallows too. In both series, when a new book was released I would read the previous book (or two) to get back into the story. I think I've read The Gunslinger about five times. I think I've read Goblet of Fire about four times. What's more, now that both series are finished we both have the desire, maybe a better word is need, to read them both from start to finish.

That's a lot of re-reading. A lot of time spent reading things we already know quite well when we could be reading new things that might be just as rewarding.

During this discussion Jen mentioned that she had listened to the earlier Dark Tower books on tape and that the guy who did the reading did a wonderful job. That got us thinking about our long morning commutes. I take my iPod with me to work and am always listening to music. Maybe I could listen to a book for a while instead.

So, digging through old files and some shopping produced a copy of each Dark Tower novel on tape. If you listened to the whole thing without stopping at all it would take more than five days. That's a lot or listening. I loaded The expanded edition of The Gunslinger (which I had not read, although I did start reading Jen's copy before bed last night) onto my iPhone and listened to disc one on the way to work. It wasn't so bad. It also wasn't the reader Jen had so loved, but he's on some of the other editions we have.

As it turns out, the time it takes to listen to a single disc is just a touch shorter than my drive each way. So I listened to all of disc one and the first couple of minutes of disc two. That should make it pretty easy for me to find my place if I go a couple of days without listening.

Maybe tonight I'll dig through the old files and see if I can pull out the first five Harry Potter Novels so I can line those up next. I can pretty much guarantee that I will totally lose interest in this little project after a few days, but for now I am into it.

I'll tell you how it goes (without spoiling anything).