Audio books

I have shared my thoughts on the new wave of e-readers before (here if you missed it) but I have never experienced an audio book. However, with a six-hour bus ride across the Mid-West looming before me, and myself unable to read in a moving vehicle without becoming violently ill, I did something drastic. I loaded up my ipod nano with all of the Harry Potter audio books, read by Jim Dale.

The one I chose to listen to first was Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince because it is one of my favorites in the series and I wanted to brush up on it before I moved on to Deathly Hallows.

I do have a special place in my heart for the art of storytelling. My father read The Lord of the Rings series, yes all of them, to my two brothers and I when we were very young. He did voices for all of the characters and though I cannot remember everything from his reading, the story has a very special place in my heart.

Anyway, back to Harry Potter. Jim Dale does an amazing job of creating voices for all of the different characters, and has a beautiful narration voice as well. " So much so that even when I turned off my ipod, I could still hear him in my mind, narrating away about what I was doing. The only thing I couldn't stand was the way Dale had Hermoine whine "Haaaaarrrrryyy" every single time she says his name.

I have listened to a good chunk of Deathly Hallows after finishing my first audio book, but I am not sure how much I like this medium. I mean, for my travelling purposes, it was wonderful. And I suppose if I was the type to actually go to the gym it would be nice to be able to listen to something literary while on the elliptical. But I am just first and foremost a fan of the printed word. It is nice to have these audio books in my back pocket, but I think I will save them for when reading an actual book just isn't practical.

Do any of you readers listen to audio books regularly? Have any favorites? Any that you cannot stand?

Am I the only one who made a costume?

Runaways Volume 2: Teenage Wasteland by Brian K. Vaughn and Adrian Alphona.

I'm probably not going to blog a whole lot about the rest of this series, but I will say that it has hooked me enough to have a stack of them waiting to be read. The teens continue to hide away from their parents, determined to do what is right. They pick up another young teen who seems to be in a similar situations, but he has some dark secrets of his own. Also everyone starts kissing everyone.


In other news, I'm taking a gigantic bus trip tomorrow to see the boyfriend and am fully prepared with all of the Harry Potter books on audio. Some of you may know that I am a giant snob about books in other mediums but so far I have enjoyed listening to Jim Dale read me Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince. But I do get his voice stuck in my head and end up imagining him narrating my everyday actions. I know that the HP audios are hugely popular - are there any other shining examples of good audio books out there?

Just a few more days left on my classic poll and Bleak House is still winning. No Russian love?