So if you’ve not read the comments on this post, you won’t be aware that after not inconsiderable angst, I chose We need to talk about Kevin as my audiobook. I was pretty relieved that the excellent Carmela recommended this, because I’d already downloaded it and was having a little post download anxiety!

I started listening on Monday and very quickly I was totally hooked. The narration by Lorelei King (who sounds a whole lot like Katey Sagal) is superb and the story is utterly compelling.

I restricted myself to listening while walking to and from SML and at lunch. But I really do think I could have easily listened all in one go, so invested was I.

Anyway, after eking it out I finished it up on the way home on Friday evening!

It was just brilliant. I’d guessed pretty early on where this was going, but that didn’t spoil my experience at all. This was the most perfect introduction I could have had to audiobooks and I will be surprised if anything else can measure up.

I found this exercise really interesting as I don’t generally read with a voice in my head. I can do it if I force myself, but mostly I let the words in a book kind of wash over me. I suspect this is why I often don’t really get poetry – I read way too fast and don’t get immersed. Yes, I should slow down.

I wondered if I would get into an audiobook as much as I would a real book and I think I did, but it was a completely different experience to that of reading. One thing I didn’t care for was that I couldn’t mark noteworthy passages as I would with my kindle. And on the rare occasion that I’d missed something, I was a little tedious to go back.

Amusingly I was so immersed in this that my internal monologue was happening a Lorelei King/Katey Sagal voice and I was talking in the same cadence. This wasn’t really much of a surprise as I do this sort absorbing / mimicking people’s voices quite a lot (unconsciously of course, I’m not a dick), and don’t get me started on unconsciously replicating other people’s body language.

Of course now I have to decide whether to keep up the audible subscription (AU$14.95 per month) which allows me to download one book, and then it’s $14.95 per book thereafter within the month. This is not an insignificant investment, so I think I’ll ponder for a bit longer. The difficulty is that there are an awful lot of books narrated by, well, people who sound like pompous (or ponderous) twits. But I’m definitely not saying no to keeping it up.

And we can cross this item off the 50 list (hurrah!). I’m really pleased that I chose to do this – I’d never have attempted an audiobook under normal circumstances because I was sure I’d hate it, and now have discovered a New Thing!