Audio (or ought-not) books

I like audiobooks. When I make my two-day drives to and from Texas, I like to listen to lectures on a variety of topics, biographies, novels, whatever. They tend to be a bit pricey, of course, but I wasn't a librarian for nothing. I can usually check something out, listen and learn and/or be entertained and then return it without depleting my limited resources. With the advent of digital libraries, I can download audiobooks to my tablet and listen to them that way, too. Good deal!

But not all audiobooks are created equal. 

I have listened to a number of audiobooks -- and watched an excellent series on YouTube -- about Big History. Big History is an emerging academic discipline which examines history from the Big Bang to the present. It examines long time frames using a multidisciplinary approach based on combining numerous disciplines from science and the humanities, and explores human existence in the context of this bigger picture. Of course, like most fields of study, there are no skeptics or critics of this approach. (Ha!)

Still I find it fascinating. Yesterday in the Wisconsin Digital Library I ran across an audioboook about the topic, one that had won a national award and that I had neither read nor listened to. I happily downloaded it and last night began to listen.

I am sure the content of the book is fine. It did, after all, win a major award. But the person chosen to do the audio version -- not the author -- had such an inappropriate voice and reading style that I gave up after less than ten minutes and returned the book. Listening to that voice, I felt like I was sitting in a third grade classroom listening to an inexperienced student teacher read stories from Greek mythology.

Later I looked up the person who did the reading and discovered, not to my surprise, that this was someone who has done the audio version of lots of books -- all fiction, many romance novels and some for children. Why the producers of an audiobook that deals with the Big Bang and everything since would choose this person is beyond me. Perhaps all the other books benefit from that style and have been best-sellers. But this book was not the right match for that voice.

I can, of course, check out the printed version of the book and read it. But then I will have to listen to my all-too-familiar voice in my head! I get enough of that on a daily basis as it is.