Are you going to make the one hundred books read goal?

[FizzyWater]

Originally Posted by Catlady

No. Listening to a book means you are getting an actor's interpretation of the material. Different actors will emphasize different elements and bring different sensibilities to the material. <snip!>

As I said earlier, I don't see any reason that an audio book shouldn't count as a book read for our purposes here. But listening to a book is still different.

I don't disagree with you on this. There are audiobooks I listened to after having read the ebook, and I was SO glad I read the book "to myself" first because the reader was just awful! And there were a couple I actually preferred the audiobook "interpretation" over "mine". To me, though, it's that the audiobook performance ADDS a layer to the print book - whether good or bad. A movie/theatre version always is LESS than the print/ebook version.

Originally Posted by Catlady

I guess it's just competitiveness and a desire to compare apples to apples. I must admit I'm astounded by the people who've read 150+ books, and I'd childishly like to think their totals are so high because they've included audio books, children's books, comic books, etc.!

Looking back through my reading lists, it looks like I started listening to audiobooks in 2007 (other than a rare ebook put in during a roadtrip maybe). I didn't identify any audiobook in my 2006 list.

So, here's how it broke down for me. And I should state up front, if I read an anthology, I counted it once. However, if I bought an standalone "ebook" that turned out to be a short story or novella, I still counted it once. I figured they averaged out against the longer stories (I'm not a huge fan of short stories, so I don't think I read too many of them overall).

2006 288 (no audiobooks identified)

2007 269 (identified 49 audiobooks, including all the Janet Evanovich Stephanie Plum novels at the time, and the JD Robb "in Death" books)

2008 182 (identified 23 audiobooks)

2009 153 (identified 26 audiobooks)

2010 169 (identified 46 audiobooks)

2011 113 as of today (identified 60 audiobooks)

So when I had higher numbers, I had fewer audiobooks!

[orlok]

Originally Posted by KenFisher

It was The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich by William L. Shirer and read by Grover Gardner. I read the book as a teenager and it was released as an unabridged audiobook earlier this year.

I just picked up War and Remembrance by Herman Wouk and read by Kevin Pariseau. It is 56 hours long.

Ken

Ah, makes sense. I read The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich as a lad - a fantastic and absorbing book.