Audiobook Disasters: Incarceron in L.A. Traffic

The biggest audiobook disaster, hands-down, is my experience with Incarceron.


PROBLEM ONE
Narrator had an Eliza Dolittle accent.  But only during the dialogue.

She would speak in her natural American voice during the narration, then out of nowhere emerged a combination of Cockney and, um, Pirates of the Caribbean.  The Disney ride, not the movie.

PROBLEM TWO
A world built so complexly that listening to someone explain it - in a butchered Sweeney Todd accent - while focusing on bad SoCal drivers IN REAL LIFE leads to a completely lost listener (and sometimes driver - luckily I have a GPS).

IT GOT SO BAD THAT...

Everyone knows by now how extraordinarily spoiler-averse I am (I can't even finish reading jacket flaps). 

It took me 3 tries to get past Incarceron's first chapter.  And that was only after I finally read every spoiler-laden review on Goodreads AND the first chapter in person at Barnes & Nobles.

Befittingly, I was imprisoned in 2 hours of Los Angeles traffic one day after work and the only audiobook on hand was Incarceron.  In fact, all my music wasn't on my iPod for some reason.  So it was me, Eliza Doolittle with her rain-in-spain accent, and a parking lot called the 105 freeway.


I now provide you with Sophia's version of Incarceron, as heard by a brain boiling in the microwave of a car:

(I would warn you of spoilers, except my version departs wildly from the actual plot...)

• A guy, possibly unhuman, wakes up tied to some road - no idea what time it is and it sounds like it's indoors, though I don't know why there's a highway underground.
• It's a trick, he's actually not tied up, and this car full of humans comes by and then suddenly the road turns into a metal laundry chute.
• Cut to the outside world, which for some reason is stuck in the 1800's.  The girl's dad, who owns the metal underground world, comes back with some fat prince for the girl to marry.  Fat prince's footguard and the dad step on a set of disappearing stairs and you can hear their disembodied voices as they explore the house.
• Back in the prison, Finn (the guy) and his blood brother, some white guy named Kai, visit Jabba the Hut of the underworld who's got a Princess Leia tied to his chair, except it's a dog.  There are a bunch of goblin-dogs hanging around this cave.  
• Some chick dies but they call her something weird.  Like prophet or something.
• Cut to outside world - there's some evil queen.  And a legend about a lost prince.  Oh my gawd, it's Finn.
• Back in the prison, Finn starts talking to a bunch of red eyes and then discovers the mouth of the prison, which is apparently a creature, and it looks like a bunch of scrap metal and shoes and discarded laundry.  I pictured the cover.
• Somehow there's a key.  The chick Claudia steals a key from someone's office, and she has a gay butler.  I might have just imagined he was gay to make the book more interesting for myself.
• For some reason white Kai has the key and he's chatting up Claudia who's being all prissy and wants to talk to Finn, even though I missed the part of her meeting him to begin with.  (I probably had to get on another freeway at that point.)
• Claudia watches her dad walk across the garden, which she can see all the way from her window for some reason.  He opens a gate in the wall, like the Secret Garden, and that takes him to Incarceron.
• Down in said Incarceron, the boys are escaping.  Suddenly a basket lowers over a river and inside is a moleman wearing steampunk goggles who says, "Get in!"

By now I'm dehydrated, I have to pee, I'm brain-dead.  And luckily I'm home.

(Note: I told Krispy and Alz this version and they've cleared me up. The actual plot doesn't sound any clearer.)

Audiobook Disasters: Time to Stop Listening?

Krispy: I think you need to stop listening to audiobooks.

After I told her my version of Incarceron pieced together from a failed audiobook reading.

Something has gone very, very wrong with audiobooks and me.  I've either hated or been bored to sleep (as passenger, not driver) by several highly lauded books.


Now this could be because I, simply, just don't like the book.

But I also suspect the format has much to do with my somnolent response.

Take Bitten, for example, Kelly Armstrong's first book in her Women of the Otherworld series.  It's about a female werewolf.

A CHICK werewolf.

Awesome right?

I thought it was meh.  (Except for the s-e-x scenes. Dang that lady can write.)

I decided to give the series another shot, this time on Kindle just in time for my Taiwan trip.

LOVED IT.

In the written form, Armstrong's writing was suddenly laugh-out-loud funny, her plots exciting, her men sexy.  I ended up downloading the third book midway through my trip; it's now one of my favorite series. (Just started book 5)

Right now I'm listening to The Iron King.  I was never into fairies to begin with (save for the ones in the Sookie Stackhouse books), but it was a Goodreads book club pick plus I wanted to support an Asian sister.

I've taken to only playing it when my boyfriend is driving the car...

Sophia: (sits up suddenly, blinking) Wait.  He's standing?  I thought he was dead.
Unicorn boyfriend: (smoothly) They were discussing what to do with him, then he got up, he's bleeding, and now he's holding a sword and wants to kill her.
Sophia:...who is this now?

At least one of us is following along.

So here's my quandary: one of my Goodreads groups is now reading Looking for Alaska.  I know.  This one won the Prinz.

We're about to take a roadtrip and I'm trying to decide whether to listen on audiobook (the Unicorn will be driving so he can catch whatever I miss), or if I should do this one right and stick with the hardcover library book I took out today.

What do you think, readers???



Stay tuned for my next post, when I outline the plot of Incarceron...what I heard, at least.

Audiobooks, Kindles, the World is Coming to An End!

I'm a late adapter to technology, especially if it concerns books. I'm rather suspicious of non-paper formats.

Okay it's straight out blasphemy.

I thought:
Why would you have someone narrate an entire book?  Doesn't that defeat the purpose of, um, reading?

This changed 2 1/2 years ago when I accidentally put hydrogen peroxide in my left eye.

(Contact lens wearers who use a certain brand of cleaner know this is not as uncommon as it sounds.  And yes, I know there's a red warning ring around the cap.  I'm so blind I couldn't even see it.  And why did my boyfriend keep that cleaner next to my saline in the first place?!)

Since there was nothing to see do but lie in bed until the swelling went down, I had no choice but try a "free audiobook" - you know what company I'm talking about.  I picked Twilight.

I ended up subscribing to that audiobook site for like a year.  It's the only thing that calms me while driving in Los Angeles traffic, or breaks the monotony of the Stairmaster at the gym.  After my car accident last fall, I now plug my ears and close my eyes whenever I ride passenger so I don't have to see the crazy SoCal drivers weaving on the freeway.

Still I maintain some semblance of my old discrimination - I stick with audiobooks whose plots don't suffer if I miss a few lines here and there (when my GPS butts in, for instance).  For my favorite authors, I still prefer a tangible object I can flip through.

But the dark side is seeping in.

It started with Natalie Whipple's seductive post about the beta-reading uses of a Kindle.

Then I booked tickets for my annual visit to the grandparents in Taipei.  I don't want to lug 5 books with me...but a slim e-reader?

This is a slippery slope, people.  What do you think: e-readers all the way?  Do you own a Kindle and love it?  Any caveats you wished you'd known?