Ah, Audiobooks

I am currently listening to the His Dark Materials triology. I've just finished the first novel and am about 5 minutes into the second.

First, about the work itself, I am really enjoying it. I highly recommend it. I had initially heard it was similar to Harry Potter, but I must disagree with that assessment. One of the biggest reasons, is that it seems to be for an older audience than Harry Potter. *Spoiler Alert**If you haven't read The Golden Compass and don't want to know anything about it, stop reading and move to the next paragraph.* It's not necessarily the vocabulary, but more how the story is put together and some of the dialogue as well. Plus, it's more violent - a talking bear kills another bear, then rips his corpse open and eats his heart. And then there's the scence where the dad explains to his 11 year old daughter what castration is and why the church thinks it's ok to cut off a boy's sex organs. The plot is creative and exciting and the characters are well developed.

But now on to the title of this post. There was a time in my life when I would read three or four books at a time. I was so sure once I was out of college, I'd have hours of free time to read even more books at a time. This has not been the case. I'm down to usually only one book at a time with a second book of either short stories or poetry that I can flip through and read at my leisure. Enter audiobooks. Now I can have a second novel going AND can "read" while I'm driving to work, doing dishes, working out in the morning, or on a road trip. What a GREAT idea!! (Of course, Jim Dale has ruined the narration of novels done by anyone else but him because he develops character voices even better than novels that are dramatized.) I LOVE audiobooks. The only bad thing about them is I've found myself listening to books while I'm doing yard work - which, in the past, was more of a meditation time.