On audio books

I've never really gone the whole audio book route. I really could've gotten into them when I lived in Charlotte, because I was on the road about three weekends out of the month, driving up and down the East Coast and stopping at every McAlister's Deli between Richmond and Atlanta, but books on CD weren't nearly as widely available as they are now, and my little red Neon didn't have a tape deck.

They're not exactly prudent here in SA, either, because I live within a 10-mile radius of work, church, the grocery store, etc. If I drive out to Kevin and Mia's and/or my parents' houses, my iPod's playing, or I'm listening to Glenn Beck/Laura Ingraham/Rush Limbaugh/Sean Hannity.

But now that I'm Disney-bound, I decided that I'd break out my library card and check out some audio books that I could load onto my iPod for the trip.

I moved New Moon over via the wonder that is iTunes a couple days ago and just picked up Twilight, Eclipse and Speak today. Hopefully I'll get Everyone Worth Knowing tomorrow or Saturday.

I've had Speak on in the car all day since I've been running errands, and as it's Thursday, I had to go out and see my doctor, who's about a 30-minute drive. I, uh, don't think I want to know what the drivers around me were thinking as they watched me alternately laugh and cry my way down 410. Seriously, I've foamed at the mouth about the movie, but I'd forgotten just how fantastic this book is.

Also, I think it takes a really great reader. The girl who's reading Speak is Mandy Siegfried, an actor I'm not familiar with who played Meredith and Lexie's sister, Molly, on Grey's Anatomy. She is, in a word, awesome. She's got the cadence of Anderson's prose down so that the sarcasm comes across just as clearly as the heart-wrenching aloneness that Melinda radiates.

It just got a lot harder to determine which is my favorite -- book or movie. I think I'll have to play Switzerland and declare a tie, because like I said, the book is amazingly written, but Kristen Stewart's interpretation of Melinda alone makes the movie just as amazing.

I know I'm not recommending anything anymore, so I...DON'T RECOMMEND Speak about as highly as I could, er, NOT RECOMMEND anything.