Over the past several months (3 to be exact) I have rediscovered audiobooks for my commuting pleasure. At first I was worried since I had been spoiled by listening to Bill Bryson's lovely In a Sunburned Country back in April and had enjoyed it tremendously. His lilting voice, half British-half American was wonderful. And then after rediscovering audiobooks I was surprised taht not all audiobooks are created equal. I started with Lost & Found by Carol Parkhusrt. While the satricial story of a reality race game show (ala The Amazing Race) was interesting, I found the voice reading the story to be unbelievable. Even more unbelievable is that this woman had voiced many many many audiobooks. I moved on after finishing it to the dismal and monotone styling of a read by the author choice, The Wonder Spot by Melissa Bank. I think I was probably the only person who did not like her first book, The Girl's guide to Hunting and Fishing. So I listened and almost turned it off, the droning sound of the author-cum-voice artist. It was painful to listen to and I began to think that maybe Bill Bryson is the only one that gets it. The only one that knows how to paint a good story with his voice. Ninjagirl recommended that I give a doorstop of a novel called Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norell . It is about 26 CDs long, around 32 hours long and is absolutely marvelous. I knew that I would never carry such a huge book around with me on a plane and I honestly think that the CD holder is smaller than the book, though not by much. I'm happy to say that my hopeless feeling toward audiobooks has been erased.