Burke

June is National Audiobook Month

Who likes audiobooks as much as I do?

When I was a stockbroker, braving my way through Manhattan’s kiss-and-yell traffic every morning, I listened to books on tape all the time. Hemingway, Irving, Wolfe–I grew to love cabbies giving me the finger. Jaywalkers thumbing their noses were no problem. And angry cops, the officers were a piece of cake.

It’s easy to wave a friendly goodbye when you’re concentrating on the latest from James Lee Burke and Will Patton. Bring on the detours, the flat tires, and the traffic snarls up and down the West Side Highway. There’s no experience better than listening to someone read you a story.

Now as a writer, I have grown to appreciate–make that really appreciate–the narrators who turn books into entertainment that outshines most of Hollywood’s new offerings. When’s the last time you lost yourself in one of those comic-book action movies that monopolize theater marquees?

I had the pleasure of working with “audie-winning” Robert Fass, who narrated The Gods of Greenwich. He is meticulous, in the best possible way, and drew on his travels through Iceland just to get the accent right for my novel.

Here’s a film clip from Robert, and me, about National Audiobook Month:

One last thing. No tribute to books on tape is complete without a mention of the American Foundation for the Blind (“AFB”). The AFB was the first organization to record books on time; they have given all of us a gift that far exceeds their mission to expand possibilities for those with vision loss.