Audiobooks

I had just finished listening to the most excellent The Soul of America: The Battle for Our Better Angels (written by Jon Meacham), and was so flushed with exuberance for that title that I decided to stay with the history thing and give a listen to Doris Kearns Goodwin's Lyndon Johnson and the American Dream: The Most Revealing Portrait of a President and Presidential Power Ever Written. (I'd also become interested in LBJ in particular because of Meacham's comments about him in The Soul of America.) But pretty much from the start I was unhappy with the book. For one thing, the rotating narration approach (by Gabra Zackman and Jim Frangione) was very distracting for me. There were times when the male voice would only come in for a sentence or two, and it seemed very intrusive. Give me one narrator, or give me no breath. Also, Goodwin lays a psychological analysis trip on top of her comments about LBJ, and that got bullshitty very quickly. As soon as someone starts talking about a castration complex, I'm pretty much at the door. 

I limped along for awhile, and as I went out to cut the grass (a 90 minute enterprise, so some solid listening time) I queued it up...and that fuckin' narration relay race started up, and I just couldn't handle it. I stopped the audiobook, exiled it from my phone, and went looking for something more palatable. And when I pulled up my SAVED list, you'll never guess what was right there on top of my audiobooks list. Nope. Nope. Nope. Yep. Edgar Rice Burroughs. Specifically The Efficiency Expert. 

Now, at the time I was already reading Savage Pellucidar at night with Joe, The Outlaw of Torn on my Kindle, John Taliaferro's Tarzan Forever biography of ERB, and a Tarzan / Carson of Venus trade paperback from Dark Horse, so you'd think that that would have been quite enough Edgar Rice Burroughs for one man...but you'd be wrong. I started listening to The Efficiency Expert. And was pretty much instantly delighted. Here again was the wry, sarcastic tone and the excellent sense of humor I'd loved so much in the Burroughs Westerns. I dearly love the John Carter of Mars novels and the Tarzan novels and (especially) the Pellucidar novels, all of which ERB is well known for, but his "lesser" novels have been even better! The man could write.

It doesn't hurt that the reader on this book...just the one, by the way...is truly superb. It's a LibriVox recording, which doesn't always bode well, but I am hoping that when I get to the end of the book this guy identifies himself, as I would like to have him read some more stuffs to me. And, of course, I would like to write him a fan letter...maybe get to be pen pals or Facebook friends, you know....

P.S. I keep forgetting that this is the 21st century. The reader is Delmar H. Dolbier, and it looks like he's read lots of other stuff for LibriVox. You can also catch him onstage if you live near Fort Worth's Hardy and Betty Sanders Theatre. I'd be there if it weren't 867.2 miles away.