Travel Books

During my trips to China, I always try to throw a book in my bag and put a book "on tape" on my iPod. (I still don't like the word "audio book" for some reason. It feels like a term trying to describe itself, like "eye winker" or "nose smeller," two children's terms I also find ridiculous, for some reason.)

Prior to this trip, I had two hardback books from the library that I was working through (one, the latest from David Sedaris...always entertaining), and I didn't want to cart those big heavy books around. So Erin and I made a quick run to Half Price Books for some mindless reading material. Somehow I ended up, at Erin's selection, with "The Last Juror" by John Grisham. To be honest, I've only "seen" Grisham's material as movies. "The Last Juror" was relatively entertaining and made for good airplane reading.

On my iPod, I've had "The Kite Runner" for approximately 5 years. It's made multiple trips to China with me, and I always forget I have it around. I decided today to start listening to it, in part because since it is now a movie, someone is most assuredly going to ruin the entire plot for me by saying, "Did you like the part about 300 pages in when..." and I reply, "No, because I'm only 150 pages in. Thanks."

Anyway, I started listening to "The Kite Runner" today during a break, and I immediately fell victim to the problem I have with all books on my iPod -- I fell asleep. This is a pain on the iPod, because when I wake up, I have to search back to something I recognize, invariably leading to me listening to 30 minutes of something I already listened to.

After I finished the first hour, I immediately asked Erin about some of the major characters, since she's already read the book (literally "read" it...like in the old days with pages and stuff.) My problem thus far with "The Kite Runner" in audiobook form is that the author is reading the text, and in his native brogue, all of the names sound like some variant of "blech."

"Ali and his son Kallablech went out for a walk to the mountains. Along the way, they encountered Ali's friend Saliblech and his mother Malliblechihal. They all were great friends, and they all detested the evil nemesis, Blechilechilem."

After an hour of this, I was thoroughly confused with which blech was which. Luckily Erin was able to clear this situation up for me, and hopefully I'll be able to stay awake to avoid further confusion.