That trilogy has been on my to-be-read pile for an age. I’d hoped to read it before someone turned it into a TV series, but it appears I’m too late.
I’ve considered audiobooks, but I like to highlight and then extract highlighted passages into DEVONthink for later review or use in a paper or presentation.
For example, I can search DEVONThink for key phrases, e.g., “virtue and tolerance,” and instantly come up with many passages from books, articles, and websites that match my search criteria. For example:
The line between virtue and vice is a precariously fine one. It is the line between persuasion and manipulation, between ambition and greed, between love and indulgence, between news and tabloid journalism.
And it is the razor thin line between tolerance and moral and intellectual indifference.
Tolerance is a virtue when it encourages the free exchange of ideas, and when it acknowledges and protects the civil rights of all citizens regardless of race, gender, or creed. Tolerance is a virtue when it accommodates our many ethnic and political differences allowing us to live together in peace. Tolerance is a virtue when it allows us to celebrate rather than fear our differences. In short, tolerance is the handmaiden to a free, civil, democratic, and pluralistic society.
Ironically, good things in excess soon become vices. Eating can become gluttony, drinking can become drunkenness, rest can become slothfulness, love can become indulgence, entertainment can become hedonism, and ambition can become greed. When tolerance fails to distinguish between good and evil, truth and error, beauty and ugliness, and love and indulgence, it is no longer a virtue, it has become a vice, a synonym for moral acquiescence and intellectual indifference.
Such moral acquiescence and intellectual stupor is the progeny of a modern Sophism.
(Source: Hallowell, J. H. (1984). Main Currents in Modern Political Thought. University Press of America.)
This is what I’d lose with audio books. 
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Over Christmas, I finished Ferrol Sams autobiographical trilogy. A bit controversial with regards to outdated southern stereotypes, but enjoyable for his humor, descriptive writing, and vocabulary; e.g. “Her face was a palimpsest of wrinkles and liver spots.”
Currently reading The Will of the Many by James Islington. It’s a good read, but I started with the assumption he had finished the trilogy. Now I’m disappointed to learn I have to wait a year for the next book.
Up next is David Copperfield because I haven’t read it since high school and it seems worthy of a second look.
Oh I absolutely agree that there are categories of non-fiction that require deep engagement with the printed page (or letters on a screen in my case). My audiobook listening is mostly confined to fiction or narrative non-fiction that I’m reading for pleasure. An example of the latter would be Patrick Radden Keefe’s Say Nothing or Empire of Pain. Their subjects interest me, and they add to my general fund of knowledge, but their topics are not something I’m delving into as part of an ongoing project or course of study. In essence, I give myself leave to say “Huh—that’s interesting” and move on.
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Yes - I think the books so far were better than the TV series (slight differences between the plots) but the characters are spot on I think - though I did Series 1, then started the books, then Series 2 and the rest of the books. Still to watch Series 3.
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Okay, this excerpt from a review of the book I have not read yet makes it sound intriguing. Book Review: ‘American Mermaid’ by Julia Langbein — What Is Quinn Reading?
The story-in-a-story(-in-a-story) … couldn’t be further from the world that [the author’s] melancholy, disconnected, unaffected main character inhabits as she evolves from listless Connecticut high school teacher, to bestselling author, to Hollywood screenwriter as her book blows up and catches the eye of a movie studio. [Some author’s] novel, also called American Mermaid, is billed as a feminist, SciFi, superhero story about a baby mermaid, Sylvia, who washes up on shore and is taken in by two married billionaire scientists who can’t have children of their own.
Wow!
I stopped reading the review after another sentence or two as I don’t want to spoil the story for myself.
Going off piste with my reading. Ferrandi Ecole’s French Patisserie, Lentore’s French Pastries and Desserts, Regula Ysewwijn’s Oats in the North Wheat from the South, probably many other baking books (as I dream of being on GBBO) and — slightly more conventional — whatever are the short listed books for the James Tait Black fiction prize.
I probably wouldn’t have picked up American Mermaid if it hadn’t been on the ToB24 shortlist and readily available from the library, but it turned out to be an enjoyable read. It’s half screwball comedy (the Hollywood parts) and half cli-fi fantasy (the mermaid story-within-a-story part), and it somehow works. I laughed a lot, and also kept turning the pages.
Another book on the list, Cold People, is also dystopian speculative fiction, and also a page-turner, but it definitely does not provoke laughter. In addition to novels, the author, Tom Rob Smith, writes screenplays; I fully expect some streaming service or other will option Cold People for a series.
@Bmosbacker When you hear something you’d like to highlight, just pause Audible and open the Kindle app on your device. The Kindle app will automatically sync to the location of your Audible book. Then, simply highlight the section you want in the Kindle app and return to listening in Audible. Well this will work if you have the kindle ebook and the audio as well.
I first go to Audible and check, if there is a discounted price on the Audio book if you first purchase the Kindle book. Often the price of Kindle ebook + audible book == price of audible book alone.
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I did not know that was how it worked. Thanks for taking the time to let me know; much appreciated!
That said, I’d be stopping the audio and opening the Kindle app a lot, at least for good books. I tend to highlight a lot in both fiction and non-fiction for saving in my PKM system in DT. 
Again, thanks!
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Currently listening to:
- Capital Ideology
- The Subtle Art of Not Giving A F*ck
Not in any particular order.
Thanks for the additional reader info!
I’m finishing the last few novels in the Inspector Montalbano series by Andrea Camilleri.
The nonfiction book I’m waiting for is Technofeudalism by Yanis Varoufakis. I’m intrigued by the book’s premise and have preordered it.
Jack Reacher Series
Bosch Series
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One of Ours by Willa Cather
Never a Lovely So Real: The Life and Work of Nelson Algren by Colin Asher
The Ghost Writer by Philip Roth
War and Peace is getting close to the top of my list. Probably later this year.
Who is the author of War and Peace. I see multiple authors. This book clans been referenced multiple times times in this thread.
Leo Tolstoy. War & Peace is considered one of the greatest novels of all time. You can find more on Tolstoy here.
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A simple biblio-arithmetical question. There will be a prize for the correct answer[1].
Let X = number of unread books on the Kindle
Let Y = number of unread ‘physical’ books
Let Z = number of unlistened to audiobooks.
Let B = person who can’t stop buying books
If B normally reads / listens to between 40 and 80 books a year, how long will it take for him to reduce the book pile when X = 238, Y = 195 and Z = 23 but I get another credit every month, even if he doesn’t buy any new books this year, a resolution which has already been broken twice?
Please show your working. Write on one side of the screen only.
NB: B has already read War and Peace twice. It took him 11 goes to get beyond 200 pages, starting as a 12 year old 40-odd years ago. The trick is to skip through all the boring romantic bits with Natasha flouncing around being soppy, and concentrate on the fascinating history of the Napoleonic wars. (Other strategies may be available.)
[1] Terms and conditions: any prizes will be awarded after X + Y + Z = 0.
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Simple? I’m still trying to determine how long it will take train B to catch up with train A.
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Who says those are boring? 