the book I'm not reading is riveting

ptpatricia's downloaded a Stephen King sized assload of CDs for me, and with that I've been listening to the Dark Tower series on audiobook. (My love affair with the audiobook -- lying in bed in the dark with a ginger-scented candle and a cigarette, being read to -- this is another matter for a subsequent appointment with navel-gazing. Meanwhile.)

Book I: The Gunslinger I found eminently skippable (too late, of course), especially because book II and every subsequent book opens with an "Argument," which is mostly a very snappy and comprehensive "Previously On." I'll tell ya, I didn't understand The Gunslinger half as much till I heard the Argument.

But this is all to say -- and with a brief aside to note that kormantic is the best audio book reader there is, and if you ever have the opportunity to seduce her into reading stuff for you, I say YEA, and YEA. "Thrift" will forever resonate in my brain ("chew." "Chew." "Chew.") in the clear stacatto chimes of Ms. Pares -- selecting a reader for this sort of story is serious business.

Namely, the guy who's reading Book III: The Wastelands to me now on 20 cds (the same guy who read Book II: The Drawing of the Three on eleven cds to me earlier this week) is not the same guy who read The Gunslinger to me, last week, on cassette, in the car.

This new guy has the oddest inflection and while now, sixteen cds into his breathy voice I've gotten used to it, it really is damned peculiar.

Try this bit, aloud: He looked at the symbol on the door with puzzlement that turned slowly to wonder. The symbol engraved on the thick oaken knocker was the same symbol as the one he'd seen on the box the old woman had given him at the lake years ago. He nearly didn't believe it himself but as he looked more closely there was no mistaking it. It was impossible."

That there is a Passage of Wonder(TM), and a very specific breed of inflection with breath, and suspense, and a sort of wide-eyed slowness as the truths pile upon themselves and make the sentences weighty with their mythical resonance.

Right?

Except this reader, this guy on my tape, reads every single sentence that way.

So we get "Eddie wiped his hands on his jeans...!" with that same absurd sense of wonder. Or "Roland looked over the hills, at the sun, which was setting beneath the horizon...!" (Where everything in italics is read with a breathy incredulity, natch.)

Sometimes, sitting there alone in the dark with my cigarette and my ginger candle, swear to god I'm laughing out loud at this guy.

*

In other news, good books, so far.