The audiobook of Ron Chernow’s new biography MARK TWAIN, read by Jason Culp, runs a whopping 44 hours. AudioFile reviewer Alan Minskoff shares his very personal guide to listening to a 44-hour-long audiobook over the course of two intense weeks—and provides inspiration for fitting more audiobook listening intou our lives. And in a video below, narrator Jason Culp shares his own experience of spending 44 hours with Mark Twain from the other side of the microphone.
Garden. First, I traveled to my local garden center and brought home fertilizer, seeds, and plants. Then I visited the farmers’ market. It is best if it is spring when you yearn to get outside and garden. Taking in the final three hours, I planted tomatoes, seeds of all sorts, peppers (it is Twain, after all), and cucumbers.
Dogs. I added extra time to my walks with my flat-coated retrievers along the river and in the neighborhood. I am convinced that Marnie and Maxie sense when I am engrossed in an audiobook. As Twain went on his round-the-world speaking tour, the girls and I walked on the Greenbelt by the Boise River.
Commuting. I live about 40 minutes from work, and I was riveted by Twain’s bizarre business adventures and more bizarre “angelfish” (young girls from 10 to 16) that he chastely got to know as I drove back and forth. Often I’d add stops on the way home.
Groceries. Food stores, especially the big boxes, allow for continued listening. Twain would surely have been amused at half a dozen varieties of Cheerios.
Email. Does anyone really need to concentrate while deleting the excess of excess when you can be learning about Twain’s family woes?
Sports. Here is a generalizable trick: Turn the sound off and Ron Chernow and Jason Culp on. A sports lover, I live in a state and city without pro teams, so I mutely watch games of the teams of my boyhood (the Mets with Twain and the Mississippi). So, while Sam Clemens is living his best life in Florence, Vienna, London, or Hartford, I am watching the adventures and misadventures of Major League Baseball.
Laundry. I find a kind of Zen in doing mine. (Ditto for food prep.) And with Twain’s cigar-smoking (sometimes forty in a day), washed clothes felt that much cleaner.
Walking. On campus, to lunch, around downtown, all while Twain fumed at doctors, lawyers, and publishers. I got steps in.
The River. My city, Boise, has a river running through it that I live alongside. With or without dogs, it reveals wonders. On my final Twain day, I watched a great blue heron devour a ten-inch trout in two clamps and a gulp. To hear Twain tell it, thinking or traveling on the river is a patriotic act.
Bonus. Jason Culp does the Twain twang masterfully, and Chernow is a biographer’s biographer.
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Alan Minskoff is an AudioFile reviewer and contributor to our podcast, Behind the Mic. Photo by Diane Ronayne.
