Terry Pratchett Audiobooks!

I’ve been at work all weekend, trying to catch up/get ahead. I’m not working hard enough. Don’t ever seem to get enough done. I used to go to the office every weekend, and I guess I need to go back to that habit if I’m going to get everything done.

I need to try to get ahead because I’m going to Virginia for the 4th and won’t be back here at NCTE World until the 10th. I’m not even sure what all to haul with me to work on. I have begun the process of planning everything else though—which mainly means I’ve made a list. Okay, a bit more, I’ve figured out what book to listen to, and that brings us to the evil that is Audible.com.

Audible.com is a fine and inexpensive option for downloading audiobooks. It worked out to be cheaper than iTunes; but they made me mad yesterday and I’m not sure about forgiving them yet. I decided to look for a new Terry Pratchett book, but I didn’t really want to figure out the reading order and all that nonsense. And what wonder! Audible had Truckers, Diggers, and Wings (The Bromeliad Trilogy) as three separate downloads. Perfect! I already owned the book—I like to have the print book to refer to when I miss something or what to reread something. I thought I was set. I entered all my info to join and pay for an exciting Audible.com membership, and the site promptly told me that I was in the wrong geographical region to buy the books and dumped me out. Apparently, American are not allowed to buy audiobooks of The Bromeliad Trilogy. :(

The only reason that I’m still speaking to Audible.com is that they didn’t charge me for that little exchange. If I had paid AND been told that I couldn’t get those books which look perfectly available when you do a search on their site, someone would have been getting quite an inbox-load of invective on Monday morning.

Unfortunately, that meant that I still had to figure out the reading order and whatnot to find a Pratchett book for the trip. So I googled about, remembered that the L-Space Web had been recommended to me once before, and found there the Discworld Reading Order Guides. After looking up blurbs on the various books labeled as Starter Novels, as well as any others that caught my fancy.

I like the character Death, and seriously considered going with Mort or Thief of Time. But the plots of neither caught my interest.

I ended up going with the first three witches books (Equal Rites, Wyrd Sisters, and Witches Abroad). I’ve done Wee Free Men and A Hat Full of Sky, which show up at the end of the witches line on the chart, and also The Amazing Maurice, which the chart claims has “minor plot links” (though I don’t know what they’d be). I liked Granny Weatherwax in what I’ve read, so I decided to gamble on her rather than Death. I won’t get through all three of them on the trip, but it’s a good 10–11 hours, and the book claim to be 8, 10.5, and 8.5 hours each.

Okay, so that’s more than I need, but things should be done in threes. Besides, I’ve already started listening to Equal Rites, though I don’t have the print copy yet, so I don’t really know how far along I am. The books have a different narrator from the Wee Free Men and A Hat Full of Sky, so I’m still trying to get used to her. I think I prefer Stephen Briggs’ Granny Weatherwax to Ms. Imrie’s; and I have no idea who is doing the Death voice on this recording, but it just feels wrong, perhaps because it’s such an interruption from Imrie’s voices.

So the books are generally out of the way for the trip (if you will count that I’ve ordered the paperbacks and just have to put them in the car when they arrive Wednesday). Now I just need to do everything else for the Vue’s first road trip.