Drama by Audio

I'm one of those drivers who suffer from road rage. The real fist shaking, cussing and screaming craziness. Years ago, I found out that if I listened to audio books while driving in traffic, I never lost my temper. I wasn't in a rush. All the other drivers didn't make me nuts.

So, I'm an audio book junkie. Every long drive I do alone or with others, I try to play an audio book. If I listen to a story, I don't lose my temper and get crazy.

I just returned from D/FW. During my drive, I discovered something else: I need to listen to the whole book.

Recently, I downloaded a three book series by Brandon Sanderson. This is the author who has been selected to finish up Robert Jordan's Wheel of Time series. The three book series is called the Mistborn trilogy. I listened to book one, The Final Empire, and book two, The Well of Ascension. Or at least I thought I did. When I started my drive to Dallas, I started the third book in the series.

I wasn't lost. I knew the characters, and it was obvious that 'time had passed' in the story arc. But as they went on, I realized I had missed a bunch of action. Not just a little chunk, a lot.

So, I stopped the audio book and called my son (who recommended the series to me). I asked him some of the plot questions that were plaguing me... his experience was distinct from mine. He remembered the things that seemed to be skipped. Then it occurred to me--Audible takes long files and breaks them into multiple parts. Could I have missed downloading one of the parts? I asked my son how many parts and sure enough, that's what happened.

I listened to three quarters of the book and then tried to move to the next book in the series. I had missed a lot of the meat of the story.

So I downloaded the missing part and listened to it on my drive home...THEN I went back to book three. It all makes much more sense now.

--Sandee Wagner