When I first heard about audiobooks, I'll admit, I was very skeptical. Why would you want to listen to a book when you could just immerse yourself in the paper pages, hearing the words in your head? Once I became a librarian, though, I thought that I should give it a try, if only for professional research purposes. So, one day I stopped by the display of new audiobooks on CD and picked out a title. It was Iris Johansen's "The Search" (another case of trying something new--Johansen--in order to be informed). And while I wish I could say that I fell in love with audiobooks on the spot, that didn't happen until a few books later.

The narrator of "The Search" was Barbara Rosenblat. She may be a fine narrator, but I was listening to her in the car--and the car was drowning her out. This was my first lesson in audiobooks--the way the narrator reads can be very frustrating if you have to keep adjusting the volume. What might be dramatic on the CD player at home can be just unintelligible when played in the car.

Fortunately, I tried again. The next narrator was much easier to hear in the car, so I kept trying new books. I soon learned lesson #2: the narrator's rendition of the book might not match up with what your brain expects to hear. This can be a good thing, or a bad thing. For example: Alan Alda's "Never Have Your Dog Stuffed" was narrated by someone other than Alda. While I listened, the narrator's style kept clashing with how I expected the narrative to sound. It was so distracting that eventually I gave up and took out the paper copy.

On the other hand, the narrator can give the story that little extra something that makes the story come to life. I had tried to read Janet Evanovich's "One for the Money" twice, in print, and hadn't managed to finish it. I couldn't see why anyone thought she was funny. Then I tried the audio, read by C.J. Critt. Critt's wry performance gave the text nuances that made it much more fun for me. The same thing happened with Alexander McCall Smith's "The No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency." A book that I hadn't been able to finish in paper was much more palatable in audio, thanks to the narrator's interpretation.

Naturally, all this is very subjective. One person may love a narrator, while another may not. As a fan of Christopher Moore's books, I was disappointed by Fisher Stevens's reading of "A Dirty Job," but a coworker found it brilliant. I like C.J. Critt's work, but my friend can't stand her. Luckily, narrators are listed in our catalog. You can do an author search for the narrator you like, and get a list of titles that they've read. You can also search for the book first, and then just check the record to see who the narrator is before you head down to the Music, Art and Media Department to grab the book.

So, don't give up if you don't like the first audiobook you try. A good narrator can make or break an audiobook. If it doesn't sound right to you, there's always the paper copy to fall back on. But a great narrator can enhance the experience and even uncover meanings that you might have missed in paper.