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Mostly Everything

Audible Recommendations: Predictably Irrational, Gaiman’s Graveyard Book, Batman

The alternate title of this post is “The British Pop Culture Invasion.” 🙂

Ah, to make up for the lack of recommendations for the past few weeks, here are three books I downloaded with my subscription from Audible. The first is a Diggnation recommendation from Kevin Rose titled Predictably Irrational. I got this version as it was cheaper on audio than it was on the shelf (Phoebe bought the tome version), and it’s narrated by this British guy with a strong James Bond accent. Winner.

Why do our headaches persist after taking a one-cent aspirin but disappear when we take a 50-cent aspirin? Why does recalling the 10 Commandments reduce our tendency to lie, even when we couldn’t possibly be caught? Why do we splurge on a lavish meal but cut coupons to save 25 cents on a can of soup? Why do we go back for second helpings at the unlimited buffet, even when our stomachs are already full? And how did we ever start spending $4.15 on a cup of coffee when, just a few years ago, we used to pay less than a dollar?

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Mostly Everything

Audible Picks: That Mitchell and Webb Sound

They probably aren’t famous by name but once you watch this series of sketches, they might ring a bell:

Yeah they’re the official I’m a Mac and I’m a PC guys in the UK.

So it’s been a while since I last recommended an audiobook. As a huge fan of sketches – British sketches to be specific, who can’t ignore Mitchell and Webb? They’ve released a series of three sketches with 18 episodes (about a total of 8 hours!) titled That Mitchell and Webb Sound.

They’re extremely hilarious – if only just for the language!

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Mostly Everything

Love-hate with audiobooks and “real” books – capping with science fiction

I tried to make it a habit to post my monthly audiobook download. So far I’ve recommended three titles (Stephen Colbert’s I Am America and So Can You, Bob Newhart’s I Shouldn’t Even Be Doing This, and the dramatization of Sweeney Todd and the String of Pearls) in this blog and I by far have accumulated two more credits in the last two months, including this March.

The problem dear reader is that I’ve come to realize that there are some books that are well represented in audio whilst other should be read under the leisure of coffee and a rocking chair (or something that simulates the sensory experience of the latter endeavor). I have not mustered the guts to download, say, the audio version of Shadowdivers as it spans more than ten hours worth of audio and I’ll probably be burnt out long before my iPod battery runs out. But then again I could be wrong.