I Only Listen to Audiobooks on Vinyl

Hachette Audio and Wax Audio recently announced a series of vinyl-plus-digital audiobooks that it will be releasing in 2018, beginning with David Foster Wallace’s This Is Water. As I believe that all audiobooks were meant to be listened to on vinyl (the sound is just … warmer, you know?), this is amazing news.

All titles released “will also include digital download codes for the full version of the audiobook (for titles too long to fit on one or two LPs),” but that’s not for me. When Chaucer was writing The Canterbury Tales, he didn’t intend for you to listen to it in your car; he expected you to drive out to that one Barnes & Noble that’s still open and buy the vinyl recording narrated by Wil Wheaton.

Stop telling me that if I only listen to one vinyl’s worth of a book I’m going to grossly misunderstand what that book is about! You’re distracting me from setting up my record player on the coffee shop’s community table! Anyway, here are what I must assume are the complete plots of the one-vinyl books I’ve listened to so far.

Stop telling me that if I only listen to one vinyl’s worth of a book I’m going to grossly misunderstand what that book is about! You’re distracting me from setting up my record player on the coffee shop’s community table!

Moby Dick: A clinically depressed man gives Nantucket a terrible review on TripAdvisor.

Catcher in the Rye: A moody teen gives Life a terrible review on TripAdvisor.

The Odyssey: A disgruntled writer takes to his LiveJournal to complain about his deadbeat dad.

Les Miserables: The life story of M. Charles Myriel, the Bishop of Digne.

Infinite Jest: A young man absolutely nails his entrance interview to the University of Arizona.

The Hobbit: A bunch of dwarves wreck some guy’s house.

Can You Speed-Read Your Way to Happiness?

The Sound and the Fury: A how-to guide on how to properly behave when people are golfing.

Fahrenheit 451: A comically bad fireman struggles to understand his job.

Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone: A mild-mannered man named Mr. Dursley slowly starts hallucinating.

Twilight: A weather-obsessed teen makes a dream trip to Forks, Washington, a city with a lot of weather.

A Tale of Two Cities: The narrator discovers the “antonym” function on Thesaurus.com and starts showing off.

A Tale of Two Cities: The narrator discovers the “antonym” function on Thesaurus.com and starts showing off.

1984: A man who is very bad at telling time and counting finds solace in the care of his big brother.

The Grapes of Wrath: An intrepid turtles struggles, but ultimately succeeds, to cross the road.

The remainder of Steinbeck’s books: World’s worst tourism campaign for the Salinas Valley.

The Bible: An offbeat rom-com about a guy, a girl, and a snake, described by fans as “Naked and Afraid” meets “Three’s Company” meets “your obnoxious friend whose new trendy diet doesn’t let them eat fruit, for some reason.”

Where the Red Fern Grows: A man gets a new dog! What a delight! Don’t worry about why!

Love You Forever: A mother rocks her baby son to sleep, which is appropriate and not creepy because he is a baby and that’s where it stops.