I do a lot of audio books from audible.com because of my commute. It's a time-killing thing. But yesterday, I heard a passage from Middlesex that made me glad that I'm listening to the book and not reading it.
There is a section where the author describes the grandfather's job at the Ford motor plant.
Quote:
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Every fourteen seconds Wierzbicki reams a bearing and Stephanides grinds a bearing and O’Malley attaches a bearing to a camshaft. This camshaft travels away on a conveyor, curling around the factory, through its clouds of metal dust, its acid fogs, until another worker fifty yards on reaches up and removes the camshaft, fitting it onto the engine block (twenty seconds). Simultaneously, other men are unhooking parts from adjacent conveyors--the carburetor, the distributor, the intake manifold--and connecting them to the engine block. Above their bent heads, huge spindles pound steam-powered fists. No one says a word. Wierzbicki reams a bearing and Stephanides grinds a bearing and O’Malley attaches a bearing to a camshaft. The camshaft circles around the floor until a hand reaches up to take it down and attach it the engine block, growing increasingly eccentric now with swooshes of pipe and the plumage of fan blades. Wierzbicki reams a bearing and Stephanides grinds a bearing and O’Malley attaches a bearing to a camshaft. While other workers screw in the air filter (seventeen seconds) and attach the starter motor (twenty-six seconds) and put on the flywheel. At which point the engine is finished and the last man sends it soaring away
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The passage goes on for some length and has a wonderful cadence and rhythm that I think I would have totally missed if I had been reading it in print format.
Are there any audio books you've listened to that you think the audio experience made the book richer or better because it was read aloud to you?
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