Books for Tired Readers by Andy Scheer

I've been know to immerse myself in reading sophisticated literature – but not lately.

The past couple weeks my 8 to 5 job has been spilling over, with a few similar weeks in sight. My brain is tired.

But not quite as tired as when I left the office. As I started the engine to drive home, my ears were greeted by an audio version of a book in the Jack Aubrey/Stephen Maturin series of British Naval fiction from the age of sail.

My brain wouldn't have been ready to unpack Patrick O'Brian's printed prose, filled with archaic British syntax and naval jargon. But the narrator, with his authentic accent, delivered the words directly to my ears. A half-hour later, I was invigorated enough to tackle some writing of my own.

As I finish tonight's last project, I'm again running out of steam.

So I will take another trip though a familiar mass paperback. This time a mystery by Edgar-winning author Aaron Elkins. I won't read to discover the bad guy, just to enjoy the trip.

If you're writing something literary, I wish you well. Your readers will be people at the top of their game. Tonight, I need a book for a tired reader. If that's what you're writing, consider it a cup of refreshment for someone who's gone dry. Thanks.

Abridge Too Far by Andy Scheer

How much can you cut from a published novel—and still have it reflect the original story?

I've pondered that as I've been acquiring audio books for an upcoming road trip to Phoenix, Arizona. I plan to attend a book-collector's convention, so all summer I searched at garage sales and thrift stores for audio books by the authors who will be attending.

The main author has been writing since the mid 1970s, so many of his books were published on audio cassettes. (I drive one of the last cars built with a cassette player.) An interesting thing about those books on tape: while a version with the entire text of a novel contains twelve cassettes, the audio versions of some of his earlier books contained just four. If there was comparable time on each cassette, then only a third of the text made it onto tape.

I can't blame just the cassettes. I've acquired some similar novels on CD that came with five disks. But when I looked in the library for audio books by the same authors, they contained twelve and even fifteen.

If you had to cut two-thirds or even half from your novel, what would you omit—and what would be left? Listening to the five-disk version of Jack Du Brul's adventure novel Havoc, I was shocked to realize the entire opening chapter—fifteen pages dramatizing a maguffin-carrying passenger's experience on the final flight of the German airship Hindenburg—was gone. Better than nothing, yet in some ways like the false-front buildings on the street of a movie set. If you want sub-plots, don't listen to a shortened audio version.

But this past week I did see one book on cassette whose short original length meant the full version could be presented on just a few tapes—even if the labeling did make me shake my head:

The Bridges of Madison County—Unabridged