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There's also Books on Tape for those unwilling to even read. Granted you'll pay more than the paper pack version, but it could come in quite handy in many situations.

Many of us are familiar with the works of Robert Jordan. The 9th book in the Wheel of Time series, Winter's Heart, is about 25 hours in length (20 CD's in the unabridged version). A fantastic, first-rate performance.

To produce that, you had to pay the performer for 3.2 working days, and that's just for the bits you actually use. Let's add in the cost of mixing, second takes, plus the time it takes the performers to prepare for the work. You don't simply hand someone a script and expect them to put on a professional production sight unseen, and given the quality of most audiobook productions (and I've listened to many), I can't believe for a second that there's no prep time paid for.

I can easily imagine having to pay each of the performers for three or four weeks work to do this one production, and it very well might be longer considering the size of this book.

You simply can not get the kind of quality that makes for an enjoyable listening experience with a volunteer mom recording WAV files onto her PC with a Compaq built-in-the-monitor microphone.

If you want good-sounding audio, you're going to have to pay for it.

It took me several times through Neuromancer to understand everything that is going on in the book in the grand sense of things thanks to unique verbal constructions and new terminology that only makes sense on multiple readings, and even then, there's probably small details that I'd catch on the next reading

I had much the same problem. I'm sot sure why, but one solution to comprehending Gibson's rather dense, James Joyceish prose is to suck up the book in audio format. There happens to be an excellent audiobook available for Neuromancer. It's read by the author. It features amazing, but subtle background music by U2 (sans Bono, thank the Maker), amongst others. It's slightly abridged, yet not butchered.

It's also quite interesting to hear Gibson do a Jamaican accent, starting from his Western Canada surfer drawl. Definitely worth a day in court.

I've actually read the book before, many years ago, but many of the details have faded, so the audiobook version is a re-read for me. The reader is Connor O'Brien - he does a pretty good job with the book, especially giving the different characters distinctive voices. You can here a snippet of him reading the book here

Those immortal words of MST3K about sum it up...Speakin of which I think I'd rather have watched it on MST3K.

This just reenforces my belief that almost all TV and movies are going down hill. The idea of character development was a total loss to those who made this movie. Thufer, a mentat, with red stained libs, don't need them, we'll just ignore that. In fact we'll ignore the whole mentat subplot and make Paul a laxed spoiled child. Not the born leader that Mr. Herbert gave us... Political jousting? Nan... we can do with out it, it just makes things complicated. We'll make it simple and brainless. Lets see should we even introduce the traitor before we use him...no... whats the point of forshadowing anything.

We'll use some small parts of the book but barely give them any context. That way no one can say we did not read the book. Other major things like the doctors imperial training we can leave out.

The best way I can sum up this movie is that its what would happen if you left the people who made Starship Troopers a copy of the book and a kindergarden class to read it to them!

My recommendation is to read the book, or go to www.booksontape.com and get the unabridged audio book. You'll enjoy it far more.

disks, tape, cds... they all have a relatively short lifespan. picture storing data in mice, just feed them and keep them warm. ev en if th e parents die the children will have the artificial chromosomes... (that is unless they recombine, in which case all of your documents or whatever are worthless....)