When the NY Times ran that ridiculous cover story on emoticons in last Sunday’s style section, I didn’t say anything: The whole “look how late and clueless the Times is to cultural trends we’ve known about for ages” thing has gotten really old, for one thing, and more importantly it wasn’t a publishing industry story, so it wasn’t my problem. But today’s style section brings an equally lame story on audiobooks, and that is my balliwick, so here we go! Andrew Adam Newman tries to pretend that the whole “listening to an audiobook is cheating” gambit is not only still fresh—which is pretty laughable considering that audiobooks will be a billion-a-year market by the end of the decade if sales continue to grow at the current rate—but “the latest schism in the living room lit-fests”:
“Ms. Stephens, of Ottawa, Ontario, works part time at a bookstore and talks up audio books to customers. Nevertheless, she does not always tell her book group that she listened to a title, which she does about 40 percent of the time. ‘I try not to tell them all that much—I don’t want them to think that I’ve only listened to the book,’ said Ms. Stephens, who often chooses audio to reacquaint herself with books she’s read.”
How about not telling them because it’s none of their damn business? Seriously, if I was in a book group, and I told my fellow members that I’d listened to this month’s selection, and they told me I wasn’t doing my part for literacy, I wouldn’t mope about it to some reporter, I’d tell them where they could put their printed page. (I fully acknowledge this might just explain why I’m not in any book groups.)
Also, you gotta dig the simplistic, sexist quip that book clubs are divided by “the single-malt drinkers arguing for F. Scott Fitzgerald and the chardonnay drinkers for Anita Shreve.” Stop trying to be fancy; if you mean boys and girls, say so. Especially since the gender-coded imagery isn’t even accurate: It was Zelda who had the thing for scotch; Scott drank gin, lots and lots of gin. Still, it’s impossible to hate Newman for very long—look at the cute doggie! Isn’t he the sweetest thing? Yes he is! Yes he is!