Team Ginger Nut’s Production of Bartleby, the Scrivener

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I served as an editor on the Ginger Nuts audiobook project of Bartleby, The Scrivener, although that is not what I originally thought I would be doing. During our first meeting, we discussed what our roles would be and opened the floor to any initial ideas. We did decide on an abridged version, but were still finalizing how we would present the audiobook. I think we were all immediately in agreement with Matt reading, but were unsure if the rest of us wanted to. I thought I would be a reader, as I had no experience with production or editing sound. The idea I liked in the beginning was the Zoom meet. It would require all of us to perform, and would feature video. I thought it would be great for each character to have their own unique background, but Bartleby would turn off the video, as he would “prefer” not to be seen. Zoom has been an integral part of office life in 2020, and I was excited to use that. But when the 2020 sound theme was brought up, it worked best for all of us. Whether the theme would be Zoom or 2020, I knew that we would have to edit the text and break it up like a script to make it easier for readers to deliver their lines as none of us are professionals. I began by editing out some of the Lawyer’s text, mainly overlong descriptions of characters like Turkey and Nippers. It was important to keep some description of the characters, but information about Turkey’s coat could be cut. I condensed most of the scenes, but made sure to keep all dialogue from interactions between Bartleby and the other characters. I made sure to also keep text relevant to the theme of the work, passive resistance. 

After editing the text, I formatted it to look like a script so it would be easier to distinguish who is speaking and how they are speaking. I labelled and color-coded each character, and in brackets kept any description of how he delivered the line. For example, the Lawyer exclaimed or Turkey cried. I wanted to keep this to assist the reader(s) so they would have an idea of how to deliver the lines. I also put any of the Lawyer’s monologues in italics to separate it from dialogue. These edits made me realize how much of a performance an audiobook reading is (or should be). Readers have to be aware of these descriptions to accurately deliver a line, or risk producing a flat performance. I submitted my draft to the team, explaining my process and what I left out, for further edits. 

The team were happy with the abridged version and added a few pieces including where some sound should be played. Matt did a fantastic job as Reader and Martin and Lola found amusing yet relevant sounds to include. Once Martin finished editing the audio, he shared it with us and asked for feedback. Conn then presented our work and did a great job despite technical difficulties! 

I admit that I approached this project with some trepidation, as I have no experience with audio production and overall did not enjoy reading Bartleby. I am glad to say Ginger Nut’s audiobook version changed my mind. Thank you to Matt, Martin, Lola, and Conn for this experience!

Lisa’s Office Crew Adventure

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Cadavre Exquis, Valentine Hugo, A Landscape c. 1933

Cadavre Exquis, Valentine Hugo, A Landscape c. 1933

This assignment was fun: more play than work for me.  By way of full disclosure, I use to do voice-over work for a living, so I came to the project with that lens.  However, since Maggi Delgado (our producer) and I were the only folks on our team who admitted to having production experience, our Bartleby, The Scrivener audiobook, was not actually created the way a professional production might have been.  Had this been that kind of endeavor, the workflow might have been something like this: the producer hires a writer to cut the script, hires talent to do the voices, maybe hires a sound designer for the music and special effects, and finally works with an editor to assemble the final product.  There would have been rehearsals, and likely at least three voice-actors gathered to lay down their tracks.  Also, possible that the dialog scenes would have been voiced by the actors together.  Our process was nothing like that. 

At our first meeting, we decided on a simple workflow: 

  • Rather than editing the story together, montage suggested we use a variation of the Exquisite Corpse game. The voice-actors (myself, Ostap Kin, and montage) would choose whatever passages we wanted to voice, and the result would be a surprise. 
  • I had some push-back with the idea that only the producer would see the elements we created because I knew how much additional work that would make for Maggi. We agreed that we would instead use a shared Google document to highlight our desired passages and not overlap.  That way, Maggi would have a script to follow for their editing. 
  • Our producer made their Google drive and Dropbox account available to us to upload the digital assets we created into a shared space.  They also organized our Zoom meetings.
  • Our scribe, Kevin Pham, would track the team’s process and create the class presentation.
  • We also set an exact schedule for deliverables, so our producer would have ample time to create a rough cut. And we would then have time to make changes if needed.
  • We agreed to use the same email thread for all team communication, so everyone was kept “in the loop” during the production process.

I did a rough cut of the shared Google document, cutting about half of the content.  I did this in part because the script is the most important asset for me as a producer, and I could not decide on what to voice until I had a semblance of a working script.  However, I did those edits via strike-through text, not as actual deletion of the material.  That way, my teammates could see my ideas for form but were free to ignore them for their process.   

Once I had the script, I used a Yeti Blue Streamer mic and Audacity to lay down the track.  Maggi had asked for a single audio file using the *.wav format.   It took me about four hours to lay down the 40 minutes of audio.  It was mostly a single take.  I had to re-record a couple of sections where I could hear I’d mispronounced words on playback. Still, since I was not going for perfection for the most part but rather for energy and when appropriate humor (Melville is funny!), it not being perfect seemed in keeping with the assignment.

We had a meeting after Maggi had shared their rough-cut, and it was great!  Here is where we, as the makers, got to experience the Exquisite Corpse process in practice.  Maggi had edited our work down considerably, but still kept the core of the story.  She’d created interesting effects with my voice when I said Bartleby’s lines, so he sounded robotic.  montage had found an audio filtering platform that allowed her to type copy into the engine and have it voice the speaker as a posh-sounding English gentleman.  However, those files’ quality was not great because she had to use her cellphone’s mic to capture them, so when Maggi raised their volume, they became distorted.  As a listener, not understanding all of the words was very frustrating … precisely the way the narrator felt when dealing with his scrivener!  So that was really fun.  Finally, Ostap did a great job with his pieces.  His delivery had an individual pensive self-awareness that was an excellent match for the text. 

Additional changes were minimal; our last meeting was about talking about the process and learning what we’d done.  The final piece of the puzzle was Kevin’s presentation.  We didn’t see that until class.  Wow, it was impeccable too!  He gave an excellent summation of our process, explained the framework, and pulled it all back to the readings. 

Again, this was an enjoyable project.  Thank you, Maggi, for doing such a fantastic job as our producer.  Thank you, montage, for helping us to find our intellectual framework.  Thank you, Ostap, for bringing such humanity to the voice of the narrator.  And thank you, Kevin, for representing our team so brilliantly in class.  I hope all my collaborations this semester go so well.

Editing the retelling of Bartleby, the Scrivener

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As the editor for The Office Crew audiobook project, I was committed to adding an extra layer of complexity to the already intricate short story of Bartleby, the Scrivener by Herman Melville. Our three readers randomly assigned themselves their favorite bits, and those were then sent to me, the editor. I used the reader’s voices as a guide to set the mood and tone.

The Voices:

Using Adobe Audition editing software, I compiled the voices. First, Ostap’s reading, showcasing the setting and establishing the story, Lisa’s dialogue between all the men in the office, and Semon’s take on the narrator’s inner monologue. Due to his repetitive dialogue and machine-like actions, we collectively decided on a robotic voice for Bartleby. To achieve this, I used an effect called flanger; I boosted the male voice enhancer and stripped the audio of any “noise.” The effectively made Lisa’s voice cold, distant, and mechanical. I also played with the narrator’s inner turmoil. For this, I took the audio Montage already filtered through a program and enhanced the audio piece with convolution reverb effects like memory space and infinite tunnel. These gave the narrator’s voice an echo, an effect that proved fantastic for “inner thoughts.” Through these distinct voices, listeners, unlike the readers, are given a 3-dimensional narrator.  

The SoundEffects:

After editing the voices, I added sound effects by foley artists. In my Youtube Creative library, I found sounds like: walking on wooden floors, writing on paper, writing with an inkwell, newspapers, and opening/closing drawers.  I combined these via a processed called “mix paste,” which combines selected sounds into one “mixtape” the individual   I did the same process for ambient sounds like horses, cobble streets, distant voices, and walking on roads. Both mixes added to the sense of setting both inside and outside of Bartleby’s office. 

The Music:

Music gives meaning to pieces by setting the tone and pace for the story. For Bartleby, I debated between two styles: one more upbeat and wacky and another more soft and sad. When Ostap’s voice came in, describing the setting, and the wacky office characters like Turkey and Gingernut, I choose the piece entitled English Country Garden was perfect for reflecting this. It also gave the story a sense of pace, and it made, at least in my opinion, the narrator a bit more likable and relatable. This music also added to the sense of weirdness, awkwardness, and mystery surrounding the office. Once we moved to the darker, more somber setting of the tombs, I changed the music to Allègro. Allègro altered the tone of the piece, foreshadowing Bartleby’s quiet end. It also added to the sadness we can infer in the narrator’s voice when he learns of Bartleby’s previous job.

Final Thoughts:

For the final presentation, I used the Headliner App to add the final touch: a visual representation of the sound waves. Overall my experience in sound editing and podcast production proved to be a great asset in piecing together this amalgamation of voices and sound. Is this collaborative workflow that separates the audiobook from the written book. Here we can literally hear not just the individual voices, but each person’s idea and interpretation of the text given Melville’s work new life and style. This adventure reminded me of Orsen Welles’ 1938’s War of the Worlds’ radio play. Adding sound effects and music grounded the tale, engaging the listener, and creating an immersive experience and a rollercoaster of emotions (even if Bartleby didn’t have any).

Audio book blog post #2 – Late

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The communal workplace ceased to exist in March of this year, and for those of us who have had to commute to a 9-5 office, we probably won’t be returning until next year. In this sense, the workplace is now an imagined world existing only as we remember it. There are a number of noise machines or atmospheric sound generators on the internet that replicate this environment, and allow us to relive the audial elements. They pose an interesting Philosophical puzzle to me and https://imisstheoffice.eu/ in particular is representative of a great work in digital humanities which brings this shared experience to life. MIT Technology Review also recently ran an article on this phenomenon which goes to show its contemporary relevance in technology circles.

If we were told today would be the last day in an office, we might bring home objects that were dear to us, or take photos of our desks. Few of us would think to take a field recording as a snapshot in time. Even then, a sample of sound wouldn’t be able to encompass the whole of experience. Let’s imagine we took a recording for one minute. We might miss the squeaky wheel of our neighbor we were used to hearing around lunch, or the clattering of keys as a late email comes in. These noise machines attempt to unify the standard elements and its success can be gauged on how precisely they meet our expectations. 

Sound effects are used in audiobooks in order to transport the reader, so these elements are nothing new. An audiobook on war might include machine gun fire, or a children’s book set in a zoo might include bioacoustics animal noises. These are transportive and secondary to the reading, but nonetheless important to an overall immersive quality.

I’d like to lay out one necessary and one sufficient condition of audiobooks, but leave the rest I leave to Philosophers of Aesthetics:

A necessary condition of an audio book is that it is an oralization of a text. I would argue that the office experience is one which has an agreed upon script because it is uniquely banal and practiced ad infinitum. If we allow that this script is not written down, but ingrained in us as and handed down as we spend time in a particular role, and a script is a kind of text, we may allow that it is also a candidate for adaptation. Audiobooks of “texts” from purely oral traditions also are considered audiobooks without much opposition.

We can also with a degree of accuracy ascertain what and what are not office sounds. That explains the limited scope of the office script. Street sounds, loud chatter about very personal matters, and restaurant sounds would not be counted among those we hear in the office. Opening and closing doors, low chatter, the hum of printers and copiers, count among those we would expect instead. I would argue there is a limited set and perhaps no more than 10 audial elements we might identify as essential to the office script. 


A sufficient condition of audio books is that the speaker is playing roles, or acting parts. A person is not their occupation. And in an office space they are acting out certain lines of dialogue and behavior according to their position. Whatever language used in the office must then be considered performative. A conversation for another time would be: if people are working from are they then relegated to an always-on work personality? This condition is sufficient because we must make room for the Author of a text reading of their autobiography in which case they would not be acting out anything: they are dictating lived experience.

Marx’s Kapital as audiobook

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[apologies for the late response—just remembered that I’d forgotten to submit this after class]

When thinking about the affective differences between “normal” and audio-books, especially following reading Rubery’s piece, my mind seemed to assume differences as it pertained to works of fiction. And even though this assignment was meant specifically to explore audio-books of fiction, I still thought this sort of interesting, and so I wanted to explore what it would mean to, perhaps, “perform” non-fiction or critical theory texts—and what the display of these texts into the sonic dimension would bring about. I was thinking that maybe, this would bring about a similar effect as when my professors in college would read difficult concepts aloud, which would somehow, magically, make me understand that concept better.

I was somewhat surprised to see a plethora of Marx’s unabridged work in a-book form on LibriVox. I actually found it kind of funny; to think that someone would take the time to transcribe Marx’s complex writing into audio form seemed a bit wild. Indeed, all of Kapital Vol. 1 was transcribed, and so I decided to take a look. Production value of the a-book was very low, with a single narrator usually speaking for the entirety of a chapter, with new narrators every once in a while for other chapters. What was more interesting is the order of the reading, in that all footnotes are read as their emplaced through out the book; that is, the narrator will suddenly jump in and recite the footnotes as they appear throughout the book, which I would usually read at the end of chapter. The spacial arrangement of a physical book allows for jumping around (easily) as you read, whereas with an audiobook, there is a specific decision that has to be made when deciding to read footnotes as you go. For me, this disrupted my usual reading flow, which was a bit off-putting.

While “reading” this book felt a bit lackluster, I wouldn’t consider the decision the a-book’s monotone style as neutral, per se. Considering the various ways in which one can interpret and understand Marx’s Kapital, it makes sense to read it in such a way as to not intentionally emphasize certain parts of the book and impute one’s own interpretation of the work. It made me think about what it would look like, then, to read Kapital in a way that intentionally emphasized certain pieces of Marx’s writing: For example, I’m sure that a Marxist-Feminist would emphasize certain parts of the text, as opposed to, say, an eco-marxist. I think there’s room then, through playing with production, that one could play around with and communicate a text like Kapital. 

Bartleby, new and oldish

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As you get organized, you might enjoy an early 2000s Bartleby hypertext edition that I’ve rediscovered via the Internet Archive’s invaluable Wayback Machine. It starts with Bartleby’s blank wall and goes from there: cute, no? It exemplifies the kind of Web 1.0 experimentation that Liu analyzes so lovingly in his amazing book, The Laws of Cool.

Here’s a pretty cool version of Bartleby edited by a Slate writer, Andrew Kahn, in 2015. It’s richly illustrated and contains a wide range of notes that provide historical context and a sense of some of the diversity of critical opinions on the text over the years since its publication. And there’s even an audiobook version on the site for good measure.

As such, it also points towards our second collaborative project together, in which we’ll be doing something similar (though with much lower production values!) with Toomer’s Cane (or whatever else we think of), so as you check it out, think about what Kahn did to make this work. Or not.

Finally, although it sometimes seems like ancient history, Bartleby played a starring role in the Occupy Wall Street movement in and around Zuccotti Park in 2012. I’ve collated a few pieces from that time that capture the flavor of the way Bartleby haunted that space and that time:

Aaron Kelly’s Bones

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Today I’m writing about a recording of the short story, Aaron Kelly’s Bones, read by George S. Irving. You can give it a listen yourself if you click here.

I haven’t been one for audiobooks in many, many years. The closest I get is listening to literary analysis of pieces of I’ve already read in the background while I’m doing something else. Now, I know that the video I’ve posted may not appear to constitute an “original audiobook”; it’s a reading of a single story from a large anthology of short scary stories called Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark (apparently, it’s well known, but most people I ask are only semi-familiar with it at best. I chose the video I did specifically because it has the entire story in its description, in case you want to read along.) However, I’d argue that isolating it from the rest of the anthology gives it a different, unique context – I find myself going back to this video far more often than I do any other content relating to the anthology, and I feel like listening to just this story is an incredibly different experience from listening to the entire anthology.

The performance of the narrator of this reading, George S. Irving, is a massive part of the reason that I’m writing about this recording specifically. The slightly accented voice Irving uses while narrating this story is not the norm for him: however, it gives the recording a very distinct identity entirely on its own. In an audiobook, the narrator becomes a much more present character than in a text you’re reading silently, and this is a key aspect of storytelling that many people tend to overlook, especially because one doesn’t always think about the narrator when reading a text unless the text is either in the first person, or features a particularly striking or unusual form of narration, such in parts of William Faulkner’s The Sound and the Fury.

On the subject of voice, Irving’s performance is what not only makes this reading appealing to me in the first place, but in my mind, it makes it something more than a reading or audiobook; Irving is energetic, enthusiastic, and lively as he recites. With only mild adjustments to his voice, he’s able to give each character’s dialogue its own distinct touch. As you listen, you can tell each of the characters apart without any difficulty at all, and Irving’s portrayal of each of them feels consistent with their characterization within the story. Aaron Kelly’s Bones is a horror story, and a rather morbid one, considering the fact that its plot consists of a deceased man returning from beyond the grave. However, it also has humorous themes to it – Aaron Kelly, the revenant or zombie or whatever you want to call him, returns from the dead largely to be a minor nuisance to his widow. Thus, Irving’s choice of voices and tone are a perfect fit for this sort of story.

This is a reading I can listen to over and over again without getting tired of it. Admittedly, this is the case with the other stories from Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark that Irving has narrated, but I chose this one because I feel like it’s a prime example of how with the right narration and technique, the way one tells a story can be radically altered and improved. Probably my favorite section of the reading is at 2:06, where a goofy MIDI track starts up to represent the fiddler beginning to play. It always catches my attention, as it’s easily the most noticeable sound effect added to the recording, and if I’m being honest, I find it rather catchy, despite how silly it is.

Dostoevsky and His Fourteen Narrators

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It is not an easy thing–to pick a novel. In the end, I decided to go on with Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoevsky. The novel was published, as a book, in 1866–it was translated into English multiple times by a diverse cohort of translators. While choosing this book, I also wanted to which translated will be available online, and naturally, what happened to the text and how it was presented? 

When I searched on LibriVox, it turned out that an audiobook is available on this resource in Constance Garnett’s translation–this is a translation that has been actively used for many decades by scholars and researchers as well as students in the field of Slavic studies.

Crime and Punishment available on LibriVox is almost twenty-hours long. A large number of narrators contributed to this work; to be more exact, I counted fourteen narrators who read six parts of the book and its epilogue. The parts are then divided into chapters, and narrators usually read chapters—not following any order at all. Sometime, a contributor would read just one chapter, whereas the other would read a big chunk of the book. What I found particularly interesting is that some narrators provided their real names and some, just nicknames. Some of these narrators, it turned out after looking up their profiles, are very active contributors to LibriVox. They narrate not only literature in translation but also literary works composed originally in English. As it seems from their profile, one narrator has been a professional “voice actor,” using the definition from Matthew Rubery’s illuminating article.

Since we have a very vibrant and diverse number of narrators, each one did their job differently. Since we have here fourteen narrators, it is tough to generalize how their approach the reading of their part. I would say that some felt more natural and relaxed, and therefore it was easier for them to go through the text and change voices when appropriate, while the others were not that convincing. Such a diverse and large number of voices made me think of the following question: how, and more importantly, why did they end up having so many narrators? One of my hypotheses is, of course, the length of this novel—it is relatively uneasy to find a person who has resources and energy to narrate 

After reading Rubery’s essay, I came up with several other questions that might be tackled and explored in a longer piece. For example, how did this 19th-century novel was read by Dostoevsky himself—do we have any information on this topic? Could we trace any continuities between how Dostoevsky’s novel is read now and how it was read during the author’s life? Was it ever read by the translator, Constance Garnett, and if we have a recording of her reading? Do we have a different sense of the novel when we hear in someone else’s narration? Also, are we going to have a different experience of the novel when we listen to an audiobook of other translations? (Garnett’s translation is not used nowadays as actively as it was before the 1990s?

Close Ear Contact

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Inspired by the prompt to find an “original audiobook” I chose to look at the New Yorker Fiction Podcast series, because it contains audio recordings of short stories chosen and read by other authors. Looking through the New Yorker archives I landed on an author whose work I know and love, but a story I had not yet read. I wanted to listen to the recorded voice first, without any formed ideas of the characters or the piece. 

The story I landed on is Barn Burning written by Haruki Murakami and read by Andrea Lee, a renowned writer in her own right. The most unique feature of Lee’s voice is also the reason I chose a recording from this series; she cannot really be considered an amateur reader, but she is not a professional actor. Her voice does not “perpetuate the tradition of staged readings by celebrated actors more so than the domestic pastime of reading aloud in the Victorian parlour.” ( Rubery, P65) The sound quality is excellent, but the focus and the purpose of the recording and the conversations that follows, is to listen to the story through and explore the voice of Andrea Lee.

Her reading is a performance in the sense that she lends a different voice to each character, but this is done mostly to differentiate between the characters. She applies something very close to her own speaking voice to the narrator, only slightly at a lower pitch and slower, perhaps to get closer to the voice of a male character. This could be because the main protagonist also happens to be a writer who recants the story with some detachment. As in most Murakami stories and novels, he is also the narrator. 

The most striking difference when I read the piece, after listening to it, is the visual transformation of the characters and places. In Lee’s voice the protagonist looked and sounded older and the setting was only vaguely Japanese. Settings looked more like in-between images of places I know. Much like the Mid-Atlantic accent it was neither Japan nor rural Ohio, but somehow it looked like both. The places were also more vivid when I read the story. 

I considered Rubery’s “ear contact” as I was listening to the story. I felt an intimate connection with the voice, “whispered directly into my ear” but the connection I felt with was Lee’s voice. Through her narration I felt more distant to the events and characters. Listening to a recording of the story as part of this podcast that lands her voice as much weight as that of Murakami is at least partially responsible for this. Taking the podcast as a whole, there are many voices and different media that come together to tell this story. This is a taste of the potential of digital audio technology to change the way we think about literature that Rubery discusses in his piece. It is also another form of a community moving further away from the idea of writing as a solitary experience. The original title I considered for this post was something like, Barn Burning written by Haruki Murakami, read by Andrea Lee, in a recorded conversation with Deborah Treisman, in which they also discuss the film version by Lee Chang-dong, and the loose relationship with William Faulkner’s story of the same name.

The Legend of Sleepy Hollow

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This assignment was a little difficult for me, as I do not like audiobooks. I prefer to read, especially if it is fiction. While thinking about possible choices, I remembered that I do own an audiobook, or rather my mother does. My parents record collection contains a small subcollection of audiobooks and sing-alongs from the 1960s and 1970s. Looking through the collection, I saw Disney’s The Legend of Sleepy Hollow and Rip Van Winkle from 1969. The Legend of Sleepy Hollow is, as Rubery describes, a twice-heard tale for me. I grew up with the record (and movies) but did not read Irving’s work until college. I decided to use this record and look at how the audio compares to the text version and what I overall prefer.

Considering the year it was made, the production quality is high but I am not surprised since Disney is known for its attention to detail. The narrator is famous voice actor Billy Bletcher, who worked with Disney on multiple projects. He is most known as the voice of Pete. As a professional, Bletcher’s narration blends seamlessly with the two songs included and the sound effects. He is also the only narrator, but does not sing the songs. Bletcher does not change his voice at all, but changes his tempo during the infamous chase scene. 

The recording is abridged, frankly much shorter than the time it took to read the actual text. The total time was approximately 15 minutes including the 2 songs. I was not completely surprised with the cuts, as Disney’s target audience is children and a lot of what was removed would not appeal to them. Looking at the cut text, it was over-long descriptions of the town, food, and what was on Van Tassel’s farm. All of the text mentioning “negroes” was removed, which I approved of. A lot of the original text was kept and even used in the lyrics for the two songs, “Ichabod Crane” and “Headless Horseman.” Songs are very popular with children, and a smart choice on Disney’s part. What changed the most was the chase scene. The Horseman on the record was given a sword and had a pumpkin head. In the text, there was no sword and a pumpkin was found on the ground the next day. I loved this version of The Legend of Sleepy Hollow. Rubery wrote about sound technology creating a “private acoustic space,” and I did appreciate that with this story. The eerie sounds of the trees swaying and the wind whistling kept me engaged and made this version more enjoyable than the text. I still have “Headless Horseman” in my head, and I am okay with that.

Since this recording was meant for children and different from the text, I wanted to see if I would feel the same with an unabridged version. I found a recording on LibriVox of the complete text. The narrator, Chip, had a pleasant voice, and the entire recording (with LibriVox introduction) was 1:23:23. The production was fine, and the complete text was read aloud. There were times when Chip seemed out of breath in the middle of a sentence and had to take a deep breath, but I will blame Irving’s long, detailed sentences. Chip’s voice did not change throughout, but did quicken a little during the chase scene and there were no sound effects.

Overall, I don’t think my mind has changed on audiobooks. I enjoyed the Disney version and Chip was a great narrator, but I prefer reading over listening. You have more control with text than with sound, and I need that. It was difficult for me to sit there listening to another dull description, when I can easily scan ahead with text. I will admit that it was easier to re-read sections in the text than with the audio I first chose. I couldn’t simply “re-wind” my record, but even the digital audio was difficult to navigate. Maybe it is possible to bookmark sections in Audible or other paid apps. I am willing to try audiobooks again, but with something in the horror or thriller genres.