Smoke Coming From My Ears

I recently started listening to an audiobook for a book that was recommended somewhere. (I can't remember where.) The idea sounded interesting and I love a good mystery set on a sentient spaceship.

The first six minutes of the audiobook was the narrator reading a binary number.

Let me put that a different way. After the title, author, and narrators' names were announced, the first narrator spent SIX MINUTES reading "zero-one-one-zero-one-..." slowly and carefully.

Unfortunately, I had started the audiobook before pulling out of a parking space on my 30-minute drive back home. By the time I got to a red light, I was more than ready to hit the "skip forward 15 seconds" button. Again. Again. Then the light turned green and the ones and zeroes kept going. Only at the second light was I stopped long enough to skip to the actual words in the first chapter.

The rest of the first chapter didn't do it for me, and I DNF'd the audiobook after I pulled into my garage. Might I have made it to a more interesting part if I hadn't been so irritated by the beginning? We'll never know.

(I was not the only listener to react poorly to this. The Goodreads reviews were interesting. Also, it happens again another three times during the book.)

PSA for anyone making audiobooks

Authors: Having a string of binary at the start of a chapter isn't as cool as you think it is. Just don't do it.

Audiobook producers: If the book you are hired to produce has a binary string like that, push back. Point out that it will make a terrible listening experience. There's actually no law that says the audiobook has to match the written book.

Narrators: If you have been hired for this book, you had better be reading those numbers like you are narrating a horse race and zero and one are neck-and-neck near the finish line. Or like Father John Joseph gave you 200 Hail Marys as penance for swearing in class and you only have five minutes to knock them out. Faster. No, faster still. You can do it. We don't care if we can't understand you. Now isn't the time to enunciate. Now is the time to skip four lines and keep going. Nobody will ever notice.

Obligatory Self-promo

Want to listen to a book that doesn't start with a six-minute binary string? Try Shift Happens: Anyone can shift if they have a bad day. But what should you do when you suspect there's another reason a dragon is destroying the city and your co-workers are too busy cosplaying the macho heroes of a television show to listen?