“This is Audible.” These three words signaled the beginning of my six-hour road trip, and instilled in me a slight sense of dread. It wasn’t the possibility of bumper-to-bumper traffic, the inevitability of asshat drivers, or even the fact that I was 6’3 and making a road trip in a hatchback that worried me. Instead, what concerned me was how I was going to spend the next six hours in the car.

Let me explain. Although I consider myself progressive on a variety of issues, I happen to be very old fashioned on two that are dear to my heart: driving and literature. In terms of driving, I believe that if someone can’t drive stick, they can’t call themselves a true driver or car enthusiast. Also, I hate electric/hybrid cars, and will take a gas-guzzling V8 over something that sounds like a vacuum any day. As for literature, I’m a sucker for the old, dead, white, male authors that make up “Western canon.” Furthermore, I can’t stand reading from an e-reader (NOOK, Kindle, etc). Sure, I might need a backpack to carry around Tolstoy’s War and Peace, Proust’s In Search of Lost Time, and Joyce’s Ulysses, while an e-reader can carry these and thousands of other books, but leave me to my antiquated ways damnit. However, I have mixed feelings when it comes to audiobooks. On one hand, I find listening to a book to be nowhere near as enjoyable as reading one. On the other, I fondly remember listening to either Pat Conroy’s My Losing Season when my father would pick me up from basketball practice, or a Carl Hiaasen novel any other time I was in the car with him.

Now to get back to what I’m actually writing about. You might be wondering why would I spend 6 hours listening to something I may not even enjoy. Well, there were a variety of reasons. The first and foremost being that it was my second time making the six-hour road trip, and the last time, I only listened to music. By the time I got to my destination, I had listened to my entire music library at least twice. And at that point, even though I’m a huge fan of The Rolling Stones, Bob Dylan, Joe Cocker and Frank Sinatra, I was getting sick of listening to them. So this time around, I figured that if I got even sicker of listening audiobooks than I did listening to my music, I could swap out the former for the latter.

So what book did I listen to on the road trip, that I enjoyed enough to write an article about it? Well since I started a free Audible trial through Amazon, I actually got two free books that I can keep even after the free trial is up. My first choice was my personal favorite: City of Thieves by David Benioff, who also happens to be the co-creator of HBO’s Game of Thrones. My mother saw the book in Barnes and Noble one day and picked it up for my father and me, believing we would enjoy it. And holy hell was she right. I’ll probably end up writing a review of it some point, or maybe a personal piece about how it’s affected me, but rest assured it’s a fantastic book and I highly recommend it. Anyway, the audiobook version of City of Thieves was narrated by Ron Perlman, who you might know from the Hellboy series or Sons of Anarchy. Initially, I was worried he would stick to a gruff monotone for the entirety of the reading. But, since City of Thieves is a first person narrative, Perlman’s natural delivery complemented the reflective tone wonderfully. As for the second audiobook, I choose one we all had to read in school but many of us actually enjoyed: The Great Gatsby. This audiobook version of Fitzgerald’s magnum opus was narrated by Jake Gyllenhaal, known for his roles in movies such as Donnie Darko and Brokeback Mountain. Although I didn’t enjoy listening to The Great Gatsby as much as I did City of Thieves, what kept me enthralled was Gyllenhaal’s commitment to using a different voice for almost every character. At some points I felt as if I was listening in on conversations between the characters, which I admit is something I’ve never felt while reading. So in conclusion, if you’ve yet to listen to an audiobook out of fear of disappointment like I was, give it a try.