It’s been about a year since I signed up for an Audible subscription. (And it would explain why I’m going to need a couple extra hard drives soon, given that your average audiobook download is somewhere between a half and a full gigabyte of mp3 goodness.) I’ve been enjoying it. It’s one of those gee-I-sure-don’t-mind-having-that kind of expenses. And while this isn’t a plug, I do recommend the service: they’ve been good to me, and have kept me stocked to the gills with fine listens. The cool thing is that — in addition to my single (but more than ample) monthly download credit — I also get access to the occasional member sale, a sale wherein a small, mixed selection of books shows up on a privately linked list, selling those books for about five bucks each. It’s the equivalent of a bargain bin bonanza, but with the benefit that an audio file doesn’t get dog-eared from thousands of people fumbling through the pile. And it was in one of these sales, about eight months ago, where I picked up the first two (of four) novels of the Dan Simmons’ Hyperion series.

If you are not familiar, the series is a hard sci-fi epic spanning three centuries and the covert war between and amongst numerous factions of people and a variety of artificial intelligences, set on a galactic backdrop. And it really is quite epic. Sappy and far too philosophical at times, but epic and really worth the read.

I was doing the dishes last night, cutting up another batch of tomatoes for the freezer, and picking up a few of Claire’s toys while I plugged in my headphones and listened to the last half hour of the last book of the four novels. And while that doesn’t seem like it should be a blog-worthy event, you should know that having done a quick tally this morning of the total duration of those four full length, unabridged novels I came up with a number a few minutes short of ninety-six hours. Yeah. Ninety-six HOURS. That was a slog. An enjoyable slog, true. But as I noted in the title of this post, something of the equivalent to an audiobook marathon, even if I did spread it across eight months.

The craziest thing is, facing the prospect of a four and a half hour drive (for work) this afternoon, I’ve already got a new book queued up. Well, maybe I’ll listen to some music for the first bit…