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I wrote about my love for audiobooks in 2007, but it’s long past time for an update. At last count I had 96 audiobooks on my iPod, which seems a bit much even to me.

I started out only listening to audiobooks while I was driving. It made long trips more bearable to have a story to concentrate on, rather than just music. Later, I had a job that involved night shifts, a lot of mindless busywork and a lot of waiting on copy editors. It didn’t require my full attention, so I began listening to audiobooks while I was at work. Now I listen to audiobooks as I fall asleep at night, because it lets me drift off without the boring part of waiting to fall asleep.

In the beginning, I would only listen to an audiobook if I had read its paper version, but that’s changed. The thought behind it was that if my attention drifted, I wouldn’t be lost when my mind returned to the story. It was solid reasoning, but then I started branching out to books that iTunes recommended based on my purchase history. (Darn you, marketing wizards!) Now I have no problem buying audiobooks that I haven’t read before, but if it’s new to me, I can’t listen to it while falling asleep. I save that for the old classics.

Here are 10 more audiobooks that I highly recommend:

• The Big Over Easy – I mentioned this Jasper Fforde book in an earlier post. Nursery Crime Detective Jack Spratt solves the murder of Humpty Dumpty. It’s fantastic. I’d listen to his Thursday Next series too, but they’re abridged recordings, and I am completely opposed to abridged recordings.
• A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court – This is the first Mark Twain book I ever read, about a 19th-century blacksmith who time travels back to King Arthur’s Court and makes himself the power behind the throne. Listening to it as an adult makes me realize how many 19th-century allusions and social commentaries I missed when I read it as a 9-year-old.
• Ghost Map: The Story of London ’s Most Terrifying Epidemic – This is about an 1854 cholera epidemic that was halted by John Snow, a father of epidemiology. My favorite section explains the miasma theory of disease and why people clung to it for so long.
• Good Omens – This just came out as an audiobook, and I was thrilled. It’s the hysterical collaboration between Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman, following the last days before Armageddon and the various angels, demons and people trying to prevent it.
• In a Sunburned Country – This is Bill Bryson’s affectionate account of traveling in Australia. He’s enthralled by the myriad ways the country has to kill you, including the world’s most poisonous snakes, spiders and jellyfish. My favorite parts are when he travels with a companion, one of whom makes the vow that if stranded in the murderous desert, he will let Bryson drink his urine. Screamingly funny in places, and it makes me want to travel there, which is after all the point of a travel book.
• Into Thin Air – Author Jon Krakauer reads his first-person account of the 1996 Everest disaster that killed eight people. He can’t do accents at all, so everything is mostly read in the same voice.
• The Lightning Thief – This is the first book of an entertaining children/teen series about a boy who discovers that he’s the son of Poseidon and is sent to a hero-training summer camp with other children of Greek gods. It’s being made into a movie, and I am cringing in anticipation of the final product.
• The Man in the Brown Suit – One of Agatha Christie’s lesser-known works, this is the story of Ann Beddingfeld, a recent orphan who longs for adventure. Seeing herself as a movie heroine, she follows cryptic clues to hunt down a murderer and travels to South Africa on the trail of the Man in the Brown Suit. It has a colonialist mindset, but it’s very entertaining.
• The Unthinkable: Who Survives When Disaster Strikes – and Why – A journalist looks at disaster dynamics and how people cope in life-or-death catastrophes. I don’t listen to this one when I’m trying to fall asleep.
• The Westing Game – If you left childhood without reading this whodunnit mystery, then I pity you. But it’s not too late!

• Puppets – This was especially a problem when I lived in Prague for three months. There are neighborhoods in Old Town where display after display of marionettes line the streets. It was really unnerving because, as everybody knows, puppets come to life at night and hang over your bed to watch you sleep.
• Raccoons - It’s their little hands, and the way they rub them together. They’re super creepy. I think this stems from childhood, when the top floor of my grandparents’ four-story house was inhabited by three destructive raccoons and I was forbidden to go up there.
• Possums - Tail like a rat, pointy teeth and snout, hisses at you. A couple of weeks ago my mom came home from her honeymoon in New Zealand and she brought me back socks that are a blend of merino wool and possum “fibre.” They give me the heebie-jeebies, but I forced myself to wear them once.
• Attic of my childhood home – It’s over the garage, and to get up there you have to pull on a cord, then unfold the rickety ladder and climb up it. I hate that ladder. Then once you’re up there, you have to be very careful to walk on the beams only, because the floor is just drywall and you’d plummet right through it. There is also the strong possibility of mice. Our Christmas decorations are stored up there, and one time my parents asked me to go up and get the boxes and start decorating the tree before they got home. They came back and found me in tears, unable to make myself climb more than halfway up the ladder.
• Escalators – Oh, I use them. But I don’t like them. Regular stairs don’t have to have an emergency button.
• Check Into Cash commercials – Okay, this is the weirdest one. Check Into Cash is some payday loan business. During the commercial, people repeatedly say “Check Into Cash.” As they say it they draw a checkmark in the air with their finger, and it’s animated to draw an actual red checkmark that appears on-screen and, if I remember correctly, it sort of shimmers. Not exactly the stuff of nightmares, right? But I actually have to change the channel or leave the room while it plays, it gives me the willies so badly. It might be on YouTube, but I can’t look it up for you guys because that would involve seeing it.

It’s been a long, long time since last we met – and I’ve read many, many books. Let’s start this up again, shall we?

I’d like to start out by writing a little bit about the author of “Shades of Grey” and his prior works. I read Jasper Fforde*’s first book, “The Eyre Affair,” when it came out in 2001.  Set in a world in which literature has the same importance as sports or celebrities have in ours, it follows a Special Operations officer, Thursday Next, as she tries to thwart literary crimes. There are now five books in the Thursday Next series, and the sixth will be published in January 2011. I highly recommend them, but I do advise you to read “Jane Eyre” or the Cliff’s Notes version before reading “The Eyre Affair.”

His second series is about Detective Jack Spratt, head of the Nursery Crime Division in Reading, England. With his sergeant Mary Mary, he investigates crimes committed by (or perpetrated on) nursery characters. In the first book, “The Big Over Easy,” Jack must solve Humpty Dumpty’s murder. (You didn’t think he just fell off that wall all on his own, did you?) In the second book, “The Fourth Bear,” he solves Goldilocks’ disappearance, uncovers a nuclear cucumber conspiracy, hunts down the cakey serial killer The Gingerbread Man, and answers the riddle of the three bears’ porridge-temperature differential. This is my favorite of his series, and I listen to both books on my iPod all the time. I’m eager to read the final installment, “The Last Great Tortoise Race,” which will be published in 2011 or 2012.

In the first book of his new trilogy, “Shades of Grey: The Road to High Saffron,” Fforde has created another fantastical universe, and it’s the strangest one yet. In a world where all people have color blindness, your caste in society is determined by what colors you can see. Purples are the aristocracy, Yellows are the law enforcers, Greens are higher than Blues, and Blues are higher than Reds. Greys occupy the lowest rung of society and are relegated to menial labor. Artificial colors that can be seen by everyone are available but costly, and must be processed by using scrap color dug up from the ruins of a past civilization (us, presumably).

Every aspect of life is strictly controlled by the state, and there are many rules to define what technology can be used or produced. For example, it is forbidden to manufacture spoons, so spoons are jealously guarded and passed down through generations. “Leapbacks” are scheduled regularly, which means that old knowledge and technologies are removed and banned. Those who run afoul of the system and lose too many merit points are sent to the rebooting facility, and are never heard from again. Like in any restrictive society, people figure out how to get around these strict rules by obeying the letter of the law but not the spirit. “Train tracks” were banned, but not “train track,” so all the trains run on one rail.

Eddie Carmine, a Red from a Green sector, travels with his father to the town Vermillion, on the outer fringes of Red Sector West. He is eager to return home because he hopes to marry Constance Oxblood and run the string factory owned by her powerful Red family, but is thwarted at every turn. He falls in love with a violently disagreeable Grey named Jane, who at the beginning of the narration has just shoved Eddie headfirst into a carnivorous plant. Together they begin to solve the mystery behind a swatchman’s death, the ancient civilization’s end, a ghost town named High Saffron, the deadly mildew and what goes on at Reboot. While some of these mysteries become clearer, there’s plenty left to explain in his next “Shades of Grey” book, to be published in 2012.

Verdict: 7.5 out of 10. It’s not my favorite Fforde book, but it’s an excellent debut for a series that promises to be mind-bending and highly intelligent.

* – Full Disclosure: I met Fforde at a book signing in Chicago during the publicity tour for his second Thursday Next book, “Lost in a Good Book.” He was lovely, and he helped me to coerce a friend into reading “The Eyre Affair” by writing “Now you have to read this book. – Jasper Fforde” on the inside cover. So I’m quite fond of him.

There’s nothing more delightful than a book that makes me feel smart while I’m reading it.

I don’t mean in a “Oh my God, this is such simplistic writing” kind of way. More like “Hey, I totally recognize that obscure cultural/literary reference!” It’s why I like reading Jasper Fforde. It’s a reward for the vast amounts of usually useless trivia that’s taking up shelf room in my brain.

The premise of “American Gods” is that all the immigrants who came to America brought their gods with them. The people who crossed the Bering Strait brought their animal deities, the Vikings brought Odin, the Irish brought the Morrighan and leprechauns – and here the gods languish, as the people who once worshiped them die out or stop believing.

But here in the New World, we created our own gods to worship: Highways, Cell Phone, Internet and Credit Cards. And the new gods are ready to make war on the old gods.

Into this steps Shadow, a recently released ex-con whose wife has just been killed in car with another man. A mysterious stranger named Wednesday offers him a job as a bodyguard, and suddenly he is caught up in the schemes of a god.

As a kid, I was very into mythologies. Greek, Norse, Egyptian, you name it. Neil Gaiman drops hints and references to hundreds of different mythologies, and figuring out all the clues awoke the 8-year-old nerd in me. (To be honest, that little girl is never sleeping very heavily.)

That’s not to say that I would let an 8-year-old read this book. It is adult and it is dark.

Verdict: 8.5 out of 10. As a bonus, I got to break out my rusty Russian skills! Such as they are.

My family is crazy – just like everyone else’s family. But there are books that remind me why I’m so grateful to have them. And this is one of them.

“Seeing Me Naked” is undoubtedly chick lit, but hey, I’m not a snob. I like chick lit, and this is a good example of when it works.

Elisabeth Page is the daughter of a W.A.S.P. socialite and a celebrated Kerouac-like writer. (Let that combo roll around in your mind for a little while. In the words of Ralph Wiggum, it tastes like burning.)

She and her brother, Raskolnikov or “Rascal,” have always lived under their father’s shadow. Rascal responded by setting out on a literary path of his own. Elisabeth responded by becoming a pastry chef. Neither of these choices is respected by their father.

One of the things that really works in this book is the way Elisabeth’s job completely consumes her life. I have a friend who is a chef in a Chicago restaurant, and I only get to talk to him every 10 months or so. He is always working. Elisabeth’s social life is pretty much restricted to semi-annual hookups with her childhood sweetheart Will, a foreign correspondent to war-torn countries. And that particular relationship is far from healthy.

Now, the inevitable love interest: Elisabeth donates a cooking lesson for one of her mother’s charity auctions, and regular-guy Daniel is the top bidder. He’s a basketball coach at UCLA. They hit it off, and slowly and painstakingly try to build a normal relationship. You know, the hard kind, with compromises, disappointments and insecurities.

So, you know, heartwarming. But my favorite part of the book was the Page family dynamics – and again, they make me super happy to be a member of the Rawles family.

Verdict: 7 out of 10. Light and fluffy, but with a bite.

I feel about extreme mountain climbing the way I feel about the Discovery Channel’s Shark Week. It’s fascinating as a spectator, but there’s no way I’m climbing into that steel cage with a bucket of chum.

One of my favorite books is Jon Krakauer’s “Into Thin Air,” an account of a disastrous 1996 Everest expedition. When I was browsing through an airport bookstore and saw that Ed Viesturs had been on Everest at the same time, I bought this to hear a different side of the story.

“No Shortcuts to the Top” is Viesturs’ memoir about climbing all 14 of the world’s 8,000-meter peaks. It’s an incredible (and incredibly dangerous) feat which has been equaled by fewer than 20 other people.

I haven’t read a lot of memoirs, so maybe this is standard fare. But he came across as kind of a jerk in some places, like when he dishes about a booty call with a French climber. Dude, don’t kiss and tell, particularly when the woman was killed while climbing and can’t contradict you.

There was also a passive-aggressive section about calling his wife on a satellite phone while in the Himalayas. She was six months pregnant with their second child, and he didn’t call her for four days while on Annapurna, the deadliest mountain on earth.

A sat phone can be a blessing, but it’s also a pain. Paula and I never had an explicit agreement about how often I should call. But sometimes she expected that I would call more often than I did. When I’m on a mountain, I need to be focused, in the moment. There are times when the last thing I want to think is, Oh, I’ve got to make a call back to the States. Yet once you have a family and kids, the importance of staying connected increases.

Some people might have thought Paula was being unreasonable, but I took full blame for not calling. It’s just my nature. When other people get upset, I feel as if it’s my fault.

Jerk. “Some people might have though Paula was being unreasonable…” I hope she writes her own book someday.

But aside from those moments of douchery, it was an informative and interesting book. I still prefer “Into Thin Air” because of Krakauer’s journalistic style of writing. I don’t think that memoirs are my thing.

The lasting impression I’ll take away from this book is the same one I take away from Shark Week: Those guys are crazy. In the acknowledgments, Viesturs names nine friends who have died while climbing. Nine. I’m staying at sea level, thank you very much.

Verdict: 6.5 out of 10. It gets an extra half point because it has a very thorough index, which I think is an absolute must for non-fiction books.

I’ve been a horribly inconsistent blogger, so in penance I’ll admit something embarrassing. I spent my evening listening to Kenny G’s Christmas album while my dad taught me how to dance the foxtrot. Beat that! The only possibly way it could have been dorkier is if I’d been wearing a spangled Christmas sweater.

I was watching the TV movie Frosty Returns (look, I have only basic cable, my options are limited) on CBS when a little cartoon girl uttered a sentence that really struck me. It was a command from which no good can come: “Put this on and get in the box.”

Being a fast reader definitely has its advantages. But a big disadvantage is that I run through books like crazy, and to be honest, I can’t afford the bookstore tab.

I’m on vacation right now, and since Monday night I’ve read the following books, in order:

• “Big Boned,” by Meg Cabot
• “The No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency,” by Alexander McCall Smith
• “The Book of Lost Things,” by John Connolly
• “Pearls of Lutra,” by Brian Jacques
• “Tears of the Giraffe,” by Alexander McCall Smith
• “Make Him Look Good,” by Alisa Valdes-Rodriguez
• “The Gun Seller,” by Hugh Laurie (Okay, this one is only partially finished; I’m trying to stretch it out for the plane ride home.)

Denise Mina’s “Garnethill“ isn’t just dark. It’s a black hole that sucks you in and consumes you.

I’ve gone on record saying that I don’t like movies and books that deal extensively with mental illness. For the most part, I think that this is still true; I have no intention of running off to buy “The Bell Jar.” But even though a hefty percentage of this book takes place in a psychiatric hospital and the heroine is forever teetering on the brink of a complete breakdown, I found it really enthralling.

“Garnethill” is the first of a trilogy of books (”Garnethill,” “Exile” and “Resolution“) set in Glasgow. The heroine, Maureen O’Donnell, is a young alcoholic who is mere months out of a psychiatric hospital and is dealing with the aftermath of childhood abuse at the hands of her father. One morning after another bender, she awakes to find her married psychologist boyfriend slaughtered in her apartment. In her efforts to clear herself, she uncovers a series of abuses against mentally ill women in the same hospital in which she herself was confined. More murder and mayhem ensues.

I know, right? The very description makes you want to slit your wrists to get it over with, doesn’t it?

Well, I can’t really explain it, but even though it’s an incredibly dark series, it never gets bogged down beneath the giant weight of its own pathos. I mean, the most sympathetic member of her family is her drug-dealing brother Liam – that should be almost cartoonishly pathetic. Maureen is barely able to cling to the remnants of her own sanity, and her actions consistently made me say, “Oh Maureen, what in God’s name are you doing?” But she does cling on, and her actions are believable given her circumstances.

If you do read “Garnethill,” I’d highly suggest reading the entire trilogy. Even though it seems kind of impossible, “Resolution” does resolve all the plot threads in a satisfying and really unexpected way.

Verdict: 8 out of 10 for the whole trilogy. It won a bunch of literary prizes, and it’s not hard to see why.