Even more than fifteen years after the fact, I still can hear James Woods telling me a story.

Back in 1993, Stephen King was a major presence in my household.  My older brother, though only in middle school, was going through a major Stephen King faze.  He was devouring as many King books as he could get his hands on.  Everything from the novella The Silver Bullet to the doorstop that is The Stand was located in my brother's room.  As most younger brothers do, I tried my best to get into whatever my brother liked.  He liked the Doors, I tried to like the Doors.  He started to play Dungeons&Dragons, so I started to play it too.  Looking back on it, I'm surprised at how much he allowed me to tag along in so many of his pastimes.

During a family vacation, my family found itself in a bookstore.  This was not an unusual occurrence, as my entire family were voracious readers.  Somehow, either through gentle prodding by my brother towards my parents or by simply having enough money, my brother bought a book-on-tape version of one of Stephen King's short stories.  It was Secret Window, Secret Garden, a short story found in the collection Four Past Midnight.  Some actor whom I'd never heard of named James Woods had somehow been tapped to read this particular story.  My brother listened to it on his walkman in the car during the rest of the vacation.  When he was finished, I talked him into allowing me to listen to it.

I cannot tell you where we went or what we did during the time my family stepped outside of the car.  All I remember is that James Woods told me a story during that road trip.

Years later, when I had my first monotonous job at a local library, I was allowed to listen to my walkman as I did my work.  After becoming bored with music, I tried old time radio shows.  While Fibber McGee and Molly, Suspense, and Mercury Theater on the Air were nice and all, I wanted something else.  These was 1998 and while Harry Potter had yet to become the phenomenon it would eventually become in the mainstream, librarians were already in the know.  After some prodding by a librarian, I popped Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone in my walkman and was transported once again.

This time, the culprit was Jim Dale.  Throughout the years, I would find out that Jim Dale has won just about every single award that is available for those performers who read audiobooks.  He has deserved every single one.  The life that Dale infused into the characters that Rowling created was infectious.  Different accents were used.  Different speech patterns were presented.  In each case, it helped draw me further into the story in a way that simply reading couldn't do for me.  I remember being so engrossed in the story, that after finishing up work one day, I refused to leave the library until I'd finished the end of The Prisoner of Azkaban.  And I was still about an hour and a half to go.  These days, I'm a bit more willing to hit the pause button when necessary.

I eventually became a librarian myself, if for no other reason than to keep myself close to the stories that I love and the new stories I've yet to try out.  My iPod is constantly loaded with at least one audiobook while my iTunes account has a good dozen to choose from when that one is finished.  I listen to audiobooks when I driving, when I'm shopping for groceries, when I'm going for my lunch break walk, and even when I'm playing the occasional Wii game that doesn't require me to actually listen to it.  Listening to audiobooks has even changed the books I choose to read.  While I might not have the patience to actually read Pride and Prejudice, I'd have no problem listening to it.  I might not have time to sit down to read I, Robot, but I would enjoy it while doing the dishes.  It's a lifestyle choice and it's a great one.

And it's all because James Woods once told me a story.