What’s My Favorite Audiobook?

This post is part of the Wednesday Weekly Blogging Challenge, hosted by Long and Short Reviews. Check out other bloggers at this week’s post.

This week’s prompt: “Audiobooks I’ve enjoyed.”

It’s a short list.

I’ve said before that I don’t necessarily process long sections of spoken audio very well. I can watch a movie or a performer or a speaker just fine, but if it’s just audio, I lose interest and focus easily.

It took me a long while to figure that out, and it may be something that developed over time.

At any rate, I’ve only listened to one audiobook that I remember.

The catch is, I’m not sure which book it was. <grin>

I know it was a Clive Cussler book, and that I listened to it in the mid-90s as I drove all over Columbus. I lived on the West and South sides while I went to school on the East Side and worked in Obetz. That was a lot of driving each week, so I borrowed a “Book on Tape” from the Columbus Public Library because that’s how you did audiobooks back then: on tape.

They came in a big binder with hard plastic pages holding the tapes. I feel like this particular book had five or six cassettes.

One thing I remember about this one was that it was more akin to a radio drama than a basic audiobook. Cussler (and probably the entire audiobook industry) went through a phase where books had multiple cast members, sometimes advertised as “full cast recordings,” and even included sound effects. I also remember being tickled to death when I recognized someone on a radio commercial as having been the primary narrator in whatever book this was.

A big chunk of the action involved a car chase through the streets of Havana as Dirk Pitt tried to prevent an explosion on a ship in Havana Harbor. One of the cars in the chase scene was a ’57 Chevy, that much I remember. Cussler often included classic cars in his books, and the backmatter usually had Cussler sitting in whatever car was in the story. His personal collection numbered over 100 classic cars, and you can visit the museum in Arvada, Colorado, or see much of it online.

The ship exploded, and I remember that it happened at a chapter break. The next chapter opened with “The SHIPNAME disappeared.” Such a short line, but with so much drama.

Duck.AI, built around ChaptGPT 5.0 mini, seemed pretty certain it was Vixen 03. The GPT client tells me that the book “includes action in Cuba: part of the plot involves events tied to Havana and Cuban waters, and there is a scene with a 1957 Chevy (a ’57 Chevy) used in a chase,” and that it used multiple narrators.

But I also wonder if it could be Cyclops. “Yes—Cyclops fits that description. In Clive Cussler’s Cyclops the major ship explosion occurs late in the book (roughly the final quarter), the plot includes Caribbean/Cuban connections, multiple POVs, and several action set pieces including vehicle chases.”

Hmm. Nothing definitive, and the online plot summaries aren’t all that helpful. Plus, my library doesn’t have Cyclops or Vixen 03 for me to loook at to be sure.

So there you have it. I’ve only listened to one audiobook, and while I recall that I enjoyed it, I can’t remember exactly what book it was.

Then again, it was almost thirty years ago.

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