What I'm Reading Now -- Autobiography of Mark Twain

Mark Twain wrote a three-volume biography, which famously was not to be released until 100 years after death.  It came out a couple of years ago, and I read a few excerpts in Time.  They were, of course, uproariously funny, and then and there I decided this was one book I needed on audio (and this was back before I was regularly listening to audiobooks).  It just seemed like something that should be read aloud, in order to enjoy the full humor of it.

I got it recently and was very nearly terribly disappointed.  Given that I was listening on audio,  I couldn't really tell what was going on in the book in terms of forewords, acknowledgments, introductions, etc.  The introduction (or something like it) was so long and so tediously detailed regarding things like paper usage, pagination, use of pen versus pencil, which edits were made by whom and in what order, etc., that I almost stopped listening, thinking that was what I had to look forward to for the remaining discs (and this is a long book).

Indeed, the opening remarks ran for nearly two full CDs.  I'm glad I toughed it out (though I did skip sections when they got too dull), because now I'm into Twain's actual words, and they contain all the humor and scathing wit I was hoping for, and then some.