I recently started getting into audiobooks because I was seriously feeling the overwhelm of having a mile-high TBR and I figured this would be a way for me to get through more books. I had actually tried audiobooks several years ago, but the experience wasn’t good, so I had abandoned the effort. However, recently, as I was trying to figure out how to get through more of my TBR, I decided to look into audiobooks more and came across some articles that talked about understanding your own audiobook style. Something clicked in my brain and I realized that audiobooks didn’t work for me before because I was “reading” the wrong kinds of books via audio.
In assessing my own reading style overall, I realize that I have some perfectionist tendencies which cause me to take an overly disciplined approach to reading. This manifests in different ways for me, but mostly, it means that I need to be very focused and pay close attention to what I’m reading – an approach that works well for the types of books I’m usually drawn to -- i.e.: literary and historical fiction with gorgeous prose, contemporary fiction about relatable society issues, emotionally nuanced fiction that makes me both laugh and cry, etc.. I can’t read these types of books via audio because it’s hard for me to concentrate, as I am usually doing something else at the same time, which distracts me from paying as close attention as I need to in order for the story to sink in. So based on this, I figured out that the best books for me to “read” on audio are ones where I don’t need to pay as much attention and, more importantly, I don’t need to hang on to every single word – for me, this means memoirs, essay collections, narrative nonfiction, and some genre fiction such as mystery/thriller titles with compelling plots. This has quickly become a life-changer for me, as I am able to get through so many more books than I would have been able to otherwise – I just need to make sure I choose the right books.
One of the first books I decided to read on audio was John Stamos’s memoir If You Would Have Told Me. There are not too many Hollywood celebrities whose memoirs I’m interested in reading (in fact, I usually try to stay away from celebrity memoirs if I can help it, but that’s a discussion for another time), but as a huge Full House fan back in the day, I unsurprisingly put this on my TBR as soon as it came out.
I have to admit that I was a tad bit disappointed with this one, but I think that’s because I didn’t have the right expectations going into it. In my mind, the character that John Stamos will always be most associated with is Uncle Jesse from Full House, so I was anticipating that there would be a lot of behind-the-scenes insights about his experience on the show that, essentially, made him a household name. While Stamos does talk about his Full House days here, that is actually a relatively small portion of the book overall. Aside from the expected biographical stuff about his childhood and family (which I did find insightful), the chapters about his career mostly focus on his relationship with the Beach Boys, comedian Don Rickles, and the other entertainment industry folks who had mentored him throughout his long career. Since I had never watched any of Stamos’s performances outside of Uncle Jesse (though I knew of his stints on General Hospital and ER), I was admittedly less interested in these other aspects of his career, so I ended up zoning out a bit during some of those sections.
Overall, the sections I enjoyed most were the ones where Stamos talked about the life-long relationships he developed with the Full House cast and crew. The chapter on the late Bob Saget was especially moving and well done and of course, brought tears to my eyes. I also enjoyed the chapter about Stamos’s experience working with James Earl Jones on Broadway (I never would’ve guessed that Darth Vader was once a mentor to Uncle Jesse, lol). It was also heartwarming to read about Stamos’s close relationship with his parents and sisters, which was a nice departure from the typically strained and messy relationships that so many celebrities have with their families.
I’m glad I finally got a chance to read this and while it wasn’t what I expected, it was still worth the effort, especially on audio where I was able to get other things done at the same time. Speaking of the audiobook, I had a bit of an interesting experience that I wanted to share. One of the reasons I had decided to read this as an audiobook was because I was told that this would be narrated by Stamos himself, which I thought would help me get into the book easier. Maybe it has been too long since I’ve seen or heard John Stamos on TV so I’m not able to recognize his voice anymore, but the narrator honestly did not sound like him at all – in fact, for most of the book, I couldn’t help but think that perhaps my library copy of the audiobook was defective or something. Also, some of the sections where Stamos talked about some of the shows he was in, it seemed like he was reading copy from a plot summary or something similar, as those parts sounded awkward and overly professional, like reading from a script perhaps. But this could just be my novice experience with audiobooks – I think once I have more of them under my belt, these type of narration nuances will make more sense to me.
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