We just got back from two weeks of what felt like non-stop driving -- a three-day trip to Canada, and another long weekend to see the inlaws in New Jersey, with a few longish errands in between. Now, we're pretty much homebodies, so any car trip over two hours rates a trip to the library to find some books on CD to help pass the time.

Ironically, for many years I avoided audio books. Our nightly ritual until the kids were well into their teens was a long read-aloud, and I loved it. But every now and then I'd come across a book that I simply couldn't read aloud well to my kids -- somehow I couldn't find the right voices or the right inflection or the right mood. Then one day I tried an audio version of The Wind in the Willows, a book I gamely tried to read but couldn't find my way into. It was just wonderful. And slowly but surely I came to love audio books.

Nowadays, when we're in the car, if I don't get books to play through the sound system then both kids will plug into their respective music players, leaving me to sit in silence -- or ::shudder:: listen to talk radio, if there aren't any classic rock stations available. So the challenge for me is to find something appropriate and engaging for the kids that I'll enjoy listening to as well. (I don't spend enough time in the car -- or anywhere else -- alone to listen to books just for me, sadly.) When the boys were little, choices were limited. I found that we were always good with humor: Car Talk, Dave Barry, even The New Yorker. Short stories and radio show excerpts are great for listening to in short bursts, which made Prairie Home Companion and Selected Shorts great options.

As the kids got older, our options expanded. Stephen King has always proved to be a good choice -- although if there's night driving involved then horror might not be the best genre. (King's autobiographical On Writing -- read by the author himself! -- was a nice alternative.) And nonfiction seemed to work well in audio versions, for some reason. One of the first books the kids and I listened to on a long trip was Shark Trouble by Peter Benchley, author of Jaws. The book was a fascinating look at how sharks fit into the ecosystem, and real-life stories of encounters between shark and human. It was only when we reached our destination -- the Jersey Shore -- that I realized I might have picked a better choice if I wanted the kids to try swimming in the ocean! After that, we stuck to titles that were more intellectual, like Freakonomics and Blink -- both excellent for starting discussions with your teens.

On our most recent trips, we returned to fiction and listened to Leviathan by Scott Westerfield. Apparently this is an illustrated novel, but from the vivid descriptions in the text, you never miss the images. I absolutely loved this alternative-reality/steampunk/war/adventure/coming of age novel. Although it seems to be written for young adults, it is totally absorbing for this not-so-young adult as well.

Now, the other thing that made me wary of audiobooks for so long was that when I read, there is a very definitive "voice in my head," with its own interpretation of the lines. It took me a long time to accept that someone else's voice could provide as intense an experience, but over the years I've found that the right reader can almost be as enjoyable as reading a book myself. And Leviathan definitely has the right reader: Alan Cumming. Although at the start I felt Cumming made his Austrian characters sound too much like Ah-nald, and his adult female is a little too prim -- but after a few hours his version won me over completely.

Having finished the book this past weekend, I'm now torn over whether to grab the sequels in dead-tree version, which I can read as fast as I like, or borrow the audio versions and find excuses to take the car out over the next couple weeks. Here's a great conversation between Cumming and Westerfield about the second book, Behemoth.

What kind of family-friendly audio books do you look for on long drives?