Boxall's 1001 Books You Must Read Before You Die discussion

As a spinoff to the Best Boxall Audiobooks, I thought I would start a thread about books that really SHOULD NOT be read as audio books. Off the top of my head I can think of four.

Infinite Jest - If you purchase the audiobook it should come with a PDF that contains the endnotes. They are essential to the book. So don't get it from the library as I don't think they have a mechanism for getting you the PDF. At least not that i know of.

House of Leaves - This book is very stylistic and the fonts, page layouts, and more lend to the overall reading of the book.

Albert Angelo - With holes cut in some of the pages, revealing later text.... not sure how they would do that in audio format...

The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time - I did ear-read this, after I eye-read it. And it worked out ok because i was able to remember the illustrations. It's possible, but I think you get more from the actual book since the illustrations are referred to in the text.

What about On Beauty? Somebody told me in my LIT 100 class that it was meant to be read while contemplating certain paintings. Are the paintings included in the book? Or can one listen while still viewing the same art?

Do you have more? Do you know of any other books that the physical copy is pretty much mandatory?

Disagree with these? let me know.

H(A)PPY by Nicola Barker and Watchmen come to mind.

One of the Sebald books has a lot of illustrations, too, if I recall.

For me it’s “White Tiger”. I was married to a man of Indian decent for 20 years. The audiobook has a white narrator faking an Indian accent. It was so so so terrible. I don’t know if most of it was because I could tell it was fake, being around the accent for so long, or cultural appropriation — why couldn’t they get any one of a number of Indian actors to read?! (I know I listened to at least one audiobook read by a British actor of Indian decent that had the subtle touch of a Indian accent in it.)
But White Tiger was nails on the chalkboard for me.

All of Sebald‘s books have illustrations or pictures, so audiobooks don‘t make much sense.
The same is true for Blood and Guts in High School, but I wouldn‘t recommend this book in any form!

Diane wrote: "H(A)PPY by Nicola Barker and Watchmen come to mind.

One of the Sebald books has a lot of illustrations, too, if I recall."

Watchmen! how could I forget Watchmen.. of course.

Ellinor wrote: "The same is true for Blood and Guts in High School, but I wouldn‘t recommend this book in any form!"

I completely agree.

Sean wrote: "Albert Angelo - With holes cut in some of the pages, revealing later text.... not sure how they would do that in audio format..."

My copy doesn't have the holes (I have the B.S. Johnson Omnibus edition which includes Albert Angelo). The text is arranged in a strange way, though.

paintings are not in On Beauty

Sarah wrote: "paintings are not in On Beauty"

Thanks Sarah

Nadja by André Breton -- has 44 photographs related to the story.

Perhaps, anything by Beckett and Bernhard -- they would be hard to listen to with the long involved sentences and the nonsense words in Beckett (though a little might be interesting).

Pale Fire by Nabokov. Back and forth with the footnotes!?!

What about Dictionary of the Khazars? It's been quite a while since I read it.