"American Gods" question

Does anyone know what the true first of Gaiman's "American Gods" is?
I see that both US and UK editions came out in 2001. A search on
abebooks.com did not shed any light on this issue, as both editions
were offered as "firsts."

The U.S. edition precedes by a few weeks.

For future reference, the best group to ask such questions in is
rec.collecting.books (to which this reply has been copied).

wrote:

Does anyone know what the true first of Gaiman's "American Gods" is?


I've started listening to audio books during my daily commute. I just
finished THE RULE OF FOUR, which I found surprisingly entertaining. It
is a biblio-mystery of a sort, but I found the bibliographic part
somewhat weak, while much of the rest is quite clever.

In any case, I was hoping to listen to AMERICAN GODS next, but the only
unabridged version available on CD seems to be the "MP3 CD" version,
which apparently can only be played on a computer. (I was also hoping
to listen to a recent and well-received legal novel, IN THE SHADOW OF
THE LAW, but it too seems unavailable in unabridged CD form.) Any
rhyme or reason to these (un)availabilities?

Makes me glad I'm a BOOK collector, though--really only one format to
worry about.

William M. Klimon
http://www.gateofbliss.com

On 28 Feb 2006, "William M. Klimon" wrote in
oups.com:

In any case, I was hoping to listen to AMERICAN GODS next, but the
only unabridged version available on CD seems to be the "MP3 CD"
version, which apparently can only be played on a computer. (I
was also hoping to listen to a recent and well-received legal
novel, IN THE SHADOW OF THE LAW, but it too seems unavailable in
unabridged CD form.) Any rhyme or reason to these
(un)availabilities?

The thing is that one can fit more onto a CD using MP3 encoding than
using standard audio encoding. Or, to put it another way, a long audio
book will fit on fewer CDs. I shudder to think how many CDs an
uncompressed version of 'American Gods' would take up, and perhaps the
publisher did too.

Paul
--
The Pink Pedanther
"Any plan where you lose your hat is a bad plan."

On 28 Feb 2006 00:32:45 GMT, Paul Andinach
wrote:

On 28 Feb 2006, "William M. Klimon" wrote in
roups.com:

In any case, I was hoping to listen to AMERICAN GODS next, but the
only unabridged version available on CD seems to be the "MP3 CD"
version, which apparently can only be played on a computer. (I
was also hoping to listen to a recent and well-received legal
novel, IN THE SHADOW OF THE LAW, but it too seems unavailable in
unabridged CD form.) Any rhyme or reason to these
(un)availabilities?

The thing is that one can fit more onto a CD using MP3 encoding than
using standard audio encoding. Or, to put it another way, a long audio
book will fit on fewer CDs. I shudder to think how many CDs an
uncompressed version of 'American Gods' would take up, and perhaps the
publisher did too.

Paul

My wife gets audio books through Audible.com - we download them and
copy them in compressed form to her portable player, although if you
wish you can burn them to CDs uncompressed to play in any CD player.
"American Gods" unabridged was 19 hours and change, and that would be
a big stack of CD disks (and probably a couple of hours disk swapping
in the course of burning them, too). Compressed, it would easily fit
onto one CD.

And (for Bill) there are numerous non-computer CD players now which
will play MP3 CDs. You can probably get a battery powered portable
one for less than $30. A little FM transceiver to plug into the
earphone jack and broadcast to your car radio, and you're in business.

Most recent DVD players will play them, too.

"R. Totale" wrote in message
...
....
And (for Bill) there are numerous non-computer CD players now which
will play MP3 CDs. You can probably get a battery powered portable
one for less than $30. A little FM transceiver to plug into the
earphone jack and broadcast to your car radio, and you're in business.

Most recent DVD players will play them, too.

"R. Totale" wrote in message
...
....
My wife gets audio books through Audible.com - we download them and
copy them in compressed form to her portable player, although if you
wish you can burn them to CDs uncompressed to play in any CD player.
"American Gods" unabridged was 19 hours and change, and that would be
a big stack of CD disks (and probably a couple of hours disk swapping
in the course of burning them, too). Compressed, it would easily fit
onto one CD.

And (for Bill) there are numerous non-computer CD players now which
will play MP3 CDs. You can probably get a battery powered portable
one for less than $30. A little FM transceiver to plug into the
earphone jack and broadcast to your car radio, and you're in business.

Most recent DVD players will play them, too.

And if you're insistent on having it in CD format, it's relatively easy to
produce CD's from MP3's. Roxio or Nero software will do it easily. Blank
CD's are very cheap. Though I suppose if that's what you wanted, you'd
prefer to buy it like that.

J/

Paul Andinach wrote:

The thing is that one can fit more onto a CD using MP3 encoding than
using standard audio encoding. Or, to put it another way, a long audio
book will fit on fewer CDs. I shudder to think how many CDs an
uncompressed version of 'American Gods' would take up, and perhaps the
publisher did too.


Yes, we could fit more books onto microfilm too, but they would not be
easily readable. The last thing I want to spend my time doing is
ripping audio books from MP3 to standard CD format.

I'm not sure what's so shutter-inducing about a big box of audio book
CDs. I've recently listened to unabridged versions of:

DUNE: THE BUTLERIAN JIHAD on 20 CDs
DUNE: THE MACHINE CRUSADE on 22 CDs
THE RULE OF FOUR on 11 CDs

and am currently listening to:

JONATHAN STRANGE AND MR. NORRELL on 26 CDs.

I have a long commute, so the more, the merrier for me.

William M. Klimon
http://www.gateofbliss.com

"William M. Klimon" wrote in message
ups.com...
Paul Andinach wrote:

The thing is that one can fit more onto a CD using MP3 encoding than
using standard audio encoding. Or, to put it another way, a long audio
book will fit on fewer CDs. I shudder to think how many CDs an
uncompressed version of 'American Gods' would take up, and perhaps the
publisher did too.

Yes, we could fit more books onto microfilm too, but they would not be
easily readable. The last thing I want to spend my time doing is
ripping audio books from MP3 to standard CD format.

I'm not sure what's so shutter-inducing about a big box of audio book
CDs. I've recently listened to unabridged versions of:

DUNE: THE BUTLERIAN JIHAD on 20 CDs
DUNE: THE MACHINE CRUSADE on 22 CDs
THE RULE OF FOUR on 11 CDs

and am currently listening to:

JONATHAN STRANGE AND MR. NORRELL on 26 CDs.

I have a long commute, so the more, the merrier for me.

I'd certainly prefer to have a single CD with the entire book on it if I
were on a commute. Unless I could guarantee that one CD's worth would last
the trip. I can just imagine reaching into the glove compartment to try to
find #17 and pulling out #7 by mistake. And the sound quality of MP3's for
spoken work is just fine. If one doesn't have MP3 capability in the car
that's another matter.

J/

On 27 Feb 2006 15:24:57 -0800, "William M. Klimon" wrote:

wrote:

Does anyone know what the true first of Gaiman's "American Gods" is?


I've started listening to audio books during my daily commute. I just
finished THE RULE OF FOUR, which I found surprisingly entertaining. It
is a biblio-mystery of a sort, but I found the bibliographic part
somewhat weak, while much of the rest is quite clever.

In any case, I was hoping to listen to AMERICAN GODS next, but the only
unabridged version available on CD seems to be the "MP3 CD" version,
which apparently can only be played on a computer. (I was also hoping
to listen to a recent and well-received legal novel, IN THE SHADOW OF
THE LAW, but it too seems unavailable in unabridged CD form.) Any
rhyme or reason to these (un)availabilities?

Makes me glad I'm a BOOK collector, though--really only one format to
worry about.

William M. Klimon
http://www.gateofbliss.com

Note that the top-of-the-line Subaru car radio will play mp3 CDs. Not that I have it, but it is described in the manual.

I would imagine that it isn't the only such device.

P. Taine

"P. Taine" wrote in message
...
....
Note that the top-of-the-line Subaru car radio will play mp3 CDs. Not
that I have it, but it is described in the
manual.

I would imagine that it isn't the only such device.

P. Taine