I use audio books to put myself to sleep so I always have one book that I'm barely interested in because I set the timer for 15 minutes and miss at least half of each book because I never backtrack to hear what I missed after I fell asleep. When I saw a biography of Mark Twain that was 45 hours long I jumped on it. Partly, I was very curious about how anyone would come up with 45 hours of book-worthy information about Mark Twain. What kinds of details were lurking?
I do not recommend the book unless you need something to put yourself to sleep. It is a dreadful amount of detail about things that are actually very sad. He was a talented writer but totally inept at managing the business end of being an author and even worse at managing his finances. Dismal.
It seems like the Clemens family did a lot of letter writing and journaling and most of it, maybe all of it, survived allowing the author of the biography to drone on for 45 hours. When Twain's wife was on her deathbed and the doctors advised no visitors, not even family members, Twain slipped notes under her bedroom door and one is included in the audiobook. It is a very generic mushy note. The thing that struck me was that they lived in the same house, but he did not see her for weeks at a time. It was a big house with plenty of hired help so there were people tending to her. But family stayed away. I wonder what it was like to be the invalid.
It's a very sleep inducing book, although there are a couple tidbits at hour 30 that I'll post tomorrow because they involve mail.
Not that anyone would be interested after this scathing review, but the book is Mark Twain by Ron Chernow. He wrote Hamilton, another massive tome.
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