Museum of Innocence by Orhan Pamuk, read by John Lee.

Listening  to a book is not always the same as reading it.  Turkish Nobel prize winner Orhan Pamuk's novel Museum of Innocence is long and tedious, a book that starts to hold your interest and then falls flat, making you want to skip to the end (indeed the author suggests that you do so in the early part of the book.) This is the story of a middle-aged man's obsession with a young girl he seduced -- and his subsequent exploitation by the girl and her family. Along the way we learn a fair amount making about popular Turkish movies. When one of my book club members offered it as a selection, I reread Museum more closely, and in a last minute stroke of inspiration, checked out and downloaded the audio version from Overdrive. I found John Lee's reading (he deftly handles those Turkish names with odd spellings ) encouraging and good company when walking or gardening.

I still feel that the author's Istanbul would have been a better selection for the book club, My Name is Red is the best novel I've read by him, and wonder if he would have won the Nobel Prize if Museum of Innocence was published before and not afterward. Anyway, the point of this digression is that sometimes listening to the audio version can be a better experience than reading the print!

Here's a link to print and non-print versions of Museum of Innocence.