Better than average and average is itself pretty good, the audiobook "Funny in Farsi". A 7 year old Iranian girl and her mother and father move from Iran to Whittier, California. The narrator is the author of the book and is now the grown woman who made that move as a child. Her father had been a graduate student in the US the previous year and knew something about American culture and life in the US. But, not as much as he thought he did. With energy, pep and humor, the author/narrator explores attending elementary school accompanied by her mother when neither of them can speak any of the local language at all. The parents had had servants in Iran, just as the Indians in "The Indian Doctor" (on Acorn streaming TV) had.
Imagine being used to planning the family meals, supervising the purchase of produce by the cook and suddenly switching to shopping and cooking on your own in a strange new land with strange equipment and none of the ingredients you are used to. Imagine siblings and relatives you love and are close to visiting from Iran (where is that, anyhow?) for a few seasons ! Not a few days or weeks but a few seasons. All the while you can't understand anyone or read anything.
Audible.com has the best prices I have found for audio books: for most, $12.46 a book. I find that downloading a file, moving into iTunes, loading it onto my iPod Classic gives me a few weeks of listening time. I haven't slotted audiobooks into my life except when I am driving. I usually drive a short distance, maybe five miles or so, once or twice a day. Thus, an audiobook lasts a while, usually about 2 weeks.
I find it easy and quick to give a friend an ebook from Amazon and I used to have the same deal with Audible.com. However, they have switched to offering memberships but not individual books. On the Amazon site, I can send a friend a gift card. The possible hassle of downloading, moving into iPod can often be shortened by use of the Audible.com app on a phone or a tablet. That app works like a Kindle and offers all the Audible.com audiobooks one owns.
