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Last week the New York Times Book Review did a couple of nice features on audiobooks, an under-reviewed genre. The Times stories “Wired for Sound” and “The Mind’s Ear,” got me to thinking about audio.

I’ve always used audiobooks on car trips, where I dug into things I might not otherwise read in a book book, and I’ve enjoyed audiobooks on the treadmill at the Ashland YMCA (though I exercise harder with music than with books or cable news). And when I had eye surgery, I listened to all 10 disks of David Hajdu’s The Ten-Cent Plague, read by Stefan Rudnicki. Perhaps my New Year’s resolution should be to get more systematic about listening to audiobooks.

So seeing the Times pieces and making my pre-resolution, I was pleasantly surprised to learn that two Blackstone audiobooks were nominated for the 2012 Grammy Awards, in the wordy category “Best Spoken Word Album (Includes Poetry, Audio Books & Story Telling).” I had forgotten there was such a category, but I shouldn’t have: Barack Obama won in 2005 and 2008.

The three-hour “Hamlet” performance was produced and directed by Ira Burton and based on the 2010 Oregon Shakespeare Festival production directed by Bill Rauch. It’s part of an OSF-Blackstone collaboration which aims to produce audio versions of all of Shakespeare’s plays over the next 17-25 years. The “Hamlet” audio features almost the entire cast of the OSF 2010 production, including Dan Donohue in the lead. It’s great to see the debut production in the running for a Grammy.

And congratulations too on Blackstone’s nomination for “The Mark of Zorro,” read by Val Kilmer. The winners will be announced at the 54th Grammy Award ceremony on February 12, 2012.

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This morning I read this piece about writers and their book collecting habits, content in the knowledge that aside from a few dozen dictionaries I don’t really collect books.

Today is Thanksgiving and as I’ve been “helping” in the kitchen, I noticed my wife’s collection of Peter Pauper Press cookbooks, which appeared from the 1950s through the 1980s. Unlike dictionaries, these are small volumes, 5 x 7 and less than 80 pages each. And they are full of art, doggerel, and great recipes. Simple New England Cookery, for example, has this turkey recipe:

Clean and dress turkey. Rub insides with salt and pepper. Stuff neck cavity. Fasten with metal pins. Fill body cavity loosely with stuffing. Rub with butter or make a paste of ½ cup butter , ¾ cup flour; spread over all parts of turkey.

You know the rest: roast uncovered at 300-325 degrees for 15 to 20 minutes per pound. Turn the turkey midway. It’s done when “the meat pulls away from the leg bone.”

Check out Simple American Cookery for a pumpkin pie recipe (and illustrations featuring regional quilt patterns). For doggerel, check out Simple Continental Cookery, which introduced international cuisines to American home cooks. This volume (as with the others) begins with poetry:

It’s a continental weakness,
To dote on fancy food,
So we offer you some recipes,
That are ravishingly good.

Here’s a bibliography of Peter Pauper Press cookbooks. The only little book that worries me is Cooking to Kill! The Poison Cookbook, which is billed as “The cookbook to end all cooks.” Ulp.