The year-end lists of best books of 2006 started appearing in late November and ended in early January, but those lists almost always refer to the print versions of each title.

Even so, who has time to read all the books on those lists? Not me. While pursuing a Master's degree at seminary, and since completing those studies, I have had little time for personal reading. However, I do drive to work every day in congested Northern Virginia. To redeem the time, I listen to books on CD.

Those of us who maximize our reading by listening to audio versions of books are often left to wonder if the audio versions match the quality of the print books. After all, anyone who listens to audiobooks knows that it's quite possible for the reader of each title to ruin an acclaimed novel (I never made it past disc 1 on the audio version of Walker Percy's "The Moviegoer" available at my local library), or to make a poorly reviewed novel come alive (Dylan Baker's reading of Tom Wolfe's "I Am Charlotte Simmons" is a tour de force one-man performance).

Three non-fiction titles from 2006 -- all of which appeared on numerous year-end best lists -- are also among the year's best audiobooks.

The most essential of the three titles addresses the most important issue of our day: the rise of global terrorism, and our efforts to thwart it. To say that Lawrence Wright's "The Looming Tower" is a must-read is to fail to do it justice. It's an amazingly detailed, fascinating look at the roots of Islamic radicalism, starting with the life of Sayyid Qutb, and ending with our post-9/11 efforts to track down terrorists around the globe. Wright lays out the history through insider accounts that almost defy belief in their detail; how is it that Wright gleaned such fascinating, illuminating detail? Whatever the answer, and whatever biases the work may reflect (some have accused it of being FBI-centric, at the expense of the CIA -- a charge that's difficult to refute, but which only underlines the intelligence turf wars that marred the country's efforts to prevent terrorist attacks), the end result is a landmark work that should be read by anyone interested in the details of Islamic radicalism.

Michael Lewis has become one of the finest chroniclers of American culture. His wonderful books include a dissection of the Internet revolution ("Next: The Future Just Happened") and how to build a competitive Major League Baseball franchise with one of the lowest payrolls in the sport ("Moneyball").

With "The Blind Side," Lewis takes on football -- specifically, the rise of the left tackle, who protects the blind side of right-handed quarterbacks. Such players are now among the highest paid in the sport. What makes Lewis' latest book so rewarding is the picture of a support network for Michael Oher, a black boy with the physique and skills ideally suited to play left tackle, but an impoverished intellectual capacity that threatens to keep him from fulfilling his obligations as a student.

Those obligations are to a Christian school, for Oher is taken in by a white Evangelical family who raises him as though he were their own son. The white mother, Leigh Anne Touhy, is a picture of Christian love, perseverance, and fierce determination. As an example of faith in action, Leigh Anne Touhy is tough to beat.

Finally, a book about food. Michael Pollan's "The Omnivore's Dilemma" will change the way you think about food, and might just change the way you eat. If nothing else -- and there's much more to the book than just this -- hearing of Pollan's evolution from skeptic to admirer of Joel Salatin and his Polyface farm in Virginia, where the cows are grass-fed and the grub-eating chickens lay delicious eggs, is worth the time invested in the book. Salatin, an outspoken Christian who raises his animals and grows his crops as a way of glorifying God, makes a convincing case for how to exercise "dominion" over the creation in this day and age.

I hope everyone reading this enjoys these three audio titles as much as I did. And, if you prefer the paper-and-ink versions, I'm sure you'll be just as delighted by the titles.

 Comments? Send them to me at crosswalkchristian@earthlink.net.