Whenever I go anywhere it is a long drive. Church on Sunday: 35 miles, 45 minutes to an
hour, shopping once or twice a month at least 100 miles and a couple hours of
drive time, one way. To say I live
rurally is the understatement of the year.
I like it, occasionally it is a little frustrating but you learn to
adjust your lifestyle and tell yourself that you never liked eating takeout
anyway! With all this windshield time I
have discovered audiobooks. I always
thought audiobooks were the lazy way to read, but now I have discovered it is a
good way to maximize drive time. When
the kids are in the car we listen to books like Lord of the Rings, and when it
is just me I swing between novels and books about politics and social
issues. In the privacy of my car I can
shout about the stupidity of bureaucracy or have an aha moment about my
personal journey. I have learned that I
have some specific preferences in audiobooks.
One is that I hate abridged books.
I don’t know who chooses what to remove to shorten these books but they
get on my nerves in much the same way that readers digest condensed books do. It just makes the book seem lacking, and,
with fiction, the plot becomes disjointed and character development suffers. It is worse than making a good book into a
movie! Now I realize that I am probably
in the minority but I feel like the book suffers from abridgement. I view books
as a completed work of art and hacking it up a crime. I enjoy a good narrator and a poor one can
totally ruin the experience for me. I
like dramatized versions occasionally but usually just a good reader is the
best. .
I wish I could figure out how to get my textbooks on audio, I would be
able to use drive time to accomplish long reading assignments. Overall
I have become a big fan of audiobooks and have found myself using them more and
more. I now can be found listening on my
Mp3 player as I clean, work in the garden, or exercise. I would encourage others to consider
audiobooks as a way to squeeze in more reading and learning into their busy
lives.
I love audiobooks! My job requires quite a bit of travel in Oregon, so I try to find a book I have not yet read. One problem is that I may start a book on a trip, return it to the library, and then try to get it again for the next trip, only to find it checked out! In a number of instances, I have resorted to buying the paper copy because I can't wait to finish the book. Ken Follett's World without End and Susanna Clarke's Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norris are two that I want desperately to finish. No one should be allowed to check them out until I'm done! :) Nancy
ReplyDelete