Reading Without Reading
Filed under: General Health
Now that we are truly in the midst of the busy season at CP, downtime is a scarce commodity. I love to read, in fact it is one of my favorite leisure activities, been that way since I was a wee lad. Unfortunately these days there is little to no time whatsoever to sit down and enjoy a nice book.
On the bright side however, is the fact that I spend approximately 2.5 hours per day in my car. The first impression of that statement may not seem like such a bright side, but we can make those hours mighty productive if we chose to. I use that time to dictate some of these here blogs on my Dragon Naturally Speaking, I listen to sports talk radio and most recently I have been listening to audiobooks. This has been awesome.
My queue of books seems like it grows daily, and I am barely able to even chip away, so this has been more or less life-changing. This all started a while back when I listened to EC’s copy of Born to Run, which I reviewed HERE.
That book really got me interested in pursuing this route further, and I have finally come around to making it happen. I have found that the best way to do this is to join Audible.com. You can download the mp3 versions of these books rather than on multiple cd’s. This allows you to download it straight to your iPod, and it goes in as one file, rather than 15 tracks per cd. There is also no waiting for the product to ship, and you have less “things” lying around your house. For the final touch, it costs significantly less.
Tony has been trying for over a year to read some of Malcolm Gladwell’s stuff. I have really wanted to, they were just stuck behing other books on the list that I just could not seem to finish, so audible.com came to the rescue. In the past few weeks I have listened to Blink and Outliers, and plan on getting the Tipping Point soon as well. Blink was very good, but I thought Outliers was fantastic, definitely a must-read (or listen) and both books are read by Mr. Gladwell himself.
I am about to start working on Eating Animals by Jonathan Safran Foer. Tony is loving it, so I thought I would give it a listen. I have to head up to Bangor, Maine tomorrow so needless to say I will probably finish the book by this weekend.
To wrap up here is a quote I borrowed from Mike Boyle’s post about listening to audio books during your commute:
“A study at USC has shown that if a person drives at least 12,000 miles a year ( as likely someone would in any metropolitan city) and uses this method of education (audio books), in a matter of three years he or she would have the equivalent of two years of college education”.
That’s pretty sweet considering I drive 750-900+ miles per week!
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Posted on January 21st, 2010 by Brian St. Pierre
4 Comments
January 21st, 2010 at 11:19 am
I dont understand how the credits work? Is it just like purchasing the book? If it is wouldn’t it be cheaper just to buy a book from Amazon if a credit is only worth $11 and an audio book from amazon is $9.99?
January 21st, 2010 at 4:52 pm
Brian,
Do you find that Dragon Naturally Speaking works without too many hitches? I have heard mixed reviews on these and have yet to look into it. I’m assuming they’ve made significant improvements since the initial versions of these products.
I think listening to audiobooks is excellent, although I find that that style lends itself to certain types of reads/”listens” more than others.
Plus concentrating on the road and a “book” is not as straightforward as listening to some background music. Perhaps I’m just one of those who can’t walk and chew gum at the same time, hah, hah.
Thanks for sharing this post with us.
March 3rd, 2011 at 11:47 am
Really appreciate this post. It’s hard to sort the good from the bad sometimes, but I think you’ve nailed it!
May 30th, 2011 at 7:54 pm
I’d want to thank you for the particular efforts you’ve created on paper this post.