Years ago, if you volunteered that you liked “books on tape,” you were liable to provoke a few snickers (maybe that’s just because I hung out with English majors). To fit on the most common format, two cassettes (about three hours of listening) most books required drastic cutting to fit onto this new audio format. Listening to something on tape back then was equated with reading the “Cliff Notes,” instead of doing the work to read something.
However, in college in 1989 and finding myself driving my mother’s Ford Escort with an AM radio only (same Car/AM radio combination that introduced me to Rush by the way) I was lucky enough to stumble upon my first book on tape. I was even luckier when it turned out to be a great story by a great author, “Presumed Innocent” by Scott Turow.
To this day, Scott Turow is one of my “go to” authors for a good novel. His writing just totally sucks you in. Unfortunately, he seems to write way too slow. Don’t quote me, but I feel like he only puts out a book once every three or four years!
I am reminded of all this because I’ve just finished listening to the latest Turow work, Ordinary Heroes, in audio format. The book is a bit of a departure from Turow’s other fiction works in that the main story takes place during World War Two, following Captain David Dubin of the JAG core (Judge Advocate General). Of course, the book still touches on Turow’s ever present fictional Kindel county, by framing the Captain Dubin story with one of his son, a reporter in modern day Kindel.
So between that first book on tape 15-16 years ago and this latest one a lot has changed. Subject to a whole lot of “car time” over the years, I’ve only listened to probably around 200 more books in what would otherwise be “junk” time (okay, I don’t know exactly how many, but it must be in that range). Of course for the past several years it’s been much better. Instead of tapes, you load multiple audio format books onto your iPod. Instead of abridged version, you get the entire book. And thanks to companies like Audible.com, you have access to a much wider assortment of “reading” material.
Yes, I still “read” the real way, but the advantage of these books on tape is that you can absorb that much more. I tend to devote most of my “real” reading to things that I consider work or career related (okay, sometimes loosely). The books I take in on the iPod tend to be the “fun” stuff I might not normally make time to read. Or it may be all those books I wish I had time to read, but can’t seem to find the time.
