Tuesday, February 16, 2010

Finding Time


I know that people who are not readers would think that I read a lot. And I do. But unfortunately, most of my reading time is dedicated either to things I'm teaching or things I'm thinking about teaching, which is all good and well I suppose, but does not fulfill my need for recreational reading or for keeping current.

So, I'm trying something new. I've blogged in the past about how I listened to audiobooks on my commute back and forth to Ole Miss, and I loved it. It made the drive go by more quickly, of course, but it also let me read for pleasure when almost every non-driving minute of my day was dedicated to reading, studying, or writing for classes. The eight-or-so miles in to HU in the mornings doesn't quite qualify as a commute, though, so I hadn't rented an audiobook in more than a year. But lately I've been feeling desperate. There's so much I want to read, long to read, need to read, but I just didn't see it happening.

My solution? I joined audible.com. For $7.49 per month for the first three months I get one audiobook download per month--my choice--and they have lots of books to choose from: bestsellers, fiction, nonfiction. After three months, the price goes up to $14.95 a month, but I can cancel at any time, so I figure I'll know before three months are up if this is worth it or not. My plan is to use my daily exercise time to listen to a book. I walk or run listening to music on my ipod anyway--why not use that time to read?

Maybe I'll even be tempted to exercise longer.

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