Audio Book Exchange

Commuting Made Easy With Audio Books

Audio Book Exchange I was lucky enough to live very close to my job for many years. However, when I moved to my latest job I was forced to join the hoards of commuters heading downtown. I love music and have satellite radio in my car, but even that bored me considering I spent roughly nine hours a week in the car (not counting other drives that take more than just a few minutes). Between boredom and feeling like I was losing so much time from my already busy life, it wasn't long before I started going stir crazy in the car.

After listening to my commuting woes one day, one of my work friends suggested I listen to audio books in my car. For some reason I had never thought of that. Of course I knew audio books existed, but I guess I thought they were for people who had vision problems or other difficulties reading. I never associated them with listening to in the car.

So I tried it. I started out with a Dean Koontz my friend loaned me. I was hooked. Not only did my commute seem to fly by, but some days I couldn't wait to get back on the road to hear the next part of the story. Plus, listening to books on CD had another advantage that was even better than improving my commute - finding time to "read." I am an avid reader of just about everything. Not only do I enjoy the entertainment of fiction, but I am almost addicted to learning new things. So I like reading, non-fiction books, magazines, websites, blogs, whatever. The only problem is I rarely have time to read. Between work, being a parent, graduate school and the need to sleep here and there, reading anything but text books had become a luxury. But now I can enjoy whatever I want in the car without the guilt that I should be reading (or just doing) something more productive. I have now come to find out many of my similarly-busy co-workers also use their commute for "reading."

The only problem I have come up against is that some libraries still have a large portion of their audio books on cassette tape. Unfortunately I don't have a cassette player in my car (who would have thought I'd need one of those again?), so I need mine on CD. This means I end up buying quite a few. However, you can get them fairly cheap at used CD stores, garage sales, flea markets and eBay. I have also hooked up with a group of co-workers and created a CD book exchange. We trade CD books with each other and even go to our local libraries to get books another person can't get at their library. Our little book exchange has now given a bunch of us something new and interesting to talk about at work besides, oh, griping about work.

These days just about every book you can imagine is available in both audio and digital formats. So no matter how you get your audio books, there is no lack of variety. My latest project is learning languages in the car.
And on a related note, as an avid iPod user, I download a lot of things from the Internet and iTunes. ITunes and Audible.com both sell audio books which you download to your computer (and then can burn off onto a CD as well as add to your MP3 player). So now I can listen to books in addition to listening to my music and watching videos on my iPod. Great for waiting rooms or a session on the treadmill.

Now I don't know what I'd do without my audio books! I've even listened to a couple of them over again. Any CDs I end up with that I don't think I'll listen to again I loan or give to friends (including a couple of elderly ladies who have difficulty reading), donate to the library or sell at used CD stores. In the mean time, I have gone from dreading my drive to looking forward to the next chapter that awaits!

By - Kathy is a freelance writer, producer and video editor. She is currently concentrating on travel journalism, and you can catch some of her work on the Travel Channel's online platforms. Kathy is also a col...

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