I like to listen to audiobooks while driving around town. Even on a short drive of ten or fifteen minutes, a surprising amount of a book can be heard. The biggest obstacle for me is the number of explosions of ideas in my head.
I am listening to The Well-Dressed Ape by Hannah Holmes. I listened to her The Secret Life of Dust and liked it very much. She said that the dust that falls on the hood of my car overnight probably contains at least one speck from outside the galaxy! She has many arresting comments in her Well-Dressed Ape, too.
I suspect that meditation and daily writing, and perhaps aging and years of reading, have increased my mental net of associations. So, the narratress of the book will make some comment that wows me. I need to turn the voice off while I recover from my amazement. If I don't, my stunned state prevents me from grasping what is said next. I would have missed some wonderful sentences if I didn't stop the playing.
Well, you can see how it goes. One sentence. Wow! Stop. Think, think, chuckle. Consider making a note of that comment and what comes to mind because of it. Ok, play. Next sentence. Wow! Stop. Think, think, still amazed. Appreciative of the clever comment. Apply the idea to myself or my friends. Criticize the assumption inherent in the sentence. Wonder about counter-evidence. Limping slowly through a 300 or 400 page book can really take weeks.
I am in no hurry and a good book is fun to digest and fully react to. I do have to laugh with Audible.com sends me an email that says something about 6 audiobooks to enjoy over the next month. That number would be close to a year's supply for me.
