The last three books I have read have all been audio books. I am reading a physical book at the same time but it is slow going and I can’t help but think that the audio books are cheating. They are car books though and the physical book is a home book. I am in my car more often these days with business picking up. I am at home less. I also have to say the story of the physical book is starting to take shape. It just took 400 pages.
That’s the other thing. The physical book is Bleak House and it is a slog. Not only that there are three children at home. I also think the pages are more congested than modern novels. Characters give speeches instead of speaking in sentences. Then there is all the set-up to the scene. At times it can be hard to follow with three kids screaming and then my getting up to help them and returning trying to find my place. I have also scanned a good portion of the book and it is still slow going.
It is funny because the pages are so dense with words but so few of them say anything. It takes ten pages to describe a wedding between two minor characters. Is every detail of this wedding that important? Is the wedding itself? This isn’t a post complaining about the book I have chosen to read. It isn’t meant to be, but maybe that is why I find the audio books to be so close to cheating. I didn’t think the 38 hour biography on Ulysses S. Grant to be cheating, but Survivor’s Song, Blue-Eyed Devil, and A Man Called Ove, now that feels like cheating when I have finished them all while I’m plugging away through Bleak House.
It might be different if I were reading Ed McBain in a day or two but slogging my way through Dickens is another matter entirely. The lesson here could be that some books are harder to get through than others. Reverse the scenario and making the audio books the physical books and the physical book the audio book. I likely would have no thoughts of this being cheating.
Besides all this I am in my car a lot during the day. Why shouldn’t I get in some reading even if it is my being read to? Is that such a bad thing, getting to consume more books than I would normally. I am half tempted to purchase A Man Called Ove if I ever see it on discount. It was a fantastic book. It might be one of my new favorites. It is the first book I remember in awhile that I’ve wanted to say that about. I truly loved that book and want a physical copy just to give it a hug and perhaps read it to or share it with my children one day.
David Huzzard Writes 