Listening in the Car
Thursday, December 2, 2010 at 08:45PM One of the great habits we have fallen into is listening to audio books in the car, no matter how short the trip (this saves me from having to argue about whose music or radio station to listen to and keeps us all happy). I have different books that we are listening to, depending on who is in the car (thank goodness for my favoriate all time app, Bookmark).
For all three of us, the book of choice is Story of the World Volume 4: Modern Times. Full disclosure, after having just listened to SOTW Volume 2: Middle Ages and SOTW Volume 3: Early Modern Times, I lobbied to take a break from history and listen to Rick Riordan’s new book The Lost Hero, but Jason (my history kid) really wanted to do Volume 4 and Kyle (my usually non-history kid) amazingly agreed, so who am I to argue.
Jason and I are listening to The Looking Glass Wars which is an interesting take on the orginal Through the Looking Glass story.
Kyle and I are just starting Jonathan Stroud’s Bartimaeus Trilogy with the Amulet of Samarkand. Jason and I read these a couple of summer ago and Stroud just came out with a prequel, Bartimaeus: The Ring of Solomon so I figured that this was a good time to read them with Kyle.
I am currently re-listening to Parker Palmer’s Let Your Life Speak: Listening for the Voice of Vocation which is resonating very deeply with me right now. All about “living the life that wants to live in me.” Hoping to write more on this at some point.
It is amazing how much book reading you can get done in the car.
Reader Comments (6)
The best part of how you are keeping your literature is that you don't have piles of books everywhere! My sister was here at Thanksgiving and was laughing at my nightstand buried in books, the dining room stack, the desk stack, the bathroom pile, and the Reader's Digest in the car for emergencies. She told me "You wouldn't have this problem if you had TV!" Which is so ironic because she is getting her doctorate right now in, wait for it, Reading Development!
We listen in the car all the time but are not nearly as democratic. It's whatever Miles and I choose, and we still use the library CDs, you know, so I can return all but the last one and have to go back. Every. Single. Time.
Thanks for all the ideas on what to get next time!
What do you use to listen to audiobooks? An audible.com membership, an itouch, and the bookmark app? How do you listen through the car's speakers, do you have one of those radio broadcasters, a direct link to your stereo aux, something else?
We're big audio book fans, too, from the library for the most part (CD.) It's hard to manage them on the ipod, one of ours is trippy (skips/randomizes sometimes and drives us nuts), the radio station we broadcast through isn't always clear, and controlling the device is harder than just clicking "off" when the kids ask a question while we're listening to the CDs. Would love some ideas for different ways we could configure it to make it easier.
We've recently listened to The Alchemyst, which was really good. Listening now to The Name of This Book is Secret, but it's annoying me. Not a fan of heavy use of authorial asides, and the voice talent is actually mimicking a stutter for one (minor) character and it's driving me BATTY!
ummm...Lee? That is just my car. I still have TONS of books scattered and piled all over the place in the house. Especially by my bed where I have books for the boys and for me (we do our before bed reading together in my bed since it is more comfy for the 3 of us) And actually now that I think about it I usually have a book or two in the basket on the front seat of the car too to grab if I am somewhere I have to wait.
It is funny..I had actually not been interested in the iPod when it first came out since I was not really into my music at the time. But then I realized that you could hold tons of audio books on them and not have to lug around the 25+ disks of Harry Potter. Then I discovered Audible and I was sold! That is one reason I am sort of considering a kindle or nook...the idea that I could carry my whole library with me is just...awesome. But still not ready to make the leap quite yet. I really do love the feel of a good book.
Karen....pretty much all of the above. A couple of years back for my birthday I took my car to the Chrysler dealer and had them install whatever it is that they install to allow me to plug my iphone directly into my car stereo. One of the best decisions ever. The cord runs into my glove box which is a bit clunky/awkward, but it sounds great! We had tried going through the FM receiver and the tape player before that, but it never sounded good at all. HUGE difference.
We do get a lot of audio books from the library (ours has a great selection) and I usually just play the CDs (when I got my car I specifically ordered a tape player (and no dvd player...the dealer thought I was nuts) because at the time most of the library audio books were on tape. Now they are pretty much all CD or downloads to the boys ipods.
Another thing that I use often that comes in handy is Bookbuilder...it is software that makes it really easy to copy CDs into an audiobook file on my computer. It is only for Macs though. I personally prefer to play things on my iphone rather than lug the cds around.
I do order quite a bit from Audible as well...it is getting hard...not only do I have to decide whether to own my own copy of a book (as opposed to getting it from the library) but now have to decide if I want to own the audio book too. But they do tend to get listened to over and over around here by the boys and me.
My kids are sometimes more interested in meat than fluff too.
My son has listened to vol 2 of Story of the World over and over. For Christmas he asked for volume 3. I am delighted and not only did I buy it I saved money as the money came out of the Christmas budget...now I have more for curriculum purchases.
I have "read" some of my favorite books in the car. I love listening to Jane Austin in the car.