Audiobooks

It still amazes me how many people I talk to who don’t realize that you can use an iPod to listen to audiobooks. I don’t even know how I ever survived before my iPod + audiobooks. It allows me to combine two of my favorite activities — going out for a walk & reading a book — into one Voltron-like uber-activity. It allows you to exercise and get smarter at the same time. Back at USC I worked out a system that worked pretty well. I like to listen to a complete short story without interruption, so what I’d do is go out for a one hour walk and listen first to a short story, then fill up the remaining time with whatever novel I was working on. (Recently Stephen King’s The Cell and Audrey Niffenegger’s The Time Traveler’s Wife.) I get my audiobooks off Audible.com. Their selection of short stories is mostly classics, so I’ve been listening to a lot of those (Joyce, Chekhov, Saki, classic detective and horror stories). Here in the Netherlands, I’m living right next to a wooded park, and I’ve really been getting a kick out of heading out in the early evening and listening to a classic horror tale while wandering the woods. The setting sun and cool breeze rustling the leaves really adds to the atmosphere. A story I just listened to that I really enjoyed was William Hope Hodgson’s “The Voice in the Night.”

Update: braintraumered correctly notes (in the comments) that MechMuse also offers audio content, and that they feature work by talented new writers. That reminds me, I configured my Myspace profile to play an audio clip of my fiction when you visit it, which I think is kind of cool.