Audio Books

Now that we live miles away from anything, we do spend more time in the car going places. Contrary to the time we used to spend driving in more urban areas, the drive time here is fairly stress-free on flat open roads with little traffic. The biggest challenge is watching our speed.

We have discovered audio books. They’ve been around for a long time and I’m sure everyone else has already discovered them. Our children used to listen to books on tape when they were little and before hand held electronics became available. But as adults they are new to us. We used to listen to the radio when in the car, but out here even the radio signals are weak. We could invest in satellite radio but didn’t want the added expense. We quickly realized that there is a skill to listening which we had forgotten. It engages your brain in a different way than music or conversation.

At the moment we’re in the middle of reading (listening to) The Broker by John Grisham.  We bought the set at a used book store before we left Florida. I know you can get them at Cracker Barrel but it would cost us a small fortune in rental fees because it takes us so long to finish one because we're not in the car everyday. Each time we start we have to click back a track to remind ourselves where we are in the story. Sometimes we’re lucky enough to get through an entire disc on one drive.

A few Sundays we’ve not managed to make it back out for an evening worship, so we have listened to the Bible on CD at home. We have a nice set called The Word of Promise New Testament. It’s more of a dramatic reading of the actual text. Jim Caviezel is the voice of Jesus.