Audio books are an excellent alternative to actual reading for a number of reasons. For starters, they require very little effort on the part of the consumer. All you have to do is sit back, relax, and let the narrator do all the work. It’s a pleasant change for most people, who spend all of their time catering to others. And who doesn’t like to return once in awhile to the early days of childhood when parents told stories to a rapt audience of one? Furthermore, it is a great way to work literature into our daily lives, which can best be described as hectic. If we’re lucky, we might squeeze in a chapter or two a day of traditional book consumption before we fall unconscious, but for most adults, reading is not high on the to-do list. In fact, one in four adults will likely not even read a single book this year! But by far the best aspect of clicking on a CD player or iPod to listen to a book rather than reading it is the fact that you can do something else in the meantime. Here are just a few examples of how you can multitask while getting your fill of literature.
- Driving. There is no better time to partake of audio books than when you are endlessly stuck in rush hour traffic. Commuters everywhere have discovered that instead of listening to the saccharine brain candy of morning radio hosts or the doom-and-gloom prognostications of talk-radio pundits, they can ignore the traffic and curb their road rage to the soothing tones of Donald Sutherland reading Ernest Hemingway’s The Old Man and the Sea or Paul Newman narrating Mark Twain’s The Adventures of Tom Sawyer.
- Cleaning house. Nobody likes to do chores, but they’ll go by in a flash as you listen to classic tales or modern bestsellers. Scrubbing the toilet and dusting the furniture never seemed like such fun!
- Cooking. If you’ve got a million things to do and preparing a five-star meal is the last thing on your agenda at the end of the day, why not reduce your stress and enhance the experience by adding an audio book to the mix? No doubt cooking dinner will become your favorite task.
- Working out. Even though many workout machines provide a handy ledge on which to rest your reading material, you may have noticed that bouncing around as you walk, jog, or bicycle makes it a little difficult to read. Solve your problem by putting in your ear buds and passing the time with your favorite book, on tape (so to speak).
- Sitting in the waiting room. While it can be fun to pass your time in line or waiting for appointments by whipping out a little reading material, you probably don’t want to carry around a bulky hardback on the off-chance that you find yourself with some time to kill. No worries! Simply download it to your iPod and get going. You can also use this unexpected free time to learn a new language or catch up on other non-fiction pursuits via audio book.
Sarah Danielson is a writer for Medical Coding where you can browse medical coding schools and industry jobs.
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