Things I Love #2: Audiobooks

I love to read. I always have. When I walk into a library or a bookstore, I see hours and hours of adventure and discovery and understanding. I just imagine how wonderful curling up with one of those books would be. One of my favorite commercials right now is the one on PBS where the kids are all waiting at a train station and the destination board pops up places like "The Shire," "Narnia," and "Hogwarts," then the kid who climbs on the train gets his ticket stamped "Oz." While the the kid sits down in his seat, the train fades away and instead the kid is sitting in a gorgeous window seat reading a book. I get goosebumps every time. During the summers growing up, going to the library was one of my favorite after-chore activities. It just felt magical going into that building and coming out with hours and hours of entertainment. I used to limit myself to one novel a day because if I read more than that then I would run out of books before the next library day. Even now, as much as hiking is Brent's "Perfect Day," mine would be sitting on the couch in a clean house feeling caught up on my things with a great book that I haven't read yet. Wow. Once I grew up and didn't have as much time to sit down and read, I discovered books on CD. I used to have these in my car all the time going back and forth from Boise and when my work was taking me all across the valley. I sometimes would sit in the car in a parking lot trying to finish a chapter before I went in to get my groceries. But these days I don't drive much. If I do, I'm chatting with Miriam. And when she lays down for a nap, there are a lot of things I want to get done that I can't do with a book in my hands. Which is why I am so incredibly enraptured with books on CD on my ipod. Once Miriam is down, I pop in my earbuds and am instantly in another world. I listened to the entire series of Harry Potter (which is an amazing story that still brings tears to my eyes) as I washed Miriam's bottles a hundred times a day when she was tiny. I listened to Sheri Dew's wisdom as I cleaned the tub and the toilets. I listened to "The Poisonwood Bible" by Barbara Kingsolver and watched a family travel to Africa and was astounded how it affected the mother and four daughters so incredibly differently. I listened how Pi Patel survived a shipwreck and lived on a lifeboat with a Bengal tiger named Richard Parker in "Life of Pi" by Yan Martel while I swept and mopped the floors. I love it. Perhaps too much. As much as I used to crave cuddling down with a book, I now can't wait to push the earbuds in and hit play. I do find times where I have listened too much in a day and haven't had time to think and plan. So I try to keep it under control so it doesn't take over my life. But it is something I love. There are readers that are incredible (like Jim Dale, who reads the Harry Potter books), and some that are surprising (Kirby Heyborne of cheesy Mormon movie fame reads some of Orson Scott Card's Alvin Maker series), and some that make me love the characters all the more (the reader of Life of Pi portrays Pi as absolutely adorable). There are also readers who are just average and make me wish I would have read the book myself and not have their voices tied together with the story. Oh well. But I love love love my books on ipod. Happy listening!