Tag Archives: reading

Audio attention

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A few years ago I exclusively switched from reading books to listening to them. I was never a fast reader and always struggled with my attention when reading. I’d get lost in thought and read whole pages without absorbing any of the content. In fact, sometimes while reading I could turn back one page and not remember reading any part of it.

So for me, audio books were a blessing. I could just listen and absorb. However, I’m going through a phase now where I’m losing my attention while listening. My wondering mind becomes a wandering mind and I tune out the sound. When this happens, only one thing seems to get me out of it and that’s a good fiction book. By moving from learning content to enjoying an adventure, I start to tune back in.

So, I’ll put my current read on hold, I’ll skip my next planned read, and I’ll find myself a good fiction book to get lost in. Normally I save fiction for holiday time, but there’s no use listening to something informative now, if every few minutes I’m hitting the rewind button.

I need a good fiction audio book to remind me what it means to listen intently and pay attention.

Double dipping

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Had 2 long drives today, the first one was 2.5 hours and the second one was 1.5 hours. Of the 4 hours, about 45 minutes was spent on the phone to my sister, and most of the rest of the time I was listening to a book. I love solo drives now that I mostly listen to books rather than reading them. The road becomes an endless stretch before me, and time drifts away as I listen… my only interruption being Siri’s voice occasionally giving me commands from Google Maps.

I love to double dip and both enjoy a drive and also enjoy listening to a book at the same time. The drive becomes a pleasure rather than a chore, and the kilometres disappear… time passing faster because of my involvement in my book.

Now I’m where I need to be, and the journey was both effortless and enjoyable.

Novel worlds

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I enjoy reading novels when summer comes along. I seek out books that take me to different worlds and different realms. I seek magic and the majestic. I don’t really enjoy historical fiction. I want dystopian tribulations, lost kingdoms, and kingdoms lost. Give me magical orbs, forbidden powers, fragile Gods, and alien encounters.

Set me free in a novel world, where I can escape on the pages, written or read, paper or digital, visual or auditory. Places I can visit in my mind; places that could never exist save for an author’s imagination.

Summer is a time to escape to places only the mind can go… thanks to a good book.

Don’t watch the movie

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It’s holiday day time and that means it’s time to pick up a novel. Well, metaphorically pick it up because I’m actually going to listen to an audio book. Every extended school break I usually choose a good fiction and enjoy having an author take me on an adventure.

A few summers ago I got deep into the Gray Man series by Mark Greaney, and now I’m on book 13, ‘The Chaos Agent’. I love escaping into a world of spies, espionage, and more action in a week than any one person would ever experience in a lifetime. The books are fun, fascinating, and exciting… but the movie is absolutely awful!

The movie combined characters and made a cookie cutter Hollywood movie, which undermined the essence of the book, and more importantly the character. Here is a movie spoiler that proves my point: The Hollywood version of the final fight starts with the Gray Man facing his rival. The Grey Man works alone the entire book, but the movie has his female team member with a gun pointed at the bad guy and the Gray Man doesn’t say ‘take the shot’, no instead he chooses to fist fight the guy.

This would never happen in the books, it would never be a choice made by this deadly assassin. It doesn’t fit, other than to have a Hollywood version final battle. Then to make the scenario worse, the army trained rival only remembers he has a knife after he starts losing the fight to the Gray Man. None of that is a spoiler for any of the books.

It’s really too bad the movie had to veer so far away from the book. It took a great story and made into a Hollywood cliche, where any of 100 action hero’s could have replaced the Gray Man and the script would have looked the same.

If you are into spy novels, enjoy reading or listening to tthis series, and stay clear of the movie. And I don’t just mean enjoy the book first, then watch the movie… This is a case where telling you to avoid the movie is keeping you from guaranteed disappointment. It’s that bad!

The sci-fi try

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I don’t usually listen to fictional books during the school year. I usually wait for the breaks, in summer, winter, and March, to pick up a ‘fun’ book. But I started a sci-fi that is about the moon breaking up from a mysterious and sudden catastrophic event. The earth then has roughly 2 years to get as large a community into space before being destroyed by moon debris crashing into earth at a rate that makes earth a fiery hell.

The technical aspects of the book are great. It’s easy to nerd out on the science and to imagine the challenges the survivors must face. The only issue I’m having with the book is that it doesn’t share the loss of life in a compassionate way. The story lacks heart.

It tries, but fails to put loss of life in a way that lets the reader feel grief over the loss. The author is more interested in the science than the humanity. He makes attempts but they aren’t great. Yet the book is still good. I’m only 1/3 of the way through and it will be the Christmas break before I get through it. I’ll let the shortcomings go and enjoy nerding out on the science and the idea of the future of humanity and civilization resting on an ad hoc space colony.

Not all stories need to be perfect to be enjoyable. Sometimes you have to make choices. This book lets me geek out without getting too heavy into the devastation of the entire earth… and I’m just one generation in. From what I understand the story spans a few thousand years. I won’t be putting the story down just because it feels a little clinical in how it deals with death. Because ultimately (so far) it’s a story about survival in desperate times, and under dire circumstances, and I’m hooked on finding out what this dystopian future holds.

I chose a science fiction, not a romance novel, and I’m getting a good dose of both science and fiction. For those interested, the book is Neil Stephenson’s Seveneves.

Battling the inner demons

I’m listening to a book now that has two main characters who are both cautiously interested in each other and doubting that the other person is interested in them. It’s a little painful because they should have recognized the other’s attraction by now. So, while as a reader I’m waiting for the inevitable, I do appreciate the author’s perspective on both characters self-doubt… and how they are fighting their inner demons about their own appeal, their own value of what they can offer to the other person.

I wonder how many relationships flounder not because of lack of interest, but rather lack of confidence? How many people don’t initiate intimacy for fear of rejection? It happens in books all the time. Is that indicative of what really happens, or is it more likely that the attraction is one-way? Is it more if an external imbalance of interest in one another or more internal conflict holding back advances?

How often do people succumb to their inner demons and not move forward? Not just in relationships, in their studies, in their jobs, in sports, and even in hobbies?

“I’m not good enough for that team, why even try out?” (Or worse yet, “Why practice more, it won’t make a difference.”

“They won’t want to hire me.”

“They don’t see my value, I’ll get rejected if I ask for a raise.”

“My photos aren’t good enough to submit in the contest.”

How often do our inner demons prevent us from trying?

Errands day

Some days are just task after task. The day feels slow then you look back and realize that it was a good day filled with small accomplishments.

My favourite thing to do with errands is to listen to a book. Something like watering plants suddenly feels like it’s worthwhile doing. But some tasks pull me away from my book and I find myself rewinding to re-listen at times. Still, this isn’t work, it’s errands. And if I’m searching through camping gear and forget that I’m also listening to a book, that’s ok.

Getting stuff done always feels good after the fact. Check a few things off of the ‘to do’ list, and listen to a good spy novel while I’m at it… sounds like a pretty good summer day to me.

I need a good book recommendation

What’s your favourite, “I couldn’t put it down (or stop listening) book you would recommend?

I listen to a lot of books in a year. I barely read much before switching to audio. I’d come home and try to read but I spend so much time looking at screens in a day that even if I chose to read, my eyes would get tired after 10-15 minutes. Switching to audio, I can listen during my workouts, while in the car, when eating lunch on my own, and even doing house chores. I can get hours in over a week, rather the occasional minutes reading.

But to start this year I’m listening to a book that, while I’m enjoying it, I can only listen to short bursts then I need a break. And in between listening to this, I’ve been listening to podcasts, and I’m looking for a good book to listen to.

I tend to listen to books I learn from until Christmas break, March break, and summer, when I listen to fiction, but right now I’m thirsty for a good, hard-to-put-down action/thriller. I like sci-fi, fantasy, and spy novels, and enjoy novels no matter the age or gender of the protagonist. Some recent things I’ve enjoyed listening to include:

Caliban’s War, book 2 of the Expanse series, (but not ready to go to book 3).

Many books in The Grey Man series (do NOT watch the awful movie that butchers the story and creates a final battle that screams of bad moviemaking and screenwriting). I love this series but 7-8 books in I need a break.

The Bone Witch… fabulous storytelling!

The Bobiverse entire series and everything Dennis E. Taylor has written.

And Artemis, sharp, witty, and fast paced sci-fi that begs for a sequel.

So there are some of my shares… what would you recommend?

Listen up

I’m currently listening to two books and a long form podcast, and when I have down time I tend to be listening to one of these. Watering the garden, having a hot tub, doing the dishes, walking, riding my exercise bike, each of these are done with headphones on.

I rarely read anymore, I listen. Sometimes it’s hard to pay attention, but I actually found reading harder. First of all I’m a painfully slow reader. And secondly, the slow pace makes me more susceptible to being distracted. I would often read a book and then realize I wasn’t absorbing what I was reading. After catching myself being distracted, I could often look back 3-4 paragraphs, or even a couple pages, and not remember reading any of it. While I can be distracted listening, it’s usually only when the task I’m doing requires me to think a bit, like when I’m driving.

The first year that I started listening to books rather than reading them I went from reading 3 books in a year to listening to 26. This year I’ll likely surpass 30. Looking at my Audible stats, I listened to an average of over 3.5 hours a day in July.

Since downloading Audible, I’ve listened for over 2 months, (over 1,400 hours). There is no way that I would have read for a third of that long in the same amount of time!

And that’s just my books, not podcasts, which I listen to for a few hours each month. I don’t watch tv, other than an occasional series with my wife, and I don’t follow sports. I listen. Summer was all about fiction, now I’m getting back into books that I learn from. I find fiction too much of a distraction during the school year. When I listen to books I learn from, I get more value out of reading and out of work. But if I get a good novel recommendation, I occasionally switch up and treat it the same way someone else would treat a movie.

Audio books have transformed they way I consume books… I read them with my ears.

Read Fiction

It was probably the January semester, 1989 that I took a Rural Extension course on Leadership, at the University of Guelph, when I met Professor Al Laozon. He was my first prof to have us call him by his first name. The first prof to have us sit in a circle, despite there being about 24-26 of us in the class. He listened as much as he talked. And he quickly became a friend.

Al had us read The Tao of Leadership, which to this day is still one of my favourite books, and one that I call my ‘Leadership Bible’.

And while his class was one of my more memorable courses at university, it was his office hours chats that I most enjoy and remember. They were filled with insights and wisdom, but also with the things friends talk about, like our childhoods and stories of family members.

Yesterday I wrote a post about my struggles with going through the motions of my healthy living routines with low energy and effort. It helps me to share these things ‘out loud’ and I was able to push my workout harder than I have in weeks as a result. But another benefit of sharing is getting insights from readers, and Al was kind enough to share a comment. With respect to mediation I said,

“I’ve missed more meditations in the last 6 weeks than I’ve missed for the rest of the year. When I do meditate, it’s more like I am am having a quiet moment to think about random things. I can’t seem to focus on my breath any more than I could when I started my daily meditation routine almost 3 years ago.”

And to this Al said,

“Our routines, like life in general, ebbs and flows of its own accord. Be patient. I have had a meditation practise since 1991 and some days are good and other days, well the monkeys are running amok in the “store” despite my desire for them to quiet themselves. Somedays you just go with it.“

I also said, about listening to audiobooks,

“I’m an avid audio book listener, and I usually get through almost a book a week unless I am reading something that’s really long, then it could be two weeks. But I just took three weeks to listen to a 5-hour long book, and didn’t feel I got as much out of it as I had hoped.” And later added, “I’ll start a fictional novel even though I usually wait for the holidays to choose a book that I’m not learning from.”

To which Al commented,

“As for reading fiction, there is much to be learned from fiction. As I have often said, novelists often have more insight into humans and their behaviour than do the best of social scientists. Do not deprive yourself of that which can offer insight, nor dismiss it as simple entertainment or distraction. The arts offer much in terms of insights into our collective journey. After all, there is no greater means of learning than a good story, be it true or fabrication. I recently wrote elsewhere that science offers us knowledge, but the arts offer us truth. I will take truth any day over knowledge.”

All these years later, and miles apart, but Al is still my teacher, advisor, and wise friend, sharing insights I need to hear.

Usually I only ‘let myself’ read fiction on holiday breaks. But I’ve been drawn a lot more to fiction in the last couple years. It started a couple Christmas breaks ago when I received some free ebooks from Audible and I listened to a science fiction novel and got hooked into an epic series. Then I listened to a couple books that I never would have selected for myself, just because they were free… and I loved them. But reading fiction outside the holidays always came with a little self-imposed guilt.

Not anymore. Al’s words have given me permission to indulge guilt free. I will choose more fiction. Let me know if you have a favourite you’d like to share.

“Science offers us knowledge, but the arts offer us truth. I will take truth any day over knowledge.” ~ Al Lauzon