Audible.com
I’ve been giving an audible.com a try for a few weeks now & I’m pretty pleased with it. My motivation was largely for something to listen to while trying to go to sleep at night. (My mind tends to start to race off in a thousand directions at night, making it hard to fall asleep.) It’s worked out well.
I’ve had speakers for my iPod in my bedroom for a while, eliminating to wear headphones while trying to sleep. If you stop an audio book track, the iPod remembers where you were, so when you play it again, it picks up where you left off. It also has a built in “sleep timer”, allowing you to tell your iPod to shut itself off after 60 minutes or so.
The selection on Audible seems decent, although like books on the tape, you have to pay attention to if a book is abridged or not. The integration on the PC is slightly better than on a Mac, but both work well enough. The number of computers you can “authorize” to play purchased audio isn’t as generous as Apple’s 5, but they do allow 2, letting me download it to my desktop (where I sync my iPod) and on my laptop (which I use more often).
My only real complaint is the site uses javascript to dynamically create links instead of just simple hrefs. God knows why and whoever did it, should be taken out back and shot. Hopefully they’ll fix it soon as it makes it difficult to open up books I’m interested in in the background while I continue browsing.
Right now I’m listening to Bill Bryson’s A Short History of Nearly Everything, a book I wanted to read a while back, but never found the time. The most interesting thing I’ve learned so far is just how much of a crazy fucker Newton was. I’d known remotely about some of oddities, including his odd forays in religion, searching the bible for secret codes, etc. but not his extensive efforts in alchemy, working to turn base metals into gold and the like, and his willingness to experiment on himself. As an example, apparently he stuck a need into his eye until he felt the back of the socket simply “to see what would happen”, and, for the same reason, latter stared at the sun for as long as he could. Neither permanently blinded him, but he did have to spend several days in a dark room to restore his sight after staring at the sun. I guess when you come up with not just gravity, but calculus, advances in optics, you’re entitled to a few eccentricities.
September 11th, 2005 at 3:35 pm
Does listening to audio books help you fall asleep faster? Since you mentioned it, I’ve tried listening to some podcasts and it just annoys me. Of course it may be that Laurel and I are having trouble finding something we both like. But I’m curious to know if the method has actually, and significantly, helped with falling asleep. And, if so, are you really getting much out of the books?
September 11th, 2005 at 4:32 pm
I’m not sure if one should consider it a historical source, but the way the needle in the eye thing is described in Quicksilver, he was trying to understand how the eye actually works, in order to better understand the instruments he used to observe the world. Also, the needle wasn’t in his eyeball, but in between the eye and socket, enabling him to distort the shape of the eyeball and see what happened to his visual perception.
(Reading Quicksilver, etc., is largely responsible for me picking up Gleick’s new bio of Netwon, which I imagine has a more accurate account. However, I haven’t had a chance to read it yet.)
September 11th, 2005 at 5:34 pm
Khayman, I tried podcasts at first, but they generally didn’t do it for me. Not sure why books are much better, but they seem to be. It’s probably tied to content — what podcasts are you listening to? Have you considered getting a book on tape/cd & ripping it as a trial?
Not sure how much I’m getting out of the books, but that’s okay. For me the point is to get to sleep, anything else is gravy. I’d still probably opt to read a book I really wanted to retain as opposed to listening to it at night.
Kevin, how are Stephenson’s Baroque Cycle books? I liked a lot of his other stuff, but got frustrated by his inability to write a decent ending, so shied away from them. Worth reading?
September 11th, 2005 at 9:12 pm
I discovered a few months ago that listening to high-tempo music helps me fall asleep. I woke up in the middle of the night and couldn’t get back to sleep, so thought that I may as well just listen to something so as not to make a waste of the time. It put me right to sleep. Now, many nights, I put on my “Funky Stuff” playlist and listen for a few songs, and I’m soon asleep.
I think that one reason this works is that it helps to stop the mind from racing all over. But I couldn’t imagine how it works with something that you really need to pay attention to, like an audio book. In particular, I didn’t want to sleep at all while reading Bryson’s book (the one you mention, or any of them). Bryson’s _History_ is my all time favorite book. When I finished reading it, I sat dejected for a moment (that there was no more to read), and then went back to page one and started again. There’s so much interesting stuff in there that by the time you get to the end, you’ve completely forgotten what was in the beginning, so it’s just as good the 2nd time as it was the first. At least it was that way with me….
September 11th, 2005 at 11:13 pm
I think a big difference is that your eyes are closed. Coupled with your body already being naturally tired, you start to imagine the story in your mind… and drift off to sleep.
I have to stay I’m enjoying History… I’ve taken to listening it to at the gym, walks around Pasadena, and just cleanin’ up around the house.
audible.com++