Audio Books

Audio books have been around for a long time. Even before I started reading. The earlier days involved the analog format of audio tapes but nowadays they are available in the form of audio CDs in WAV or MP3 format, making it more portable.

Its just recently I started exploring the idea of listening to audio CDs than reading the book. Though hesitant about the change I did bit of cheating for my first audio book. I picked up a book I had read long time back - It's not about the Bike by Lance Armstrong and Sally Jenkins. And I should say it was a wonderful experience listening to the heroics of Lance Armstrong once again. I was able to listen to at work made it even better. Multitasking at its best :-)

There are couple of benifits of listening to audio books over reading them. The main being it doesn't require your 100% attention, its like listening to music. At some subconscious level your mind is capturing it. And if not then the Rewind button is very handy. You can listen to audio books multiple time as compared to reading a book multiple times (I have not done multiple reading of a book so far).

On the flip side, nothing beats a physical book at hand. The feeling is quite relaxed when one is reading a book. Not all books make a good audio book. It depends on lot of factor right from the contents of the books to the voice over for the book.

Though my conclusion stands that audio books are good though they cannot replace the activity of reading books. It is sure another weapon to keep in an avid book lovers arsenal.