ipod
Photo Courtesy of Fausto Milletari

“I like to listen. I have learned a great deal from listening carefully. Most people never listen.” - Ernest Hemingway

Audio Books

I have decided to include audio-fiction on the trail too, whether that be full-length novels or short fiction, it should form part of my "reading" list. Does it qualify as reading material? Well, I suspect many of the same mental-muscles are exercised and it's all story, which is the main thing. What sold me is that Stephen King listed audio-books in his own reading list in his book On Writing.

The Birth of the Trail

That list is what made me realise that I had no idea what books I have read. A few stand out in my mind but I must have read hundreds of books surely? How many do I get through in an average year? What mixture of genre and literary fiction is there? Is it mostly fantasy? These questions are why I started my bookworm trail. A reading list is personally interesting to me, and it may be interesting to others. It may even be useful when someone asks me to recommend a book to them or if I can't remember who wrote that great book I remember reading when I decide I want to try another by the same authour.

The Future of the Trail

I've had an idea how to make the trail useful to others. If all goes well on the blog I may well investigate putting together a different kind of website, one that allows people to subscribe and keep their own reading journals. These could be public or private, perhaps the information could be used to cross-reference different opinions and thoughts. Just an idea.

More Slime

So, you may expect to see more posts from my as I begin to include audio books to the trail. I listen to a lot of short fiction podcasts such as www.podcastle.org and Escape Pod, plus I am working my way through Scott Sigler's back-catalog of novels right now with plan's to listen to more Mur Lafferty and J.C.Hutchins stories. I seem to have no trouble being involved in multiple stories at once. My reading and listening times are clearly defined: I listen to and from work and whilst doing chores around the house, I read at night before bed and at lunchtimes when work is not too busy. I'm going to try something different though. For audio work I'll only post after I have listened to the whole thing. I think this will work better given the serial/episodic nature of podcast novels.