It is so difficult to listen to talk radio these days because I do not want to become immersed in the political diatribe that is swirling around all of us. It sickens me. The political climate of the US right now makes me retch and it frightens me more than I can say. So I try to listen to NPR on Friday because "Science Friday" steers away from politics and focuses on science, of course. And in that discourse we have everything from genetics to climate change to animal migration and on to esoteric topics about skin and light and sleep and so many things that make one's mind tingle with new realms. I am a huge fan of Ira Flatow and "Science Friday" and Ira's enthusiastic voice.
The other hours in my car I get books on CD out of the library and they provide a buffer from the real world. I listen to pretty much everything: literary fiction, mystery, books on science, biographies if they aren't too long, police procedure, true crime, autobiographies, anything that catches my fancy. My criteria is that there cannot be more than 15 CDs in the case, which rules out books like "Crime and Punishment" by Dostoevsky and "War and Peace" by Tolstoy. But I am fairly certain those are books meant to be read, book in hand.
My normal commute is an hour a day, 4 days a week (sometimes 5) so getting through a 15 hour book will take me almost two weeks, given that I work 4 days a week. That's fine. More than that, I lose interest and then what's the point? But there is something so engaging about listening to a book spouting itself out from your car speakers. It's like having someone read to you but they don't really care about you. Sometimes they don't even seem to care about the story, they are merely reading the words. But most of the time the narrators become the story, they change their voice for each character and they, with their singular voice, make any story come alive in the listener's mind. It make commuting not just entertaining but educating at the same time.
What's not to love?
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