Audio Book and eMagazines

Recently with the new job, my commute time is around 1.25 hours each way. That gives me about 2.5hours of reading time. I started of reading physical book, but it was heavy to bring around, hard on the neck always looking down and with the motion train painful to the eyes as well, and people could see what you are reading all the time. So recently I have taken well to audio books.

During the weekend, I would do a search on any interesting book, and download them at home. Some books last only 30mins, some can go up to 12 hours. Usually I just download enough to take a screenshot for record sake, and then those books should be enough to last me for 2 to 3 weeks, which would just nicely reach their expiry date. Unlike physical book, you can't renew your audio book. 

The bad thing about audio book is, you have to really concentrate when listening to it else you'll be lost. And it is easily to get distracted if the subject you are listening to is not of your interest at all. But if it's an interesting topic, 7 to 12 hours of audio is manageable for me so far. It's great to put you to sleep at night too! Usually I leave it on for 15 mins, and I'd usually be asleep by then. If not I just extend it another 15mins! But when listening on a train, I have to turn up the volume whenever the train is in a tunnel as the surrounding gets kinda loud. It doesn't help if your passengers are loud as well. It really does damage your hearing! But it has been great! I actually learn my Portuguese on the plane on my way to Brazil like this!

As you can see, I've downloaded a lot of audio book so far. I've only been in my new job for 5 months. I don't really listen to everything I download. I realise there are many audio books that are Christian related or motivated. If I happen to download one of those, I would immediately return it the moment it's clear to me that everything in it was about God. Ever since my father's death, I  have been rather against religion.

And if you scan my list in this post, you can see that I mainly listen to non-fiction. Even physical library book, which I still borrow, are usually made up of non-fiction. But the thing with audio book is, you can't really download recipe books. So I kept those for physical library instead. I've even ventured out to Chinese recipe book recently as they are of better variety. Too bad I can't really read them or understand properly 

So while I'm wasting so much time commuting, I guess these audio books will continue to accompany on my journey. You can't listen to audio books while working. To be frank, you can't do anything that needs concentrating while listening to audio book, cause you tend to lose track of what you are listening to after a while. So note that if you are thinking of trying these. 

Above is my latest download. I can't wait to start listening to them starting the new week.  I've actually already used one of them to put me to sleep at night cause sometimes the reader's voice is just so calming. 

Apart from audio books, I've also recently discovered newspapers and magazine. I love that I don't have to spend money on magazines any more cause now I can just download them. Not only that, I can also download magazine from other countries! This is a great companion when you are chilling in a cafe by yourself or even with your grumpy husband. I've also used this as inflight entertainment on my 24 hours journey to South America. At least you know what you have is what you are interested in as compared to whatever they offer you on the flight. Love this! I love NLB!