Not a lot in the Times this week (other than, you know, depressing news about the Middle East), but I did find their piece on couples arguing over audiobooks amusing:
[L]ately an unwitting group has been parachuting into the matrimonial crossfire: authors. As more couples discover how an audio book breaks the monotony of a road trip, writers who once enjoyed sovereignty on respective night tables are now fighting for air time in the family car.
"While I like business books, or nonfiction, or maybe science fiction," said Mr. Wollborg, who rents from Simply Audiobooks, which is set up like Netflix, "she wants James Patterson books like the Women's Murder Club series. I did try getting a couple of the Patterson books but I think the writing is unbelievably bad."
Happily, Kate and I don't have this problem. It really doesn't matter what sort of audiobook gets put on, as they all put me directly to sleep. Which means, if I'm driving, we get music so I can sing along with the iPod to keep myself awake (and Kate goes to sleep), and if Kate's driving, she listens to audiobooks, while I sleep.
Yet another dopey marital problem written up in the Times that doesn't affect us. I've got to say, there's nothing like reading their relationship columns to convince you that you have the Best Marriage Ever...
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Someone quoted in the article: I think audio books fill an age-old void -- that men don't want to converse
Also not a problem that we have!
I didn't know your wife had a book blog. *pokes around and bookmarks a bunch of good authors* Neat. One of the better ones I've seen for SF/F...
Oddly enough, while my wife and I have similar taste in books, we both prefer audiobooks that aren't like the books we like. Listening to a real book would be weird, and would deprive you of the pleasure of actually reading it. But listening to The Da Vinci Code deprives you of no pleasure at all, plus you can take a nap without worrying about missing anything.
And you get to experience it with a wide variety of accents.
My first instinct was really to mock the reader (performer?), but he's quite a bit better than his material.
(Still not done, by the way.)
For myself, I find that I enjoy music more than audiobooks, but audiobooks are better at keeping me awake.
I find that for the right book, listening to it is actually an improvement; there's no skimming over descriptive passages, for instance, or skipping to the end of battles to see who won, and I have time to really visualize what's being described (which I don't usually do).
It's not every book that lends itself to this, of course. Some books can't stand up to it, and some aren't read in the way I'd imagined them to sound.