photo by me

I work in a department where most of us are pretty geeky. We get excited about things that most people roll their eyes at. Sometimes, it’s almost like we’re out-geeking one another.

Let’s learn a new language! PHP, SQL, whatever. It sounds good.

Oh! I want to do that in Flash — those slideshows you are doing are antiquated, don’t you know. (All said with a hint of one-upsmanship and a knowing geeky wink and nod.)

So, it’s not surprising that most of us have laptops. Some of us have tablet PCs. Some of us have PDAs. Some of us have iPods (no Zunes yet — but that’s probably wise since I’ve heard they are not all that great). Heck, we even had 2 co-workers bring in an XBox360 and a Wii so we could see the differences (and…uhhh…play with them).

What happens when you have an intelligent group of well-read geeks getting together? Well, of course, they’d want to start a bookclub. But it can’t be any ordinary bookclub, can it?

Oh, no.

We gather around and decide to have an audible bookclub.

Yes. That’s right.

We are all downloading books to our iPods and listening and then getting together in 6 weeks (I know, seems like a long time but many of us are in school, all of us work a lot, and we need time to actually read…uhhh…listen) to discuss the current book.

So, I have been listening to podcasts on my Nano for a long time. I listen to books from podcasts. But they are usually broken up by chapter.  That makes it easy for me because I can choose exactly when to end it and come back to it.
I started listening to Orson Scott Card’s Ender’s Game last night. The file is large.  Five plus hours for the first part of the book. And like a good book, I didn’t want to unplug. I was getting caught up in the story.

I listened on my way home from work. I listened as I did my household chores. I missed some things but I chalked it up to that phenomenon where I gloss over words when reading, too.

Still, it requires a bit of concentration that is like reading but also different. I think about things differently than I do when reading. I conjure up images differently.

I don’t think I’ll ever put books down. I like the smell of them and the feel of them in my hands. But this is a nice way to get some different reading in.