Books on tape/CD

One of the more frustrating things in my life has been my wife’s listening to books on tape (and recently on CD). As parents of teens know, it isn’t easy to start a casual conversation with a person who has earphones plugged into their ears. Carolyn has made it very clear that she will pause the tape or CD the moment I want to talk with her but that just doesn’t work. Putting the tape on the home stereo so that we both hear it isn’t a good solution either. I’ll end up hearing parts of the story that don’t make any sense unless you’ve heard the whole thing.

It does work out when we make the long drive to Southern California or over to Utah. There’s only so much casual conversation possible and the story makes the time go so much faster for both driver and passenger. As the passenger I often can’t read with the motion of the car anyway.

This last trip we got home having listened to only 4 disks of an 11 disk book "Q is for Quarry" by Sue Grafton. A low-key murder mystery, it was clever enough to catch our interest but I've had to wait for Carolyn to finish the rest of the book. Now its my turn to walk around with earphones on or try to listen to the rest of the book in 10 minute segments on my drive to and from work. Its almost enough to make me want to take a long weekend drive just to complete the story.