Listening Library

I seem to be hooked.

Awhile ago I started checking out audio books from the library. You know those books on tape (or CD) or various stories. I seem to be hooked on them now. I have enjoyed listening to them during the short (15min) commute I have to work and when I need to wait for my daughter after her play practice in the evening.

It seems that my children and I have different tastes in stories :-) While we have all enjoyed the Harry Potter series and for the most part have also enjoyed tapes of the older original Hardy Boys mysteries, they don't like my taste in Science Fiction. I have a penchant for hard science fiction (science fiction with plausible precursers) with my favorite probably being stories related to time travel. Being an engineer I guess this is only normal (I love to consider the possibilities and probabilities of such fanciful devices).

Lately I have been listening to Carl Sagan's Contact. While you can definitely read his irreverence in the store line (I have read that the character Ellen follows his beliefs very closely), I still appreciate the science and the questions raised in the story. I have read the book earlier and love the movie adaptation (enough said), but the tapes are a bit hard to follow. The book has a number of vignettes and montages, along inclusions of related quotes at the start of each chapter, that make it difficult to follow if you are not listening carefully (or have already read the story). My kids just say its 'wierd' and hard to follow.

Chalk another one up to Dad's strange ideas.

Enjoy!