You are here: Books

I haven’t always been the most avid reader. I read books during high school because it was part of English or other classes but after leaving school I didn’t read much. The amount of reading increased when I started using and working with computers. I’d buy computer magazines and computer books from Dymocks. This is in part how I amassed so much knowledge very quickly about computers. For a long time I didn’t read much for enjoyment. I would maybe read a few books a year. Reading so much tech stuff didn’t leave much time for other things but there was also the fact that I am short sighted which made it physically hard to read a book.
 
I read slower and having to hold the book so close wasn’t easy. Also with the weight of those computer books some a thousand pages or longer I’m surprised that I didn’t do permanent damage to my wrist. So I didn’t read much apart from tech stuff until I discovered audio books. Audio books are great someone else does all the hard work and reds the book to you. Initially the audio books I bought were on cassette tape and eventually on CD. There were three problems, first anytime I wanted a book I had to go to the bookstore and usually there wasn’t much of a selection.  The third problem was that depending on the book size I would have to carry around 10 to 20 tapes or CD’s swapping them in and out of my tape player or discman.
 
Despite the problems I very much enjoyed the Harry Potter series and several novels by Matthew Reilly. I then discovered a great site on the internet called Librivox (http://librivox.org/) where volunteers record themselves reading book that are in the ‘public domain’, in other words the copyright has expired. They then upload the books as MP3 files and the reader/listener can then download them and play them on their computer or MP3 player. I read the adventures of Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn. There are many other classics there as well like Dickens, that I plan to read eventually. Last time I looked they had recorded more then 1500 books.
 
The amount of reading I did really went through the roof in 2009. In January of 2009 I decided to sign up for and become an Audible subscriber (http://www.audible.com). This meant that I got access to over 60,000 audio books that I could download directly to my computer. Some months later I solved the carrying CD’s problem by becoming trendy and buying myself an iPod Shuffle that could hold multiple books on it regardless of length. Throughout the year I read 37 books.
 
My reading highlights of the year were the 8 books in the Dune series by Frank Herbert (surpassing Harry Potter as the longest book series I’ve read.   The Power Of One by Bryce Courtenay, the 4 books in the Twilight series by Stephenie Meyer, Chocolat by Joanne Harris, The Time Traveler's Wife by Audrey Niffenegger,  ‘Tis and Teacher Man by Frank McCourt. The last book of the year is also a highlight Kim Stanley Robinson's Red Mars.