Look what Santa gave me

Happy new year everyone. After a nice little break, we're now starting to ramp up for 2007 and I'm really looking forward to it!

My new year's resolutions are to get fitter (doesn't everyone?), continue to undertake projects I'm excited and passionate about and to try to find more time (where does it go?) to read more books.

On that point, I've started to cheat a bit. For Christmas, I got an ipod shuffle - a cute mp3 player which can store 1 gigabyte of audio data. It's been great for the gym and listening to podcasts.

However, in the last couple of days I've finally purchased my first audiobooks from itunes.

Talk about an efficient way to "read"! Now I'm listening to audiobooks all the time, I can see an addiction developing. I went for walk with my ipod shuffle the other day and was so engrossed in the book, before I knew it, I had walked from Lane Cove to Neutral Bay (and was too tired to walk back).

Of course, listening to an audiobook is an entirely different sensory experience to reading words in a book and feeling the paper as you turn the page. That experience involves translating the type in front of you into a magical language that can create new worlds and fuel your imagination.

Can audiobooks do that? I'm guessing no. But I'm willing to give it a try. It definitely won't be the same experience but it may offer a different paradigm and alternative to "reading". One thing's for sure, I've listened to more audiobooks in the last week than I've read books in the last six months!