I love audiobooks. They have saved me from being bored to tears during many commutes in congested rush hour traffic. If you commute to work 5 times a week, you could be spending as much time in your car as a college student spends in class. You can utilize that time to learn a lot by listening to relevant or interesting audiobooks. If you fly a lot, having several audiobooks in your pocket on your iPod, can make your trip more pleasant.

You can also take advantage of audiobooks to “read” while waiting in lines, doing mindless tasks like yard work, or while you work out. It is often difficult to read a book while doing other tasks. If you like to collect books on your bookshelf as keepsakes, you may not like audiobooks.

One of the drawbacks of audiobooks, is that it can prevent you from day dreaming when you are bored, which is when many of us have our greatest ideas. You also cannot take notes or highlight key passages in an audiobook, and it is difficult to find an important passage that you want to revisit.

Audible.com is the leader in audiobooks and was recently purchased by Amazon. Most of the more popular books are available at Audible and some of the more obscure titles. You can sign up for a trial and get 2 free audiobooks by going to audible.com/twit2. If you don’t like it, it is one of the easiest subscriptions to cancel.

Photo by Andrew