Audiobook Love

I love to make things. I love to play with my daughter. I love to keep my house organized and tidy.

I know when I'm doing these two things I should strive to be more Zen, and present, and just flow.

But I CAN'T.

My brain is crying out for stimulation.

To make my brain feel better without having the television on in the background, I've turned to podcasts and audiobooks.

It feels so good to finish a book, or learn something interesting, while emptying the dishwasher, folding clothes, or fishing tangled thread out of my sewing machine (I'm in the market for a new one, if anyone has a suggestion. I've had one too many machine-induced temper tantrums.)

This week I "read" The Great Gatsby, which for some reason wasn't required reading for my English class in high school. I loved listening to Fitzgerald's writing. Hearing it aloud gave it an entirely new dimension, and I'm thinking this might be the best way to accomplish #15 on my to-do list (to read the classic works of literature I really should have read as an English major/teacher a long time ago). More on that project to come later.

I also "read" Michael Pollan's Cooked: A Natural History of Transformation. He is one of my favorite non-fiction writers. However, I found his stuff to be definitely more enjoyable when you are reading it to yourself. His book is a fascinating look at the ways we cook using fire, water, air, and earth, and the ways our species used cooking to survive. I'd never thought of cooking as a form of pre-digesting our food before we eat it, but essentially that is what it is. Pollan explains that cooking is why humans don't have to spend six hours a day chewing and digesting and can instead focus on other things like building our civilization. It was incredibly interesting, and inspired me to attempt baking bread without using my bread machine (the recently added #42 on my to-do list) and get a move on with #20 make my own yogurt.

I need to dedicate an entire post to podcasts, which have been an addiction of mine for the past six years, but I don't have the time to really delve into it here.

I've decided to report on this blog what I'm reading, as a way to make sure I finish the thirty or so books that are sitting in my kindle untouched.

What have you been reading lately?