Having said all that, I really like Audible.com. I was listening to Gibbon today in sheer delight. It is a comfort and genuine pleasure to spend time with people who value the English language and treat it with craftsmanship and care. I can remove myself fully from todays cares.
And I think I said this, but there really is a qualitative difference between LISTENING to a book, and reading it. I greatly enjoy this man’s Queen’s English, and as Gibbon himself noted, “books” in the ancient world, at least Greece, were read aloud in groups and discussed. The listening evokes a different part of the brain. It is of utility over and above the ability to do it while driving.
If you change the medium, you change the message. I’m still not sure what he meant with “massage”, although we can all guess, if we take pleasure in unexplicated ambiguity.
I have 127 hours of Gibbon I WILL traverse, then James Varieties of Religious Experience, Johnson’s History of the Jews, then Toole’s “A Confederacy of Dunces”.
I am a one man nerd Army. Fear me. Or at least get me something from the ice cream truck. Here’s $2.56. Hopefully that’s enough for a Bomb Pop.