A Book Every Week
If you’ve been following my Groundhog Day Resolutions posts, you’ll remember that my second resolution is to Read a Book Every Week, and that in amongst my busy schedule I’ve had mixed success with keeping it these last few months.
On a related note, before I left the YUK I was keen to leave my bank accounts in a good enough state that they would take care of themselves while I am away. One of the things I did to make that as easy as possible was to go through all my Direct Debit payments, and cancel as many as I could — cell phone contracts, utility bills, magazine subscriptions etc.
Now, I’ve been a member of Audible for almost 4 years now, and made great use out of the audio books on my daily commute to work helping to make my daily hour of driving much more pleasant — I sometimes became so enrapt with the book I was listening to on the way home that I’d sit in the car for 10 minutes on the drive before going in just to get to the end of the current chapter, and I would actually look forward to the morning rush hour drive the next day, knowing I could get back to a rivetting book. Maybe there’d even be bad traffic, and I’d get some extra listening time 
Since I gave up my day job, however, my book credits have been accumulating, and there hasn’t been an obvious point in my routine to keep up. So, I came very close to cancelling my subscription, except that 50 Spiritual Classics caught my eye as an interesting book to listen to on the flight, so I decided to get that first, and cancel my subscription later. You might have noticed that very book has appeared in the Now Reading widget in the sidebar.
Tying all this together, is my ongoing difficulty of reading an actual physical book every week, so I’ve dusted off my iPod (which is doing the honours as a portable Apple TV with a selection of my favourite movies and a TV cable while we’re in Florida) and spent my remaining credits. The cheapest service plan costs only £7.99 for a book of your choice every month, plus you get two free books when you join — and they can cost non-members upwards of £30 each for the heftier tomes. Alternatively, you don’t need to tie yourself to a monthly subscription if you’d rather pay for books on an adhoc basis. As soon as we collect our Harley’s from customs tomorrow, I’ll have ample opportunity to catch up on my reading as I ride around Florida for the next few months, and I plan to kick my target of 4 books before the next GHDR review day into orbit
I thoroughly recommend audible’s service. They have an enormous selection of books (my wishlist is backed up for 2 years worth of books from my subscription), and even if it takes a little creativity to find the opportunity to listen to the audio programmes, I guarantee it’s much easier than making the time to actually sit down and read a dead-trees edition of the same book!